Too Weak
/Our passions are not too strong, they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased. -CS Lewis
Disruptive Innovation
/Innovation distance explains why so many of those who turn an industry upside down are outsiders, even outcasts. To understand this point we need to grasp the difference between the two types of innovation. Sustaining innovations are improvements that make the product better, but do not threaten its market. The disruptive innovation, conversely, threatens to displace a product altogether. It is the difference between the electric typewriter, which improved on the typewriter, and the word processor, which supplanted it.
Another advantage of the outside inventor is less a matter of the imagination than of his being a disinterested party. Distance creates a freedom to develop inventions that might challenge or even destroy the business model of the dominant industry. The outsider is often the only one who can afford to scuttle a perfectly sound ship, to propose an industry that might challenge the business establishment or suggest a whole new business model. Those closer to - often at the trough of - existing industries face a remarkable constant pressure not to invent things that will ruin their employer. The outsider has nothing to lose. But to be clear, it is not mere distance, but the right distance that matters; there is such a thing as being to far away.
Tim Wu, The Master Switch
Fooling Folks
/You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, and them’s pretty good odds. (unknown)
To be alive
/To be alive is to be vulnerable. –Madeleine L’Engle (born Nov. 29, 1918)
Don’t be surprised
/If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always gotten.
25 free (mostly one hour) Journalism courses
/Free short online courses to strengthen your skills and add a line to your resume. Most of these Poynter courses are one-hour in length or less.
Journalism Fundamentals: Craft & Values - A five-hour, self-directed course that covers basics in five areas: newsgathering, interviewing, ethics, law and diversity.
Telling Stories with Sound - Learn the fundamentals of audio reporting and editing in this self-directed course.
How to Spot Misinformation Online - Learn simple digital literacy skills to outsmart algorithms, detect falsehoods and make decisions based on factual information
Understanding Title IX - This course is designed to help journalists understand the applications of Title IX.
Clear, Strong Writing for Broadcast Journalism - One-hour video tutorial
Powerful Writing: Leverage Your Video and Sound
In this one-hour video tutorial, early-career journalists will learn how to seamlessly combine audio, video and copy in captivating news packages.
Writing for the Ear - In this five-part course, you’ll learn everything you need to write more effective audio narratives.
Fact-Check It: Digital Tools to Verify Everything Online
News Sense: The Building Blocks of News - What makes an idea or event a news story?
Cleaning Your Copy: Grammar, Style and More - Finding and fixing the most common style, grammar and punctuation errors.
Avoiding Plagiarism and Fabrication - For authors, editors, educators, journalists, journalism students, news producers and news consumers.
The Writer’s Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use - Ethics of Journalism Build or refine your process for making ethical decisions.
Conducting Interviews that Matter
Make Design More Inclusive: Defeat Unconscious Bias in Visuals
Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Publishers - Three important areas of media law that specifically relate to gathering information and publishing online: defamation, privacy and copyright.
Freedom of Information and Your Right to Know - How to use the Freedom of Information Act, Public Records Laws and Open Meetings Laws to uphold your right to know the government’s actions.
Journalism and Trauma - How traumatic stress affects victims and how to interview trauma victims with compassion and respect.
How Any Journalist Can Earn Trust (International Edition) - What news audiences in various parts of the world don’t understand about how journalism works.
Is This Legit? Digital Media Literacy 101 - MediaWise’s Campus Correspondents explain the fact-checking tools and techniques that professionals use in their day-to-day work.
The On-Ramp to Media Literacy - Center for Media Literacy
How Any Journalist Can Earn Trust
Dignity and Precision in Language
The Path
/The path to sainthood goes through adulthood. - M Scott Peck
10 Articles Worth Reading about AI's Use by Colleges
/Attainment with AI: A Compendium of Practical Applications for Generative AI in Higher Ed – Complete College America
Why Educators Should Lean in to AI to Better Support Students - EdSurge News
The sheer growth in computing power behind generative AI raises the question of whether this technology could be the turning point – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Why I chose OpenAI over academia: reflections on the CS academic and industry job markets – Rown Zellers
Teaching Philosophy in a World with ChatGPT – Daily Nous
ChatGPT could eventually cause powers-that-be to think that writing is less of a university-wide essential skill down the road - Chronicle of Higher Ed
Top Law School Welcomes The Use Of ChatGPT In Its Admissions Process – Above the Law
Ban or Embrace? Colleges Wrestle With A.I.-Generated Admissions Essays – New York Times
AI writing tools will not fix HE's language discrimination – Times Higher Education
Using artificial intelligence to assess personal qualities in college admissions – Science
Always
/It’s always too soon to quit. - V. Raymond Edman
Justified Anger
/To be “angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -that is, not within everybody's power and is not easy.” The Greek philosopher Aristotle offered that observation more than 2000 years ago.
Justified anger revolves around boundary violations, but sometimes, a proper boundary is never put into place or maintained. In their book Boundaries, Henry Cloud and John Townsend write about how a person’s skin is the first boundary. People who are sexually abused as children are often confused about maintaining that boundary, not realizing that it is appropriate for them to claim ownership.
There are other psychological boundaries we fail to set. Regular violations of that psychological marker make it hard to see things for what they are.
One way to gain clarity is to think about your children. If a boyfriend, boss, etc, treated our child the way they treat us, how would we respond? This is when anger is justified.
Seeing a situation from a different angle—putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes—helps us to work around our distorted boundaries and more clearly see the situation for what it really is.
Stephen Goforth
8 Articles about How Companies are using AI
/The Creepy AI-Driven Surveillance That May Be Infiltrating Your Workplace – Digg
Inside the consulting industry's race to become AI rainmakers – Business Insider
ChatGPT provided better customer service than his staff. He fired them. – Washington Post
AI investments are a top priority for U.S. CEOs, KPMG survey finds – Axios
Your employer is (probably) unprepared for artificial intelligence - Economist
Amazon’s New AI Will Make Its Junk Problem Even Worse – Washington Post
Meta’s Free AI Isn’t Cheap to Use, Companies Say – The information
Growth Requires
/Spiritual growth requires the acknowledgement of one's need to grow. -M Scott Peck
Virtue
/Virtue, even attempted virtue, brings light; indulgence brings fog. - CS Lewis
Old Enough
/Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. –CS Lewis
Sometimes
/Sometimes it is only when you see where you have been that you can tell where you are heading. -William Bridges
The Shining
/How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world! -William Shakespeare
Winnie’s Wise Words
/If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear. -Winnie the Pooh
What it Takes
/Why do certain people put themselves through the years of intensive daily work that eventually makes them world-class great? The answers depend on your response to two basic questions: What do you really want? And what do you really believe?
What you want - really, deeply want - is fundamental because deliberate practice is an investment: The costs come now, the benefits later. The more you want something, the easier it will be for you to sustain the needed effort until the payoff starts to arrive. But if you're pursuing something that you don't truly want and are competing against others whose desire is deep, you can guess the outcome.
The evidence offers no easy assurances. It shows that the price of top-level achievement is extraordinarily high. Maybe it's inevitable that not many people will choose to pay it. But the evidence shows also that by understanding how a few become great, all can become better.
Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated
Two Kinds of Fools
/There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better." -William R. Inge
Good but not Safe
/“Then, he isn't safe?” said Lucy. “Safe?” said the Beaver. “Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King I tell you.”
CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe