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The Future of Journalism - by Ross Dawson | The Future of Journalism. Bull beware: Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news. You’re reading a wrap-up of the Sept. 22 Republican presidential debate when you land on this claim from Rep. Michele Bachmann: “President Obama has the lowest public approval ratings of any president in modern times.” Really? You start googling for evidence. Maybe you scour the blogs or the fact-checking sites. That’s why Dan Schultz, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab (and newly named Knight-Mozilla fellow for 2012), is devoting his thesis to automatic bullshit detection. If you had the truth goggles installed and came across Bachmann’s debate claim, the suspicious sentence might be highlighted.

“I’m very interested in looking at ways to trigger people’s critical abilities so they think a little bit harder about what they’re reading…before adopting it into their worldview,” Schultz told me. Imagine the possibilities, not just for news consumers but producers. Schultz is careful to clarify: His software is not designed to determine lies from truth on its own.

The Tech Press: Screw Them All. Last week I wrote a post about my current investment policy at TechCrunch, and pointing out already disclosed financial conflicts of interest. Our primary duty to readers, as I’ve said many times, is transparency. To that end we will (as we always have) be extremely careful in disclosing any investments I’ve made in startups or in venture funds. And these interests will be disclosed even when other TechCrunch writers are covering these companies. In that post I said that there would be a lot of criticism headed our way from our competitors. And that’s exactly what happened. AllThingsD calls me “vaguely icky.” The Atlantic Wire says what I’m doing “lowers the bar for journalistic independence.” So, hold on a minute. We can argue all day about whether or not my policy is a good one. But when you read a tech blogger call a CEO “tough and misunderstood,” should you know that the CEO in question is social friends with that blogger, and leaks confidential information to her?

Consolidation of Trade Publications Nears. Does ESPN.com have a twitter problem ? Over the last two years things have changed. We all found twitter. We found Facebook. Not only did we find twitter and fb, but our phones got much, much smarter. Tablets popped on the scene. We were able to get everything sports we wanted in the palm of our hands. ESPN responded. In the past, sports fans first stop in the search for sports news would be ESPN.com .

Today, sports news finds millions and millions of sports fans first via twitter. So they responded. It hasnt worked. ESPN.com reporters havent had a lot of success getting followers on Twitter. Their deficiency in twitter followers is not for lack of trying. Whats the role of media for sports teams ? I’m going to make this short and sweet. In the year 2011, I’m not sure I have a need for beat writers from ESPN.com, Yahoo, or any website for that matter to ever be in our locker room before or after a game. I think we have finally reached a point where not only can we communicate any and all factual information from our players and team directly to our fans and customers as effectively as any big sports website, but I think we have also reached a point where our interests are no longer aligned. I think those websites have become the equivalent of paparazzi rather than reporters.

Have you ever watched TMZ where they catch someone walking down the street and ask questions like “are you upset about your divorce ?” Do we really need to ask Dwight Howard and Deron Williams where they think they will be going in TWO YEARS ? There is never a loss of words or lack of depth in questions asked in the locker room after a game. Newspaper: Newspaper has to be in the room. Right behind trades ? Facebook's Growing Role in Social Journalism. A Facebook-only news organization? It was only a matter of time. The Rockville Central, a community news site in the Washington, D.C., area, will move all its operations and news coverage to its Facebook Page starting on March 1. This risky move by the site's editor, Cindy Cotte Griffiths, highlights Facebook's growing role as a platform for journalists to use for social storytelling and reporting.

When it comes to journalists using social media, Twitter has been the go-to platform for real-time reporting and reaching out to sources, largely because it's a public platform and most of its content is accessible. But with Facebook continuing to scale and in some ways becoming more public, it offers journalists an arsenal of content types beyond 140 characters and an alternative destination to connect with new sources of information. A 500+ Million-Person Directory of Sources "There hasn't been any query that we haven't gotten good sources for," Peralta said. Social Storytelling. Multi-Platform Journalism: An Interview with Dominick Brady. For journalists, the opportunities for diversifying your craft are increasing at a rapid pace.

Multi-platform journalism is the name of the game, and no one knows this better than Atlanta-based journalist Dominick Brady. I recently had a chance to talk with Dominick about what he does, his perspective on journalism, and his future projects. Maurice Cherry: Tell our 10,000 Words audience a little about what you do. Dominick Brady: I’m an independent multi-platform journalist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Traffic reporting for Clear Channel radio is my day job but I also freelance quite a bit. My freelance work has focused primarily on arts and entertainment.

I’ve worked in Internet radio as a features contributor for East Village Radio, an audio documentary series producer for Brooklyn Radio, as a blogger and audio features producer for CentricTV; a video features producer, blogger and contributing writer for Atlanta’s Creative Loafing and a features contributor for The Smoking Section.