…at least for now.

Starting in about 10 minutes (9 a.m. CST), I’m taking part in The Next Great Generation’s Social Media Blackout experiment. That’s right: I’m on Facebook hiatus for the next 48 hours. In fact, I’m taking the experiment a step further and doing away with all non-essential Web surfing for those two whole days. If you need me, you know how to reach me. I hear there’s this invention called the telephone. Apparently you can use it for stuff besides texting and Twitter!

It occurred to me this morning that I’ve been plugged into the internet for about half my life. I’m 28 now, and I can still remember that fateful day when I was 14 and my parents let me hook the phone line into the back of my 50-lb Packard Bell. I was in 28.8 Kbps heaven.

Like most of my generation, I’ve grown reliant on the Web. It’s time to see what life will be like without it.

Sorry to cut this short, but it’s almost time. See you on the other side!

I wonder if I’m the only Apple-centric new-media geek on the planet who still has a first-generation iPhone. I know that my friends in the biz often laugh at me for it, but why? Anyone who understands anything about Apple knows that the company prides itself on computability. Every time there’s a new software update for the iPhone, my three-year-old device manages to keep up with those new-fangled little 3GSs with little trouble at all. There are of course certain things a first-gen phone can’t do that a 3G/3GS can, but I haven’t really noticed anything that makes me long for the inconvenience of a hardware upgrade.

The main thing (for me, as an all-in-one new-media journalist) that older models lack is built-in video capability, but even that is changing. This past December, Qik, a company striving to bring video technology to the mobile world, released an application that turns even my first-gen’s still camera into a useful video tool.

Here’s a video I shot with Qik last month. My only complaint is that I would prefer more frames per second since these doggies are fast, but all in all, I’m quite pleased. This app makes my “classic” first-generation phone feel a bit like a 3GS light, so to speak. Obviously the 3GS, which is built for video, does a better job with it over all: The camera in general takes clearer, more vibrant photos. The video, also, is clearer and less jerky.

You can see the need for a better frame rate and quality even more so in this video I shot at a hibachi grill near my house:

The frame rate for the default Qik video resolution of 200×152 is only 15 frames per second, which is half that seen in film. Shooting anything larger will kick the rate down even further, producing a choppier shot akin to old security camera footage. That said, the application is only $0.99 and hosting is absolutely free. If money is the only obstacle between you and a shiny new 3GS with video–or if you, like me, are too lazy and attached to your older model iPhone to make the switch–you might be better off with Qik. As noted above, you won’t get the same quality or clarity, but you will get usable video.

If you’re a 3GS-less journalist or anyone else looking for a quick, on-the-fly option for raw video production, I highly recommend this program. If not, well, why are you using your cell phone to shoot to begin with?

All in all, I give Qik for the iPhone 4 out of 5 stars. It’s cheap, reliable, accessible and all-in-all a well-programmed piece of software. I’d prefer a frame rate of at least 24 FPS, but 15 isn’t terrible.

After agonizing for months over which DSLR camera might be right for me, I recently settled on the Canon 50D. I have to say, I have no regrets. This little bundle of joy is quickly becoming my most prized possession.

I’m by all accounts a novice photographer, but I enjoy photography and I think that’s what really matters. If you know what you like, you’ll know what results you want and you’ll do your best to get them. Also, I think I’m starting to get the hang of having more control over what my gear can actually do:

What kind of gear do you use? Are you a point-and-shoot kind of person, or do you work with professional/prosumer cameras entirely?

As some of you already know, my husband and I decided to leave our fast-paced careers and enter into the family business of hotels a few months ago. It was a tough decision, but ultimately a good one (at least for now). So in May, he said goodbye to software and I to professional multimedia journalism. I proved a lot to myself with NOVA and an adjunct professorship at BU being my first two jobs out of school. So why not move closer to family and do something different? It would be a new challenge for us both.

While I’m not quite ready to revamp this site into “Hotel-Geek.com,” I think I will illustrate a few of my adventures and misadventures here on this blog. If I get back into media, I’ll go back to posting about that.

And now for a story…

About two months ago, a woman with big hair and an even bigger grin came to the front desk with a check for $200. I was a little confused, so I asked her what the money was for. She responded:

“Oh, I owe you this!”

Me: “You do? Are you with a group?”

Her: “I was last year!”

So I thanked her and asked her, awkwardly, what exactly the check was for.

The woman explained that she is the spokesperson for a charitable organization catering to the Native American community in my area–her phrasing, not mine–and that last year she rented 20-ish rooms and wasn’t able to actually pay for them. Apparently the “wonderful and gracious” manager at the time said “no problem!” and allowed the woman to pay after-the-fact in little monthly increments of $200 or less.

Mind you, this was the first and only check I saw from the woman in my nearly three months here so far. (We began new ownership on March 25 and I personally arrived in early May.)

When the woman left, I looked in our database and found that someone posted artificial payments to the rooms so that the staff could check the rooms out in the system and later rent them to other guests. Great.

Today, the same woman came in–big grin and all–and asked if I would be willing to accommodate her group again this year. I said yes, but that we couldn’t accept checks as payment. Honestly, we only ever accept checks from schools and government agencies, anyway.

The woman seemed shocked–even offended. She asked, “How do you not take checks?”

I responded, in my polite and awkward way, “Well, we usually only accept them from government agencies, and considering your remaining balance from last year, I–”

Her: “Well, how do you expect us to pay then???”

Me: “I will accept cash in advance or credit.”

Her: “We don’t have credit cards! Can you at least give me a good rate?”

I told her that because she is from a charitable organization, I would be happy to give her an even better discount than our usual group rate. She rolled her eyes and said she’d be back–”maybe.” Then she left in a huff.

As far as I can tell, she still owes the hotel about $3,000.

Is it too late to get back into journalism?

[Hindsight update: It's now May 2010, and I see that media has been and forever will be my true love. I actually stopped posting about the hotel after one story. That must be some kind of record.]

This has been quite a busy semester for my Multimedia Journalism students. They’ve gone from having little (if any) experience with HTML and online media to building and designing their own Web sites. Additionally, they’ve all created fabulous slide shows, audio-stills features, interactive maps, Web video, and so much more in the span of a few short months.

As if this hasn’t been enough, each student will be expected to cover the famed Boston Marathon next week. Most students will cover the event LIVE via tools like Qik, Ustream, Utterli, Mogulus, BlogTalkRadio, SoundSlides and more.

You’ll be able to keep up with everything they’re doing starting later this week via this FriendFeed account:

Be sure to subscribe to the account so you can get updates. Or, just come back here on Marathon Monday and take a look at all of the great work the students have done!

Kudos to my colleague Steve Garfield for setting this up!

House and Senate leaders introduced legislation yesterday that would establish a federal ban on bisphenol A (or BPA, a toxic chemical linked to heart disease and diabetes) in all food and beverage containers.

Click to view a NOVA audio slide show I conducted with BPA expert Dana Dolinoy

This move came just one day after Sunoco, a gas and chemical company, announced that it is now refusing to sell BPA-containing containers meant to store food and liquids for children younger than 3. The company told investors that it cannot be certain of the chemical compound’s safety. Playtex, Gerber and four other baby-bottle manufacturers have also announced that they will stop using BPA in bottles.

The quest to ban BPA is nothing new. San Francisco lawmakers proposed barring the product in children’s producs in 2006, and while they eventually backed down, their efforts have inspired similar proposals in California, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon. Canada banned BPA nationwide in October.

But we hear mixed messages about dangerous chemicals all the time. Sometimes, one group of scientists will tell us that something we’ve been eating/drinking/standing near will kill us, while another group encourages further exposure! Remember all of the drama surrounding the cholesterol in our eggs? And don’t even get me started on this pro-corn-syrup campaign. Suffice it to say, I think it’s misleading.

So what is it about BPA that we know makes it so harmful? Last year, I interviewed Duke University scientist Dana Dolinoy about her research on the chemical and its effects. Click the image above (or here) to watch an audio slide show I created showing what her team has found so far.

In case you haven’t heard, the members of U2 are taking cues from The Beatles these days and putting on “secret” concerts. Bono and the gang played one show last night at Davis Square’s Somerville Theatre, a mere ten-minute walk from my home and one of the tiniest non-bar venues the band could have chosen for this occasion. Were it not for the internet, I suspect the event would also have been just as “low key” as the later Beatles shows were.

Justin Meisinger, a teaching assistant for the JO540 New Media discussion section, reported on the concert for CNN’s citizen journalism service, iReport. The report (as well as an interview with Meisinger) eventually found its way to Headline News. You can watch the segment below:

Thanks to my colleague Steve Garfield for putting this video online.

A little over two months ago, I reported on the Pew Research Center’s discovery that the internet has finally overtaken newspapers as a leading news source, and how journalists disparate to keep their jobs are now willing–even eager–to learn new skills in multimedia. This new attitude toward the Web as friend (not foe) would have been difficult to imagine a few years ago when many journalists were so afraid of going multimedia, they began threatening to leave their jobs. (Just read my master’s thesis.)

But is this acceptance of the Web “too little, too late”? In 2008, nearly 16,000 newspaper journalists lost their jobs to layoffs. And so far in 2009, another 3,000 have found themselves out of work. These figures don’t even include television, radio, the struggling magazine sector, or the Internet.

I interviewed writer, public speaker, and founder of the aptly named AngryJournalist.com, Kiyoshi Martinez, last week about our struggling profession. Although Martinez has left the reporting world, he keeps up with the industry as much as he can and is currently developing a new site, Journalism.me, which currently lists the most popular topics journalists are blogging about on any given day. Here are some highlights from the interview:

Rima Chaddha Mycynek: Your brief career in journalism includes a stint as a stringer for Newsweek and as a Web editor for five Chicago-area newspapers–at once. Why did you leave the field?

Kiyoshi Martinez in Chicago, February 2008. Photo courtesy Jason Reblando

Kiyoshi Martinez: Short answer? Money. Long answer? I wanted fair financial compensation, job stability, weekends off, good benefits and a broader range of career opportunities.

RCM: Fair enough. Is that why you started AngryJournalist.com?

KM: I started AngryJournalist after reading a report from Dr. Scott Reinardy on how the burnout rate of young journalists was on the rise. Some of the responses (anonymous) were similar to either my views of the profession or those expressed by friends in the industry. I wondered how universal these thoughts were and what journalists would say if given the platform to anonymously and freely speak their mind. For a site though that hasn’t changed much and required no extra effort by me, I’m satisfied with its results. I saw this project as more or less an experiment that has overperformed my expectations.

I think a lot of people assume that I was an angry journalist. I would say it was more a “disillusioned” or “disappointed” feeling about the industry. I’m not angry now. I’m pretty content with my life, but I do empathize with friends who are still in the industry and being let down by it. I’ve known three close friends who were laid off in the past year, one was my girlfriend. Another was my roommate in [an] internship program. And the other was my bureau chief who mentored me during my [government reporting] internship in Springfield. I think what David Simon’s essay for Esquire nailed it: you can love newspapers, but “a newspaper can’t love you back.”

RCM: Do you think the journalists who visit your site are more angry than disillusioned or vice versa?

KM: I think journalists are transitioning between anger and sadness, especially as we witness more layoffs, shutdowns and general chaos in the industry. Will they quit? Honestly, I think that decision may be made for many of them soon enough.

RCM: That’s pretty ominous, but probably not inaccurate considering the 2008/2009 job-loss figures. Do you think “angry journalists” are more intent on leaving the field now, or are they doing everything they can to keep their positions?

KM: Initially, a year ago, I would’ve said that people were making these threats [to leave their jobs] because they were fed up with management and the general way these companies were being operated. Now, I think it’s shifted to survival. The industry has no financial stability or job certainty. Additionally, all these layoffs are creating a large surplus of experienced talent for the few positions remaining. Then, throw in wage freezes and reductions, hiring freezes and more work on less people. When the odds are this stacked against you, I think that’s a good reason to leave.

RCM: Do you think there’s any hope for print, which seems to be struggling the most out of all media?

KM: I’m a pessimist and realist. It’s going to get worse. There will be less jobs, fewer publications and too little innovation too late (on both business and editorial ends). Watch for more production duties (page design, creative ad services) to be outsourced to India. Expect some publications to have full-time staff replaced by freelancers paid on pageviews. More sections will be dropped from the physical product and the newshole will get smaller. Circulation will drop further, especially in this economy. And there will be fewer print ads, too. All the ad verticals newspapers built their empires on are eroding away right now: auto, real estate, classified, retail, etc.

RCM: Surely you can’t be completely pessimistic. Is there anything at all that you feel we can do to keep professional journalism alive?

KM: A “better” economy aside, the only thing that I believe can be done by news organizations is to have a huge push to innovate when it comes to online advertising and make your services and product more appealing. Don’t pursue any editorial projects that you can’t monetize. Find new revenue streams. I would also stress an emphasis on finding a way to monetize the growth of mobile broadband Internet browsing being done, but I doubt many news orgs right now have the funds to seriously become a player in that market right now, let alone last long enough to take advantage of it.

RCM: That’s a lot to ask, considering that journalistic education nationwide still seems to be focused on the us-versus-them mentality of broadcast-versus-print. I won’t get into how arcane I think that is, but I will ask you this: How can we tweak journalism education make what you suggest possible–or at the very least, to ensure that we’re not sending students out to face a bleak future of unemployment or temp work?

KM: To justify the cost of a journalism degree, it should have business courses training journalists to be entrepreneurs. You have as good a shot in being successful working for yourself as you do for the established companies. This mythical wall between editorial and business needs to come down. This willful ignorance is a huge problem.

I can’t speak for journalism programs around the country, but I think that my undergraduate classes were mostly a waste of time. All the classwork wasn’t as valuable as the experience of actually performing acts of journalism and learning skills by practicing them. This is something you can do outside of a journalism college. You can train yourself and let your peers review you online. There are plenty of free resources to learn about multimedia. However, one class that I think was valuable was media law. Knowing about libel, copyright, the First Amendment rights, etc. was essential and helpful.

One thing that I’d stress is that anyone can perform acts of journalism. Having schooling or training doesn’t matter as much anymore. What matters now is having the tools to distribute information to an audience. One of my favorite journalism-related movie scenes is from “Superman Returns” when the editor of the Daily Planet is screaming at Jimmy Olsen for getting scooped by a kid who snapped a photo of the Man of Steel with his cameraphone.

Four years of schooling, thousands of dollars of student loan debt and a piece of paper doesn’t have anything over the guy with a iPhone and a few hundred followers on Twitter.

What do you think? Is journalism (or at least the journalistic model we’re still teaching in schools) dead? Can we save our profession?

Kudos to Steve Garfield and my student, Nick, for this great on-the-fly chat about new media tools for journalists. Steve interviewed Nick today during the discussion section immediately following our class. You can listen to the clip right here:

Using only his cell phone, Steve had the above report and Nick’s picture online and ready to be viewed within minutes. Now it’s just six hours later, and so far more than 120 people have listened to the file.

If you’re interested in doing this kind of reporting yourself (as any self-respecting multimedia journalist should be) you should check out Utterli. With tools like this available all over the Web, there’s no excuse for any reporter with a decent cell to miss out on breaking news.

In other news, here’s my only contribution to cell-phone reporting today:

In my grocery store’s organic freezer section–right above the soy ice cream and next to the chocolate-covered frozen bananas–is the Yoghund, a yogurt treat formulated just for your dog. Yummy. Or should I say “yuppie”? (I also have a close-up shot of the text. I took both of these images with my iPhone and posted them via the iPhone WordPress application, which I once reviewed here.)

While constructing a lecture today for my multimedia journalism students on search engine optimization (among other things), it occurred to me that I hadn’t taken the time to fully optimize my own Web site.

Boy, was my face red.

By default, WordPress gives a very unassuming permalink to each new post and page. It includes an ID number and a question mark–exciting, I know.

But why settle for something like…

http://www.news-geek.com/blog/?p=10

…when you can have:

http://www.news-geek.com/blog/2005/bob-woodward-judith-miller-and-rovian-semantics/ ?

Search engines place a lot of value on words and phrases within URLs. If two blogs share all the same content, but one uses the original link structure while the other implements the new-and-improved structure, the latter blog will always outrank the other in a Google search.

You might be asking yourself why this matters. Who shares content like that?

Well, the answer is simple. While most blogs don’t syndicate original posts to other blogs, most news Web sites feature syndicated articles every day. (Ever hear of the Associated Press?) Just go to an aggregator like Google News and search for anything that comes to mind. Chances are, your top hits will not only have your search term in their headlines, but in their URLs as well.

If you want to stand out and make sure your content gets found–and you’re using content management or blogging tools–you should consider spending the five minutes it takes to optimize your URLs.

It’s pretty straight-forward, and even if you can’t figure out how to do it, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you’ll find the answers you need in your software’s FAQ.

Like the Gods of Ancient Greece, every president has had his epithet. Back around 1980, an Arkansas Newspaper dubbed Bill Clinton “Slick Willie” in response to what editors perceived was his misrepresentation of his own politics. Toni Morrison later called him “the first black president” for his interest in issues affecting minorities. Through the years, we’ve had an “Honest Abe” Lincoln and a Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon. And who could forget “The Gipper,” Ronald Reagan?

Now, a variety of news organizations are calling Barack Obama the “Internet President.” (1, 2, 3 — This is just a random sampling.) Not only did Obama make great use of the internet during his campaign through sites like YouTube and MyBarackObama.com–the latter being an innovative social networking tool–but he has announced many goals that if achieved could bring high-speed internet and better computers to schools and communities nationwide.

Did you know that YouTube didn’t even exist during the 2004 election? The site is so ingrained into our Web culture that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t available for public use until ‘05.

Now, news sites like CNN.com and FoxNews.com are doing what they can to keep up with our tech-savvy president-elect. CNN has paired up with Facebook to allow users to watch the inauguration live starting today at 12 noon (EST). The Facebook element will allow these users to chat about the event as it happens, whether just with their friends or with people worldwide–it’s up to the viewer.

Meanwhile, FoxNews.com has also set up some live chats as well as a live feed for inauguration coverage, but the methods are a little old school. The chats and streaming video aren’t integrated into one neat little page as on CNN.com, but are rather separated throughout the site. One interesting difference, however, between Fox’s coverage now and the live chats of yore is that the network is taking to heart Obama’s grassroots message. Recently laid-off autoworkers will preside over the Detroit chat, for example, while military servicemen, women and their families lead the North Carolina discussion.

For the first time, internet users everywhere can truly experience an American inauguration together, sharing thoughts and expressing feelings with others next door and miles away. If you can take advantage of this unique privilege, I suggest you do.

I’m neither the first journalist nor the first blogger to reflect upon our nation’s past with an eye toward her future. To say that tomorrow’s inauguration will mark an important day in our history is like saying the sun will rise and water will flow. The importance here is obvious.

Regardless of whether you (my readers) support President-elect Barack Obama’s ideas and goals, I suspect you all understand their significance.

You see, my generation never had a Jack Kennedy. We barely had a Ronald Reagan. By the time we came of age, Bill Clinton’s philandering was old news, and any respect for the office of President ceased to exist when journalists started vying for book deals. As for patriotism, we were too young to appreciate the nationalistic effects of the Cold War. Sure, we’ve got textbooks, archived footage and even the Rocky movies to show us how things used to be–for better or worse–but it’s not the same. Even the American solidarity we saw following the September 2001 terrorist attacks quickly faltered as we focused our hatred onto the Middle East, almost as if the entire region swarmed with enemy combatants.

Growing up in the early ’90s, bands like Nirvana told us to be apathetic. As the decade continued, television and films said that we should be sarcastic and condescending toward anyone with a positive outlook on life. The naught years told us to be excessive–to party hard, revive the yuppie spirit, and to first and foremost look out for ourselves.

I didn’t buy into it, and neither did my friends. And now it seems the tides might turn in our favor. “Hope” is no longer an idea that inspires childish snickering. People seem to have regained their optimism.

Perhaps it’s a pipe dream, but maybe tomorrow will mark the day when Americans started looking out for each other again. It’ll be a long road… but do you think we can do it?

“Yes We Can”

The artist Will I Am created the above video and song from Barack Obama’s speech at the New Hampshire primary. You can watch the speech here. If you’d rather read the entire transcript, click here.

…and we’re spending sunrise on the runway. According to my Associated Press app, however, some people are worse off than we are. Major delays extend as far south as Houston.

Looks like we’re about to take off, though. Wish us luck!

I just had to post this:

Forty-eight hours and two cancelled flights later, I’m standing in line again at Logan praying to the snow gods to give it a rest. Right now, the chances of us getting to Chicago today seem slim, but not impossible. I’m a patient woman, and I won’t give up hope just yet.

Anyway, what better time than the present for this multimedia journalist to test out the WordPress iPhone app? So far, so good. The user interface is simple, yet effective and refreshingly kind to those of us who host our own blogs. Now to see how easily I can post a picture I shot with the same app.

It looks like my current wait is nearly over, and I’m fighting the growing urge to hug the ticket agent just for speaking to me.

I’ve got to go, but here’s hoping the holidays are less frantic for you!