WaPo Makeover

Because I live 20 minutes away from the district on a good day with light traffic, I view the Washington Post website multiple times a week for the news (..duh), but also for good places to eat, museum exhibits and dun. dun. dun. traffic. Dr. Gridlock helps me guesstimate my journey via 495 from northern Virginia (USA Today internship) to my comfy home in Maryland and vice versa. This past weekend I saw a Tweet relating the WaPo makeover news with a link and voila I saw a cleaner, fresher website. It's a less junkier format, crisp and neat like the New York Times. Yet, the site still has something Post-ish about it that separates it from the NYT website. It reminds me a bit of Gawker's redesign, just a tad bit, though. The PDF version of the paper is displayed prominently, which is quite refreshing, given I haven't seen a print WaPo newspaper in months. It recreates the feeling without the hassle of recycling the paper afterwards. The one seemingly trivial option that I love ("single page") is now at the top of the article. I honestly, don't even know why the stories are broken in to pages online. Perhaps loading issues...or some people don't read the entire story :0 All in all, this is a great new look for the Wapo.

Immigration Conundrum

This interactive gives a comprehensive insight about American immigration enforcement. I HIGHLY suggest everyone take a look.




Via http://seattlepostglobe.org/


The slideshow runs a bit fast, but it's still pretty impressive.

I would also take a look here. It's a mixture of global story telling and web magic~

The Power of the Flip

For all of my multimedia projects others have swayed me to believe in the video powers of the Flip camera, which I recently bought from Walmart. Granted it's zoom in quality's a bit low, the portability and simple button layout make it a great low-tech gadget on-the-go. Right now I'm crafting an awesome holiday movie too see how to expand my iMovie skills. And it's seemingly infinite range of multimedia potency I have yet to fully discover. Seen here is a twin of my camera. Note: Pink was the color that gave me a camera at the lowest price :)

Social Networking Site

So for my advanced multimedia class I made this web site (from scratch I might brag and add) about social media, which includes an interview with this fabulous digital media expert and Twitter media consultant. I'm still learning about location-based social media (i.e. FourSqaure GoWalla). Doubt if I have time to use it as changing location requires much leisure money. But, I find the whole topic fascinating and encourage all to try it and report.

An Angry Journalist

As a neophyte journalist the following exerpt from a Gawker feature sort of upsets me It's about those in my profession succumbing to monetary temptations from the PR machines that try to feed us what THEY want to see in the paper. All too often I've felt others have used me for their motivations as a reporter for various outlets. And if what gets printed doesn't portray them in the right light, sources are less than eager to talk to me. Well here it goes. Poor language choices, but I agree with the overall notions behind this terrible rant.

Read here: http://gawker.com/5714779/comment-of-the-day-an-angry-journalist-speaks

La Frustrated Femme

Next to the Newsuem's new Elvis exhibit lies an expansive chronological catalog of American newspapers and magazines. The journalistic reservoir includes newspaper clippings from the 1700s until the present. In one of the drawers of glass preserved newspaper covers I found Ms. Magazine with a picture of a giantess superwoman running over war and destruction. The heroine represented Hillary Clinton in this Ms. Magazine edition that ran during the 2008 presidential election.

Not quite sure of the entire back story behind this image, the cover still intrigued me. I found it captivating because this women exudes some sense of traditional male characteristics, sans the choice of clothing. Her aggressive footsteps countered her worrisome and I daresay look of motherly worry.

This look might be suggestive of what writers of letters of recommendations often call female applicants: "caring," "sensitive," "compassionate," or a "supportive colleague." A study revealed these words did not appear as frequently upon male letters. The reputable National Science Foundation supports the study.
How do I react to this study and the superwoman cover? Let's just say not compassionate, caring or supportive. Just masculine frustration.

Tweet Tweet: A personal one-on-one session with Twitter guru

The number one Twitter obstacle for Tweeters everywhere is not necessarily the fail whale when a mind-blowing tweet comes to mind.

Members of the Twitter cult are having a difficult time finding the accounts most worth following with more to say than they ate a tuna fish sandwich today. Future Twitter changes will address this searching dilemma, said Robin Sloan, writer and media inventor for Twitter.

Over the next year, he said, Twitter will explore ways to enable eager Twitter followees to find the “good stuff.”

“One of the big challenges in Twitter is finding the lots of really cool and smart relevant people with accounts,” said Sloan.

Twitter receives 90 million tweets a day, which Sloan says is both good and bad for the company and its users.

Sloan’s favorite followers include Ezra Klein from the Washington Post and Ellen McGirt, a writer for the Fast Company Magazine.

On the Job

Of course, my journalist background prompted me to ask the Twitter representative if the company was hiring. Turns out Twitter is indeed hiring, at a rapid pace even.

Each month the company hires about 30 people a month. Now the company stands with a social media army of 300.

“It’s crazy to have literally a new face everyday,” Sloan said.

Oddly, he said, the Twitter work environment resembles the site itself. He trades e-mails more times a day than he can count and he senses a great sense of transparency, he said.

“I have found the culture of communication at Twitter really open and fast pace,” he said. “It’s a nice mix of code and content.”

Journalists Tweeting

While Sloan knew little about Muck Rack, the hub for tweeting journalists, he did mention that it was valuable one-stop site for journalists looking for other professionals to follow based on their beats and interests.

“I think it’s more effective as a way to find people than anything else,” he said.

Muck Rack hosts a number of journalism Twitter accounts with a live feed in its home page and separates its tweets and users by beat, links, photos and location. It resembles other Twitter searching sites such as Wefollow and Tlists, said Sloan.

“What’s the appealing thing about the [Muck Rack] platform is that journalists can become real people,” he said.