October 2006

After two days of coding, testing, and pulling my hair out, I am proud to announce the release of Own the Feed, my newest Wordpress plugin. Have you ever gazed at the Wordpress Dashboard’s default RSS feed and wished you could replace it with something better? Now you can, quickly and easily.

The idea was first presented to me by David of BloggingPro. He had just reviewed my first plugin, The Nine Rules, and mused that it would be awesome if there were a plugin available to bring 9rules member content into the Dashboard. Always eager to meet a challenge, I quickly got to work. Once I had done some research, however, a thought occurred to me. Why limit ourselves to 9rules content? Why not allow the user to define any feed they wish? It is their Dashboard, after all.

Most of my time was spent planning and researching — trying to figure out if the plugin would even be possible. Much of the coding was completed over the course of the day, with the first beta going out to testers sometime around 5:00pm. The final beta version was posted and tested around 2:00am. My eternal thanks and gratitude go out to the regulars in the 9rules IRC channel. Without their help and support in testing Own the Feed, the plugin would have never seen the light of day. Cheers guys. I also need to thank the crew responsible for Dasher for giving me plenty of inspiration and for excellent code to learn from.

Hopefully, this will just be the beginning. I already have ideas for improvements and additional features I’d like to see included in the plugin, including the ability to use multiple feeds, so expect another release sometime in the future. I don’t claim to be very skilled at creating plugins, but I am always willing to learn. If anyone spots something in the code that can be improved upon or changed, feel free to let me know about it.

So, what are you waiting for? Go check the plugin out at the Downloads page! As always, leave any comments, support questions, or critiques as comments on this entry. Alternatively, you can contact me directly through e-mail. And be sure to let me know if you are using the plugin!

Update (5:02am): I’m already fixing bugs! A bug in which the feed would disappear if you visited the “Dashboard” feed sub-menu, but navigated away without entering anything, has been squashed. A new version has been uploaded. If you are one of the few who has downloaded the plugin already, please use the new updated version.

If there is one important lesson I learned in journalism school, it’s to never confuse a writer with a journalist. While a writer may be able to pen page after page of flowing prose, a journalist is a different kettle of fish altogether. At any time, a well-trained journalist can be called to write well on a tight deadline, lay out a page, shoot photographs, or edit the work of others. In short, a journalist must master a much larger skill set than most writers.

While most large papers employ reporters and photographers separately, many smaller publications require a reporter to shoot their own photos while in the field. Many young reporters, inexperienced with photography, find it difficult to balance their reporting style with their newfound photographic duties. The addition of a camera can make the reporter feel intrusive and awkward when dealing with the public and interviewees. However, with time and practice, a reporter can effectively shoot and report simultaneously.

Here are some tips for improving your technique.

• Know your equipment. Before you even walk out the door make sure you know, at minimum, the basic functions of your camera. Read the manual if you have to. You should be able to turn it on and off, shoot photos, and review them without flinching. When a great photo presents itself, the last thing you need is to be fumbling around with an unfamiliar camera.
• Talk through the camera. To put your subject at ease, keep talking to them when the camera is up to your face. By doing so, you minimize the impact of losing eye contact and face-to-face interaction. A calm tone of voice and encouraging words will help your subject relax, and a more relaxed subject almost always results in a better shot.
• Don’t be timid. Being saddled with a camera can make many journalists feel intrusive. Don’t let it. In my experience many people, despite their initial reaction, like having their picture taken, given the right situation. Remember, you have been sent out to do a job, don’t allow your personal anxieties to get in the way of that. If you are friendly, courteous, and aware of your surroundings, most situations will present little difficulty.
• Plan ahead. Think about the event and your story. Who are your main subjects? What shots do you absolutely need to get? What shots would you like to get, but are optional? What will you need to bring with you to accomplish those goals? Answering those questions, if possible, can save you a lot of time and aggravation.
• Be prepared. Keep the camera around your neck and the lens cap off. If you are using an external flash, make sure it’s on and set properly. Keep an extra memory card in your pocket, if you need one. Extra batteries are a good idea too. Think like a Boy Scout and make sure you go into the event ready for anything.

For many young journalists and students, finding a full-time industry job can often prove difficult. By mastering “secondary” skills like photography, a journalist improves their skill-set and makes themselves infinitely more marketable to potential employers. By adopting an attitude of continuous learning, it becomes easy to ensure you are never replaceable.

When it comes to periodicals, a good cover is everything. If a magazine fails to present a unique and visually arresting face to the world, it will simply fade into the background when placed on a shelf with 100 competing publications. Unlike books, the quality of a magazine’s content can usually be gauged by the quality of its cover with a fair amount of accuracy. In my mind, if a publication can’t be bothered to put a half-decent effort into their cover, they probably can’t be bothered to put any sort of effort into their content either.

Why tell you this? Because it so accurately describes why I found the premiere issue of Good magazine so intriguing.

Browsing through the magazine aisle at the local Chapters the other day, Good’s cover caught my eye almost immediately. Visible from well across the room, never before has a magazine cover accomplished so much on so many levels. If you are going to do something, the cover challenges, can you please do it with a little heart and soul? That, right there, nails what Good is all about. Just give a damn.

Ben Goldhirsch, the magazine’s founder, explains further.

“We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let’s call it GOOD. We’re here to push this movement and cover its realization.”

Published bi-monthly and covering things like urban revitalization through vandalism, the battle between migrants and minutemen, American patriotism, and the upcoming midterm elections, Good certainly lives up to its motto. Flipping through the pages, the passion behind this project quickly becomes evident — in everything from the typography and layout to the quality of writing. The Portraits section, a collection of small profiles of various public and private figures, is of particular interest, and something I hope to see expanded in the future.

Topping it all off is the Choose Good campaign. Until mid-2007, 100% of the money paid for a new subscription will be given to one of 10 non-profit organizations, including groups like Creative Commons, UNICEF, and the World Wildlife Fund. Ultimately, they hope to gain 50,000 subscribers and raise $1 million dollars. Unfortunately, subscriptions are only available within the United States at this time. Come on guys, make this easy for me.

In the end Good was, and continues to be, and thoroughly enjoyable read. They’ve managed to pull together a great group of contributors and produce a package which is easy on the eyes, challenging on the brain, and put together for a half-decent purpose. How many publications can honestly make the same claim?

Between tweaking Ekonoline’s recent re-design and trying to keep up with school, things have been fairly busy for me these last couple of days. I have a couple of posts lined up for you guys in the coming days, including a review of a great new magazine launched recently, a how-to on working with cameras while reporting, a story about conflict of interest in reporting, and much more.

In the meantime, however, I would just like to take a moment to thank each and every one of you. Thank you for reading my articles, thank you for commenting on them (I still get excited over each and every single comment I read), thank you for helping me with my adventures in design, and thank you to the 20 or so of you who have seen fit to subscribe to my feed. Thank you to those of you who publish your own writings, because that is truly what the Internet is all about.

I love writing and knowing people are reading what I have to say is a wonderful feeling. This site has grown considerably in the last five months and, despite any setbacks which may come along, I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

Cheers.