Government Info. PR. » Quantifying impact: A better metric for measuring journalism The Linchpen. Before Isaac Newton, words like mass and force were general descriptors, as James Gleick writes in The Information: “the new discipline of physics could not proceed until Isaac Newton appropriated words that were ancient and vague—force, mass, motion, and even time—and gave them new meanings.
Newton made these terms into quantities, suitable for use in mathematical formulas.” The term information was similarly amorphous until Claude Shannon, while working at Bell Labs, quantified the concept in bits. The journalism goals and business goals for news organizations are out of sync. Pageviews. Some journalism might be best quantified partly or wholly by one or more of those ways, but we need to explore deeper beyond these fairly simplistic metrics.
We know how these terms are defined, but what do they really mean? In creating a theory of information and quantifying information in bits, Shannon aimed to remove meaning. So, what if we measured journalism by its impact? Define your own metrics. How To Make Millions As A Journalist. And why not???
I am writing today’s blog in conjunction with the Carnival of Journalism , Dave Cohn’s ongoing journalism project. If you feel like participating, please do. The issue I wanted to write about for some time is Journalism and Capitalism – or “Why We Can’t Seem To Make a Living”. Jeff Jarvis, much to his credit, recently launched the Center for Entreprenurial Journalism at CUNY.  And bravo Jeff! Alas, there is an instinctive aversion to the idea of making money amongst most  journalists.
On the heels of attending one of Jarvis’ classes in Entrepreneurial Journalism, I was so impressed, I went to see Nick Lemann, the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, my alma mater, and a place I had taught for 8 years as an adjunct. Lemann was aghast at my suggestion and practically physically recoiled. “Follow the money” says Deep Throat to Woodward and Bernstein. As a member of the generation that was inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, let me amend that.
Multimedia. Internships. A DJ Saved My Life: Lessons from the Director of the MIT Media Lab. What's the Big Idea?
Most academics work alongside other academics in the same field to arrive at the deepest possible understanding of a particular subject. At the MIT Media Lab, researchers focus on breadth, not depth, of knowledge. On any given day, you could come across an engineer, an economist, and an opera singer brainstorming solutions to projects that span across multiple disciplines and perspectives. Recent questions include how to engage people in creative learning experiences and how to give computers human-like intuition so they can better understand us.
“The world is full of expertise,” says Joi Ito, Executive Director. The mission of the Media Lab - symbolized by its glass walls - is to mitigate the isolating effects of specialization by creating a common space where brilliant people in every field can share ideas, English major to mathematician. The difficulty, of course, is encouraging people to take risks and contribute, even when they’re not 100% sure of themselves.
Whois Lookup - Domain Names Search, Registration, & Availability. The Job Board for Media Professionals. Pubications. Story ideas. Innovation Journalism. Interviews. American Journalism Review. Lying and Ethics. Lying By Tim C.
Mazur "I don't dig into people's private lives. I never have. " Ross Perot's brief statement on ABC News in July 1992 was meant to end allegations that he secretly investigated his presidential campaign volunteers. So what? The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that lying was always morally wrong. Lies are morally wrong, then, for two reasons. A second perspective, virtue ethics, also maintains that lying is morally wrong, though less strictly than Kant.
Though the nature of virtue ethics makes it difficult to assess the morality of individual acts, those who advocate this theory generally consider lying wrong because it opposes the virtue of honesty. According to a third perspective, utilitarian ethics, Kant and virtue ethicists ignore the only test necessary for judging the morality of a lie - balancing the benefits and harms of its consequences. Recall the son and his dying mother described earlier.
Further Reading Bailey, F. Bok, Sissela. Greenberg, Michael A. Hunter S. Thompson - King of Gonzo.