Raining on our parade

Today's Memorial Day Procession in Oshkosh will be long remembered for the extremely bad weather: pouring rain as well as some thunder and lightning. No doubt there will be some questions about why the event was not called off once the lightning came.

Another good reason to join Oshblog

Where are book agents looking for new talent?

In the blogosphere.

That's according to The New Yorker's current issue. The Talk of the Town column includes this passage about book agent Kate Lee:

"Lee spends the majority of her workday in the manner of any agent-to-be: reading manuscripts from the slush pile, vetting contracts, negotiating rights, checking her boss’s voice mail. But she spends approximately an hour each day reading blogs. She scans a dozen first thing in the morning and keeps tabs on another twenty-seven throughout the day, though any of these may lead her to countless others. Reading blogs on company time is hardly unheard of, but Lee does not so much read as prospect, sifting through sloppy thinking, bad grammar, and blind self-indulgence for moments of actual good writing. It’s too soon to say how this will pay off, but she represents writers from the first six blogs listed above and is in talks with writers from the rest."

Getting some ink, digital and otherwise

OCNN and Oshkosh News are featured in the latest issue of The Oshkosh West Index.

In the article Mandi Hirte does a very nice job of explaining the mission and goals of OCNN.

Thanks to Mandi and the other Index staffers who worked on this article!

Hope to see you all on the 15th!

Covering uncovered news

A couple of big stories went uncovered in our local paper today.

One was the release of testing results for public school students. Among other news outlets, Fox 11 seems to have the most complete coverage, although it wasn't very local. It does, however, include a link that allows access to a searchable database of school-specific results.

The other missing story would have been a simple follow-up to an article that appeared in Tuesday's paper about a proposal for a new club in an old movie theater on Main Street.

The proposal, by a group called Fever Pitch, was approved by the City Council.

Great minds...

Participatory journalism has come to Skokie, Ill., thanks to some students at Northwestern and the folks who publish The New Yorker (and lots of other things).

Obviously, this is a great idea, but what do you think of the execution?

Would this work in Oshkosh?

Is this where we want to end up?

Bill Gates comes aboard

The Microsoft chairman set off shock waves in the blogosphere Wednesday with comments about his expectations for the growing role of blogs.

Prototypes for participatory journalism

So what would participatory journalism look like in Oshkosh?

Well, here are some answers:










These are digital photos taken during this semester's Online Journalism class at UW Oshkosh. Students in the class are developing prototypes for sites that could in one form or another be sponsored by OCNN.