3 discoveries at Chicago's Technori Pitch

3 cool, built-in-Chicago things I encountered at last night's Technori Pitch event in Chicago:

Mirrorgram. A free, weird and strangely compelling iPhone app for creating mirrored images. And you can change the location of the "mirror" after the photo's been snapped.

BirdFeud.com. Hey, let's you and him fight! A promising new platform for taking polls, Facebook brawls and other Web-based conflicts to a new level of engagement. Kind of like the late, lamented World Wide Web Fights Grudge Match series.

GoSoapBox. Designed for classrooms, but put to great use for Technori's full house at the Chase Auditorium, GoSoapBox lets the audience use smartphones or laptops to pose questions and vote them up or down, so the moderator can see which are most popular before deciding the ones to pose. I'm recommending this for my next gig as a moderator -- in December for the Publicity Club of Chicago, thanks for asking.

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In storm, Twitter trumps TV with near-omnipotence

Earlier this month, Will Oremus of Slate suggested that those who didn't monitor Twitter during presidential debates were missing half the show.

With coverage of The Storm Formerly Known As Sandy (TSFKAS), the percentages have shifted -- maybe permanently. If you watched the storm's arrival last night just on TV, at any given time, you missed most of the story.

At 10 p.m. Central time, most coverage on local channels and networks consisted of one soggy reporter standing on a balcony or a beach, stammering against the wind for long minutes. As many of us wondered, "Why aren't you telling us this from inside?" most of these reporters made painfully clear they had little information beyond what they could see. And they provided a woefully inadequate perspective on the storm's enormity.

Meanwhile -- in less than half a minute -- Twitter users could scan continuously updated, intensely dense coverage that approached omnipotence.

3 Twitter lessons learned from TSFKAS:

1. The more people you follow on Twitter, the more comprehensive your coverage. Unlike Facebook -- where you might want to limit your circle of friends to ensure you get high-relevance information-- the more populous the list of those you follow on Twitter, the more varied and textured your breaking-news intel.

2. As the Chicago Tribune's Scott Kleinberg explains, Twitter lends itself to quickly propagated (but also quickly debunked) scams and falsehoods -- including fake photos. So choose your Twitter contacts with an eye toward credibility.

3. Twitter can be a lifeline in a disaster. T.J. Ortenzi of the Washington Post spells out how: "If you lose cable, broadcast signal and Internet, you can still receive tweets about the storm -- even if you don't have a Twitter account."
* The Onion: "Misinformed Man Riding Out Storm In Bathtub Filled With Batteries"

What's this mean for broadcast news?

It's tough to compare TV and Twitter and not conclude that, to remain relevant, TV has to do a lot more than just send one reporter in a raincoat to the beach.

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Not-so-secret ballots / SeeClickFix / Websites that fail

3 things for Monday, Chicago:

NOT-SO-SECRET BALLOTS. ProPublica reports a handful of companies have assembled political profiles matching millions of unsuspecting Internet users.
* Romney satirically endorsed by Joss Whedon, the director who brought you "Buffy" and "The Avengers"

SEECLICKFIX. See something amiss in Chicago? A pothole? A broken parking meter? A slumbering city worker? Take a picture with your smartphone and fire it off to the city for investigation. The four-year-old SeeClickFix service has now been integrated into the city's 311 reporting and tracking system, mainlining your report into the municipal databank. You can then track how (or whether) the city's responding. And aldermen are watching, too.

WEBSITES THAT FAIL. Ten telltale signs your digital presence is overdue for a redesign.
* One new website built for the 21st Century
* Keys to growing digital audience
* What your audience's clicks tell you about what it wants
* Does your site's video suck? You probably know the answer before you post it

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God and rape / Standardized reading pest / Fairly poor

3 things, Chicago: Afternoon edition

'SO GOD IS AGAINST RAPE, BUT HE'S FOR BABIES CONCEIVED BY RAPE?' In the Sun-Times, Neil Steinberg takes on Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's assertion that when a women conceives after a rape, "it’s something God intended."
* Tina Fey: "If I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a $2 haircut explain to me what rape is, I'm going to lose my mind."

STANDARDIZED READING PEST. Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader comes to a staggering conclusion about measurements now required for kindergarteners who can't even read the questions: "Teachers get to grade their own accountability tests."

FAIRLY POOR. A new study finds that, unlike students from other disciplines one year after graduation, communications majors -- including journalists -- experience no pay gap by gender.
* Internet gains on cable TV as source of campaign news
* Web browser add-on zaps politics from Facebook and Twitter feeds

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Facebook breakups / Jackson's issues / News biz mystery

3 things, Chicago:

FACEBOOK BREAKUPS. Ever unfriended someone over a political exchange on Facebook? The Tribune's Rex Huppke takes a look what he calls "a rampant severing of social media ties" during this election cycle.
* Ex-Playboy and video game model up for seat on Kane County board

'NOBODY'S ACCUSING JACKSON OF BEING A LOAFER. THEY'RE ACCUSING HIM OF BEING A LIAR.' Steve Rhodes takes apart the strange case of U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

WHY DO NEWSPAPERS STILL DO THIS? "'He came up with the name "Argo" because he loved knock-knock jokes.' (In the film, the title becomes an off-color joke)." Honest: We can take it. Just tell us the joke. Use bleeps, hyphens, whatever, to protect your imagined audience. But don't leave readers guessing. (Great movie, by the way. The joke -- a pun -- goes like this: "Argo f--- yourself.")
* Finding (or at least seeming to have found) the truth "has become exponentially harder than it used to be" for journalists

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PR’s ‘Dark Side’ not always a myth

My friend and former WXRT News colleague Michelle Damico has posted an eloquent essay debunking the stereotype that holds journalists who transition to public relations have joined “the Dark Side.”

I may years ago have bought into that cliche. But as time’s passed, I’ve come to recognize that an insightful, responsive and forthright PR person—like Michelle—can be among a reporter’s greatest resources.

What puts the Force on the side of good PR people? Following rules like these can help:

Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 astronaut James A. Lovell interview: ‘After we came back ... we got sued’

JUNE 10, 1987: The time I interviewed astronaut James A. Lovell.

What a privilege to have had even these few minutes with a real hero — a man whose work inspired me to become a journalist in the first place. (I wasn’t going to become one of the astronauts, so why not get a job that would at least give me reason to talk to some of them?)

We began with a discussion of the religious controversy sparked by the Apollo 8 mission.



Check out more of my interviews with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in iTunes, on Spotify, via your favorite podcast player, and at Chicago Public Square.

(Originally posted Oct. 21, 2012. Updated Dec. 23, 2018, to mark Apollo 8’s 50th anniversary. And here’s my then-Rivet colleague George Drake Jr.’s wonderfully produced version of this interview from 2015, marking the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission. )

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Recorded at Lovell’s Centel Corp. office, outside Chicago. Raw audio, complete with malfunctioning microphones. (I’m waaay off-mic. Deal with it.) NASA photo, 1969.

Invasion of the body scanners ... and more

By request, 5 things today:

O'Hare Airport's getting new body scanning devices, replacing a generation of scanners that the ACLU's Ed Yohnka tells the Sun-Times have been empowering security agents to conduct "virtual strip searches" of passengers. The replacements are faster, too.
* Pro Publica report from 2011: Scientists Cast Doubt on TSA Tests of Full-Body Scanners

'NO GROUNDING IN SCIENCE AND ... COMPLETELY INACCURATE.' A Northwestern University doctor is among those condemning Republican Rep. Joe Walsh's declaration that "you can't find one instance" of an abortion necessary to save a woman's life.
* Walsh issues clarification: "I find it amazing that both the local media and the national media are so fascinated that I and most Americans actually feel passionately about protecting the sanctity of life."
* Abortions getting tougher to obtain in dozens of states

THE BOAT THEY MISSED. What should Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have said when asked about all those Apple products made in China? Arik Hesseldahl of AllThingsD serves up an answer he'd have liked to hear from either of them.
* The answers they did give
* Bloomberg gets tough on Obama and Romney

IT WAS JUST A MATTER OF, UM, TIME? Newsweek's print edition dies at the end of the year. The Atlantic's Derek Thompson says the company's plan to transition to a "subscriber-only product for the tablet ... is an answer to the wrong question."
* The Onion brags: "Thriving 'Onion' Puts Another Print Edition Out Of Business"

SPEAKING OF THE ONION... Its editor, Will Tracy, and its head writer, Seth Reiss, visited Rick Kogan on The Afternoon Shift Wednesday to talk about their new book, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge. Guess what the entry on "Chicago" says.

Journalism on fast-forward

3 things for journalism students this week:

2nd SCREEN TIME. If you didn't monitor Twitter while watching the presidential debates, Will Oremus writes in Slate, "you missed half the show. The rest of it was on Twitter, where the nation’s journalists, comedians, politicians, and armchair pundits were busy dissecting, fact-checking, spinning, and riffing on every word the candidates uttered, almost as fast as they could utter it."

GRAPHIC WARNING. Infogr.am lets anyone "create cool info-graphics on the fly" and share them as easily as one would a photo. Tech Crunch asks: Death knell for designers?

POWER UP.
-- The Drudge Report is worth hundreds of millions, according to Henry Blodget, writing in Business Insider.
-- Is LinkedIn's executive editor the Internet's most powerful business journalist?

Debate prep

3 things to set the stage for tonight's showdown:

5 THINGS TO WATCH. No. 1, Politico says of tonight's second presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney: "It's ladies night." (Image: Creative Commons / Catherine Poe)

WHAT THEY NEED TO DO. National Journal says Obama needs to bring his A-game, and Romney needs to show voters he feels their pain.
* The Onion: Obama Excited To Participate In First Debate

DON'T BE SURPRISED. The Atlantic says if Romney's struggles over the summer hadn't hogged the spotlight, Obama's weaknesses would have been apparent sooner.

Day after / Google in Slumberland / Journalist's power

3 things for Monday, Chicago:

THE DAY AFTER. Writing in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait takes a look ahead to Nov. 7 and the dramatic changes in the size and character of American government likely to come under Mitt Romney or Barack Obama.
* Politico: The 3 states that may decide the election.
* Follow-up questions from moderator during Tuesday debate? Horrors!
* Pizza Hut plan for debate stunt gets panned, canned.

GOOGLE IN SLUMBERLAND. Google's home page today serves up an interactive tribute to pioneering cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay.
* Do you suffer from nomophobia?

'MOST POWERFUL BUSINESS JOURNALIST ON THE INTERNET'? Business Insider says that may be LinkedIn.com executive editor Dan Roth, who describes his mission this way: "We send all of the traffic out because we don’t want to keep people on LinkedIn. ... It doesn’t matter to us where you go as long as you are coming back all of the time."

3 things for journalism class

On the table for today's lesson:

BASIC HTML. It comes in many flavors, and most of what you need can be handled simply by selecting text and then clicking an appropriate button in your "content management system" (Blogger, WordPress or others). But being able to tweak the code by hand can be fun and rewarding. Googling "HTML Guide" or "HTML Introduction," for example, will generate many places to learn more. But here's a good one to start.

GETTING PEOPLE TO TALK IS TOUGH. Here are two reasons why:
-- Have you ever been involved with a story that made it into the news? If so, was it accurate?
-- Too many reporters put themselves into situations like this and this.

QUIZ TIME. Eliminate or replace unneccessary or unnecessarily long or redundant words in sentences like this: In order to stop the dog, the officer shot it.

5 things / Free things / 3 things

3 things, Chicago:

5 THINGS TO WATCH IN TONIGHT'S DEBATE. No. 1 in Politico's analysis: Can Joe Biden draw blood?
* Google image results plague Romney.
* The story behind that photo of Rommney's behind.
* Guy who gave Obama-related super PACs $1 million tells reporter: "We’re going to go after your publication, you, and whatever."
* My long-ago WXRT partner, Garry Lee Wright, and I will be experimenting with a new form of realtime video analysis of the debates, using a Google Hangout. If you'd like to witness all the beta action -- Garry had a breakthrough moment yesterday when he realized he could dramatically improve video quality by removing shrinkwrap from the camera lens -- follow me on Twitter, where I'll Tweet a link tonight. Be warned: My office is a mess.

FREE THINGS. To mark its 50th anniversary, Wendella Boats is offering free rides all day on its Chicago Water Taxi service.
* The aforementioned Garry Lee Wright is offering a few free promotional copies of his new autobiography, "Happiness for Beginners," rich with references to 'XRT, Tribune Co. and other iconic Chicago things. Drop him a note at happinessforbeginners@earthlink.net to tell him why you deserve a copy. (Trivia: Garry's book dropped the same day FM News imploded, so it became an instant collector's item in that my back-cover endorsement blurb was dated on publication. Kind of like this 1963 publishing mishap.)

3 THINGS ABOUT JOURNALISM SCHOOL. Is it still relevant? A resounding yes from a journalist in Cleveland.
* "Matt Drudge is arguably the single most powerful individual in the digital news business."
* "No, giving away the news doesn't mean lower-quality journalism"

Super PACs not so super / Flying 'nones' / Unrewarding?

3 things for Wednesday, Chicago:

SUPER PACs: NOT SO SUPER. Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal says none of Democrats' fears about the Citizens United ruling -- that it "would create a brave new world where stealthy Republican outside groups would overwhelm underfunded Democratic candidates" -- have come to pass. In fact, Democrats' super PACs in several races are faring better than the Republicans'.

FLYING 'NONES.' Neil Steinberg celebrates a new report from the Pew Forum, "'Nones' on the Rise," which documents a growing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans and reports that, for the first time, Protestants make up less than half the U.S. population. "In detaching from Great Britain and trying to forestall the repressive reach of the Church of England," Steinberg writes, "our founding fathers were like scientists who create a new virus to solve one problem -- a domineering king and his church -- only to see it get loose ..."

UNREWARDING? Raise your hand if you understand Walgreen's new loyal-shopper program (link requires registration). Bonus points if you can explain Dominick's "Just for U" program.

Rahm vs. Quinn / Lehrer strikes back / Hey, airlines!

3 things for Tuesday:

RAHM vs. QUINN. Mark Brown in the Sun-Times, about the fight between Chicago's mayor and Illinois' governor for control of the agency that oversees U.S. Cellular Field ... and that might someday oversee Wrigley Field: "There’s worse things for Illinois and Chicago taxpayers than having the governor and the mayor at each other’s throats." (Photo: Zoonabar via Creative Commons)

JIM LEHRER STRIKES BACK. The moderator of last week's presidential debate says he knew what he was doing, and why. To his critics, he says, "Weren't you paying attention to what was happening before your very eyes?"
* I, moderator. (Tomorrow.)

HEY, AIRLINES! Steve McCabe, writing in TidBITS: "If your iPhone really had the potential to down your plane, would your flight attendant be happy simply to ask you to turn it off, and then trust that you have complied?"

Bonus thing: NBC delays season premiere of "Community" indefinitely.

Romney's bump / Riverwalk expansion / Bottoms up

3 things, Chicago:

ROMNEY'S BUMP. Gallup says Mitt Romney's post-debate approval bump is the largest it's ever measured.
* Recap of Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly's "rumble"

RIVERWALK EXPANSION. Mayor Emanuel's pushing plans to expand the walk along the Chicago River another six blocks.

BOTTOMS UP. The Active Transportation Alliance is polling the public about the design of those new CTA cars, with center-facing seats. Would you prefer scooped-out seating (bumps between spaces) or a flat bench?

3 inclusive songs for the weekend

What better way to kick things off than with songs that feature the words "everybody," "everyone" and "everywhere"?







What songs would you add to the list?

A dying journalism practice?

3 things for today’s journalism students:

On the agenda for today’s journalism class: Writing from a news release.

It’s there because I found it there when I inherited the class. And so the students get a news release and the chance to turn it into something clear and relevant over the course of a few minutes. But they’ll also hear that this is a skill of diminishing relevance in the era of online journalism, for at least three reasons:

Reason to be wary of the word 'permanent'

A Money magazine article from 1986 begins:

"The video cassette recorder has found a permanent place in America's living rooms."

Truth is: The VCR still has a place in my living room. But I don't expect it to outlast me, because no one else in the house knows how to work it anymore.

The Netflix/Roku combination has consigned to the basement the Rabbit video multiplier system referenced in this article. (I bought it used for a couple of bucks two or three years ago.)