Pinterest is designed, top to bottom, to make copies of photos on the internet. That’s a crucial difference from other sites that rely on users to post content: YouTube and Tumblr and Facebook all generally operate under the assumption that the majority of posted content is the user’s own, not someone else’s. Compare that to Pinterest, which presents as its primary interface a toolbar bookmarklet that rips all the images from any web page you’re on.

The comments to that piece may be of interest to those curious about media law.

Sharing this through Twitter made it unique, in a way. The great pictures and the personal touch make it lovely. But remember, the best work — no matter the tools you’re using — always stems from great stories.

I used to ask classes how they felt about the idea of their phone getting a buzz whenever they passed a nearby Starbucks. “Hey! You’re just down the block. Come in, show us this message, get $1 off a latte!”

No one in any of my classes has ever liked that idea. We’re going to start seeing that more frequently, however.

The premise is “What breed would play what position on the football field?” The video is showing the dogs, essentially putting names to faces, while the two guys strategize on building a dog team.

Here’s the roster breakdown, with the caveat “For the sake of argument, these dogs have opposable thumbs and can understand the purpose of sporting contests.”

UPDATED to fix the video, which was inexplicably embedding something else into the post for some browsers.

Don’t write blah blogs. How is that?

Dr. Daniels feels students are often writing solely to their professor, only the one person in the scheme of things.

(Your scheme of things includes: building/cultivating an audience and brand, developing rapport with readers and fellow content creators, being interesting, engaging and, finally, finally earning your grade.)

He has a few suggestions and solutions for you. They are worth your time and consideration. The first two:

SOLUTION #1: Remember you’re writing for an audience outside of the university

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The purpose of the blog is not to take a boring academic assignment and dump it out here online for all the world to see.

You’re building a work habit that prospective employers are (hopefully) going to admire.

SOLUTION #2: Pick something that will attract some interest or elicit a response …

Get to the point quickly. Speed and time are so valuable in this space. The audience’s attention can be short. Get your hook in the first sentence.
Don’t say in 1,000 words what you can say in half that space. As you know, writing tight takes thought and time. You have to work at that.

Include links, photos, videos, slideshows. Text-only posts don’t provide a lot of context or demonstrate your ability as a content curator. Get beyond the Wikipedia link. Find the source material. Find other supplemental material. Did you look for contradictory material, too?

As professor Mindy McAdams writes, “Too many students write blog posts just to get the assignment out of the way — the poor quality of the blog post reveals that plainly. No future employer is going to be impressed by that kind of writing.”

Remember, this is part of a portfolio of experience.

Here’s an argument to that effect:

3. By “revamping the liveblog template” and turning it into a “second screen”

Heron recognises she is “lucky to count on about a dozen interactive developers as colleagues” on her team, “which is kind of a dream come true for a journalism nerd like me”.

She told the news:rewired conference that the “team of developer-journalists has rebuilt our traditional liveblog and transformed it into more of a second screen, social media-heavy experience – a one-stop-shop for reporting, analysis, newsworthy tweets, reader engagement, and interactive election results”.

4. By creating a “liveblog about liveblogs”

The New York Times team decided it should provide its “own coverage and analysis” for the “aforementioned media cacophony”.

Media reporters Brian Stelter and David Carr have been using Storify to collect the “news media’s tweets, videos and Facebook posts on primary nights”. They have been adding their own analysis as narrative within the Storify.

Engagement, or immersion, if you prefer, should be the goal at the beginning and the end of news products. Otherwise, why is your audience bothering?

A new study of advertising in news by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, currently, even the top news websites in the country have had little success getting advertisers from traditional platforms to move online. The digital advertising they do get appears to be standard ads that are available across many websites. And with only a handful of exceptions, the ads on news sites tend not to be targeted based on the interests of users, the strategy that many experts consider key to the future of digital revenue.

Of the 22 news operations studied for this report, only three showed significant levels of targeting. A follow-up evaluation six months later found that two more sites had shown some movement in this direction, but only some, from virtually no targeting to a limited amount on inside pages. By contrast, highly targeted advertising is already a key component of the business model of operations such as Google and Facebook.

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Overall, the analysis finds that while news organizations have tried to persuade their advertisers to buy space across multiple platforms, there was little evidence that they had succeeded. The kinds of products and services being advertised online were quite different than in legacy platforms, and often were seen across multiple websites.

Interesting findings, but the researchers were seemingly only at the front page of sites. A lot of traffic comes from search engines, directly into interior pages. Indeed, many front pages aren’t built for the human aesthetic, but rather for the search engine spiders.

Sites selling specific ad space, or clients buying ads exclusively on sports pages or on automotive stories, don’t seem to figure into this. That’s worth studying (and, professionally, worth practicing) but it would be incredibly labor intensive.

The guidance for journalists not to break news on Twitter is based on a flawed understanding of today’s media ecosystem, says University of British Columbia associate professor Alfred Hermida. Twitter is going to continue to be a news-breaker, so why resist it?

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The tensions over Twitter and breaking news result from the collision of two worlds – when a hierarchical media system in the hands of the few collides with a networked media system open to all. The reasons for wanting to control the flow of news are understandable.

For the errors you can find, most recently the Joe Paterno story, the benefits are obvious to see. We talk a lot about going to where the audience is. Paterno, Beyonce’s big announcement, Madonna at the halftime show, the death of Osama bin Laden and dozens of other examples point to the simple truth that our audience is these days fragmented into a variety of places. A great many are, of course, on Twitter. So why wouldn’t you report your hot news there?

Twitter, Facebook and the like are some of the fastest, most accessible means of communication for the audience. Meet them there. Tell your story there. Have them share your story.

You still have to report the story. Get sources. Get confirmation. Verify your details. Report, report, report. And then share across all your channels. Go to where your audience is.