Snopes founders doing journalists' job

Mark Glaser in OJR has a Q&A with the founders of leading Internet hoax busters Snopes.com. David and Barbara Mikkelson's site got a big boost after 9/11, and their success at unmasking the lie about hunters shooting naked women in the Las Vegas desert (Hunting for Bambi) has now made them even more well known. Excerpt:

MG: So what made you think "Hunting for Bambi" was a hoax?

DM: Part of it is that we start off with the thought that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Our approach is going to be that something outrageous is going to be a hoax. But that's unfortunately not what a lot of people in the media do. They say, "This is real, and we'll see if there's proof it isn't."

MG: So you start off with the assumption that everything's a hoax until proven real?

DM: In a general sense. I can't say that applies to everything. We start out by saying, is there anything that proves this to be true. Absolutely the worst approach you can take -- and unfortunately the approach that most people in the media take -- is simply to contact the hoaxer and ask, "Are you on the level?" No one will put the time and effort into perpetrating a hoax simply to say, "Oh, you got me." Simply by approaching him, you've both alerted him that you're on his trail, and you quite possibly have given him clues as to what people might be looking for to verify that it's phony and will give him ideas on how to improve the hoax. ...

Reporters should take a page from their playbook. I wish the Chicago Tribune had interviewed them for its story on Bambi and Internet hoaxes, which I wrote about on Monday.

Could a hacker steal the '04 election?

Paul Boutin in Slate asks: Could a hacker steal next year's election?

CopyPaste: another helpful app

The other day Dan G. wrote about CopyPaste from Script Software, an application that's apparently been kicking around since the mid'-90s but one that I'd never heard of. (Howard R. pointed him to the software.)

Twenty-two years ago, when I moved to California for a newspaper editing position, we had macro memory keys on our low-tech VDT keyboards that let you copy characters, sentences or commands to about three dozen different keys.

So it has always amazed me at how incredibly limited the Windows operating system is in this regard -- keystrokes that lets you select, copy and paste, but only one item at a time.

CopyPaste frees you from those limitations. I've just been using it for the past 24 hours, but already I can see how handy it will come in. You can copy and paste on up to 99 different sets of keys -- plus other goodies under the hood that I haven't inspected yet.

It's cross-platform, so I'll be downloading it for my Mac as well as my PC. Cost: $20.

Free phone calls

John C. Dvorak in PC magazine tackles free phone calls, aka voice over IP. Buzz tells me I ought to look into it, given all the time I spend on the phone. Excerpt:

Anyone who would use Vonage in a hotel has long since stopped using the hotel phone anyway. Most people use mobile phones when they travel. Even with the priciest roaming charges, mobile calling is cheaper than the horrid hotel phone rates. Only dummies use hotel phones.

I wonder what the Park South folks would think if they knew people could completely bypass the hotel's phone for all calls. I'm certain that both telco executives and hoteliers are going to be passing this column around with notes of concern scribbled in the margin. But smart hotel operators will see this as an opportunity. I'm a regular at the Park South because of the T1 connection. What's more important than a regular customer? ...

Keyword searches of PBS video

Lots of good stuff, per usual, on Gary Price's Resource Shelf, including this:

More and more spoken word material is becoming searchable. The Public Broadcasting Service not only offers television programming throughout the U.S. but also has a website that provides additional resources for each program. Included on the PBS site are several databases of archived video. Every word spoken in these video segments can be searched by keyword. Simply enter your terms, use some of the limiting options, and click search. Once you the material that interests you, click and watch the section of the program where your search terms are spoken or the entire segment. You'll need a RealAudio/Video player. That's it! There is no charge to access and use these tools. These databases were created using voice recognition technology, no human intervention. Next to every entry on a results page you can also read a text transcript of the video segment. ...

• PBS NewsHour Video Search
Search segments of the program beginning in February, 2002.

• Washington Week Video Archive
This archive dates back to July 21, 2000.

Scoop your own newscasts on the Web

Lots of good stuff in Lost Remote:

• A Cory Bergman essay:

Start scooping your own newscasts on the web. The Internet won't make more money than TV anytime soon, but the extra cash will mean more TV reporters and photographers will get to keep their jobs.

• Get your ESPN cell phone

Walt Disney Co. is in early talks with several wireless telephone companies over plans to offer cell phones under the entertainment companyís various brand names, including ESPN, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• Slate gets into radio

• Merrill Brown, former editor of MSNBC.com, will leave Real Networks.

Blogs have a place on news sites

Steve Outing's latest in E&P: Blogs Have a Place on News Web Sites.

It's hard to believe this fundamental point still needs to be hammered home, but such is the way of the newspaper publishing world.

Steve tackles both blogs and moblogs in his column. Excerpt:

Last year, I wrote a column for Editor & Publisher Online suggesting that many reporters, correspondents, editors, and columnists at newspapers should produce Weblogs. I stand by that advice, but these days I place equal importance on non-staff members producing the content for blogs at news companies.

Weblogs present a wonderful opportunity to get the voices of the public onto your site. An area that's ripe to capitalize on is digital photographs taken by members of the public -- AKA witnesses to news. This, I am convinced, is going to be a huge trend in the next couple of years.

A handful of media companies have already experimented with the concept. BBC News Online solicited digital photos from people attending anti-war rallies prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Dallas Morning News Web site collected images of space shuttle Columbia debris that had fallen to earth.

My advice is for news companies to set up a standard repository of public images and publicize how to submit photos (e-mail a specific address either from a photo phone or conventional e-mail). Then, the next time a tornado or hurricane rolls through, or a plane crashes in a populated area, a stream of witness images will pour in, ready to be filtered for publication. This concept can be deployed on any manner of public event or happening: a participatory event (say, a local marathon); an appearance by a presidential candidate; a Hollywood filming taking place in your town; etc.

Having a digital-camera-toting public at your disposal is, of course, the result of the popularity not only of digital cameras, but also picture cell-phones. It's the latter that's really exciting, and that will change the face of photojournalism. ...

Tom Daschle to begin a blog

Sioux Falls Argus Leader:

Tom Daschle is coming soon to a blog near you.

The Senate minority leader and South Dakota Democrat will post a daily diary on his official Web site as he drives around the state next month during Congress' annual August recess, he said Wednesday. The diary is modeled on the growing phenomenon of the online journals known as Weblogs, or blogs for short.

"At the end of the day, wherever I am, I can just type up some thoughts and tell stories about things that happened," Daschle said. "I'm always up for trying something new." ...

The first posting in Daschle's blog - which will be called "Travels with Tom" and will be linked to the front of his official Senate Web site - should go up Thursday [presumably today], spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said.

Um, no mention in the newspaper about what the blog address is.

Thanks to kpaul for the pointer.

Consumer groups ready financial privacy initiative

Here's a California voter initiative done right: Backers of a financial privacy initiative say they've collected enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot. But in a surprise move, they promised to hold the signatures for three weeks to give state lawmakers a final chance to hammer out a bill instead.

Newpaper sites struggle to reach the young

In OJR: Newspaper Web Sites Struggle to Attract Younger Readers. Surveys show that about half of 20 to 29 year olds read the newspaper every day in 1972; by 1998, just 20 percent of twenty somethings read the paper every day.