Daniel Ionescu

“What journalism and the public most need right now is serious, continuing coverage of matters of public importance: city halls, school systems, statehouses. Journalism schools are not fully equipped to provide that now, but the logistical and financial difficulty of equipping them to do so would be far less than the difficulty of creating and sustaining new news organizations built from scratch. Like teaching hospitals, journalism schools can provide essential services to their communities while they are educating their students.“

The Chronicle of Higher Education | Nicholas Lemann – Journalism Schools Can Push Coverage Beyond Breaking News

The week in tech with my posts in the Today@PC World section:

YouTube Goes High Definition with 1080p Videos
YouTube says it will start supporting 1080p high-definition video in full resolution starting next week. The Google-owned video-sharing site will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p resolutions, depending on the resolution of the original source.

Microsoft Bans Up to One Million Users From Xbox Live
Microsoft has banned as many as one million users who hacked their Xbox 360 consoles to play pirated games from the company’s Xbox Live service in a bid to counter piracy. The move triggered an avalanche of cheap “chipped” Xbox 360 consoles for sale on Craigslist and a public outcry from users is expected.

Samsung Intros Bada Mobile OS: Do We Need It?
Samsung today introduced Bada, which the company calls a mobile platform for a new breed of its smartphones. But is there really a need for yet another mobile OS, next to the likes of Apple, Microsoft, or Google?

Not anymore: a Hackintosh Dell Mini from Gizmodo.

Apple’s Snow Leopard Update Zaps Bugs, Kills Hackintosh Netbooks
On Monday Apple released an update to its Snow Leopard operating system (10.6.2 ) that fixes flaws, including one that wipes out a users’ personal data. But along with fixes, Apple’s update also kills support for Intel Atom processors, in a bid to stop users from hacking their netbooks and creating “hackintosh” systems.

iPhone ‘Rickroll’ Worm Is No Threat To Most Users
The first worm to infect the iPhone will not affect most users of Apple’s smartphone, despite worrying reports. The ikee worm only affects jailbroken iPhones, representing a minority percentage of iPhones on the market.

Verizon’s Motorola Droid kept on making headlines this week, but Apple might just have found a way to maintain the iPhone’s lead. Here are my stories this week on Today@PCWorld:

iPhone as an eBook Reader Threatens Kindle, Says Report
Apple’s iPhone is quickly becoming the ebook reader of choice for many, and could steal market share from Amazon’s Kindle, according to a report from market research firm Flurry.

Best Buy, CinemaNow Partner on Movie Download Service
Best Buy will partner with Sonic Solutions’ Roxio CinemaNow to offer a movie download service that will pipe movies to a range of electronic gear from televisions, DVD players, computers and phones sold at the retail giant’s stores. The move is seen as a sign of the times for the leading retail seller of DVD movies, Best Buy, who is seeing its retail sales of DVD discs shrink as more people opt to rent movies via digital distribution.

Beatles Due Soon on USB — But Not From Apple
EMI will release next month a collection of remastered Beatles albums on a special edition USB drive, to the joy of fans and geeks alike. The apple-shaped 16GB USB drive will be loaded with the remastered audio tracks from the Beatles’ 14 albums, and will set you back a cool $330 (£200).

Motorola Droid Steals BlackBerry’s Limelight
Motorola’s upcoming Droid smartphone is grabbing plenty of attention — so much attention, in fact, that news of two new BlackBerry devices is getting lost in the shuffle. In recent weeks, Research In Motion announced two new smartphones, the revamped BlackBerry Storm 2, and the Bold 9700. Both are impressive phones in their own right, but neither is garnering the buzz that surrounds the Motorola Droid.

A $99 8GB iPhone 3GS to Kill the Motorola Droid?
AT&T and Apple are preparing a cheaper iPhone 3GS just in time for the holidays to distract from the popularity of the Motorola Droid, according to sources quoted by a BoyGenius report. A cheaper version of the iPhone 3GS would come with only 8GB of storage and $100 off the original price tag, replacing the current $99 8GB iPhone 3G.

My local newspaper, The Lincolnshire Echo, whose online practices I criticised before, is pitching tomorrow’s newspaper today, with news from yesterday. Let me explain:

In an article on their website on Wednesday, November 4 2009, sensationally headlined ‘City’s binge drinking crisis‘, there are only (exactly) 50 words of text, which are trying to sell me the printed version of the paper for Thursday, November 5. Here they are:

“New alcohol profiles for England have revealed Lincoln has the second worst rate for binge drinking in the East Midlands.

The statistics reveal that the city came second out of 40 local authorities in the region.

It also came fourth for alcohol related crimes and fifth alcohol related sexual offences.”

The article continues with one last paragraph:

“See Thursday’s Echo for more on the statistics, plus reaction from alcohol prevention groups and city MP Gillian Merron.”

So they are basically telling me that they sourced news yesterday (or possibly today), but they are only going to tell me more about it tomorrow. Well, here’s why I won’t buy your newspaper tomorrow:

1. I use Google search
I will type in “alcohol profiles for England” and (2.) click on the first result (see image below)

3. On that website I am going to look after some press release or spreadsheet with the numbers and I going to look for myself (approximately 45 seconds). You can download the spreadsheets with the data I believe they used, which looks like it was last updated on October 22, almost two weeks before the Echo report was written (corrections for this fact welcomed).

4. So I already learnt about the “more statistics” pitched to me in the article, and I can pretty much guess what alcohol prevention groups will say about binge drinking and the local MP will probably say that she’s working on it.

My point: If I can find and pretty much guess the news that you are pitching to me for tomorrow in about 5 minutes, what makes you think I will buy your paper the next day?

–Later edit: One commentator (Martin, Lincoln) on the article rightly points out: “Let’s hope the source of the figures is revealed, so that we can check them out for ourselves minus the sensationalist, scaremongering tripe that they’ll inevitably served up with…”