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Saturday, September 24, 2005
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& one has additional destination
I was just telling students how some newspaper websites have been reluctant
to link outside their own pages for fear of losing viewers for their
stories (and ads). That's not true at the Knoxville News-Sentinel, at least not in its staff blogging section, where Michael Silence now has his "Valley of the blogs" page online.
His directory of East Tennessee weblogs has collected more then 90 names and links since he asked for volunteers last week. Now he's inviting bloggers to add their own
descriptions and locations as comments on the blog list, so I've just
pasted my blog heading there...
He also points to Johnny Dobbins' somewhat similar idea of sorting the RockyTopBrigade.org
membership by region. The home page he whipped up last month for the
brigade already offers links and contents from more than 140 Tennessee
blogs. If his database-backed site allows him to automagically generate
regional "samplers" from the blogs' RSS feeds, it would save
local-information junkies (including journalists) a lot of
surfing...
(It also might save Michael or some KNS interns the drudgery of cutting
and pasting blog comments into a searchable, updateable database.)
Additional destination: For skb... and jfm...
Speaking of the Rocky Top Brigade, Michael has links to two out of
three new incarnations of its organizer, "the blogger formerly known as
South Knox Bubba," who is now writing as "R.Neal" at Facing South, as well as hunting birds, butterflies and bears for his photoblog.
Neal's new third location isn't exactly a blog... He is contributing his twist on Tennessee myths to the first issue of Red State Reader, an online zine launched from New York by former Knoxville alt-weekly editor Jesse Fox Mayshark. Other contributors include Joe Tarr, formerly with that same weekly.
7:39:52 PM
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Bloggers are doing some serious -- and dangerous -- journalism in some
places around the world. This downloadable 87-page booklet offers help
with some blogging basics (in your choice of five languages),
including ways to spread the word about a weblog and "establish its credibility through observing
basic ethical and journalistic principles." But it goes farther, with more "who," "what" and "why" to go with the "how-to":
Reporters Without Borders' Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents
"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in
countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure.
Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the
government and sometimes courting arrest.
"Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them,
with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and
to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each
situation..."
RSF (the group's untranslated name is Reporters Sans Frontières) offers the booklet in French, English, Chinese, Persian or Arabic. I learned about the booklet from Wired; its article also mentions another online booklet I talked about here a few months ago, "For Freedom's
Sake: Legal Guide for Bloggers" from the U.S.-based
Electronic Frontier Foundation, with information for government workers
and others who might wonder just what they should feel comfortable about saying in a personal
blog, such as its How to blog safely (about work or anything else)
page.
More Law for Journalists
The EFF page just reminded me of another online resource, a Court and Legal Handbook for Journalists,
especially those who cover trials and legal issues. While it's a
Massachusetts Bar Association publication with plenty of in-state
information,
reporters anywhere can use a lot of its information, including a guide
to federal courts, a glossary of legal jargon, a summary of libel law, and an essay explaining why reporters should not use "innocent"
as a synonym for "not guilty."
That last point came up in class recently. Some older editions of the Associated Press Stylebook -- and journalism textbooks based on it -- suggest using
"innocent" in court results, to avoid publication errors made by
accidentally dropping the "not." However, AP has updated its advice and now
suggests "acquitted" to editors worried about convicting someone with a dropped "not."
11:16:21 AM
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© Copyright
2008
Bob Stepno.
Last update:
7/19/08; 1:09:17 PM.
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