Saturday, August 19, 2006

Where do I get all this stuff? It's aggregating. With a new semester starting next week, I'm planning to have students use RSS aggregators to help cut the time they spend finding news stories to read. But I'm a little worried that they'll get as addicted as I am to building an aggregation of so many interesting sites that life will disappear into the computer screen. They're younger; they won't let that happen. Or so I tell myself. For examples, I've simply cut and pasted items from my aggregator fields to build today's series of posts. (Any item or indented section that ends with an address in square brackets came verbatim from that source.) 7:42:55 PM    comment [] Today's Society of Professional Journalists' SPJ Press Notes, an aggregator of news about the worlds of print, broadcast and online journalism, carries this notice above its batch of headlines: TODAY'S MEDIA NEWS. NOTE: Beginning Monday, PressNotes will be compiled by Janet Tate and edited by Dorothy Bowles at the University of Tennessee. [SPJ Press Notes] I can't think of a better editor for the job... In fact, when I was dragooned into teaching editing a few years before coming to Tennessee, an editing textbook by Dr. Bowles' helped save my class from complete disaster.  Dorothy also has led the East Tennessee Pro Chapter of SPJ to several awards. 7:19:21 PM    comment [] CBS Evening News with Katie Couric to use web. CBS will become the first network to offer a live simulcast of its evening news broadcast on the Internet, when Katie Couric becomes anchor of the 'CBS Evening News' on...  By Jonathan Dube. [CyberJournalist.net] 6:49:42 PM    comment [] Here's a pretty nice cross-section of local blog posts, syndicated over at the News Sentinel's KnoxNews blog, "No Silence Here," usually the home of the paper's reporter Michael Silence. However, the blog now has a group of "guest" contributors, and I just noticed that when I pick up the aggregator feed I can't tell one author from another. It looks like this:   An Evening Stroll. Some items I've been reading with interest today include: At KnoxViews.com, Les Jones posts a seemingly innocent restaurant review that evolves in the comments section into something else entirely. R. Neal posts an fascinating bit of news about a barge accident and its impact on future Tennessee River barge traffic over at Facing South. The Mainstream Baptist is collecting information for a directory of centrist Baptists out in the blogging world. Tele-Buddy shares some information (but, sadly, no spoilers) on the upcoming third season of Lost. Say Uncle is talking about an interesting lawsuit over gun confiscations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that is making its way through the federal courts. And finally, a federal judge has apparently ruled that the U.S. Constitution can be put back on the feeding tube. No word yet on whether the White House will continue its fight to pull the plug. [No Silence Here] On the blog itself, the author is identified as Michael's latest guest, who goes by the handle "Tennessee Values Authority." 6:45:28 PM    comment [] Media Frenzy: At Some Publishers, Nonbusiness Is Going Strong. There is a clutch of magazines that have been quietly going about their business -- or, rather, nonbusiness -- for years. By Richard Siklos. [NYT > Media and Advertising] 6:33:20 PM    comment [] Kidnapped Journalist Jill Carroll's Story. Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped while in Iraq and held hostage for 82 days. The Christian Science Monitor and Boston Herald are printing her story as a serial. [j's scratchpad] 6:31:56 PM    comment []

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