Megan Taylor: Web Journalist - Latest Comments

Re: Harris Field Contaminated / Norwood News

Name — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:53:25 -0000

Great stuff. Follow up will be even better. Rattle those cages and watch the fur fly. And heads will roll. Go get 'em, Boots. HLT

Re: I’m in the gray, working with public relations

Kids Virtual World — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:26:18 -0000

This is a good position if your final goal is to be a journalist. Right now you're finding out the best way to reach people, a very important tool to understand.

Re: I caught the bug at a MediaStorm Workshop

McKenna Ewen — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:50:25 -0000

Sounds pretty awesome!

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love GIS

twitter-18624351 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:11:36 -0000

Great article Megan. You might want to take a look at a district matching / mapping service that the company I work for produces. It has local districts for NYC. http://www.avencia.com/Products/Cicero

Jeremy

Re: Rebooting Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists

paulbalcerak — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:23:43 -0000

Perfect—Greg and I are Twitter buddies. Thanks.

Re: Rebooting Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists

selfmadepsyche — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:35:59 -0000

Paul, talk to Dave Lee or Greg Linch, I believe they run TNTJ. (They are both Googleable and present on Twitter as well.)

Re: Rebooting Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists

paulbalcerak — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:51:36 -0000

Trying to learn a little more, but the "Find out more about this criteria" link is broken (on this page), or at least leads out to a blank page.

Re: Rebooting Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists

leetaylor — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:31:02 -0000

Hey Ms. Online Journalist:

This is the way I see it: Journalism is a hose: it can be long, short, various diameters. One end gets shoved (by the owner of the hose) into the great river of life (at various places, to various depths). Suction is applied and the opposite end of the hose is then aimed at media customers (of one demographic or another) depending on who will pay or sometimes who will read/listen. That's all most journalism is. You're absolutely right to call for a mission statement, not just for TNTJ, but for Journalism as a whole. What the hell do you guys stand for? Perhaps you haven't noticed the WAR between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, the White Hats and the Black Hats. Perhaps you are still living in the sixties when the world was GRAY. Truth is, it never was gray. There are people who care and do good things to make the world a better place, and then there's everybody else. Choose your side. And do it quickly, because there is no time to scratch your ass and ask the Ouija board. If you're not with us, then get out of the way.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love GIS

selfmadepsyche — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:47:44 -0000

Thanks, Will. I've also posted some more GIS resources on my Delicious bookmarks. I haven't had time to go through them all, but there are two teachers who post notes and resources on their websites among them!

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love GIS

William M. Hartnett — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:53:51 -0000

Another extremely useful conversion tool is ogr2ogr.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love GIS

piercepresley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:25:30 -0000

I saw your query on Twitter today, and Derek's response. Glad you got the help you needed, and thank you very much for posting your experiences on your blog. For people, like myself, desperately trying to catch up to how far CAR has gone since the days of putting county budgets into Excel by hand, explanations like this are priceless.

Re: Yet another “What I learned” post - Miami Herald Internship

Website Redesign New York — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:22:22 -0000

Thanks for sharing this info...

Re: Davos Debates on YouTube

Ahmed Nuaman — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:27:08 -0000

Wow, this is the first post I've seen about this. I was the guy who created that gadget for YouTube and the whole project went much better than we all thought it would. It's such a great idea and YouTube is such a powerful platform for generating discussion. YouTube has now gone from being just a video web site to more of a search engine too.

Re: Algonquin Hotel’s Matilda’s 13th Birthday / Quinn & Co., Public Relations

hotel_chiangmai — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:24:32 -0000

Thanks for the information, it's definitely a big plus for anyone to know!

Re: Learning Web Design: 6 Blogs, 3 Cheat Sheets and 1 Degree

Miami website design — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:38:49 -0000

I learn a lot with your blog here. Thanks for sharing some of your knowledge regarding webdesigning and i hope you will do more blogs like this in the future and i'm hoping that i can read also one of them.

Re: Small community newspapers and the future of journalism

selfmadepsyche — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:08:35 -0000

Thanks Pam. Can you send me a link to your paper's site (if they have one)? I'd like to look at community papers in other areas.

Re: Small community newspapers and the future of journalism

Pam Spittel — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:38:05 -0000

Megan,

I admire your creativity. The "boot is a hoot". I would hire you in a "New York Minute" if I could. I came to your blog from searching about community newspapers. I am a sales rep for a paper in a suburb of Baltimore. And, what you say is so true. The only time our major Baltimore newspaper reports on our community is when a crime is committed or a big elected official comes to town. I feel there is a real future here. Only place to read Good News about neighbors and great target audience for advertisers.

Re: Learning Web Design: 6 Blogs, 3 Cheat Sheets and 1 Degree

flash design — Tue, 26 May 2009 02:02:01 -0000

It really is inspiring to see carefully considered typography playing a central role in a site design.

Re: Speaking at the Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative

selfmadepsyche — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:10:28 -0000

Thanks Kasumi, I did ask them about their web skills and the media they use to find out about what is going on in the world. There was not enough time to get personal, but I covered the basics pretty well. See my follow-up post on this at Scaring highschoolers about the future of journalism

Re: Speaking at the Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative

kasumi — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:55:03 -0000

well my advice is this.
try to get to know each high school kid in the personal level. Ask them about their computer skills, and get them to think about the different kinds of media that is used to for news. You should ask them what kind of media they most often see, and how they can use many of this media to express what they view in the community, what they find as an interesting story.

Good luck

Re: Who is Twitter for?

dkzody — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:05:00 -0000

I think I am an unusual "old" person in that I like all these forms of communication but many of my peers find it irritating that I blog and put so much of myself "out there." They just know it's a bad thing! However, a few are getting on Facebook (which I'm not on) and loving it. So, with time, we will see how the older generation deals with all of the "newfangled" technology.

Re: Who is Twitter for?

dkzody — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:00:23 -0000

I think you've made some valid assumptions, especially about my inner city high school students. My students usually want to communicate with just one person at a time. As they go off to college, that may change. And, as others in their group tweet, they too may want to get on the bandwagon. Right now, it's not relevant for them. They hear about older people being on it, and I think that discourages them from using it. Most of them, if not all, are not on Facebook either. They still like MySpace.

Re: Visualizing State Taxes in Number of Days Worked

Lee — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:29:12 -0000

Jamie:

I'm in your corner. While the press has to bring home the bacon, it is nevertheless a higher calling, akin to a religious calling. We need more skepticism and more passion (the fire in the belly). And even then those of us who are not in the media have to take responsibility for choosing among the cacophony of competing journalistic voices and, if necessary, launch our own investigations. Thank God for the internet--yes, no, maybe?

Re: Visualizing State Taxes in Number of Days Worked

Jamie — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:48:21 -0000

(and please forgive my accidental "fulled" instead of "not be fooled...")

Re: Visualizing State Taxes in Number of Days Worked

Jamie — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:46:55 -0000

Lee:

I think we're on the same page for the most part (and yes, we're definitely off-topic). I absolutely believe that corruption in any form needs to investigated and publicized and I'm frustrated that the media is largely failing in this area because the companies that own the news organizations don't see enough profit in funding investigations.

Regarding corporations, I think it's a bad move for blame to constantly and blindly be assigned to them (or any entity) for society's ills. This has the effect of diverting attention from the real issues but it also has the effect of numbing people to the point that when real corruption is exposed it barely makes a ripple in people's minds.

And yes, I am part of the media and that's why I am so frustrated by what I perceive to be major shortcomings of this industry. The media has a responsibility to the public to be honest and truthful, to ask the tough questions and not be content with canned responses, and to be wise enough to be fulled by illogical arguments and straw men.