The Jeff Beckham Weblog

The Economist reports on the death of college yearbooks:
One fixture of college life is rapidly disappearing. Yearbooks, those beloved annual publications recording the events and people of the academic year, are suffering from plummeting print-runs, or are even being dropped altogether, in colleges across the country.
Predictably, the culprits are cost (as high as $75) and [...]

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Nick Carr has a terrific article in this month’s Atlantic magazine titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“. It’s an insightful look at how the Web is changing the way we think — moving away from deep concentration, understanding and analysis toward short, scannable, sharable bursts of information.

I don’t agree that Google and the Web are [...]

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For years, Texas Monthly has been at the top of the list in the City and Regional Magazines Association contest, consistently winning for writing, design, layout and photography. That was the case again this year, as the magazine won first place (or gold) awards for general criticism, writer of the year, excellence in writing, and [...]

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For sports fans, one of the can’t-miss sites on the Web is Deadspin. I’d say I get 90% of my information about national sports from there.
Today I’m honored to have a small piece I wrote appear there as part of the site’s NCAA Tournament preview. I took a look at the Texas A&M Aggies in [...]

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The New York Times is reporting that this week, Sports Illustrated will take the wise move of making its entire 53-year archive of stories and photos available for free online.
The new feature, called the Vault, will also contain video clips and all of its material will be searchable by athlete, coach, team, sport, decade and [...]

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Humans are social animals. And in “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations“, Clay Shirky shows how the widespread adoption of the internet has allowed us to become more social than ever.
And though the focus is on the online tools we use to find, meet, and talk with each other, you don’t need [...]

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The Statesman’s entertainment site, Austin360.com, won a Newspaper Association of America Digital Edge Award for Best Local Guide or Entertainment Site in its circulation category.
The Digital Edge Awards categories, part of the Media Innovation Awards, drew more than 200 entries from U.S. newspapers of all sizes. The volunteer team of judges, who are all [...]

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Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith has found himself in the middle of quite the dust-up after pointing out that this month’s cover of Rhode Island Monthly magazine (”Steak”) bears a striking resemblance to the December 2007 issue of Texas Monthly (”Steak”).

Smith’s post has nearly 50 comments at this point, more than any other post in [...]

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The recent launch of local journalism site EveryBlock tries to answer a question that doesn’t always have an easy response: “What’s happening in my neighborhood?”
Beginning with Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco, EveryBlock pulls together local news and public information, then allows you to narrow the focus to your particular neighborhood of interest. You [...]

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When it comes to the right way for local media to embrace the online world, I’ve been tempted for some time just to link to Rob Curley and add “What he said”.
My man just hit it out of the park again, this time with a piece in Harvard’s Nieman Reports that lays the the strategies [...]

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