by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
This Is Why You’re Fat, a Web site for food gone awry, is holding a photo competition in which contestants visit New York street vendors and shoot themselves with coronaries-on-plates.
It’s not a contest for the faint of heart. For a site whose tag line is “Where dreams become heart attacks,” each food truck will create an appropriate contest dish, like chocolate cupcakes with bacon shavings.
Is hyperlocal the magic bullet when it comes to fixing all that’s wrong with the news business? That’s the issue up for debate in this month’s Media Talk USA.
Last year, Leo Laporte became a Twitter quitter. The host of one of Silicon Valley’s most popular podcasts was none too excited that of all the names in the world, the burgeoning message service had picked one that hit piercingly close to home. The online broadcasting network that Laporte owns and runs a short walk from his house in Petaluma is called TWiT.tv, after his company’s flagship show, “This Week in Tech.”
by Scott Kirsner, Columnist, Innovation Economy, The Boston Globe
When Peter Alan Smith pulls out his phone in a crowded Back Bay restaurant, there’s no clue that his Nokia is by far the most expensive mobile phone in the entire place. He has about $2,400 in software loaded onto the $600 device.
The traditional path of a journalism career has clearly shifted. In the past, a journalism student would learn about being a newspaper reporter, then take a job at a small-town paper, eventually moving up to a medium and then larger paper. Now, the reporter might launch a blog, an audio podcast or video reports as a one-person operation, handling editorial and business duties simultaneously.
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