Say, Can You Make Phone Calls on That Camera?

By NICK BILTON
Companies are producing dozens of inexpensive smartphone attachments that can easily convert a mobile phone into a mini-professional camera. These products include zoom, fisheye and ultra-up-close macro lenses — all designed to snap onto a smartphone and make photos look as if they were shot with an expensive single-lens reflex camera. And for the most part, they are easy to use.

Read more at The New York Times.

Annie Leibovitz Endorses the iPhone

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45314750#45314750

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CBS RADIO TO BRING ALL-NEWS STATION TO 99.1 FM IN WASHINGTON , D.C.

CBS RADIO TO BRING ALL-NEWS STATION TO 99.1 FM IN WASHINGTON , D.C.

Premier Local Radio Broadcaster Presents Live News Programming
24-Hours A Day, Seven Days A Week

“El Zol” To Move To 107.9 FM Following Acquisition From Family Stations, Inc.

CBS RADIO today announced it will be launching an all-news format in January 2012 on 99.1 FM in Washington , D.C. serving residents of the metropolitan area, including Virginia and Maryland suburbs, with more local programming and information specific to its audience.  The move comes as a result of an agreement to acquire 107.9 FM from Family Stations, Inc. which will serve as the home for “El Zol,” CBS RADIO’s thriving Spanish-language station.  Terms of the transaction, subject to customary conditions, including regulatory and other approvals, are not being disclosed.

With more major market news stations than any other broadcaster, CBS RADIO is regarded as the foremost programmer of the locally-based format.  Stations in New York , Los Angeles , Chicago , San Francisco , Philadelphia , Boston and Detroit are among the most popular in their respective markets with a total of more than 12 million listeners on a weekly basis.

“CBS RADIO’s history in all-news is rich in tradition and recognized nationwide for its excellence,” said Dan Mason, President and CEO, CBS RADIO.  “There is no one more regarded in this field, nor anyone with the journalistic expertise and capability to put forth a product with such instant credibility.  We have perfected this format over many decades and we’re thrilled to expand the options for the D.C. community who have a distinct passion for news.”

Added Steve Swenson, Senior Vice President and Market Manager, CBS RADIO, Washington , D.C. , “Time is precious and we know listeners want information that is important to them delivered immediately and in a succinct manner.  Operating under the ‘All-News All the Time’ philosophy CBS RADIO originated, listeners can count on the station to provide clarity on what’s happening in their own backyard, as well as the impact world events will have on their everyday lives.”

▪ Robert Sanchez has been named as Program Director of the station.  He is currently serving as Assistant Director of News and Programming for WCBS Newsradio 880 in New York, and also has worked at CBS RADIO’s other legendary all-news station, 1010 WINS;

▪ Michelle Komes-Dolge will also join the station as News Director.  Her decades of local news experience in the Washington , D.C. area include significant time at WTOP-FM as news director, managing editor and producer;

▪ The station’s roster of local anchors and reporters will be focused exclusively on breaking news, traffic, weather, and the latest financial, lifestyle, entertainment and sports headlines conveyed as it happens with live coverage broadcast every hour of every day.

“El Zol” will debut on 107.9FM on Thursday, December 1 through a Local Marketing Agreement with Family Stations, Inc.

Media Venture Partners, LLC represented Family Stations, Inc. in this transaction.

About CBS RADIO
CBS RADIO, a division of CBS Corporation, is one of the largest major-market radio operators in the United States , with stations covering news, sports, talk, rock, country, Top 40, classic hits, and urban formats, among others. Reaching more than 70 million unique over-the-air listeners on a weekly basis, the division operates 129 radio stations across 28 markets, including all of the Top 10.  Award-winning local personalities are instrumental to the division’s success, presenting programming that is entertaining, informative and relevant to the audience.  Nick Cannon, Carson Daly, Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton, Mike Francesa, Kevin and Bean, Danny Bonaduce and Ryan Cameron are among the most popular talent on CBS RADIO stations across the country.  For more information please visit http://www.cbsradio.com <http://www.cbsradio.com/> .

About Family Stations, Inc.
Family Stations, Inc. operating as Family Radio, is a nondenominational, noncommercial, nonprofit, listener-supported 24-hour Christian ministry which has agreed to sell the 107.9 FM frequency to CBS RADIO.  Family’s listeners can enjoy Family’s programming on WBMD 750 kHz (AM) and WBGR kHz (AM), or at http://www.familyradio.com <http://www.familyradio.com/> .

*     *     *

Press Contact:
Karen L. Mateo
212/649-9639
karen.mateo@cbsradio.com

Recipient of lewd tweet criticizes New York Post story via Twitter

By Paul Farhi,
Washington Post, June 5, 2011

Gennette Cordova tried, really tried, to hold her tongue when the news media began stampeding her way last week. After word broke that she was the recipient of a now-infamous photo from Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account, Cordova was suddenly in demand.

No interviews, said the 21-year-old college student. No comments about congressmen’s crotches, either. Stop asking and go away, she said.

Only the media wouldn’t. The New York Post apparently found a way around Cordova’s defenses: One of its reporters, Reuven Fenton, apparently tagged along on what Cordova thought was a student photo shoot and casually chatted her up while a photographer snapped away.

READ MORE: at washingtonpost.com

Wall Street Journal launches WikiLeaks Imitator!

Imintation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I’m surprised it took so long for someone to do this.  I predict all “legitimate” news sites will soon have something like it.

The WSJ’s Safehouse is a secure site for leakers who want to leak to responsible journalists with traditional values of accuracy and fairness.   Seems like an idea whose time came a while ago, but people were slow to catch on.

READ MORE:

Wall Street Journal Launches “SafeHouse” Site for Secure Submission of Tips, Information

NEW YORK, May 5, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Wall Street Journal today launched SafeHouse, a service that allows users to upload and submit tips, information, documents or files directly to the Journal. SafeHouse is a stand-alone site – https://www.wsjsafehouse.com – located on secure servers and managed directly by Journal editors. Users can submit materials along with their contact information or remain anonymous.

“The Wall Street Journal is the world’s most trusted source of news, and SafeHouse will enable the collection of information and documents that could be used in the generation of trustworthy news stories,” said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Company and managing editor of the Journal.

SafeHouse provides a single location for readers to submit information to the Journal on any topic via multiple available formats, including text files, audio recordings, photos and more. Information provided to SafeHouse will be reviewed and vetted by a senior Wall Street Journal editor assigned to manage the service.

If a user prefers to be considered a confidential source before agreeing to provide materials to the Journal, the user can fill out a secure online form, and a Journal editor will follow up directly.

SafeHouse is accessible via: https://www.wsjsafehouse.com.

First a buyout; now owner of a blistering photography business

By Steven I. Weiss
Washington Post, Tuesday, April 19, 1:29 PM

At first glance, David Hobby looks like just another casualty of the decline of print media: A longtime staff photographer for the Baltimore Sun, he was one of many employees who accepted a buyout in 2008 as part of broad staff reductions at the newspaper.

How Hobby went from being a workaday newspaper photographer to an internationally recognized guru is a story tied up with seismic changes in the photography profession.

Read more at washingtonpost.com

iPad2 v Video Camera

Mobile-Pensacola, Photojournalism
WKRG Tests iPad 2 Against Traditional News Camera
By Andrew Gauthier on March 22, 2011 11:59 AM

Interested to see how the new iPad 2 stacked up against the station’s traditional news cameras, Mobile’s WKRG sent web reporter Lauren Styler out to shoot a news package with the popular tablet. Styler was joined by photographer Gary Arnold, who simultaneously shot the package using one of the station’s Panasonic P2 cameras.

The P2 video is above; iPad 2 video is below:

“The P-2 won hands down in quality of course,” Mike Rausch, WKRG’s director of digital journalism, told TVSpy via email. “But, I believe the iPad 2 has great potential, once it can be tethered to the emerging 4G networks and then has the potential to be used for live breaking news. iPhone 4′s served us well recently when a few tornadoes hit the Mobile area. We used those to send video back when our live trucks couldn’t be used because of lightning in the area.”

“Like most Apple products, the iPad 2 is fast, sleek, and easy to use,” Styler noted following the experiment, “but may not be ready for the big screen just yet.”

Making Video From the White House

From nytimes.com

White House photographers joke that you can’t take a good picture of President Obama without Arun Chaudhary, the first official white house videographer, being somewhere in the frame.
Produced by Ben Werschku

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/bcvideo/1.0/iframe/embed.html?videoId=1248069317695&playerType=embed

NPR’s Andy Carvin, tweeting the Middle East

By Paul Farhi, Tuesday, April 12, 7:24 PM

Hold on a second, says Andy Carvin mid-conversation, swiveling to his laptop. He taps away for a few seconds, as quiet as a squirrel. And then he’s back.

Carvin does this 20, 25, 30 times — it’s easy to lose count — an hour. It’s practically second nature now. Often, he doesn’t even interrupt what he’s saying; the typing and the talking happen simultaneously.

Carvin is tweeting, relentlessly. Seven days a week, often up to 16 hours a day. He once went 20 hours straight, pumping out more than 1,400 brief messages on his Twitter account, @acarvin. That’s his guess, at least. It’s easy to lose count.

Since December, Carvin, a social-media strategist at NPR in Washington, has become a one-man Twitter news bureau, chronicling fast-moving developments throughout the Middle East. By grabbing bits and pieces from Facebook, YouTube and the wider Internet and mixing them with a stunning array of eyewitness sources, Carvin has constructed a vivid and constantly evolving mosaic of the region’s convulsions.

At a given moment, Carvin may be tweeting links to fresh video from Libyan rebels, photos of street protests in Bahrain or the highlights of a NATO news conference. His followers, in turn, point him to more material — on-the-ground accounts of the government crackdown in Yemen, breaking reports from Tahrir Square, the latest from Jordan or Syria.

The result is a dizzying, nonstop ride across the geopolitical landscape, 140 characters at a time: Read more at washingtonpost.com

 

Huffington Post blogger sues AOL for $105 million

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — A longtime Huffington Post blogger has filed a lawsuit against the site, its two co-founders and new owner AOL, seeking $105 million on behalf of himself and 9,000 other unpaid bloggers.

The suit is being led by Jonathan Tasini, a journalist and union organizer, who filed the complaint Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Tasini is seeking class-action status for the case.

Tasini says Arianna Huffington personally invited him to blog for the Huffington Post in 2005, shortly after the site launched. He subsequently wrote 216 unpaid posts for the site, though he stopped blogging after AOL (AOL) agreed to buy it on February 7.

AOL’s $315 million Huffington Post purchase served as the catalyst for the lawsuit. Tasini says HuffPo’s 9,000 unpaid bloggers deserve a large cut of the windfall.

“The value added by the content provided by [the unpaid bloggers] to TheHuffingtonPost.com’s price was at least $105 million, none of which was shared,” the legal complaint says. READ MORE at money.cnn.com