Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Lost and found: Newspaper industry research ideas While tracking down a webpage that the AEJMC Newspaper Division site hasn't featured in a while, I found a collection of links that journallism grad students and faculty members might find useful as they plan thesis and dissertation projects. The list, compiled by the International Newspaper Marketing Association, features a decade's worth of academic conference papers that the organization considererd especially useful to the newspaper industry:  INMA's favorite AEJMC research papers, 1993-2003. The request that sent me browsing INMA's site was for a related 20-page report on newspaper research ideas by Earl J. Wilkinson, executive director of the association, based on a 2003 survey of newspaper executives. The document has been available on the AEJMC Newspaper Division website for the past couple of years, but gradually submerged under newer material. Wilkinson's cover letter also discusses his hope for closer connections between university researchers and the industry. The original links to Wilkinson's presentation, and a related AEJMC survey, are on the "Archives & Resources" page of the newspaper division website, along with links to material from the last three AEJMC annual conventions. I'm hoping to add a new page to the resource section, listing award-winning papers in one place, so that visitors don't have to search a year at a time. For now, INMA's list probably links to a lot of the same top papers. 11:53:17 AM    comment [] No news, but good story: Times keeps covering podcasting Just when my classes are discussing the difference between "features" and "breaking news" stories, Dave Winer points to an up-to-date New York Times feature on podcasting.  There's not much real "news" in that story, but it has handy how-to tips on equipment to use, as well as anecdotes about podcasters that aren't professional radio folks, just interesting people with microphones, Internet connections, something to say and time to say it.  (The latter, unfortunately, is something I haven't been able to find for my own  non-news podcast idea.) While he was at it, Dave tossed out a technology business term I hadn't seen before, which may fit a "watching language grow" discussion in class someday: What's "bubble-ware"? From the context, the word may suggest a program or product intended to take commercial advantage of some "next new thing" buzz, rather than a program based on a long-term vision or unique inspiration. In that case, bubbleware would include some Web businesses that soaked up  investors' money in 1998 and were gone by 2001, after that market bubble burst. Or maybe Dave just means a product that will be "here today and gone tomorrow," for whatever reason. (If you Google the word "bubbleware," with or without the hyphen, you'll also find people using it to describe some diagram-drawing graphics programs, some glassware  and a sub-category of game software, among other things.) Speaking of Dave Winer, the Wikipedia page on podcasting is still carrying a fairly  detailed description of his role in creating the technology. That part of the page has stayed pretty much intact for months, recovering from occassional Wiki-vandalism. But the fact that "facts" can come and go from Wiki pages is something worth noting when the class talks about finding reliable information online. 11:21:00 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2008 Bob Stepno. Last update: 7/19/08; 1:09:57 PM.