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Posts Tagged ‘News’

The problem with polls

Let’s be blunt. Polls are wildly inaccurate, and increasingly so.

I’m tired of reading that this or that poll has been debunked by today’s newest numbers, and then watching as the Twitterverse explodes in shock that election results were far from the experts’ (read: polls’) predictions. But day after day, more polls are released and more charts are built to show how the GOP candidate who’s rocketed into “flavor of the week” popularity would fare in a general election versus Obama or a primary versus their GOP opponents.

Sometimes, the infographics show a three-month trend, or another method of pseudo-science. These numbers should carry a warning: “This poll’s results carry a 24-hour expiration date and reflect little other than an outdated system for gauging public opinion.”

Plus: most people with home telephone service probably didn’t watch the latest GOP debate or hear the latest sound bite since it is nearly ONE YEAR until …

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December 13, 2011   Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: News   No Comments comments

Watch: A walk in Zuccotti Park

When I arrived in New York earlier this month, I knew one of the first places I’d need to visit was Zuccotti Park, for a glimpse into the home of the worldwide Occupy movement. I’ve spent some time at Occupy Vancouver, and I was curious to see the resemblance and the differences.

I finally made it out to Occupy Wall Street last Saturday, Nov. 12, as protesters were beginning to gear up for today’s big “Day of Action.”

I’d originally planned to write about the sights and sounds — but plans change, and it seemed more fitting produce an audio slideshow. So here it is, though perhaps a bit later than I’d wished.

I thought it best that the slideshow speak for itself rather than be colored by my own views on the movement.

Please share your reactions!…

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November 17, 2011   Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Journalism, News   No Comments comments

Fear: the reason for journalism’s meltdown

There is an unmistakable power in the written word. But what do you do when you go to work?

Do you groggily concern yourself with making the perfect cup of coffee before sitting down to skim-read your PR-laden email for potential stories, check the news to play catch-up on missed scoops and phone your favourite contact, hoping for a juicy tip?

Yeah. I thought so.

Wake up, people.

Do you really contemplate how lucky you are to be reporting the stories, rather than being the story, when you’re interviewing one of Downtown Eastside’s drug addicts for a sensational sob story before heading back to your comfortable law-abiding office to count the minutes until you can abandon the leather office chair in exchange for home’s lazy-boy couch and HDTV?

Do you think about the huge opportunity you have each day to cause reform, bring justice and give light to unspoken darkness and to ground the community …

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July 19, 2010   Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Journalism   No Comments comments

Journalism in an Old-Spice era: branding is everything

The old cliché that one is one’s “own worst enemy” might well be true when it comes to newspapers.

Organizations are systematic. They create policies, crunch numbers, build hierarchies and they make cuts according to an assumed lack of value. But managements wrongly continue to depend on financial reports as an indicator of value.

Haven’t we learned anything from web startups? What do Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and so many other revolutionizing internet startups have in common? They started from nothing more than a little entrepreneurial thinking.

While journalists loll around arguing the merits of newspaper-funding ideas, they are stuck thinking in the past. So, please, I’m tired of hearing about how to “save” journalism, because the only ones who are talking about that are talking about a journalism that is already dead. You see, none of these huge internet startups began from the mindset, “Let’s see how we can do something like …

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July 17, 2010   Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Journalism   No Comments comments

Writing: still a journalist’s key asset

Take a look at a newspaper. Any newspaper. Even a newspaper’s web site. What do you see?

Writing is every newspaper’s foundation. Stories require writing, photos require cutlines, multimedia requires titles and usually uses written introductions. Are journalism schools beginning to minimize this foundational skill to make room for multimedia? I believe they are.

Journalism schools know it’s their duty to train students in all aspects of journalism: writing, audio, video, photography, layout and basic web design. But they don’t know how to properly allocate time so that a journalist’s most important asset remains at the top of the training planner while still instilling knowledge about and the value of new media technology. So every school fumbles with their scheduling decisions and builds students in the way they believe is best. Have they stopped to decide why? As far as I can tell, they believe multimedia skills will be instrumental in our …

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October 31, 2009   Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Journalism   No Comments comments

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