Year: 2009

A visit with CT News Junkie editor Christine Stuart

Find more videos like this on Wired Journalists

I spent last Wednesday with Christine Stuart, the editor of CT News Junkie, which covers Connecticut politics. Stuart, who’s based at the Statehouse in Hartford, posts two to four times a day, often covering hearings on important but secondary stories that the mainstream media ignore.

CT News Junkie is a media partner with the New Haven Independent, one of the more interesting experiments in non-profit, Web-based community journalism. Projects such as these are crucial as we seek to grope our way forward through the economic crisis that has befallen the news business. (CT News Junkie is technically a for-profit company, but Stuart is looking into ways of taking it non-profit.)

I visited Stuart as part of a long-range project. But while I was there, I shot some video and put together a six-minute documentary. I hope you’ll take a few moments and have a look.

Some technical notes. After spending about an hour trying to edit my video with iMovie ’08, I gave up and used iMovie 6 instead. The lack of precision for coordinating audio and B-roll with iMovie ’08 is a source of constant frustration, and I’ve finally given up. I can’t believe I subjected my students to it last semester. Maybe iMovie ’09 will be a better solution.

I also was unable to post the result to YouTube, even though the format (MP4), the length (well under 10 minutes) and the file size (under 100 MB) all meet YouTube’s guidlines. Vimeo didn’t work, either. I finally posted it successfully to Wired Journalists, which uses the Ning platform designed by Netscape founder Marc Andreesen.

If anyone out there has some thoughts as to why this proved to be YouTube-unfriendly, please drop me a line or post a comment. I’d still like to get this up on YouTube.

Journalism about journalism on NewsTrust

My reading and blogging habits will be substantially different this week, as I am hosting the journalism topic area for NewsTrust.

NewsTrust is a social-networking tool that enables community members to submit and rate news stories on qualities such as fairness, sourcing and importance. If you’ve never tried it before, I encourage you to sign up and give it a whirl. I’ll keep you posted on what I’m submitting this week in the hopes that you’ll pitch in.

Here is what I submitted this morning. The links will take you not directly to the story but, rather, to a NewsTrust review page. From there you can go to the story and review it for yourself.

Hope you’ll consider taking part.

Self-referential post of the day

I just noticed that the banner ad at the top of Media Nation is promoting a screening of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” the 2005 film about Edward R. Murrow, which will be shown this Saturday at the Boston Athenaeum in conjunction with Suffolk University. (You might have to hit “reset.”)

As it turns out, I’ll be introducing the film. Hope to see you there.

The Globe’s Kennedy book makes a splash

“Last Lion,” the book version of the Boston Globe’s series on Ted Kennedy, edited by Washington bureau chief Peter Canellos, will be number seven on the New York Times’ bestseller list next week. I never cease to be amazed at how much appetite there is out there for material about the Kennedy family.

The Globe’s OT is O-U-T

The Boston Globe’s sports weekly, OT, might have had a chance if it had been given away at sporting events. A good-quality sports tabloid would have been attractive to advertisers if it could have actually been put into the hands of sports fans.

Instead, the Globe decided to charge 50 cents — a trivial amount, but it made distribution a hassle. (I think I’ve seen it once.) OT never attained lift-off, and, as David Scott reports, it’s now been canceled.

Success would have been difficult under any circumstances, but this was an opportunity lost. (Via Universal Hub.)

An outrage against free speech

When politicians and good-government types talk about campaign-finance reform, what they often mean is censorship. Of course, they’ll say they oppose censorship because censorship is bad, and what they propose is good. But it’s censorship nonetheless.

As a purely symbolic protest, Media Nation today presents the trailer for “Hillary: The Movie,” a right-wing, hateful documentary about Hillary Clinton that was making the rounds last year.

As Adam Liptak reports in the New York Times, the film was banned from television — banned! — because it ran afoul of the campaign-finance laws promulgated a few years ago by Sen. John McCain, Sen. Russell Feingold and former congressmen Marty Meehan and Chris Shays.

The Reports Committee for Freedom of the Press recently filed an amicus brief urging that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the ban, instituted by the Federal Elections Commission and upheld by a lower court.

The First Amendment says in part, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” What part of “no law” don’t these people understand?

David Brooks’ reality-based conservatism

I think this column speaks incredibly well of both Team Obama and David Brooks.

Earlier in the week, Brooks went off on President Obama, characterizing his budget and spending priorities as “a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs,” and calling for an alliance between moderate conservatives (such as himself) and moderate liberals to stop Obama’s runaway ambitions.

The White House responded to Brooks by laying out its case, arguing that the president hasn’t abandoned his preference for a cautious, incremental approach to problem-solving, but had to respond to an unprecedented financial crisis. Given a few years and a little luck, Obama’s aides say, and things will be back on track.

Brooks writes:

I didn’t finish these conversations feeling chastened exactly….

Nonetheless, the White House made a case that was sophisticated and fact-based. These people know how to lead a discussion and set a tone of friendly cooperation.

I’m guessing that Brooks doesn’t think Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. Or, if he does, he’s horrified.

On the road again

I’m heading to Hartford, Conn., later this morning to interview and follow around Christine Stuart, the editor of CT News Junkie, which covers the Connecticut politics at a time when mainstream news organizations are cutting back. Her site is affiliated with a better-known community site, the New Haven Independent.

Stuart is not waiting for a new business model — she’s just doing it.