Chip Oglesby

New York City: Food Tour

// February 19th, 2010 // No Comments » // Journalism, Photography, Photojournalism

We started our food tour on Monday with Lunch at Dumpling House in the Lower East Side. The pork scallion pancakes were amazing and for two dollars, you can’t beat it. From there we hopped over to Rice to Riches, a great rice pudding shop in SoHo. From there we skipped around town traveling between SoHo, NoLita, and Little Italy. We made our final stop on the food tour at Vosges Haut Chocolat and picked up the most amazing thing ever, a Mo’s Bacon Bar. This chocolate bar has applewood smoked bacon, Alder wood smoked salt and chocolate. Yumm!

Sights and locations so far in NYC

// February 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Geolocation, Photography, Photojournalism

Here’s a map of foursquare check-ins that I’ve been keeping track of since I came to New York City.

Where else should I go?

View Larger Map

Here are some of my geotagged photos:

View Larger Map

New York City: Ground Zero

// February 12th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Journalism, Photography, Photojournalism

I spent one day this week exploring the area near Ground Zero and the Financial District. Here are the photos I found from that trip.

Photos are from Ground Zero, Trinity Church, the Financial District, and Union Square.

My goodbye note

// January 30th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Journalism

Everyone sends out a goodbye note when they leave. Here’s mine:

I’ve always believed in the power of journalism. The platform and delivery of information is not important, a well informed society is.

Good night and good luck everyone.

Through the Lens: A Year in Review

// December 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Journalism, Photography, Photojournalism, Weddings

A look back through 2009 in photos.

2009 was a very busy year for me personally and professionally. It will always be remembered as the year that “all of my friends got married.” In addition to staying busy, my camera spent a lot of time sitting in a bag because my lens (17-85 f4-5.6) didn’t work half of the time. I’m working on getting that fixed now. At least it still shoots.

This year was a really off year for travel as well. I usually spend my summer traveling between Charleston and Asheville which I didn’t do much of this year.

I hope that in 2010 I’ll be able to some trips and spend time doing some actual shooting.

Enjoy the images below, I’ll have a couple more to add before January 1, 2010, until then Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Why S.C. media isn’t ready for Twitter

// November 11th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Journalism

Media outlets have done so poorly at Twitter because they haven’t taken the time to learn and adopt to these new tools and because they try to apply their old set of standards and control to this new tool.

The history of twitter is well known, the service started as a way of quickly letting people know what you were doing through SMS like messages.

In the recent article, “Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter,” the story reveals how twitter users dictate what changes twitter needs to make.

But there was a problem: Twitter itself didn’t invent retweeting; it was created by Twitter users. In a blog post explaining the changes to retweets, the company’s second-in-command, Biz Stone, called them “a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be.”

These changes happened because of demand. The media will not be part of this transition.

Look at all of the rules and restrictions placed on reporters and editors by organizations such as the Washington Post, New York Times and ESPN. Most of their rules are so restrictive that it’s hard to have an online presence.

When managers look at social media, they’re looking at it from an old-guard point of view. They want to apply their rules. Control the information and control the message. There have been two exceptions to this rule, The Colonel Tribune and the Austin American-Statesman. These two news organizations social media strategies work because of clearly defined goals. It’s difficult for people in traditional media to understand the significance for two reasons: 1) They see media as a one-way street. 2) They are so disgusted by comments on their own Web sites they would rather not participate because they see it as noise.

Mass Amateurization

Columbia twitter user Ryan Bowen recently asked Mandi Engram on twitter “any chance of us cola peeps starting news/traffic/etc hashtags?” Ryan has a great idea for using #cae hashtags on his site. This is the type of ground-up movement we need to see more of.

In the book, “Here Comes Everybody,” Clay Shirky points out that “The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from Why publish this? to Why not? The problem is, citizens can’t wait on newspapers to publish that information for them.”

Starting a revolution on twitter isn’t hard, it just takes the right group of people. Asking a media outlet to start a twitter account for traffic isn’t going to get you anywhere because they’ll never decide on any sort of standardization or rules for the account. When do we tweet? How often do we tweet? What do we tweet? Since there is no definitive answer, the solution is simple, the mass amateurization of media.

Dan Conover and the folks at the Digitel held a #CHS hashtag summit earlier this year with the idea of standardizing hashtags for the Charleston area. They include #chsnews, #chsweather, #chs and #chstraffic. This was a great idea. A way for people in Charleston to filter their news to receive what matters to them. It worked because dedicated group of people got all media outlets to come together and agree on what to do and how to do it and most importantly it started from the ground up.

Twitter list gone mad

In a recent conversation with Mathilde Piard, we both questioned why the LA-TIMES, NYT and other newspapers created lists for the Fort Hood shootings and Orlando shootings when other news organizations had already created those lists.Those tasks were duplicated and unnecessary. The idea that they have to be the authority on the internet is a classic holdover in print to online mentality. Why duplicate the work of others? Why not just point to the original source? I would trust you much more if you did that instead of asking me to follow your news list. I’m not suggesting newspapers ask users to follow a list of a reader they don’t have a working relationship with (for obvious reasons). But if Etan Horowitz creates a list for the Orlando shootings, just ask people to follow his list.

Twitter accounts done wrong

Prior to media outlets actually listening to their followers, most ran RSS feeds for headlines. In the case of @thestate, short headlines mean more retweets. But tweets with context usually provide the user with more information than “two die in crash.”

One of the assumptions with @thestate is that we provide headlines from accross South Carolina. We don’t do that. We provide news from Columbia and the surrounding area, because that’s the news we produce.

Recently we started tweeting about traffic jams from the Columbia area. For our Greenville and Charleston followers, this amounted to nothing more than twitter spam because it means nothing to them.

The Greenville News includes an API on their account that automatically tweets about car accidents. What an awful idea. It alienates followers who send @ replies to Greenville asking them to stop the service. Because no one is manning the account, the rub continues and the users will stop paying attention.

Twitter accounts done right

In the wake of the Fort Hood shootings, The Austin-American Statesman created an account for updates specific to the shootings. What a brilliant idea. Instead of spamming users with updates, they used @FTHOODSHOOTINGS and asked people to follow that account. After seeing this in my tweetstream, I retweeted the request from @thestate’s account asking users to follow them. There was no need for us to tweet details of the shootings since it was outside of our coverage area.

That’s what’s so great about twitter: it’s fight or flight. It takes nothing to setup a temporary account, (other than an email address to get started) and once your event is over, you can phase out the account.

Where this is all heading: FILTERING

The theme here is the ability for users to filter the information most important to them. Does there need to be traffic accounts for Columbia, Irmo and Gilbert? No, because hashtags work just fine. Instead of media outlets always talking about twitter or going to twitter, they could spend time teaching users how to use twitter. Of course, that would mean employing someone who actually knows how to have use it as well. I am willing to bet at least one person in every organization knows how to use twitter, and more than likely that person is not a manager and has been with the company for less than five years.

Unfortunately, media outlets have neither the time nor the staff to constantly update an account for traffic incidents in any given area. Asking the public to help partly crowdsource this information would be a good idea.

Retaining institutional knowledge

// November 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Journalism, The Future

In our October SMC meeting Doug Fisher made a great point when he said “What other business leaves 99% of their raw material on the cutting room floor?”

That quote has given me plenty to think about when it comes to retaining ‘institutional knowledge‘ in the workroom.

Managing information

Newspapers have always been plagued by how they manage information. Most reporters use notepads and keep them tied up in boxes shoved away under their desk.

There may be some online content stored in individuals reporters directory but there’s no central repository of information available. At best, some reporters store all of their contacts in a MS word document. *ugh*

With staff layoffs most mid-sized newspapers have completely done away with their library staff, opting instead for a digital library such as Olive.

But what happens to the institutional knowledge when layoffs come? Think of all the history that a reporter takes with them. Every contact they have, every note they’ve taken may just as well walk out of the door with them.

Suggested software

So how do we tackle this mountain of data and inefficiency?

To begin with, reporters, editors and producers need to understand that their knowledge belongs to everyone in the newsroom. I know that some may find it shocking when you ask them to share their sources with others, but it’s time to stop playing this game and start collaborating as a team.

Next, newspapers should install and internally host their own free wiki site.

Within those pages, reporters and editors can create information-rich pages about every prominent business, councilman, elected official, high school and sports team they cover.

Take for example the public wikipedia page of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. This could easily be duplicated for newspapers and could include twice as much information because every story we’ve and everyone else has published would be linked to this page. It could also include contact information, known associates, political positions, campaign donors or whatever you could imagine.

Every time a reporter or editor learns new information about an individual subject it could be added to the wiki to help retain that much needed knowledge and context. Over time a huge database could be created and using API’s and metadata, it could also be connected to your photo archives and digital libraries giving you the ability to do some great data-mining.

A reporter could easily maintain their own pages by creating entries for people they cover like the mayor, the governor, head football coach, whoever and adding small nuggets of information over time. If the need arises or beats are swapped, then all of their knowledge moves right on to the next person who covers that beat.

The type of information that is retained could very, but newspapers could create a type of guideline for what should be kept on the wiki pages. If working on something confidential, a team could password protect their page, but this would be outside of the norm since we want everyone to collaborate.

All of this comes down to newspapers need to curate raw data and give it a place to reside for long term use. Newspapers need to do a much better job on connecting the dots internally as well as externally.

Issues to consider

One thing to take into consideration is where you want to host this wiki. Do you want to store it on the internet and allow your readers to collaborate with you or do you want to store it internally behind a firewall available only from within the building and via VPN?

If there were a way to password protect certain parts of the page, I would make the bold move to suggest that it be publicly available and ask your readers to contribute their collective knowledge. Obviously there would still be a need to fact check everything that readers post.

Another issue to consider is how to get reporters and editors excited about doing something like this. There are certain types of people (like me) who could sit around and semantically tag blogs and multimedia all day, and then there are others who are lucky if they even check their work emails once a week.

Sometimes you’ll see a strong push for something exciting like this in the very beginning, like writing a company blog, but it slowly tapers off over time, So keeping folks interested will also be an obstacle.

The bottom line

As more papers face more cutbacks and layoffs our ‘institutional knowledge’ is going to keep on walking out the door an an alarming rate.

Setting up an internal wiki is only the beginning for what could be accomplished. With some basic software and data mining, reporters and editors could uncover a completely new set of data that will give their site premium content, but connecting the dots has to start somewhere. Where do we go from here?

Technology strikes again

// October 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Journalism

If you’re a fan of The State’s Adam Beam, you may have noticed something different in yesterday’s paper.

Instead of Adam’s traditional footer with his work phone number, he’s now using a Google Voice Number exclusively. This allows Adam to use one number that will ring two different numbers incase he isn’t by his office phone at the time.

There are numerous features that make GV a valuable tool for journalists. Most notable is the embeddable “Call me” button. Anyone who is running their own blog can use this to let readers call and give them tips about breaking news as it happens. This would give people the ability to give eye witness accounts on a digital tip line, or express their outrage over an editorial in the paper. The voice-mails in GV are also embeddable which is also helpful, but could be a security risks depending on the sensitivity of the message. To use the call widget below you have to enter your correct telephone number which Google will call and connect you with the Google Voice number you have dialed.

There’s also a transcription service. Google will transcribe your emails and email them to you along with a link to an mp3 of the voice-mail. The transcription service is a hit or miss, and gets a 6 out of 10 on the usefulness scale.

You can make and recieve calls within Google Voice or on your phone. I was lucky enough to snag a copy of GV mobile while it was still in the iTunes app store. If you contacts have telephone numbers in Gmail, you can call them and also send them text messages. You also have the ability to record your telephone calls in GV as well.

You can also set up the service to only ring certain phones at select times. For example, you can set your cell phone up to ring only between 7 a.m and 8 p.m. or have it only ring your work number during that time.

Etan Horowitz has a complete write up on Poynter with an embedded phone call where he discusses some of the other features of Google Voice.

Google Voice is a free service and is available through invitation only at this point.

Using data and augmented reality to help define local news

// October 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Geolocation, Journalism, The Future

There is no longer denying the use of what we currently call “smartphones” will only continue to increase their capacity as technology becomes cheaper.

The way that we use our phones will also continue to change as more phones utilize what is known as Location Based Services or LBS which uses various methods of A-GPS.

This is a pretty new area for newspapers to start exploring and I would like to see more attention paid to local advertising using LBS.

I recently saw an article that described the idea of using an Augmented Reality app that runs on the Android Phone that showed nearby tweets and various other types of information. Wikitude: (Android) TwitAround: (iPhone)

The basic idea of TwitAround is that by using the phone’s accelerometer you can see real-time tweets happening around you.

We also know that data needs relationships and newspapers are historically good about gathering data. What they are not good at is how the record and distribute that information.

My idea is the build an application that harnesses all of this data and makes it available on your phone.

Examples

Example 1: You are a first time home buyer looking in the Rosewood area on Maple for a home. By simply pointing your phone at a home, you are instantly able to see MLS listings, tax parcel service look ups and average utility usage charges. You are also able to see local related stories, photos, tweets, video, crime stats and so forth.

Example 2: You are the same home buyer and you travel to the intersection of Wheat and Rosewood and come upon Hand Middle School where you children may attend. By pointing your phone at the school, you are able to see publicly accessible data such as SAT scores, teachers salaries, crime reports, stories about the school, historical context and more.

Example 3: You are at a high school football game where Hammond is playing Heathwood Hall. By pointing your phone at a jersey on the field, you would be able to see team roster, individual stats, results in various weather conditions, past games, photos, videos and tweets.

Example 4: You are are at the museum of art and want to know more about the painting you are looking at. By pointing your phone, you are able to see historical context, painters bio, similar paintings and more.

A business model

In a virtual interview that I did with Dan Conover, I found this quote to be interesting

“The issue with augmented reality, then, isn’t the technology. You need a platform that communicates it, a system that structures and creates it, a business model that understands its value and how to communicate it, and user devices and software agents that accurately interpret and negotiate it. The issue is content and how to pay for it. ”

The problem is that we need a business model that rewards someone for adding value (i.e., meaningful content that people actually want). Until that happens, then every business that approaches augmented reality is going to treat it as just another way of delivering no-cost crap. It’s going to be mass-media executives trying to figure out how to use Facebook all over again. Business people tend to look at networked media as a way to make free money off of somebody else’s content, but there’s not going to be a sustainable business here until we work out the connections and expectations and exchanges..

While what Dan is saying is correct, I don’t think that it will be an entire ‘crap in, crap out’ model either. Just as Twitter has become popular, so will it’s ability to filter tweets through geolocation.

What we need is a better way to rate and log information through various algorithms that will sort the good from the bad. Part of the connections that we need to work out will be taking and filtering raw data as Berner Lee suggested, but also pulling content from our own archives and making that available through various API’s.

Mindy McAdams also raises an interesting point in here post ‘Augmented Reality: a business model.’

Each view of a node can be tracked. Each visit to the node can be tabulated. I think the opportunities for selling would be fantastic — the whole process could be automated. The advertiser pays a small fee to have the privilege of viewing all visits to a node. This is like micro-metrics for local businesses. The fee is necessary because you want it to be monthly or yearly, and you want it tied to a true identity. The account can be modified to allow advertisers to input and update their own coupons, etc. Then they pay per ad, per length of time, per update, etc. But it’s all hands-free for the entity that owns the app.

Not only would this tie in well with local advertisers, it would also open an entirely new stream of revenue we haven’t previously seen. It’s hard to answer the question of “how are we going to make money off of this?” because we’ve never done it before. The closest thing we’ve ever had to this would be a ‘bar database.’

Drawbacks

There are some drawbacks to LBS:

Results indicate that A-GPS locations obtained using the 3G iPhone are much less accurate than those from regular autonomous GPS units (average median error of 8 m for ten 20-minute field tests) but appear sufficient for most Location Based Services (LBS). WiFi locations using the 3G iPhone are much less accurate (median error of 74 m for 58 observations) and fail to meet the published accuracy specifications.

but that’s something we’ll have to address in another post.

Steps to getting started

1. You data will have to be available in a raw format. Hopefully, you’ll be able to use the COPE method, or the more controversial hnews for your information.
2. Your data will have to be given relationships and linked to other data.
3. Your data will have to be given a specific longitude, latitude for future reference.
4. You’ll can build your own publish platform or you can use openly available API’s like Layar.
5. All of your photos and stories will require stronger semantic data. No more incomplete information.
6. You’ll have to actually have a team who can code all of this for you.

Conclusion

Where we go from here really depends on how much news organizations want to invest in this type of technology. At the very least, we can take small steps by adding value to our stories through our Content Management System by using keywords and physical locations if they support it. (Hint: MNI does!)

One small step for man

// October 20th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Journalism

This may seem trivial for most, but I have lamented the use of generic uses of refers to our website before..

Today we moved one small step towards where we need to be by using a bit.ly link in the paper. The link was to an op-ed piece in the Times and Democrat in Orangeburg.

The whole discussion that evening was based around the argument of “We need to drive traffic to our website, so we’re going to say ‘For this link, visit thestate.com.’”

To begin with, I can’t say how wrong this thinking is. Let’s make it as easy as possible for readers to find supporting info. To support my argument, I used another link that was used on B1 to an external link as well.

I can understand how this might happen in print, but this would never happen online. Would anyone say ‘to see these documents, go find this story on latimes.com?’ NO! They wouldn’t they would link directly to the documents themselves.

If you think about it, this is a great example of control and education. On the one hand we have someone who wants to do things the way they’ve always been done. On the other hand we need to educate them that their are better ways of doing things. I know this is a long and complicated process, but we’ve got to start somewhere.