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

A monster site created by the dynamic duo of Maurice Tamman and Charlie Szymanski at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. It’s filled with deep historical data, Google maps and offers an full-screen experience.

http://stormadvisory.org

A clean, basic Google map mashup of storms, their strengths and paths. It gets the job done.

http://www.stormpulse.com

This is just a beautiful site all around. Beyond it’s aesthetic appeal, it’s brilliantly engineered and doesn’t use Google maps. Nor Yahoo maps. Nor Microsoft Live Vista Longhorn Maps (or whatever they’re calling it now). All the visual and storm data is automated from NASA and NOAA. There’s even (semi) live clouds formations! It’s just remarkable.
Full disclosure: Storm Pulse is a side project of programming ninja, Matt Wensing (half of the Storm Pulse team), who is now a coworker at my day job and quite a dope g if I do say so myself.

Weather Underground

http://www.wunderground.com

Not nearly as pretty as Storm Pulse but the grandfather and an immense hive of information. Especially Jeff Master’s weather blog.

Am I missing any awesomeness in other sites out there? Please let me know in the comments!

How news spreads in the digital age
Medill ninja and homie, Rich Gordon, rocks solutions for saving journalism. “So here’s a stab at some lessons from the two News21 stories:

• Journalists still play a critical function in identifying stories important for citizens to be aware of.
• To maximize the audience for any particular news story, both traditional media and new media are important.
• Because mass media journalists must make news judgment decisions based on limited space or air time, they inevitably (and sometimes mistakenly) bypass stories that appeal primarily to niche audiences.
• Attention is aggregated differently on the Internet than in traditional media — blogs and other Web sites with niche audiences are critical to driving traffic to Internet content.”

FTC shoots down Net Neutrality, says it is not needed
“The Federal Trade Commission today dealt a serious blow to “Net Neutrality” proponents as it issued a report dismissive of claims that the government needs to get involved in preserving the fairness of networks in the United States.”

Mika Brzezinski of MNSBC rips Paris report
‘Bout time. “MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski refuses to talk about Paris Hilton on the Morning Joe show. Perhaps more people in the media & news outlets should FOLLOW her example and STOP following up on worthless news about hardly worthy people…”

‘Cloner’ Allan Detrich Busy Promoting Himself and wrasing wikipedia history?
“A contributor going by the name ‘Mesopix’ has been busy, lately, changing threads concerning ‘Dr. Cloner’ Allan Detrich – in a positive way. ” (MESO is a group of storm chasing photographers that Allan belogs to. Maybe it’s a big coincidence, but it’s possible he or someone he possibly knows is trying to erase his epic photojournalism cloner from Wikipedia history. I really hope this isn’t true. (As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I knew Allan from my days back in Toledo.)

ICM interview: Will Sullivan aka the Journerdist
If you haven’t heard, I did an interview with College Media Hero, Bryan Murley, on topics ranging from my sanity to flossing. …Oh, and journalism. Bloggers say stuff.

Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World
This is a facinating article for mappin’ nerds. Especially how they’re developing MyMaps/KML to essentially collect searchable social media maps. Check it out: “But with the launch of My Maps, Google is anchoring its new search strategy to KML. The company is indexing all KML files on the Web — it has cataloged several million so far — and is working with the Open Geospatial Consortium to makeKML the standard. ‘Right now, Google Maps is mostly about searching for businesses,’ says Jessica Lee, a Google product manager. ‘But what we don’t have is the sort of niche, long-tail content. We don’t know where all the endangered species or the pandas in China live, or where the best places to go bird-watching are. By providing the tools, we can let other people create it.’”

Official Google Blog: Put your photos on a map, and Picasa on your phone
“…we’ve got two new features on Picasa Web Albums to help you out. First, we’re excited to let you know about ‘Map My Photos’ — it lets you show exactly where you took your favorite snapshots. When you share an album with friends, they can see your best photos arrayed on a map (or even Google Earth). It’s the perfect way to showcase a memorable road trip or a globe-trotting vacation.”

Developer uses Knight News Challenge grant to encourage citizen publishers
Ok, seriously. Can we get a correction or something? He’s not developing applications. Amy Gahran has confirmed this. He’s exploring what’s out there in his blog. Both are great but there’s a HUMONGOUS difference.

Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources
This is freaking rich with cool stuff.

Your Guide to Online Advertising
Use this to explain to folks in the newsroom how you make money on the net.

Web video replacing stills could leave photographers without copyright
“Newspapers are now looking to simply include video as an extra task at stills rates but grab all rights at the same time, arguing that is how the video industry does it. The claim is false and misleading.”

‘Too few people subscribed’ to CNN Pipeline
“As popular as the service was, it became clear to us that reaching true scale was going to be impossible if the product remained a pay service … Remember that our entire mission is about getting more news to more people on more platforms, and too few people actually subscribed for us to meet that goal.”

Medill and Drupal
“Each year, Rich Gordon’s class undertakes an innovation project, usually in partnership with a media company. This year they did two projects — one with a Morris newspaper, the other with Yahoo.”

Journalism’s future is in global dialogue
“I advise young journalists today to learn how to use a digital video camera, and to get used to working in multimedia. Nearly every story I write today for the Atlantic, and every book I undertake, I do in conjunction with a documentary filmmaker. ” [Via Multimedia Shooter]

What We Still Don’t Know | Center for Media and Democracy
“Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in 10 Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11…”

Interview: BILL FRAKES
(On video) “It’s always going to be something. What matters is that you use the technology to express yourself. You make pictures with your heart, soul, mind and eye. The box is just a capture device.”

For One Analyst, Facebook Is a Screaming Buy
“The main thing about Facebook, Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield wants to make clear, is that it is ‘not just for college students — if you have not signed up or have not used it lately, you should.’ And if you are a big media company, he has another piece of advice: Buy the company.”

Young Workers are Impatient With Good Reason – The Voice of Millennials at Work
“I also have a burning desire to be wildly successful in the business world. Typically, to be a huge success you must put more than eighty hours a week into your job. Balancing that with piano practice on Tuesday, a baseball game on Wednesday a dance recital on Friday, and family dinners nearly every night is just not practical. Luckily, I am 23 years old and most likely won’t have this family until at least my mid thirties. If you do the math this leaves me with about a decade to become a successful business person. Once the wife and kids come, the career must take a backseat. This is why I’m so impatient!

Study: 96 % of Tweens, Teens in Online Social Networks
“A whopping 96% of online tweens and teens connect to a social network at least once a week, according to a study and white paper being released today from Alloy Media & Marketing, a youth-oriented marketing firm. And nearly half engaged with a brand in the space in the past month.”

Corporate Engagement: Ways to recognize employees
These are rough times at papers. Managers, use these methods to help boost moral and give props to those who are sticking with you through the long haul.

U.S. Net access not all that speedy
“The median U.S. download speed now is 1.97 megabits per second — a fraction of the 61 megabits per second enjoyed by consumers in Japan, says the report released Monday. Other speedy countries include South Korea (median 45 megabits), France (17 megabits) and Canada (7 megabits).”

Aussie daily rocks with slideshows
Andrew, Mike and the old crew at The Herald blowin’ up slideshows that are more popular than video.

The Boys Project: Statistics
Boys get pwnd by girls in just about everything. [Via Reddit]

LEGO Aircraft Carrier
Mission accomplished!

I like turtles
We all do, Jonathon.

Springwise: Craigslist meets YouTube — online video classifieds
I saw this a while ago and didn’t think much of it… Not much has changed. That one guy on here is still selling that freaking stuffed beaver thing.

When You’ve Got To Go, Go To Mizpee.com
George Costanza has been replaced.

And finally, just in case you hadn’t heard about this new thing called the “iPhone”:

• iPhone reviews: The first batch
  Most reviews seem to be postiive and that it’s living up to its hype. Too bad they picked At&t…

• My iPhone Review
  “I love Steve. I love Apple. I’m even open to spending more on a phone than a computer, but AT&T? The slowness of its data network is only exceeded by its lack of customer service. Can I just buy an iPhone to use as a PDA to impress my friends, listen to music, watch video, and access the Internet via Wifi while not having anything to do with AT&T? Can you hear me now?” EXACTLY!

• 6 Reasons Why I Won’t Buy the iPhone
  “4) It only runs on AT&T. I’ve had the best luck with Verizon on voice, at least, and I gather AT&T’s Edge data network is relatively slow. So I’d rather wait until I get a choice beyond a carrier that vies with Sprint for worst Consumer Reports rating in many cities.”

• Craigslister offers to scare people out of iPhone line
  “A San Francisco Craigslist posting is offering to supply “diversions” that will allow buyers to cut in line for the iPhone, and sadly, we’re afraid he might not be joking.”

Spectrum Warriors of the Digital Infrastructure
“This year the Federal Communications Commission will auction off another chunk of wireless spectrum; the U.S. Senate will hold hearings on the plans for the sale this week. Now a band of technology veterans and wireless entrepreneurs is asking the FCC to set aside a chunk of that spectrum as a kind of sandbox for entrepreneurs.” This is basically Net Neutrality for mobile.

Apple Reignites the Browser Wars
“On June 11, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs stepped up his assault on [Microsoft]. … Jobs, clad in his traditional uniform of black turtleneck and jeans, announced new versions of Apple’s Safari Web browser for the ubiquitous Windows operating system.”

Google’s PowerPoint viewer goes live
“Gmail users who get Microsoft PowerPoint attachments in their in-boxes can now view them without having PowerPoint installed on their machines.”

Internet bringing back the dignity of video storytelling
“If documentaries are hard to get shown in theaters and on TV, imagine the obstacles faced by serious shorts. But now, in the online archives of U.S. papers are thousands of videos, among them dozens of exceptional short docs, more like miniature Frontlines or public-radio-with-pictures than like network-news segments, available anytime. This is video-journalism-on-demand years ahead of digital television …”

Eye-Tracking Device Lets Billboards Know When You Look at Them
Ok, this just really creeps me out.

Online video shows absurdity of NFL policy
“Great work by the Houston Chronicle’s John McClain, who interviewed some Houston Texan football players and put together this video that shows just how silly the NFL’s draconian rules about online video use really are.”

A Brief Interview with Jason Calacanis of Mahalo
Introducing a new ‘human-powered search index’ from Jason Calacanis

Doing Local Right
Great presentation on doing local news right.

Trulia Hindsight – Maps of Properties Through Time
This is really beautiful. (Or depressing, if you watch Detroit.)

Defense Contractors Reap Windfall in 2005 Earmarks
So Boeing made a 4,352% payback on it’s lobbying and campaign contributions? Yeesh. I feel sick. Sunlight Foundation, you are awesome.

How much does 48TB really cost
Yeesh… only 88 hours of 1080P video storage for $66,300?

Etsy: A Site for Artisans Takes Off
“Etsy is actually making money. Just a few days shy of its second anniversary, the site has grown to a community of more than 250,000 registered members and 50,000 sellers, and is expanding daily. By the fall, the team expects Etsy to be completely in the black.” Shameless plug: Support your local artists and craftsmen / craftswomen, like my homie Cyd!

No Ads in Embedded YouTube Player (Yet…)
“YouTube is developing its video-fingerprinting technology, to ‘spot television shows and films posted by consumers without the content owners’ permission, so the sites can remove them or share advertising revenue.’”

HD DVD sales spike in wake of price cuts
HD vs. Blu-Ray battle ending finally?

//
“…just felt like a good thing at the time” — Tim Berners-Lee, apologizing for the use of double slashes in web addresses

Yahoo! omg
omg is right. Yahoo! continues building niche content sites. Something newspapers need to seriously consider (hopefully not celeb gossip though… although it’d definitely get traffic.)

J-Lab: Knight-Batten Awards
TODAY’S THE LAST DAY TO ENTER!

MySpace IM launches
I thought this would have come a lot earlier, given their core demographic.

Yahoo! Food
Yahoo Food is quite awesome in it’s use of tagging. I love how they tag by taste “Buttery,” “Cheesey,” “Chocolately” for when you’re in the mood. This is a sleeper site that’s doing awesome stuff.

“Interactivity: an open sewer through your newspaper website”
“What does it mean when you don’t have the resources to verify, to select or to think? It can mean that you can be [only] as reliable as the next blogger. But if you want to think, if you want to take your time, you will be perceived as being as slow as the postman. The amazing worldwide web, what does it mean to your little paper? It can mean you are hosting a clash of civilisations and because of linking the beheading of a hostage or some child-porn may only be one click away.“

The Seven Be’s of Pull
Newspapers have a fever and Howard Owens has a new prescription: # Be relevant # Be frequent # Be complete # Be diverse # Be easy # Be friendly # Be reliable # More cowbell. (Ok, I added the last one)

Facebook Hammers MySpace on Almost All Key Features
You can talk to me until you’re Facebook blue in the face about why it’s better than MySpace. But I am not going to get on another time-wasting social network unless it does my taxes or something really important. There are starving children in Africa.

Growing Audience: A Toolkit For Change – Resources
Rich Gordon rocks the house: “In five months since DataUniverse went live in December 2006, it generated more than 25 million page views. The paper’s online traffic is growing rapidly, and its executive editor believes DataUniverse is the most significant driver of this audience growth.” via Howard Owens

How to make a good impression at your newspaper internship
“Competently writing 12-inch stories that were assigned to you does not even come close to cutting it. You must bring more to the table. Skills, yes. Both traditional reporting skills, obviously, and multimedia. But, more importantly, I’m talking about attitude and outlook.”

21 things to improve news sites
Great list. I can’t believe we still haven’t optimized this for the most basic strength of the web: “14.Link to external sources of information (link, link, link!!!)”

A dose of reality: Video editing
“Print this out, and leave it on desks and chairs and taped to computer monitors around your newsroom. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do video. Just don’t expect your fresh new shooters and editors to churn the stuff out at lightning speed, please.”

The first Harris Interactive / Innovation newspaper readership survey
“Online news and information will supplant television network news as the leading news source over the next five years, but newspapers will remain a vital source on their own, and can become dominant if they successfully integrate online delivery as a part of what they offer the public.”

Why (some) journalists should learn (some) code
“…But you can see now that when a journalist with data wants to get that data onto the web how a little programming can go a long way. And, the beautiful part is, once you get this working once, you can reuse it over and over and over again.”

Newsrooms adjusting to change isn’t going to be easy, but it will pay off
“There’s two aspects to an increased focus on the web. First, we may be fighting for our very survival; and, second, the web represents our single best opportunity to grow readership and grow revenue. If we want to get through this transition time, we better produce stellar web sites.”

Reinventing before resizing newspapers
“This is why I think that everyone — everyone — in the newsroom should be trained in audio, video, blogs, wikis, maps, blog search, interactivity, and more, not because they’ll all do all of this but because they need to stop thinking of themselves as paper people and they need to start thinking of the new possibilities.”

NBC Wants ‘SNL’ to Be Part of Your Lunch Break
Lunchbox updates are the bomb.

How to Nap at Work – or Anyplace You Need a Rest
Power nap nerds, rejoice!

Scooter Libby Meets Paris Hilton
“Screaming and crying, Irve ‘Scooter’ Libby was escorted out of a courtroom and back to jail Friday after a judge ruled that he must serve out his entire 30-month sentence behind bars rather than in his home. ‘It’s not right!’ shouted the weeping Libby, who was convicted of four felonies in a reckless spy-outing case. ‘Mom!’ he called out to Dick Cheney in the audience.”

Desktop Tower Defense Creates Startup
This is pretty awesome. Although, I’m never going to get any work done ever again after they start pumping out games.

Paris is Push; Baghdad is Pull
“Democracy, said our Founders, depends on an educated citizenry. That’s why they protected the news business with the First Amendment. On the other hand, it’s a good bet that Spring Comes Early for Paris isn’t exactly what they had in mind.”

Kill Meetings to Get More Done
Interesting technique: “If the customer is wavering, tell them to just take home the puppy and give it a try, and if it doesn’t work out, they can bring the puppy back. Many people will agree to this little trial — and they rarely bring the puppy back.”

The Craigslist Secret
No meetings! I heart craigslist even more.

3 Weeks Until The iPhone Goes On Sale
iPhone = Jesus?

Spoof of a Murdoch-owned WSJ
“A spoof front page, imagining a Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, has been making the rounds (specifically from the New York Times newsroom to the WSJ newsroom) according to Mary Ann Akers at the Washington Post.”

MIT discovery could unplug your iPod forever
“Soljacic and a research team he works with have some data to begin validating his theory – namely, the successful experiment to light a 60-watt light bulb from a power source two meters away, with no physical connection between the power source and the light bulb.”

Apple may rent movies for $2.99 on iTunes
“Apple is in talks with Hollywood studios to offer movies on iTunes to rent for a limited number of days for $2.99 each, reports the Wall Street Journal.” Bye, bye Blockbuster.

Journalism isn’t dying, it’s reviving
“The same technologies that are disrupting the news industry are offering unprecedented opportunities for creating a more diverse, and ultimately more vibrant, journalistic ecosystem.”

Millions of Dead Blogs Won’t Stop Blogging
“120,000 new blogs per day is still impressive but there is no denying that there are lots of dead blogs out there and there is no denying the number of new blogs per day is starting to slow. However, there are always going to be new bloggers just like there have always been new writers. “