Author: megheckman

Multiple platforms, multiple interests: gender, technology and the future of journalism.
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On NHPR, a great show but a grim reminder

New Hampshire Public Radio’s venerable morning talk show The Exchange focused on the local newspaper industry this morning. The discussion was interesting, and I appreciated how the guests drew distinctions between the challenges and opportunities the modern media ecology brings to newspapers of different sizes. The calls from listeners who appreciate quality local journalism were nice to hear, too.

But the show unintentionally illustrated another challenge for local newspapers: Achieving gender balance in leadership. All five of the guests were men and, as I was listening to the show, I had trouble thinking of more than a few women in top management positions at New Hampshire newspapers. I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s certainly something local papers should consider as they imagine their digital future. Local news organizations, after all, will remain relevant only if they reflect the communities they serve.

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(Google) Fusion cuisine

If you’re coming to today’s Tech Camp — and you should — here are few links that we’ll reference during our second Google Fusion workshop:

1.) A list of U.S. state foods from Wikipedia. (I’ll show you how to import this into Fusion during the workshop.)

2.) A file containing information on the boundaries of the U.S. states. (I found this through Google’s Tabels search interface, which you can see here.)

3.) Obesity rates by state.

4.) A list of state capitals.

Our goal will be to create the following: A map that uses different shades of a color to show obesity rates and illustrates official state foods; a timeline that shows when each official food was adopted; a chart or other type of visualization that tells us something else about this information.

If you missed last week’s overview of Fusion, here’s everything you need to know.