Rebuilding Media

Rebuilding Media is a "new blog on the disruptive changes afoot in media by Vin Croildingsbie and Bob Cauthorn," two of the new-media industry's leading thinkers and provocateurs. (Thanks to the Poynter Institute for this link.) While initial postings are spotty (like this blog), it's worth checking out.

EPIC Updated

Journalists Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson have updated their dynamic and intriguing Flash movie looking (back) at the radical changes in journalism between 2004 and 2014, now adding a year - and new/now technologies to their vision. Experience EPIC 2015 to catch a glimpse of our future information environment.

You can find out about the genesis and later development of EPIC in the online article EPIC 2014: The Future is Now from the Poynter Institute.

A Taste of the Future of News

Today the Poynter Institute posted a short article about the future of news - using BBC News' website coverage of last week's bombings in London as an example. The BBC Web coverage included reports from both professional journalists and "citizen journalists" - complete with text reports and photos from both. The author, Steve Outing, concludes:

The point for me is that this combined pro/amateur coverage was better than professional coverage alone. I think this is the future of journalism: a collaboration between paid reporters, and citizens who are intimately involved in a story having the tools to tell their personal stories. Done right -- and BBC News is as close as I've seen to doing it right -- this represents better coverage of a big story.

Citizen Journalism is growing, and one of the good resources about C-J is the weblog I, Reporter.

Our New Media Work at the United Nations

We've taken new media on the road. We're in New York City, attending the second week of the Unted Nations Conference on the Status of Women ("Beijing + 10"). 4 Franciscan University of Steubenville students and I are creating and posting "New Media" reports on the conference, as well as the United Nations General Assembly's vote yesterday to ban all human cloning.

With our audio recorders, laptops and a high-speed internet connection, the team has been busy. designed a Web site - Catholic NGO Voice - as a resource for conference participants and others involved in human rights concerns. Our first "podcast" from the UN conference was posted yesterday, with three more added so far. In addition to links through Catholic NGO Voice, the podcasts are online at the new Voices of Comm Arts Website.

And we've been updating the blog for the UN trip. If we can ever get all our team members and our laptops into our NY "headquarters" at the same time, we'll snap a few pictures to share with you.

Jim Coyle

Podcasting from the Heart of the Roman Catholic Church

Catholic Insider is a podcast by Father Roderick Vonhögen, Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Utrecht, The Netherlands. It's new - but so is podcasting. The first podcast as posted February 23 during a trip to the Vatican. Check out the site at CatholicInsider.com

Blog for UN Trip

In a couple of days about two dozen students and three faculty members from Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio will be traveling to New York City to participate in the United Nations Conference on Women: "Beijing + 10." You can catch highlights of the experience at UN Beijing + 10: A Franciscan Perspective.

Home of "Homicide: Life on the Street" in Baltimore. The versatility of this location in Fells Point gave the producers a great choice of settings within and close to the building and harbor. Something like this would be fabulous for our students and faculty! "Homicide..." was an exceptional NBC television series not enough of us watched in the 1990s. It ran for about 6 seasons.