Thursday squibs

A few quick hits before I head out for the college:

• Honours for Tyee Reporters. Congratulations to reporters Kendyl Salcito and Tom Barrett (with whom I teach), for their nomination for a Jack Webster media award here in B.C. What makes this especially significant is that the Websters are the province’s premier awards for television, radio and print media; the Tyee is an online-only publication.
• Pro photographers’ loss, but amateurs’ gain. The ‘net and all those photo-sharing (and micro-stock agencies), of course. I imagine the pain and I’ve even contributed to it by allowing photos to be used by guidebook publishers, bloggers, news aggregators, a textbook publisher in Argentina and others, all without charge. Steve Shankland argues that the change is for the better, though.
• Hip Hop Journalism Conference to be held in Miami. Who knew there was a Hip Hop Journalism Association, aimed at “Integrity in Hip Hop Journalism”?
• vlogsnapz.producer. I’m always on the lookout for cheap tools. This $25 Mac product is billed as the only thing you need for producing and uploading video podcasts. There’s not much detail at the site, but I plan to download a copy and poke around. It likely won’t replace a full-fledged video editor, but it could be a good tool for throwing together quick video reports from the field. Well, no. I just gave it a shot: it’s set up to work primarily with your vidcam. There is a function for importing clips, but it didn’t recognize the .avi file I brought in. It might work for you: I’ll stick with QuickTime Pro for the quick stuff.
• Are newsrooms ready for a cultural revolution? Tom Abate points out that while Web 1.0 was great for newspapers, Web 2.0 is cultural changing. This, it seems to me, is the hardest lesson newspapers have to learn: that content may no longer be king.
• What I want from my newspaper. Mindy McAdams’s post fits so well with Tom’s. There’s a free idea there for newspapers that really want to connect and be of value.
• Reuters suspends Rugby World Cup coverage. Media is starting to fight back against professional organizations that are trying to restrict their ability to do their jobs. Go, Reuters, go. And may this please be the start of a trend that spreads beyond sports coverage.
• AP and Google. I pointed to a number of commentaries on the Google-AP deal last week, so I’d be remiss in not adding this Doug Fisher piece to the list. It may be the most comprehensive and thoughtful of the lot.