With the Internet democratizing media in many ways, YouTube said in a blog posting yesterday that it has launched a web site aimed at educating so-called citizen reporters on how to report news.

Called the YouTube Reporters’ Center, it features tips from noted journalists like Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times on covering a global crisis without getting shot, Katie Couric of CBS News on conducting good interviews and the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward on investigative reporting.

Blogging queen Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post primarily features unpaid bloggers and links to content produced by professional newsgathering organizations, also discusses why she believes it’s important for citizens to participate in the news-gathering process from.

The videos include practical and ethical pointers, like how to fact check, avoid breaking the law while reporting and adhere to journalistic principles.

YouTube is also inviting people and organizations to submit their own videos about reporting for inclusion on the site.

June 15, 2009, 4:55 pm

Celebrity, Product and Joke Names Grabbed as Facebook Vanity URLs

Turns out I wasn’t the only nerd hunched over a laptop this weekend trying to secure a personalized Web address for my Facebook profile.

Nearly six million members of the popular social networking Web site have registered a custom name since the feature became available late Friday night. Currently, there are around 200 million members on Facebook, so less than 5 percent of the total Facebook population has signed up so far.

The next step involves people hoping to profit with the names. For example, on Assetize, a marketplace for Web domains, Twitter and Web accounts, multiple Facebook vanity URLs have gone up on the auction block, including Facebook.com/Nasa, Facebook.com/iPhones and Facebook.com/HPComputers.

But it’s not actually clear yet whether these names are worth anything.

A Facebook spokesman, Larry Yu, said the company was looking at the emerging commerce in vanity URLs. “We are working through how we are going to address that. Generally speaking our policy is a strict no-transferability clause,” he said.

Many Facebook users found their actual names were unavailable by the time they went to register them. Facebook gave first crack to its own employees and partners. It also offered the privilege to some journalists. (Times reporters did not get early access). Although the company said it was taking steps to prevent the cybersquatting of popular names and companies, some celebrities like Snoop Dogg, George Bush, Kanye West, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sergey Brin still found themselves with Facebook doppelgängers.

In addition, many Facebookers took a lighter approach to the process and elected to register comical names, such as Facebook.com/Twitterisbetter, Facebook.com/LizLemon and Facebook.com/pagenotfound.

Though Mr. Yu said the formation of Facebook’s dispute resolution process was a work in progress, he said that the company would look at rescinding a vanity Web address when the registering party does not have legal right to it.

“If it’s a dispute between two users, then it’s first come first serve. But if the user’s name isn’t actually the vanity URL he registered, the user shouldn’t have a right to grab that,” Mr. Yu said. “We want it to be associated with user identity. I don’t want to be completely definitive but that is the one thing we want to actively encourage.”

Why 2009 College Graduates Will Win Big

On campuses all across America you can practically feel the fear. But despite schools closing with sick students, kids and parents aren’t afraid of the swine flu. In the wake of the economic crash, they’re afraid that the jobs flew.

If you scratch below the surface of this recession-triggered fear, you quickly discover two key realities. First, what really has graduates most disturbed is not the scarcity of jobs — it’s the disappearance of business-as-usual jobs. Gone are the big-ticket positions on Wall Street; the blue-chip jobs at management consulting firms have dried up; the high-end jobs at old and storied companies and sexy technology start-ups aren’t there for the picking. In other words, the cool jobs that top students effortlessly slid into in the past, complete with signing bonuses and ego strokes, aren’t in the cards for the Great Class of 2009.

(more…)

This blogpost by Brian Lynch has been linked by Jezebel and New York Magazine, automatically meaning it’s totally awesome. Check it out here:

Columbia girl #1: I love spring weather. All the people are so happy…
Columbia girl #2: And all the hot guys come out of hiding.

–Columbia University