Author: Donn King

Intellectual property in the age of blogs

Merlin Mann keeps the 43 Folders site. In “Free as in ‘Me’” he does an elaborate but interesting examination into issues of intellectual property and ownership that go beyond the merely commercial. My opinion: the assumption that intellectual property is mainly about commercial interests taints the discussion on the part of both proponents of protecting intellectual property and opponents. Commercial interests matter, but mainly because of far larger issues that lie behind commercial interests and transcend them.

Given the nature of the article, I am certainly not going to summarize it–not because I fear Mann’s reaction (I doubt he’ll ever know about this post), but because I respect his point, and I would like for you to see what he has to say.

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A new look at journalism

Kristen King (no relation to me, as far as I know) attended the Region 2 conference of the Society of Professional Journalists, and shared her summaries of several of the sessions. This is very useful information for information workers of any sort, but particularly for journalism and even PR students. This is boiled-down, pure, cutting-edge information. Take the time.

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Writing for audio gives speech insights

Producers of audio material (for example, educational or motivational CDs) have a writing task not unlike that faced by speakers. They seek to prepare for the delivery of solid information in a conversational manner. Because of that, Brian Clark’s post concerning “Four Copywriting Techniques for Engaging Podcasts and Audio Presentations” comprises useful ways of thinking about a speech and “writing” it.

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The myth of government source reliability

When we teach speech students about evaluating sources, we usually tell them that government figures are more reliable than others. We teach journalism students the same thing. Maybe the operative word here is “more” and “than others.”

The greater lesson, perhaps, is to be skeptical of anything that any source tells you until you see the original data and understand how it was gathered and what it means.

As FOXNews reports in The Myth of 90 Percent, a “fact” that has been floated around by a whole bunch of government officials and passed on uncritically by a number of media outlets is just flat wrong, i.e., the “fact” that 90% of the guns used in Mexican crime comes from the United States.

It’s not just a little wrong. It’s a lot wrong. A more accurate way to look at the facts is this: about 17% of recovered weapons used in a crime in Mexico could be traced to the U.S. Continue reading →

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Why we need problem-solving skills

According to everything I’m reading, this is not an April Fool’s joke. A woman in Kissimmee, Florida, called 911 because she was locked in her car. She was locked in her car because nothing electrical was working, and her car had electric door locks.

Yep, that’s right. She didn’t know what that little plunger thingie up by the window was for. After all, it wasn’t electric.

Here’s the actual recording of the call.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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“Getting gigs” is really about good communication

This isn’t a stretch. Even though Allison Boyer doesn’t even use the word in her post entitled “One Good Job Deserves Another: Landing Gigs,” everything she writes there has something to do with communication, including concepts about networking, listening, and enthusiasm. Speech students, does this sound familiar? She’s talking about what freelancers do, but as we’ve established elsewhere, “regular employees” are still really in business for themselves, and the same advice applies even if you receive W2 income.

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Examining an educational urban legend

I love these kinds of stories.

Students know I’m a fan of sites like snopes.com and truthorfiction.com. The average person is too willing to accept what they “hear” without doing any verification. It’s not so much that these two sites do the work for you (although, for the most part, they do), but rather that they demonstrate how to go about verifying things for yourself.

FOXNews reports on a common email that claims you can still read paragraphs consisting mainly of words with the letters scrambled, as long as the first and last letters remain unchanged. As is the case with most good urban legends, there is some truth to it. Much of what is claimed, however, is false, and many of the specific facts (such as its claim of basis in a Cambridge study) are flat-out fictitious.

The article does a very good job of explaining and documenting its counterclaims, which in itself is a good model for students.

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