Readin', 'Ritin', and (Publishing) 'Rithmetic

For almost everyone who is a part of the online world coming up with fresh content consistently is a big challenge. Practically every guideline advises that content should be engaging, informative and relevant every single time. Consequently, content curation has taken off in a big way.

Simply put, content curation is the process of curating relevant and interesting content from various sources on the web and putting them together and publishing them on a personal site or blog. As a result of the popularity of the content curation process, a number of content marketing tools have been introduced. These tools are meant to help in the process of content marketing and SEO and facilitate the process of curation...

"Literary girls don't take road-trips to find themselves; they take trips to find men."

I came of age without a literary soulmate. Growing up, I read every book recommended to me. Nick Carraway's lucid account of the 1920's seduced me. Huck Finn's journey up the river showed me the close link between maturity and youth, and Ray Bradbury taught me to be wary of big government as well as the burning temperature of paper. While the male characters of literature built countries, waged wars, and traveled while smoking plenty of illicit substances, the women were utterly boring.

Two weeks ago, I saw Ira Glass talk about how stories enable us to see ourselves in the lives of others.  “The story is a machine for empathy,” Glass has argued elsewhere. “It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people’s situations.” Here, Glass is concerned not only with what stories to cover, but how to tell those stories. If we want to begin better reflecting the lived experiences of our communities we need to tackle both.

A year ago, Andrew Haeg left his work in public broadcasting to develop what he called an “empathy engine” to help journalists better engage and understand communities. In a blog post announcing his new project, he quotes Jose Antonio Vargas’ keynote at the 2012 Online News Association conference. Vargas said that journalism “has given me the biggest gift that anybody could ever give me […] the gift of empathy. Of seeing and listening to people who may not agree with me and who feel different than I do.”

So the question of empathy has two facets: empathy in the newsroom, and the empathy our stories foster in our readers. What connects these two elements is the act of listening.

by Josh Stearns

Many avid readers are also avid writers. It only makes sense that someone who loves the beauty of language would want to make a craft of it.

"Journalism is changing, and so is the role of women in the workplace. But the two are not always evolving in harmony. Women substantially outnumber men in journalism training and enter the profession in (slightly) greater numbers, but still only a relative few rise to senior jobs. The pay gap between male and female journalists remains stubbornly wide, and older women - especially if they have taken a career break - find it difficult to retain a place in the industry.

Women in journalism still cluster around particular subject genres. Historically, they were almost totally confined to “pink ghettos”, but as more women entered the industry, there was an expectation that their opportunities would expand and that they would duly embrace areas that had been traditionally male, like hard news, crime or politics.

But a byline analysis of UK national newspapers in 2012 indicates that some areas still have very few women, in particular politics, sport and opinion writing. These findings are also supported by qualitative interview data. There are similar lacunae in the US press."

The power of curation’s feedback loops is why to curate more than you create AND why the best ratio may be as high as 90% curation to 10% creation.

by @Martin (Marty) Smith on @ janlgordon's curatti.com

How Does Media Consolidation Limit Your Media Choices? #infographic Frugaldad via Businessinsider Guest post by Yin Wu I look 4Ward to your feedback. Keep Digging for Worms! Author: Bill - Dr. William J.

Installation shot: Posters (c. 1991-present) from Riot Grrrl related shows, conventions and meetings internationally.

Alien She is a new exhibition that examines the lasting impact of the punk feminist movement Riot Grrrl on artists and cultural producers working today. It’s currently on view at Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before traveling nationally to cities including Philadelphia, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. Below are photos of the exhibition and several of the featured works.

The show focuses on seven contemporary artists influenced by Riot Grrrl: Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Tammy Rae Carland, Miranda July, Faythe Levine, Allyson Mitchell, L.J. Roberts and Stephanie Syjuco. Riot Grrrl emerged in the early 1990s and emphasized female and youth empowerment, collaborative organization, creative resistance and DIY ethics. In various ways these artists have incorporated, expanded upon, or reacted to the movement’s ideology, tactics and aesthetics, as seen through several projects from each artist spanning the last 20 years, providing an insight into the development of their creative practices and individual trajectories.

Who was Kathy Keeton? For starters, Keeton was Guccione’s longtime girlfriend and eventual wife. But she ought to be remembered for far more than that.