Lunch over IP

Journalism fellowships: fewer applicants prompt re-thinking

(Note: this post has been updated June 19)

Journalism fellowship programs in many US universities, including Stanford, MIT and Harvard, have suffered a significant drop in applications from American journalists in the last couple of years, reports the New York Times.

Why am I blogging this? Because I was invited to participate in one of those programs, the John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford, in 2003-2004, and spent an incredibly rewarding and stimulating year there with 18 other Fellows from the US and half a dozen countries around the world.

But the Knight Fellowship at Stanford received only 83 American applications this year, down from 101 in 2006  and 107 in 2005. The Nieman program at Harvard also had 83 applicants, down from 91 in 06 and 110 in 05 had 91 applications, down from 100 in 2006 (see the comment to this post by Nieman curator Bob Giles). Other similar programs at the universities of Michigan and of Maryland were about even.

The impression is that this decline is tied to the rapid changes and increasing uncertainty in the US news media landscape: many newsrooms are scaling back; buyouts and mergers and job cuts are a daily diet in major news organizations, and many journalists are afraid to take a year off their job if they get accepted in a fellowship program, because they're not sure that that job will still exist after the year's over.

It's significant, for example, that the Stanford program did not receive any application this year from employees at the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and some other large newspapers (both the Trib and the LAT had Fellows in my class, 2003-04).

In parallel, applications from international journalists were way up -- 132 this year at the Stanford Knight program, for example, compared with 118 last year and 111 in 2004-05. At the Nieman, they received 121 applications in 2006 and 149 in 2007.

As Giles says in his comment, numbers don't tell the whole story: "The quality of the applicant pool gets better every year", he writes. Still, the downward trend in US applications grants a bit of speculation. Journalism fellowships were set up -- the Nieman in 1938, the Knight at Stanford in 1966 -- to serve the needs of a very different news media: a classic newspapers and broadcast landscape, with lifelong careers and steady growth. Journalists would step out one year,  spend it in a university seeking to specialize in a field, to retool themselves, or just to get a rest from the daily deadlines. They would enjoy the intellectual stimulation of the campus and of their peer group of Fellows, and then go back to the same news organization with new energies, new ideas, to become the engines of a betterment of journalism. This was to be the contribution of Fellowships.

Then came the Internet and, well, let's not go into details but things have changed. Increasingly Fellows have seen those organizations changing skin, and often even flesh, while they were away -- particularly those working for newspapers. And that's threatening: if they can go without you for a year, probably they can continue to do so. (And indeed several in different programs got offered buyouts during their fellowship last year).

Let''s be clear: these Fellowships are not broken. But clearly the landscape around them is shifting. So some of them are starting to re-think their role and figure out how they should change to adapt to the new reality and continue pursuing their mission (Knight: "To improve the quality of news and information reaching the public through the news media"; Nieman: "To promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States"; I'm mentioning these two because they are the leading journalism Fellowships in the US, but there are many other programs). The Knight Fellowship at Stanford has recently set up a working group -- of which I'm a member -- to help with this process (It's too early to report on our discussions).

At the same time, the increase in applications from international journalists is symptomatic of the growth of vibrant media systems in many countries around the world, that have transitioned or are transitioning to democracy and free market, and of how many journalists in those countries still see a model in the history and the true values of American journalism -- which are somehow being suffocated at home by the news media themselves (24-hours-coverage of Paris Hilton in prison anyone?). By inviting into their programs promising journalists from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the former Soviet bloc, fellowships are contributing massively for example to the improvement of the standards of journalism in those countries.

Stanford on iTunes featuring the "orange revolution"

I wrote a while ago a long post on Stanford University's use of Apple's iTunes Music Store for distributing, free for anyone to download, talks and lectures and music and more. Now a new section has been added: the Knight Journalism Fellowships section. If you're wondering why I'm blogging it: I'm a 2004 Knight Fellow.
If you're interested in journalism, you will find there the recordings of lectures by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and the New Yorker's David Remnick and others; panels on topics such as "Network news and presidential elections" or "When history meets Hollywood" (featuring Gary Ross, the director of the movie "Seabiscuit", and myself asking him a couple of questions); and lectures given in the summer of 2005 at the latest Fellowship Reunion, including my friend Olena Prytula's "Journalism at the heart of the orange revolution". Olena is the co-founder and editor of the Ukrayinska Pravda, an independent online news operation that played a key role in the dramatic change in Ukraine's political trajectory after the 2004 elections. In her talk she describes how Internet outlets helped overcome censorship and ultimately propelled the opposition leader, Victor Yushchenko, to the presidency.
To download these talks and more, you need to have iTunes installed, go to itunes.stanford.edu, click on the "Heard on Campus" button and, to the far right, click on the button for "Knight Fellowships."

Stanford on iTunes

I've just finished listening to a talk by Robert Sapolsky on "Why zebras don't get ulcers".
While I was jogging.
I know, normal people listen to music while running; me too, usually (and before measuring my degree of freakiness, consider that the Stanford professor is intense but also funny).
The fact is that I've just discovered, two months after it launched (thanks to Jamais Cascio at Worldchanging), the new Stanford on iTunes service, where I downloaded Sapolsky's talk (together with others from cyberlawyer Larry Lessig, historian David Kennedy, the Dalai Lama on nonviolence). Yes, Stanford University is offering, free for anyone to download from a special section of Apple's iTunes Music Store and put on your iPod, talks, lectures, readings - and students-produced music, and podcasts of the Stanford football games! There are some 350 files already available, including two videos: Steve Job's 2005 full commencement address (of "stay hungry, stay foolish" fame), and Guy Kawasaki's advice to entrepreneurs (you have to go to the Stanford on iTunes website and have iTunes installed to get to these files).
Those who know me know that I have a soft spot for Stanford: I've spent an amazing year there as a 2004 Knight Journalism Fellow and I'm still affiliated with the Institute for International Studies and I don't miss any opportunity to go through campus and catch up with friends and colleagues and attend lectures and go for a run on the "Dish" and more generally get my fix of Stanford spirit.
Maybe one day I will even find a way to go back there for real. For now, I will certainly make an intense use of Stanford on iTunes, catch up with some familiar voices and get to learn some new ones. There is a restricted-access section that provides course material to students, and that's something that other universities are doing, too (in the fall of 2004 Duke even gave preloaded iPods to freshmen). But to my knowledge, Stanford is the first university to use iTunes to give access to (selected, for now) lectures and courses, for free, to all (Stanford already has a history of webcasting certain seminars such as Terry Winograd's Human-Computer Interaction).
The service was launched a couple of months ago, and it was principally aimed at providing Stanford's content in an easy format to its 180'000 alumni, which are dispersed in 171 countries - but as a consequence it is available to anyone.
I wanted to know more about this, so I e-mailed Cindy Pearson at Stanford's Alumni Center:

How did it start?

The initiative had a very grass-roots/organic start. Stanford is one of 6 schools that Apple is working with to incorporate the use of iPods/iTunes into the academic setting. (The other schools are Duke, Brown, the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Missouri.) A pilot project at Stanford was launched last spring with a handful of IHUM classes (Introduction to the Humanities). One of the people initially involved with this project was Scott Stocker, the university webmaster. He had the idea that this application might be great for a more public facing site, and he approached both the Alumni Association and Apple with the idea. We both felt it was worth pursuing. From our perspective, we had for a long time been looking for ways to economically provide intellectual audio content to our alumni. This seemed like a great solution.

Why the cooperation with iTunes rather than other, more "open" formats?

As said above, the arrangement with iTunes literally fell into our laps, and we jumped at the opportunity without giving a lot of consideration to other, more open format options. Apple is putting a lot of staff time and resources into the project (including hosting all the content one their servers), which was an important factor as well. We didn't have another logical group to partner with, and Apple was as anxious as we were to explore this opportunity. We are currently working on making all the content available in RSS (it will still be AAC format, which is compatible with any mp4 player). As soon as it's ready, you will be able to link to the RSS feed via itunes.stanford.edu, so our format options will be expanded.

How many audio and video programs are currently available?

There are currently over 350 programs available. Only 2 are videos, though we will be expanding that area in the coming months.

Is any figure available on how many people have already downloaded files from Stanford on iTunes?

Our data on this is a bit sketchy, and we are not quite sure how to interpret it. (We are working with Apple to improve the data collection aspect of the current system.) What we can tell you is this: over the first 3 weeks, traffic on the Stanford site was similar to that of the top 5 podcasts on iTunes. And a recent report showed over 60,000 downloads for the 4 weeks from Nov. 16-Dec. 13.

When universities open up their courses online in a way or another, critics generally say that they're giving away their assets for free. What does Stanford say in response to that?

I think that the faculty who give us permission to use their content feel that it is part of the role of a university to disseminate knowledge and encourage the sharing of ideas. I think they view Stanford on iTunes as an innovative and easy way to further this endeavor.

Thanx Cindy.

Future of journalism, circa 1997

Starting today, Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs: book, blog) will be teaching a Winter quarter class on Digital Journalism at Stanford University. He will explore how shifts in media technologies, business structures and the organization of public life over the past twenty years have combined to change the practice of journalism, the nature of the public, and the interaction between the two.
His syllabus covers everything from hierarchies to public spaces to collaborative citizen journalism to social software. He asks questions such as: "What news-shaping forces are emerging from search, tagging, blogging, and other web-based media?". And he gives his students a series of interesting mandatory readings including Dan Gillmor's We the Media and Larry Lessig's Code. He is also asking them to read an essay that I wrote in 1997 for the online peer-reviewed journal FirstMonday: A new media tells different stories.
Back in 1994 Howard's The Virtual Community was one of the texts that shaped my understanding of the Internet. So it's a gratifying surprise to see my essay in his syllabus, and to realize that many of the things I wrote then about the future of journalism have passed the test of time and are still relevant.
The full text (about ten pages) is here. Following are a few excerpts. Your comments?

The small newspaper in the Italian part of Switzerland which gave me my first opportunity in journalism was one of the last dailies in the country to set their type in lead.
(...)
This was twelve years ago.
I have now spent the last twenty months conceiving, developing, and finally managing the editorial part of the first Swiss online newspaper: Webdo.
(...)
It was obvious to us also that in order to respond to this challenge, the only way would be to take full advantage of what characterizes this new medium - interactivity, hypertext, and multimedia capability. With this in mind as a starting point, everything was to be created. A logic of production, consumption, and commercialization. A language, a rhythm, a new kind of connection with our readership.
(...)
As George Gilder wrote, by establishing the existence of a mass audience, therefore necessarily a homogeneous one, the media in fact negate the individuality of their readers, their generous diversity, the real scope of their interests and passions, their multiple lifestyles and ambitions. In a way, the papers we publish today are contradictory to human nature.
(...)
Though there is much said about interactivity it is my feeling that it's not fully understood by the press and everyone in the publishing field yet. The concept of interactivity is not about the user clicking on an icon to unlatch a reaction from his computer: it is above all about connecting people.
(...)
One of the most remarkable aspects of the interactive digital environment is the progressive vanishing of the lines dividing the producer and the consumer of information. On the Internet, everyone is at once a potential writer and journalist, editor and reader, seller, and buyer. "The users are your best teachers, listen to them", someone said, and how right he was.
The relationship between us and our readers becomes less clear in its definition yet stronger by its need. Answering your readers' e-mail as well as opening forums for debates or chat rooms on Web sites are the first steps in developing what I call a community: a group of people who identify with a certain newspaper not only because it provides news but because it allows connections, a space for sharing ideas and developing solutions. As Katherine Fulton writes, "content is people as well as information". II fully agree.
With this in mind, facts and information can circulate without interference and without the journalist acting as a filter. He will have to give up part of the power he used to have - based on his competence as well as on his position. The role of the journalist is changing into a more central figure, a mediator. He directs traffic, explores, becomes a facilitator of discussions. His new power will depend on his ability to animate a group of people, to develop methods and means to enliven the community, to organize information-gathering and use with the participation of the members of the community.
(...)
The newspaper is no longer a product. It becomes a place. A place where people from the community stop by, make contacts and come back again to build a common future.

The blog sync

Joi Ito is an (or perhaps I could even dare saying the) überblogger. And a connector, entrepreneur, investor, Internet activist (he sits on ICANN’s board). I met him for the first time at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few years back, crossed his path again later, and tried to keep up with his online activities – which isn’t easy, for the man seems to be everywhere at once and posts frequently and insightfully. Or at least he did. Here is a post of September 2003 where he describes his daily "big sync":

As I was taking a shower this morning I did a self-analysis of my morning process which seems to be standardizing for the moment.
I become aware around 2am and start getting the feeling that something important might be going on that I'm missing. I crawl out of bed between 3am-4am, turn on my computer, go make coffee, and sit down, still a bit groggy. I startup email and NetNewsWire. I scan my inbox quickly for any urgent business email and take care of that while NetNewsWire is getting my RSS feeds. Then I go to the folder containing email from MT and read my trackbacks and comments on my blog. I respond to anything urgent there. Then flip over to NetNewsWire and scan the Technorati feed of new inbounds to my blog and read most of them. I comment on people's blogs where I can. Then I startup iChat and MSN Messenger to see if anyone needs me urgently. Then I chat and go through as many of the 150 RSS feeds as I can. I have the feeds ordered in different folders based on the order I want to read them. I open anything I might want to blog about into browser windows as I go through the feeds. Then I open IRC and see if anything important is going on in that community. Then I multi-task email, blogging, chat and RSS feeds until it's time to take a shower and go to work. Inevitably I think of something to blog while I'm taking a shower and end up here... a bit late for work, but trying to get the blog entry out. (And this inevitably ends up in a poorly written entry.)
It feels like a big sync every morning. Then throughout the day, emails to my cell phone, quick hits of IRC, iChat, email and RSS keep me synched. If the morning sync fails, I find myself unable to keep up during the day...

But now it looks like Joi is getting bored:

I'm sitting in a car on the way home from the airport after arriving in Japan from New York. I had a 14 hour plane trip where I caught up on email and wrote some reports. As it has been noted, the frequency of my posts (as well as the number of blogs I read) has decreased significantly since I started playing World of Warcraft. Originally I was attributing this entirely to the addictive nature of WoW, but I'm wonder if I'm also slightly bored.
I'm an early adopter type and I'm not asserting here that I represent any normal person. Reflecting back on my personal early days of blogging, there was something nifty and cool coming out every week. Blogrolls, facerolls,Technorati, etc. My traffic was growing, blogs were becoming global, and it was all new, at least to me.
New things continue to be developed, but more and more of the work seems to involve growing pains like scalability, oversized communities and integration of "normal people" as we cross the chasm. Also, the new consumer Internet bubble is attracting attention from non-participant investors. This is an important part of making blogs a truly ubiquitous phenomenon, but it definitely feels more and more like real work.
When I was in Helsinki visiting Nokia a few days ago, I playing with my phone waiting in line and in cabs. It dawned on me that what I really want is better moblogging. Now, when I am in front of a computer connected to the Internet, I'm mostly immersed in IM for business or Warcraft for fun. When I am mobile, I have idle time that I could spend reading blogs and writing to my blog. I guess this is a sign that, at least for me, blogging has moved from my primary online activity to my idle time filler. However, considering how much idle time I have with my phone, I think I could still blog at a relatively consistent rate. Also, I wish there were better ways to read and write when I am with my computer without a connection.

So in just two years Joichi went from vitally needing his morning Technorati-RSS sync to blogging as an interstitial in an otherwise very busy life.
I can relate to that, for it mirrors my own experience - in a reverse kind of way. Like Joi, I’m an early adopter, although I’ve started this blog only recently, and only after much hesitation: because I have been there before and I have learned how interesting and rewarding and a learning experience blogging can be, but also how difficult and demanding and sometimes consuming.
Back in 1996 and 1997, while we were editing the first Swiss news website Webdo, my colleague José Rossi and myself were blogging. The very concept of weblog had not been invented yet, and the tools were not there, but for all intents and purposes we were blogging ante litteram. On the site we had a section called Cyberjournal where we posted regularly (several times a day) snippets of news and links and analysis and images about Internet-related social and technological developments. Another section dubbed The Green Window was a themeblog devoted to the (then very controversial) entry into the Swiss Internet market of the national telecom operator Swisscom (it was still called Telecom PTT). We had no tools and had to code the whole thing by hand, but all the basic components of a blog where there: we posted frequently news and opinions in reverse chronological order, including external links; readers could comment on our posts and on other readers’ feedback through e-mail (we copied/pasted their messages unedited into the page); there was a blogroll; an archive; even permalinks (static HTML pages with fixed URLs). These two “ur-blogs” (both in French) are no longer there: when José and myself moved to other jobs, the site was radically transformed and somehow downgraded and only later we discovered that no copy of v1.0 was kept. The pages are copied in the Internet Archive though, from where I grabbed the two screenshots (click on them to enlarge).
(Nor were we the only ones: Jean-Pierre Cloutier was blogging from Quebec, Justin was already linking, in Geneva Pascal Rossini had developed a pre-blog format called Les Cartons du Web, and many more).
From 1997 to 2001 then, I edited another themeblog, sort of (there was no open comment feature), focused on another Swiss controversy with international ramifications: the holocaust assets. That blog is still archived on my site.
Those were intense years, spent exploring and trying to understand an innovative media space and the new social and cultural reality it was shaping; keeping up with multiplying sources and an expanding network of contacts; trying out new pieces of technology as they came along and designing a couple ourselves; trying to invent a new language and acquire new social-ware skills; working a lot and writing a lot and traveling a lot. Most days started with a “big sync” and continued at the same pace. It was exhausting but also constantly new, stimulating and exhilarating – until tech and business developments started to make it feel, as Joi says, “more and more like real work”, and exhaustion stopped being compensated by the fun.
After I left Webdo, I remained immersed in the Internet world, writing and starting up companies  and working with global organizations, but when three years ago blogs as such started to become popular and significant and people kept telling me that I ought to start one, I couldn’t get myself to do so. My first reaction was rather: “been there, done that, and the fun lasted only for a while”. And then I was offered a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and moved there and used it as an excuse to affirm my hesitation vis-à-vis blogs. I was following developments in the blogosphere closely, but couldn’t decide myself to open that TypePad account.
Leaving Stanford to return to Europe created a new sense of urgency: I needed better and faster tools to communicate, interact, develop and test ideas with others. E-mail, IM and my modest website (I’m still posting there my writings in languages other than English) weren’t nearly enough. Nor could I satisfy that need through my columns for several publications.
Hence this blog, and wikis for project work, and Skype conference calls, and so on. It feels like a parallel urgency to Joi’s wish for better moblogging.

Asimo's run

You have to take a look at these newly-released videos of Honda's Asimo humanoid robot: it runs at 6 km/h and while cornering. Amazing.
I saw an Asimo show at Stanford University about one year ago and it was most impressive. The robot walks, speaks, goes up and down the stairs without falling, avoids obstacles. Now the most advanced Asimo prototype also runs, which means that at moments it has both feet off the ground between strides, and it has then to absorb the impact of landing without falling or spinning.
It's a stunning engineering and design achievement. Asimo is 1.30 meters, carries batteries in the chest and two computers in the backpack, has facial features that pretend to mimick those of a boy and amazing mobility: it moves fingers, wrists, elbows, neck, hips, ankles and knees. It isn't "intelligent": AI is not one of its features. But once told what to do (programmed) the robot is mechanically fully autonomous.
(More Asimo videos from Honda) (The competition: Sony's Qrio)