The Carnival of Journalism is back! For those long-time readers, you might recall Journerdism was one of the founders of the group many moons ago when social media was just a tiny zygote in Ray Josen’s fertile womb.

My roomie/homie David Cohn negotiated the domain and has kicked off the party again and this month’s Carnival of Journalism topic is:

The changing role of Universities for the information needs of a community: One of the Knight Commission‘s recommendations is to “Increase the role of higher education…..as hubs of journalistic activity.” Another is to “integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials.”

Okay – great recommendations. But how do we actually make it happen? What does this look like? What University programs are doing it right? What can be improved and what would be your ideal scenario? Or is this recommendation wrong to begin with? No box here to write inside of.

I’ll focus on the latter part of the question, on how to “integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials.”

Here is my overly simplistic formula:

Schools (note, I think media literacy should start much earlier than at the university level) engaged in offering real, critical thinkers in a liberal arts education environment, committed to making it part of their curriculum
+
Media publications sharing their experts, knowledge as well as promotional and editorial board resources to educate the public at events, forums and conversations in their media
+
Professional journalism organizations spreading the message and importance to members, also giving support and resources to publicly educate the community
=
Media literacy

But enough of the hypothetical blogger-who-knows-how-everyone-else-should-be-doing-everything-their-way theory.

The university that is crushing it in this arena is Stonybrook University and their Center for News Literacy (largely lead by Journalism School Dean Howard Schneider and Director Dean Miller). They (as far as I know) were pioneers in the field of media literacy that’s actually directly leaving the charge in their community. They even have dozens of lesson plans, Power Points, videos and handouts ready for teachers to start spreading the word. And many schools are starting to take advantage of these valuable resources.

Temple University (largely behind the work of Renee Hobbs) is also doing excellent work with their Media Education Lab also has a strong community-college connection helping increase media literacy.

Both of these programs are shining examples. And they shouldn’t be the only two. All journalism and communication schools should follow to help the cause in communities around the world.

I also believe there’s opportunities for news, educational or even library organizations can partner together with the public on information projects that help raise news literacy and critical thinking skills. I’d argue that Wikipedia is an example of this. The Guardian’s project crowd-sourcing parliament member’s expenses was another example of this. The Washington Post’s Who Runs Gov project is another example.

Anything that engages citizens and gets them interested or excited about information helps drive media literacy. Media/educational/library/information organizations just need to provide a platform for participation and then invite the public in.

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• Networking Confidential
• Media conferences
• Free Networking Books
• Negotiating Compensation: Vault Salaries & Compensation Career Articles
• Consulting career advice
• Journalism school graduates: How to increase your chance of finding a job and decrease your chance of having to vent on AngryJournalist.com

(Btw, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn or Facebook, if you wanna be homies/’network’ with me.)

I’ve noticed a trend among newspapers starting to hire out their high-end tech work recently rather than keeping, training or hiring staff members with those skills. It’s interesting in this time of hyper backpack journalism, when staffers are already juggling written stories, videos, audio slideshows and more, highly-specialized staff members skilled deep in one area are becoming rare.

The most recent example I’ve seen is the LA Times Primary Tracker which was built by Bird Branch, a funky Flash design agency.

Times are lean for many papers and finding high-end talent is hard to do (especially at the rates newspapers tend to pay).

There are several high tech opportunities newspapers might consider freelancing out:

• Flash development – Mad skills cost buckets of money that newspapers don’t want to pay for a full time employee. Perhaps paying for 1/20^th of an employee, only when needed on special projects would suit the tight business model better?
• Data projects – Everyone and their freaking brother is trying to hire data programmer-producers now to copy Gannett’s Data Universe type sites.
• Design – There’s a billion web designers out there, perhaps its time to get some fresh ideas into newspaper design? Could it hurt?
• General functionality programming and development – Social media juggernaut Digg was originally created using Elance for $200.  What cool ideas could you fast track to reality before Google or a start up does?

Some of these high-end tech disciplines are thought by some to be the holy grail that will save the business. But that’s not necessarily true, there’s no one magic silver bullet yet and some of the zeal for these areas from non-tech people is rather pie-in-the-sky, as Mindy McAdams alluded to earlier in the week discussing Flash and how ga-ga people are about it. (I gotta give her a big high five for being honest and advocating a reasonable approach to using flash. She wrote the book on Flash journalism, so she could obviously benefit from fueling the Flash fire sale at newspapers.) As Mindy advocated and I’ve tried to preach to countless people that have approached me and asked them to teach them Flash in 15 minutes –Flash is a huge program and can take a long time to develop a skilled staffer from scratch that consistently does cutting edge work. It takes discipline, time and lots of experience to do very well.

So perhaps this new model of high tech freelancers filling the gaps could help catapult papers’ online storytelling into the new age, while balancing stock holders demands for high profit (as uncool as that may be to say or rationalize).

There’s a lot of opportunities and agencies popping up around the country doing awesome work and filling the niche of high end storytelling for media outlets: Brian Storm’s Mediastorm, Ken Harper’s Iron Clad Images,  Jayson Singe’s Neon Sky, Second Story, Terra Incognita, etc.

And for those of you interested in building your own agency, there are copious opportunities for freelancers to find tech gigs:

• eLance
• Sologig
• iFreelance
• 37signals Gigs
• Guru.com

I think this can be a symbiotic relationship for both parties – papers and freelancers/agencies. The freelancer/agencies get more work, more freedom, don’t have to work in the traditional newsroom and get to avoid the cubicle “Office Space” life. Newspapers can combat their brain drain, get to do cool projects quickly and perhaps get some fresh, non-traditional ideas about information and storytelling in their newsrooms.

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Nerd in Chief Note: This post is part of a new ‘blog carnival‘ thing I’m trying out. Read more about the celebration of journalism blogs and check out other members in this online magazine of sorts at CarnivalOfJournalism.com

Founding Members:

• Views on News Biz- Adrian Monck
• Andy Dickinson
• Common Sense Journalism – Doug Fisher
• Journalism Iconoclast – Patrick Thornton
• Journerdism – Will Sullivan
• Online Journalism Blog – Paul Bradshaw
• ScribbleSheet Blog – John Ndege

23-Year-Old Mark Zuckerberg Has Google Sweating
“Owen Van Natta, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said a visit to Amazon.com will uncover all the product recommendations one might want but the value can be limited in the anonymity of the people posting the reviews. On the other hand, if you take your online activities and put them through the filter of the people you know well, those actions take on greater meaning.”

What If Moses Had Had Google?
“When asked about Google’s future, he talks about the targeted personalization of search results: ‘The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask questions such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’”

Wikipedia ranks first for online news
“According to Nielsen//NetRatings, the encyclopedia site Wikipedia is the top news and information destination on the Internet, gaining 20 million unique monthly users in the past year.”

This will become the trend: news sites to require real names on comments
“The wild-web 2.0 has advantages, and normally I advocate be as much like the unfettered web as possible, and even though it contradicts my ‘stop thinking like big media’ advocacy, there are some journalistic standards worth maintaining. One of them is truthfulness and transparancy. People should stand behind their opinons and assertions with their real identity.”

MySpace News worth using
“After about an hour using the beta version of MySpace News, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be worth your time. … If for no other reason, check it out to learn how you can rate your content up the list and drive traffic to your own site.”

Metromix Los Angeles Launches
Whoa, Tribune’s Metromix gets shiny. I dig, except Orlando/Baltimore versions have lots more nice image teases. And the Chicago version has lots more scannable info visible and deeplinked. If these three iterations could have a menage a trois and produce a baby, it would be really bodacious. (Via Squared) Word on the street is the Trib will be rolling out a lot of redesigns this summer.

The lessons from BackFence.com
Great stuff here: “Hyper-local is about utility and networks of people, not citizen journalism” And… “The only thing that makes it easier is being able to do it in ‘gulps” as in ‘Here’s the local phone number for this service’ or ‘here’s where you sign up for this’. That’s it. Most people can’t do much more and those that could don’t have the time. Microblogging and Facebook status updates are literally a gift from heaven in this scenario.”

A New Branded Journalism
Medill is retooling the way it teaches the trade, to the dismay of faculty and students. More on the rapid changes and controversy (Full disclosure: If you didn’t know from the about page, I’m a Medill MSJ grad.)

Open-Source Journalism: It’s a Lot Tougher Than You Think
“But fundamentally, crowdsourced journalism’s promise must be realized by the crowd; if a project doesn’t suit the ‘users,’ it won’t fly. So hearing from — and listening to — these users is key.”

Dayton Daily News Acts Like a Start-Up with Pets Sites
“A group at the Dayton Daily News decided to act like a tech start-up and launch a niche Web site in just nine days that centered on this growth area. … In addition to social networking among pet lovers, the site offers photo uploads, photo galleries, helpful information and polls.”

New rituals for new media pt 2
“The big problem is site stickiness. Far too many web site visitors are ‘one click and out.’ They dive bomb into the site, check the weather and are gone. They come to the home page, scan the top headlines, and give up very few clicks.”

A neutral ‘Net needs up to twice the bandwidth of a tiered network
“Recent research suggests the obvious: that building an undifferentiated network requires far more capacity than one in which traffic is prioritized, throttled, and controlled. But when AT&T researchers are involved in writing the paper in question, the results seem a bit more sinister. Is the research just another attempt by a major backbone Internet operator to justify a non-neutral Internet?” Be careful kids, there’s so much evil out there!

Cutting the ties that bind
“Off with the yoke. Damn the tie.” (Via Hartnett … Although he as been known to wear his republican red power tie around the office on occasion.)

‘Chicago Sun-Times’ Looks to Redefine Itself as ‘Liberal, Working-Class’ Paper
Interesting move. “Under marching orders from Publisher John Cruickshank and Editor in Chief Michael Cooke, new Editorial Page Editor Cheryl L. Reed introduced a new Commentary section Tuesday with a promise to turn the tabloid back into the liberal-leaning paper it was for decades before the Reagan administration.”

Revamp: Del.icio.us preps next version — and gives us a peek
I am so excited about this. I hope they 1-increase the character count for link notes 2-build a cooler system for organizing/combining tags you already have. 3-streamline the lag time on the search/tagging process — I’ve found once you get beyond 6,000-7,000 links, the site slows immensely… especially when using the Firefox tag plugin (which is also a key to accumulating that many links).

Korean company GPNC has put together a 70 inch all-in-one PC, making it the world’s largest.
“Although the manufacturer didn’t even bother taking a product shot without an XP error message in it, so who knows what kind of effort they’re putting into this thing. If you open up the monitor it’s probably just filled with styrofoam peanuts instead of actual electronics.” I laughed at this for half of Monday.

Silly live shot turns into web phenom
Following up the clip of Jonathon and his professed love of turtles that I mentioned a couple weeks ago. Bonus clip: Bill O’Reilly interviews the “I Like Turtles” Kid.

New York Bike Share Project
This is awesome! Like in Denmark! Too bad it’s just for a week as a “summer charrette” … (Could that name be any more pretentious?) (Via Khoi Vinh)

MTV Labs: Short Circuitz
MTV can’t seem to find a successful vehicle for Nick Cannon. So now he’s doing a show on submitted remixed videos.

The Beard Team USA Blog: Chicks dig beards!
Beard nerds, rock it. Also, beardists, it’s time to book your Aug. 4 flight to St. Louis.

Mediastorm: Black Market by Patrick Brown
Great use of chapters and tight editing. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they’re almost too short.

33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names
Word, word nerds.

And finally, here’s some widely-discussed news you’ve probably read elsewhere, but just in case:

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash
“I feel like ctrl-alt-deleting myself”

New NetRatings Metrics: A Work in Progress
“While NetRatings’ average time per person and average number of sessions metrics typically reflect what the average user does, the total minutes and total sessions measurements provide information from ‘a ranking perspective’…” Howard Owens rightfully questions this as a final solution

Michael Moore Rips Wolf Blitzer on CNN: “Why Don’t You Tell the American People the Truth” [VIDEO]
I don’t mean to jump on the broadcast haterz train here but have you ever actually seen a broadcast TV news retraction/correction? Wolf says they’ll issue one if there’s incorrect information but I’ve never, ever seen one.

Google, Yahoo Both Working On Next Generation Social Networks
“It’s a busy Sunday evening – first the news on Yahoo Mosh, and now news that Google is working on its own next generation social networking service called Socialstream, possibly to take the spotlight away from the ailing Orkut.”

RIP: Registration, and its database of lies
“It’s about time the industry faced reality: Registration doesn’t work. The information gathered is largely a database of lies. Why would anyone enter their real name, age or anything? Most users fill out crap so they can arrive at the story they wanted to read as quickly as possible. Newspaper executives expected to use registration data as a replacement to professional market research, though few will admit it.” Right on!

’40,000 citizen journalist working to report one story for your paper? It’s possible, we did it’
“The citizen journalism project, he claims, has spun off into message boards with millions of posts, 200,000 uploaded photos and regular supplements in local editions.”

Social media site Backfence Says Goodbye to Evanston
“We are sorry to announce that Backfence Evanston will be ceasing operations within the next few days.We have been honored to have been members of this vibrant local community over the past several months. Your postings and discussions on Backfence have been been a reflection of the strength and interests of the members of the community. We hope we have provided you with a valuable local forum. Unfortunately, business issues are forcing us to close our doors and shut down the site.”

SPECIAL REPORT: Inside Gannett’s ‘Information Centers’
Definite must read.

Google: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
“Search engine giant Google Inc. has been putting together a massive cable network to provide customers around the world with telecommunications services ranging from broadband Internet to home and mobile phones.”

How Mass Media Passes Off Crap as News…
“There were certain things that respectable journalists wouldn’t write about in the 50s. For example, JFK managed to keep his affairs under wraps even though most of the white house press corps knew about it. They refused to write stories on it because it wasn’t respectable. Not that it’s a great ideas to have affairs or anything, but at least there were standards. Those are being slowly whittled away. When Saddam was hung, illicit camera phone footage ran on every major network for three days. We’ve crossed the snuff film barrier; all we have left is hardcore pornography as a limit to what media won’t portray.”

How Apple Will Use The iPhone To Take Over The Wireless Industry
“Steve Jobs isn’t stupid. He knows that AT&T Wireless sucks. So why lock the revolutionary iPhone into a crappy network? Because Jobs knows that everyone will buy an iPhone anyway, even if they hate the network. And that, as Umair points out, shifts all the power to Apple.”

How ‘Citizen Stringers’ Can Help You Hyper-Localize
“From a practical standpoint, probably not. It’s not worth assigning a reporter from your thinned ranks to spend a day watching a bike race that’s not a national championship. But from the standpoint of serving your community, definitely. You should figure out how to cover it without taking reporters off more significant assignments.

Finding yourselves in journalism: Finding yourselves in journalism
“We are seeing more people who are leaving the business altogether than I can ever recall. Some are peering into the future and seeking a different, perhaps more secure road.”

MyBlackBook lets you track sexual history
Social media sex history?

The greatest newspaper giveaway… EVER!
Free Prince album with a newspaper!

Rupert and Me
“The people responsible for lowering the quality of journalism is not us. It’s the people with the ad budgets, still investing all that money into dead trees, in a medium that hardly anyone reads, instead of hiring decent online ad agencies to produce good online advertisement. And paying the money it’s worth.”