Integrity
/You don't luck into integrity. You work at it. -Betty White (born Jan. 17, 1922)
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
A dozen January webinars about journalism, content creation, grammar, credibility, LinkedIn & more
/Tues, Jan 17 - Prioritizing mental health in the newsroom: How to create a culture of well-being
What: In this session, four experts will draw from their personal and professional experiences to share advice on how newsrooms can make mental well-being a part of their culture.
Who: Moderator: Naseem Miller of The Journalist’s Resource; Scott Blanchard, the director of journalism at public media station WITF in Harrisburg, Pa.; Sewell Chan EIC of The Texas Tribune; Elana Newman, McFarlin Professor of Psychology at The University of Tulsa; Dave Seglins is an investigative journalist and “Well-being Champion” with CBC News.
When: Noon, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Journalist’s Resource, a project of Harvard's Shorenstein Center
Wed, Jan 18 - Five Biggest Mistakes in Content Creation
What: In this webinar, team members from TechSoup will share some common mistakes that can become BIG mistakes when creating content for marketing your nonprofit to constituents.
When: 10 am, Pacific
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: TechSoup
Wed, Jan 18 - Polishing Your Materials to Land that Scholarship, Internship or Job!
What: Panelists will share best practices on how to make your application materials shine.
Who: Aisha Al-Muslim, Senior Editor, Newsroom Internships, The Wall Street Journal; Maya Nairobi Brown, the first recipient of the NAHJ Ada Lourdes Vigo Afro-Latino Scholarship
When: 6 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: National Association of Hispanic Journalists
Thu, Jan 19 - Grammar Recharge for Journalists
What: Panelists will identify commonly found grammatical mistakes -- and how to correct them -- and will share their advice for writing in an error-free and easy-to-understand manner.
Who: Cecilia Dowd, the vice president of the Press Club of Long Island, will moderate panelists John McIntyre and Pam Robinson, both experienced journalists and copy editors. Guests will have the opportunity to have their burning grammar questions answered.
When: 7 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Press Club of Long Island
Mon, Jan 23 - We regret the error: Public trust and media accountability
What: The panel will explore how newsroom leaders discuss past mistakes and what they’ve learned to build greater trust with their audiences. A recent Gallup survey found that the public’s confidence in news has fallen to an all-time low. What can news organizations do to regain trust in their work? What lessons have newsroom leaders learned from past mistakes to help their audiences understand the lengths they go through to produce credible and trustworthy news?
Who: The panel discussion will be moderated by News Literacy Project President and CEO Charles Salter and featuring top journalists and media experts, including: Tony Cavin, NPR, Managing Editor for Standards and Practices; Sara Kehaulani Goo, Axios, Editor in Chief; Adam Symson, The E.W. Scripps Company, President & CEO; Krissah Thompson, Washington Post, Managing Editor.
When: 6 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The News Literacy Project and The E.W. Scripps Company
Tues, Jan 24 – Trust issues: How Chicago news outlets build credibility in their communities
What: We are exploring why trust in the news media is declining among some Americans and presenting a panel of innovative Chicago journalists to discuss how they are building trust in their work. These journalists are involving their audiences in their editorial processes, hosting listening sessions, rethinking subscription models, prioritizing transparency with sources, and training young journalists and community members.
Who: The panelists include: Alejandra Cancino, deputy editor of City Bureau; Jennifer Kho, executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times; Jen Sabella, co-founder and director of strategy of Block Club Chicago; Michael Spikes, lecturer at Northwestern Medill and director of the Teach for Chicago Journalism Program.
When: 6 pm
Where: Zoom and in-person
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The News Literacy Project and Northwestern Medill
Tues, Jan 24 - The News Deserts in Our Backyard
What: This panel will present the early results of a nearly yearlong Hofstra University Presidential Research Project examining news deserts within our own backyard and continue a conversation that we have already begun on how to address the crisis in local news coverage, particularly within marginalized communities.
When: 7 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Press Club of Long Island
Wed, Jan 25 - Visual Storytelling: the challenges faced by journalists working with images
What: Hear from an expert panel about the challenges that come with visual journalism—about their experiences of not only pursuing visual journalism, but defending those who do.
Who: Galina Arapova, Media Lawyer, Russia, Mass Media Defence Centre; Zach, Cartoonist, The Philippines, Cartooning for Peace; Matthew Gillett, Senior Lecturer in Law & Principal Investigator, Digital Verification Unit, University of Essex.
When: 8 am, GMT
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Media Defence
Wed, Jan 25 - Rock Your LinkedIn Profile
What: Explore how to create a LinkedIn profile that brings your personal career story to life, whether you’re just starting out, seeking to advance, or making a career change.
Who: Gorki De Los Santos and Francisco Tobon from LinkedIn
When: 3 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: National Association of Hispanic Journalists
Wed, Jan 25 - Power in Art: Elevate Student Voice with Editorial Cartooning
What: Learn how to support students as they analyze and create political cartoons to share their perspective about issues. You’ll also explore topics such as trust and credibility as they relate to opinion journalism.
Who: Hear from renowned political cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz and educators who have done editorial cartooning assignments with students.
When: 7 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The News Literacy Project and KQED
Thu, Jan 26 - Celebrate National News Literacy Week with Teens for Press Freedom
What: A student-led conversation about the overwhelming amount of information (including misinformation) that we encounter -- and how you can know what to trust. You’ll hear practical tips and advice from young people about how they separate fact from fiction, how they determine credibility and how they decide what to share with friends or base opinions on.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Microsoft Flip, the News Literacy Project and Teens for Press Freedom
Tue, Jan 31 - What’s the Point of APA Style? Relevance of a Writing Style to Life After Graduation
What: How librarians can increase students’ buy-in to learning APA Style by demonstrating how learning and using a writing style will help students in any career they pursue. We will share real-life examples of applications of APA Style, showing how the APA Style core principles of writing with clarity, precision, and inclusion support people in tasks such as writing resumes and emails, creating PowerPoint presentations and other visual displays, and, above all, communicating with others to get important stuff done.
Who: The APA Style team
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: APA Style
TikToker raises enough money for 82-year-old Walmart worker to retire
/Rory McCarty used his social media platform to raise more than $140K for 82-year-old Butch Marion, who was still working off debt by working at Walmart. FOX 5 DC has a video report.
Freedom is...
/Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. -Jean-Paul Sartre
The curious paradox
/The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. -Carl Rogers
23 AI-based text/image/video creation tools
/ArtBreeder
Create portraits and landscape images with this AI-based creation tool. Free. An introduction and review here.
ChatGPT
This OpenAI chatbot remembers what you've written or said, so the interaction has a dynamic conversational feel. Give the software a prompt and it creates articles, even poetry. It writes code, too. And explains the code. Doesn’t do legit sources and limited to info from before 2022. Free.
Co-Pilot
Released by Microsoft-owned GitHub built on OpenAI technology that can translate basic human instructions into functional computer code. Intended for developers.
Copy.ai
AI text-generation tool.
Craft.do
Document-creation tool with AI features.
DALL-E
OpenAI’s tool that turns written text into realistic images using AI. Named after painter Salvador Dali and Disney Pixar’s WALL-E. A limited number of images are free.
Google Pinpoint
This tool uses AI to analyze PDFs, strip text from images and transcribe audio.
GPT-2 Detector
OpenAI’s GPT-2 Detector (Hugging Face) is a tool that helps to identify AI generated text.
GPTZero
Detects whether an essay was written by ChatGPT to help educators to combat AI-based plagiarism Built by a computer science student at Princeton who was a former data journalist with the BBC.
Jasper AI
AI story writing tool for fiction and nonfiction. Pick a tone of voice for style. Pre-built templates available. However, no sources are provided. $29 month.
Lensa
Create digital self-portraits, made with AI technology through the open source Stable Diffusion model that renders selfies into artwork. Developed by Prisma Labs, locataed in California by Russian developers. One week free trial then $30 a month. The avatar tool costs a separate $3.99 for 50 images.
Lex
AI text-generation tool.
Make-A-Video
Meta’s AI system that turns text into video. Not yet available to the public.
Maker
Generates written and visual content. Free trial then $25 a month.
MidJourney
This AI image generator uses machine learning to create pictures based on text. Created a picture that sparked a controversy by winning an art competition.
Munch
Uses AI to repurpose video content for social channels and more.
NightCafe
Create art with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
NovelAI
AI story creator. Easy-to-use but fantasy fiction only. Starts at $10 a month.
Postwise.ai
AI-driven Twitter writing tool
QuillBot
An AI-driven writing tool that paraphrases what you say.
Stable Diffusion
Generates visual creations through AI. Since it is open-sourced, anyone can view the code. Fewer restrictions on how it can be used than DALL-E.
VanceAI Art Generator
Read more about it here.
VALL-E
Microsoft's AI-powered can replicate someone’s voice with just 3-second sample. The voice synthesis machine learning model is not yet available to the public.
Discovering the truth
/Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime's work but it's worth the effort. -Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers)
The 3 Things Far-Right & Far-Left Political News Sources have in Common
/When researchers analyzed almost 6,000 political news stories produced by partisan and nonpartisan media outlets in 2021, three things became clear:
Media outlets with extreme biases — regardless of whether it was a conservative or liberal bias — tended to use shorter sentences and less formal language than nonpartisan outlets.
Mainstream news organizations, as a whole, wrote at a higher reading level.
Far-right and far-left outlets took a more negative tone than nonpartisan outlets. They generally had a lower ratio of positive to negative words.
The researchers describe their findings in a paper forthcoming in Journalism Studies, “At the Extremes: Assessing Readability, Grade Level, Sentiment, and Tone in US Media Outlets.”
Read the full article from Journalist’s Resources here.
Worry that Past Failures will Repeat
/Worry about the repetition of past problems is not a sign of healthy thinking. True, it indicates a desire to be rid of the possible plenty of repeated pain, but inevitably it represents its own brand of pain. The individual has clearly specified what must - and what must not - be part of his life, but the mind is so obsessed with preventing old problems that satisfaction is not recognized in present situations. The imperative person is a prisoner of the past.
Les Carter, Imperative People: Those Who Must Be in Control
Autistic boy gifted $15,000 piano from stranger
/Jude Kofie had never had a piano lesson, but had a gift for playing. A stranger heard him play and surprised him with a grand piano.
Selfishness and Self-love
/If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue and not a vice-to love myself since I am a human being too. There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included. A doctrine which proclaims such an exclusion proves itself to be intrinsically contradictory. The idea expressed in the Biblical “Love thy neighbor as thyself!” implies that respect for one’s own integrity and uniqueness, love for and understanding of one’s own self, can not be separated from respect for and love and understanding of another individual. The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other self.
The affirmation of one’s own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in one’s capacity to love, i.e., in care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he can not love at all.
The selfish person.. can see nothing but himself; he judges everyone and everything from its usefulness to him; he is basically unable to love. Does not this prove that concern for others and concern for oneself are unavoidable alternatives? This would be so if selfishness and self-love were identical. But.. selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites.
Eric Fromm, Man for Himself
The Process of Transitions
/Change is a situational shift.
Getting a new boss is a change, and so is receiving a promotion or losing your job.
Moving to a different house is a change, and so it remodeling your house or losing it in a fire.
Having a new change is a change for everyone in the family—including the new baby, who was pretty well situated before all the change too place.
And, of course, losing a loved one is a change—a huge one.
Transition, on the other hand, is the process of letting go of the way things used to be and then taking hold of the way they subsequently become. In between the letting go and the taking hold again, there is a chaotic but potentially creative “neutral zone” when things aren’t the old way, but aren’t really a new way yet either. This three-phase process—ending, neutral zone, beginning again—is transition.
William Bridges, The Way of Transition
Loose, Messy and Chaotic
/Tight ways of thinking and working, while being superficially attractive and comforting, don't work. They have been built on the illusion of control. This illusion – propagated by legions of consultants, economists, market researchers and other purveyors of empirical snake oil – has actually made businesses less capable of embracing the complex realities of the modern world.
Agility, flexibility, a willingness to exercise judgement and an ability to improvise will become the defining characteristics of successful institutions in the next decades. This means fighting the instinct to solve every problem through rules and regulations and recognising the limitations of long-term planning and the painfully slow nature of most internal decision-making processes.
It means accepting the need to operate in real time and making the organisational and cultural changes necessary to achieve it. And most importantly, it means building a strong, self-sustaining, trusting organisational culture rather than in investing in yet more process and bureaucracy.
The future is loose, messy and chaotic: now is the time to embrace it.
Martin Thomas, Loose: The Future of Business is Letting Go
7 Media Webinars this week about journalism, social media, accessibility, sports & more
/Tues, Jan 10 – Solutions Journalism 101
What: This webinar will explore the ins and outs of solutions journalism, talk about why it’s important, explain key steps in reporting a solutions story, and share tips and resources for journalists interested in investigating how people are responding to social problems.
When: 7 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Solutions Journalism Network
Tues, Jan 10 – Social Media 101 for Nonprofits
What: This session includes practical tips and tools for extending your cause and mission via social media. We cover the basics of using social media for your nonprofit organization and give you handy tips for the “big 3:” Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Who: Kiersten Hill Director of Nonprofit Solutions for FireSpring
When: 2 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: FireSpring
Wed, Jan 11 - The role of journalism in disrupting corruption
What: This special collaboration from the institute's Global Journalism Seminars series and the Blavatnik School of Government's Chandler Sessions on Integrity and Corruption will include contributions to the discussion by editors and journalists from countries including Kenya and Peru, and RISJ Journalist Fellows and Chandler Session members.
Who: Jane Bradley, New York Times, Mitali Mukherjee, Director of Journalist Programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Reuters Institute
Wed, Jan 11 - Making Your Nonprofit's Website More Accessible and Inclusive
What: Is your website meeting your organization's legal requirement for accessibility? During this webinar, attendees will learn how to identify accessibility problems on your website, even if you're not a developer, and tools you can use to resolve those problems. Additionally, attendees will learn more about the existing laws related to website accessibility and if they pertain to your organization.
Who: Amber Hinds, Equalize Digital
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Nonprofit Learning Lab
Wed, Jan 11 - Is a Career in Sports Journalism Your Goal?
What: Inside information on sports writing, breaking into the field, and how the panelists have navigated being the only Latino in the newsroom
Who: Iliana Limón Romero, Sports Editor, Los Angeles Times; Joe Rodriguez, Director of Digital Content, MLS NEXT Pro; Siera Santos, Host, MLB Networks
When: 5 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: National Association of Hispanic Journalists
Thu, Jan 12 - 2023 Advertising and Media Data Trends and Forecast
What: Notable trends in retail media and data management The increasing importance of multi-currency measurement How to implement better customer journey analytics
Who: Snoeflake’s Adrian Bolosan and Erin Foxworthy
When: 12 noon, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Ad Week
Thu, Jan 12 - How to Be an Advocate for Student Press Freedom
What: This workshop will allow student journalists to share their stories with their peers and learn other advocacy techniques to help fight for student press freedom.
Who: SPLC advocacy and organizing director Hillary Davis
When: 7:30 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Student Press Law Center
What Love Does
/Love doesn’t erase the past, but it makes the future different. -Gary Chapman
5 Articles about Google Security
/There's a way to delete the frightening amount of data Google has on you – CNET
Gmail’s New Encryption Can Make Email Safer—Here’s Why You Should Use It – Lifewire
Google Takedown form – Google Support
Should you log in with Facebook or Google on other sites or apps? Short answer: No. – Washington Post
How to delete Google search history – Laptop Mag
You are not what happened to you in the past
/No matter how chaotic the past has been, the future is a clean, fresh, wide open slate. You are not your past habits. You are not your past failures. You are not how others have at one time treated you. You are only who you think you are right now in this moment. You are only what you do right now in this moment.
Read more here.
10 Articles about Privacy Tools
/How to scrub yourself from the internet, the best that you can
The Washington Post’s Privacy Reset Guide
Use a second number to keep your real phone number hidden
PEN America offers some advice on keeping your accounts safe (video)
What is Signal? The basics of the most secure messaging app
Test Your Online Security Setup
When to Use a VPN—and When It Won’t Protect Your Data
The Default Tech Settings You Should Turn Off Right Away
Jumbo attempts to maximize your privacy settings across apps, and has free and paid versions.
Best Data Visualizations of 2022
/Best Data Visualization Projects of 2022 - FlowingData
New York Times “visual stories” 2022 - New York Times
Axios Visuals: 2022 in review - Axios