Commitment to Maryland false; but interest sincere for Allen

Early last week blogs and Twitter were abuzz about 2011 NY 6-foot-5 small forward Jordan Allen committing to the University of Maryland.

Many news outlets picked up an initial tweet by Rutgers basketball commit Mike Poole, but Allen claims it was just a joke and he hasn’t committed anywhere yet.

“I was in school when he decided to tweet that I committed to Maryland so I didn’t really know what was going on but was getting all of these phone calls, text messages, and emails about it,” Allen said. “I asked him about it and he said he was just playing around and didn’t know that I had deleted my Twitter over the summer.”

As of right now Allen’s only scholarship offer is from St. Johns, despite an earlier report that claimed offers from Kentucky among other schools, but has interest in quite a few schools.

And while the story of Allen committing to Maryland was a prank pulled by a friend, Allen would relish the opportunity to play for Maryland coach Gary Williams.

“Why not be coached by a future Hall of Famer,” Allen said. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity—I’d absolutely be interested in Maryland if I got an offer.”

Whether Allen gets an offer from Maryland is a whole different question, but he said that assistant coach Keith Booth encouraged him to come down and play at Maryland’s summer elite camp. He was told that “if I play well enough,” that he’d had a very good shot at an offer.

Along with Maryland, he plans to visit NC State at some point this summer and will be camping at West Virginia. He also indicated some renewed interest in Rutgers after the Scarlet Knights hired David Cox away from Georgetown.

Right now there is no real timetable for a college decision for Allen as he is hoping to bring in some more scholarship offers with some stellar summer play. He will be participating in the Eastern Invitational, Rumble in the Bronx, and is waiting to hear if he will make the cut for the NBA Players camp.

But if the right offer were to come forward he wouldn’t hesitate to jump on it.

“The biggest thing is making sure that my family is comfortable with the decision,” he said. “I want them to be able to come to my games comfortably and an eight hour plus car ride or plane flight might be a bit much.”

“Another big factor is whether anyone from New York has gone to that school and what they think of it,” he said. “We all like to take care of each other and know that they will give it to me straight about the school.”

The New York native claims to be best at finishing, slashing to the basket, and rebounding well for a wingman. But is still trying to refine his jump shot to try to impress some coaches this summer.

Lots of new opportunities on the web if you have the right skills

After an interesting year of online journalism, I learned quite a bit as to what is going on in the industry, both good and bad. Almost every class or professor that I’ve had at Maryland has made mention of the fact that jobs are dwindling in the print field and if you want a good job you will have to have Web capabilities as well as a willingness to cut and shoot video.

As we’ve learned in class there are jobs available on the online side of things, they just might not be your prototypical job that you always thought you would have. Instead you could be a full-time blogger that is expected to be constantly updating Twitter.

The immediacy of the new digital world is both a positive and a negative in my mind. I personally like the fact that if I am the first one to write a story I can get it up right away on to the Web site instead of waiting for it to appear the next day in a newspaper. The Internet finally gives print reporters an edge over television and radio, which could run a story with fairly shoddy details on the air.

But along with that are the negatives in that you basically will always expected to be ready to write a story. If a story breaks at 2 a.m. in the morning you will be expected to get some sort of Twitter or blog post up right away and just keep reporting as you learn more. Along with this immediacy is the increased chance of an error, which is a bit scary to this young journalist.

All it takes is one really bad error and you could be out of the business. Even moreso is the increased pressure that has led young writers like Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair to fabricate stories.

I think some of the other positives are the cool things that a lot of Web sites are doing. Whether it be getting their reporters to do podcasts, weekly video newscasts, or even chats. To some that will just seem like unnecessary added job responsibilities, but I personally find a lot of that type of innovation pretty cool. Journalists who might never have gotten a chance to get in front of the camera are now getting chances to become their paper’s prime personality.

To be perfectly honest this class has woken up my eyes a bit to the industry and I’ve begun to at least look at other fields, such as public relations, law school, and business. That’s in part because a lot of those industries are looking for journalists to man their Web site or simply handle media requests.

I certainly would like to have something in journalism but feel a bit behind the curve with HTML, which I feel like could be an issue in the long run. I always kind of imagined myself as the typical print beat reporter working my way up the ladder before getting either a major beat or a column of some sort. Unfortunately most newspapers won’t be around for me to work my way up the field. That is unless I start out at a major newspaper like The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times right after college, which is doubtful at best.

But hopefully with more insistence on video editing, radio work, I’ll have a shot at finding a career.

Want your own news Web Site? Check out Printcasting

Never has starting your own online publication been so easy than with the invention of Printcasting, a 2008 Knight News Challenge winner.

The innovative tool, created Dan Pachecho of The Bakersfield Californian, essentially allows for a user to create a hyper local Web Site quite easily and pair it up with local blogs, advertisers, and other local, relevant news articles. The general idea behind it is to create a hyper-local, niche publications very easily and allow for its creators to send the publication out over e-mail or in paper.

Its Web site claims it will help you start a local news magazine in only five minutes and the idea generally seems to be true. While the service is still fairly young, it does create solid, yet simple Web sites for anyone that wants one.

It really makes it easy for someone that might not have a background in online journalism or in web development, to make a good Web Site very easy and efficiently. It seems to be a great service for citizen journalism, in that anyone could really start their own Web Site and start publishing content while having advertisement connected to it.

And I think their decision to only charge $10 per ad is really smart. It allows for small companies to advertise and maybe get their name out to new people, but also isn’t too expensive because it’s meant simply for that niche market.

While it still doesn’t seem to allow video or such, which goes against some of what Clay Shirley stated nor does it charge money for the individual sites as Rupert Murdoch suggests is the future, it’s a good service.

While one concern might be that someone with no journalism background can use this service and besmirch the good reputation of journalists, I think it’s a bit overstated as an issue. Yes I’m sure there could be an issue here and there, but for the most part I think it will just allow for people to provide good, local content.

Voice of San Diego understands web design

There is an old adage that states simpler is better.

Voice of San Diego seems to understand that pretty well with the design of its Web site. It absolutely nails the simplicity of the Web site and fares more than adequately in unity, harmony, and proximity, all crucial elements for a well designed Web site.

The main page is a three column set up that places the biggest stories on the left side, which is known to grab the reader’s eye first. On the top part of the page there is a toolbar that has different subject topics that are popular amongst readers, which sticks out in a positive way. The main page kind of reminds me of The New York Times Web site except with much more color and life.

Additionally on the front page is the utilization of specific colors and fonts for certain things. Headlines are all in blue font with certain stories having larger font size than others. It works pretty well and flows fairly nicely from left to right.

Also there is the “This Just In” on the side of the page that has breaking San Diego stories. With a background color of pink it doesn’t necessarily stick out but it’s a nice place to put continually updated information and not have it take too much focus away from the main stories.

The layout of the Web site isn’t earth shattering but it gets the job done and is easy to follow. They correct match photos with stories and keep the same layout through the majority of their stories. Additionally each blog has the same similar setup and it works really well.

Photos from St. Patrick’s Day

Below are pictures from the annual Seaside Heights St. Patrick’s Day parade. Every year thousands line the streets and celebrate their Irish heritage. 

This picture is of a green car at the back of the parade with the Grand Marshall of the parade. I like that you see the car but also get a look at people watching from the sidewalks.

This picture is of two firefighters carrying flags while walking in the parade. Almost every St. Patrick’s Day parade features firefighters and police officers, and this was no different. 

You can’t have a true St. Patrick’s Day parade without someone playing the bagpipes. Bagpipers in their kilts entertained children and adults alike with Irish tunes.

A picture with a man with a flag but also a look at the crowd. I was particularly interested in the baby stroller and a little kid dressed up in some sort of costume.

A young child celebrating his Irish heritage with an Irish flag. I wanted to find someone to get a close up picture and not simply take far away shots. Although it’s a little too central for my liking, I thought it was a solid picture for what I was trying to get.

Sam Hodgson: The one man photo machine

The Voice of San Diego is similar to most news organizations in that it tries to utilizes words, pictures, and videos on its Web Site.

What’s different from VOSD and other organizations, is that they rely almost entirely on one man.

After scouring the Web site, it seemed almost every photo byline belonged to Sam Hodgson. Whether it be a standard still shot of a person to accompany a story or an action photo, it always seemed to have Hodgson’s name on it.

He also manages Credentialed, a photo blog that features Photo of the Day as well as “the best photos that were left on the cutting room floor.” Hodgson tries to add a little background information for each story and tries to generate reader feedback by asking for captions and comments, to mild success.

It’s a cool, little feature that gives some personality to Hodgson, which doesn’t always happen for photographers. Photographers often hang in the background and rarely get much attention from readers. But giving him a chance to explain his methodology and decision making for why he took certain pictures gives readers some additional insight.

Unfortunately it seems that Hodgson mostly focuses in on still photography and not video. There really doesn’t appear to be much in the video department for Voice of San Diego at this time.

There is the occasional user submitted video but for the most part VOSD does not post many videos. It’s an issue that doesn’t have an easy solution either.

One of the first issues at hand has to be either hiring journalists trained in taking video or training current employees how to shoot video. Readers and consumers want to look at photos and videos and niche like publications such as VOSD are not going to flourish without those ingredients.

While it might be hard to convince journalists to take a video camera out with them into the community, it needs to be stressed that it’s imperative for the survival of the product.

For an organization such as VOSD, the goal has to become a one stop shop for everything San Diego related. And that simply is unable to happen until there is a sufficient amount of video on the Web site. Otherwise consumers can just go to the local CBS, NBC, or ABC Web sites for all of their video needs.

Photo Credit: Informatique

Journalism isn’t dead…maybe

Across every media format has been the news of the journalism industry’s death. Television anchors, newspaper reports, and radio disc jockeys have bemoaned the state of the industry for years and warned young students, such as myself, to avoid majoring in journalism at all costs.

Despite the constant moans that there are no jobs and that all newspapers will be dead in a few, short years, there actually might be some hope. John Cutter, the deputy online editor of OrlandoSentinel.com, thinks that as long as you continue to evolve and adapt, you have a shot at surviving in the journalism industry.

One of the keys to success is to develop yourself as a personal brand. Instead of the old days in which reporting and then turning in your story was all that was needed to be done, it’s now very important to be active on Facebook and Twitter. Things like search engine optimization are now part of the reporter’s job, something which would be completely foreign to reporters of five to ten years ago.

The constant changes in technology have caused reporters to be ready to report at virtually any time of the day. Instead of just working on one story all day and then submitting it at 8 or 9 p.m., reporters are now expected to turn in the story right away and then just work on updating the story the rest of the day.

The risks of plagiarism, fabrication and other mistakes have increased tenfold with all of the new emphasis on immediacy. Reporters no longer have time to just fool around at the court house in hopes of maybe landing a story, they are expected to always be out doing something. The quantity of well-reported long-form stories continue to decrease each year, as reporters have more and more on their plate to accomplish.

Social media yet to be truly utilized by Voice of San Diego

While companies from almost every single industry have made Facebook and Twitter a key component of their marketing technique,  Voice of San Diego has yet to truly utilize it in an efficient fashion. Even though they do have the simple buttons allowing users to easily post their stories on Facebook, they have only amassed a little over 2,000 fans.

Perusing over their Facebook fan page, shows few attempts to engage fans in discussion, and mostly just posting links to stories done by Voice of San Diego writers. There is the occassional attempt to engage readers in conversation by posing a question, but not only are those attempts few and far between, but they are also largely unsuccessful.

The Facebook fan page usually updates a few times per day, including the typically boring Photo of the Day, but strangely decides to not update on the weekend. Although it’s not shocking that staffers wouldn’t want to update during their weekends, it needs to be understood that consistent posting seven days a week could really go a long way.

It is imperative that Voice of San Diego re-think their entire social media strategy and try to actually develop a true community. As it currently stands, few people comment on their fan page and very few comment on their stories on the actual Voice of San Diego Web site.

First they need to think of ways to draw more people to their Facebook fan page. 2,276 fans does not cut it for an online newspaper that covers the city of San Diego. Perhaps more of an emphasis on Facebook needs to be included in each story or an advertising blitz about their Web site.

Once they can start getting more people to their fan page, they need something that will consistently draw them to the page. Posting links of stories from that day is not going to draw much discussion. They need to think more creatively and try to actually engage readers by asking them what they want and what they’d like to read.

Until Voice of San Diego decides they are ready to completely revamp their social marketing strategy, their Facebook fan page will continue to be dormant.

Voice of San Diego hasn’t mastered search engine optimization

Similar to most news organizations out there, The Voice of San Diego still has a long way to go before truly mastering search engine optimization (SEO). Among some of the keys accordinng to blogger Gina Chen, is to write clear headlines and to include key words in the the headline.

In one post the headline is simply, “Shut Down the Airport Authority,” by Steve Peace. The article details why the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority Board should be shut down, but don’t expect Google News to pick that up. Although clearly The Voice of San Diego mainly just serves the San Diego, it certainly wouldn’t hurt them to gain additional readers. Perhaps adding San Diego somewhere into the headline could increase the odds of it being picked up, such as ,”Time to close inefficient San Diego Airport Authority Board.”

Another story detailed that the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. was facing major financial issues. The headline for the story was, “With Deficit Emerging, SEDC’s Key Support Waivers.” Unfortunately when searching different keywords from that headline, stories about Southeastern Washington, D.C. popped up, which have no connection to San Diego economic development issues. Using the full name instead of the shortened version could help or at least in some way relate it back to San Diego.

It’s understandable that they are expecting their readers to simply assume it relates to San Diego, but SEO is a serious strategy that could net the organization more advertising money and more readers. This is probably one of the major faults of The Voice of San Diego.

More emphasis on grabbing more readers and more advertising dollars through SEO, while still keeping their mainstay readers, would be the ideal move.