The solution basically involved me having to go through and strip all the existing HTML code from the article and replace it with stuff that actually made sense. (I think the copy was pasted into the visual editor from a word processor, and was just bizarre and horrible.)

This was an exceptional case, but it made me think about how much code student journalists need to know.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that the main suggestion I was making for how the Lincoln School of Journalism should improve its online teaching — adopting WordPress in all production modules — conflicts with my assertion that students don’t need to know HTML.

On the whole WordPress is very easy to use, but when it comes to actually posting things the visual editor can produce some really horrible code. If things go wrong, or significant formatting changes need to be made, then looking at the HTML is usually the best way of sorting things out.

In a comment, Martin Stabe wrote:

Most – nearly all – journalists will never have to do HTML markup, let alone template design, during their entire working lives.¹

Why is this? I don’t know for certain, but I’d guess that there’s more separation between copy and the resulting code in “professional” CMSes. So, yes, fine, the journalists who get to use those systems will not have to tinker with the code. And if things do go wrong and require some kind of intervention either directly in the code, or with what produces the code, it’ll be handled by people who know what they’re doing.

But what about the people who aren’t part of an organisation that has this setup? An organisation without in-house technical staff? An organisation that consists of just one, or two journalists?

If the “next big thing” for journalism is really the next small thing — hyperlocal, small publishers, and “entrepreneurial journalists” — then the people doing this kind of work are going to need to know some code.

They’ll be running their own sites. Thankfully it can be done fairly easily. As an example, The Linc does pretty much all its technical stuff in-house.² The knowledge and skills needed aren’t particularly advanced, and they’re fairly easy to pick up.

I think what I wrote about teaching students HTML was a reaction to how it is currently taught at Lincoln. Teaching it as the lead-in to using Dreamweaver is wrong. Students, and journalists in general, don’t need that kind of HTML.

What they do need, particularly if we want to equip students to do innovative things on the internet, is a knowledge of how HTML works in the context of a CMS. They don’t need to know how to write a static page in HTML, and nor should they be taught it.

But they should know how the formatting for the post they’re working on in WordPress works, and how to change things, and know how lists work, and links, and pictures.

If you’re a taxi driver you probably don’t need to know how to build a car, or conduct extensive engine repairs. But you should probably know how to change the oil, inflate the tyres, and fill the wiper fluid. You should also know how they affect things when you’re behind the wheel.

I wasn’t taught HTML or CSS in any great detail, but I know the basics of how to edit the template files on this site to get things to work how I want them to work. I had to play around and learn for myself, and I now consider them essential skills for publishing my own website.³

If there’s a good chance self-publishing is going to be significant for the future of journalism, then we should teach the people who are going to do it the skills they need to do it.

The longer, more detailed answer is that it does everything I need it to do.

Static pages are achieved by linking to a post. Ending posts with question marks allows for comments, though admittedly a limited version of them. One big thing was that it allows for submissions without having an account.

To submit a post to LSJ bloggers, all you need is to fill in your name and email address. No sign up. No account creation. That’s it.

And that’s pretty much it for the entire site. It’s all very simple and straightforward because that’s all it needs to be. At its core, LSJ bloggers is a very simple concept: we get together and decide what to discuss, and then we discuss it. The site is just there do host the discussion, and point people at students’ blogs.

It doesn’t need plugins, or social features, or stats, or categories, or Facebook integration, or ads.

It needs text, links, and an easy way to add them.

Tumblr does that, and it does it extremely well. It’s been about 24 hours since I created the blog on Tumblr and everything is set up, and for most of that time I wasn’t even working on it.

Oh, and it’s free. And all I needed to do to get it working with the domain name was change the A records. And, since it’s a hosted service, there was no need to upload and install anything to a server.

For example, when I type “unilin” it automatically expands to “University of Lincoln”. I also have triggers set up for things like my email addresses and my phone number.

The Problem

Unfortunately, with its default settings TextExpander interferes with the clipboard plug-in for Quicksilver, which allows you to record your clipboard history.

It appears that TextExpander uses the clipboard to swap out your abbreviations for the full phrase you want. (However, the phrases it fills in for you thankfully do not appear in the clipboard history.)

As such, it has an option for “restore clipboard”, but when using a multiple clipboard plug-in or application this causes the most recent entry to be duplicated.

This can lead to your clipboard history becoming stuffed with duplicate copies of the same item, which reduces the utility of the clipboard. (For example, instead of having 40 different items, you may have 20 items that appear twice.)

The Solution

Disable “restore clipboard” in TextExpander’s preferences. This will stop items from being duplicated.

Important caveats

In short:

Command-V will paste the TextExpander phrase just expanded. Paste from your clipboard history using Quicksilver. The TextExpander phrase will then be replaced as the Command-V pasted item.

In detail:

By not restoring the clipboard, if you were to use the paste command it will paste in the phrase TextExpander has just filled in. For example, if I type “unilin”, and then paste, it will paste “University of Lincoln” and not the last item I copied to the clipboard.

The solution to this is to invoke the clipboard history and paste via Quicksilver. (i.e., Not through Command-V or a menu.)

In Quicksilver, the clipboard history is shown via object “Clipboard History” and verb “Show Contents”. I suggest you set up a custom trigger for this, if you haven’t already done so. I use Command-Option-L.

From the clipboard history, select what you want to paste, and then choose the verb “Paste”. This will also replace the TextExpander phrase for Command-V and menu pasting. (i.e., If “University of Lincoln” is being pasted through Command-V, and I use Quicksilver to paste a web address, the web address will then replace “University of Lincoln” as what is pasted when I press Command-V, or use the menu.)

The suggestion: get a Tumblr blog.

This idea kind of came out of having this blog, and also having Twitter. There was stuff that was too long or complicated for Twitter, and I didn’t want to put it here because it didn’t ‘fit’.

So I signed up (again) to Tumblr. It’s a mid-way point between Twitter and your real, got-an-about-page-and-tag-cloud-and-everything blog. You may be completely different in this respect, but there’s lots of stuff I want to post, comment on, link to, etc. My Tumblr-powered blog ((I’m using Tumblr as an example because it’s what I’ve been using. There may be other services out there. Whatever. Tumblr works. It’s quick and easy, and most importantly gets you posting.)) is now where I put that stuff.

And now it’s acting like Twitter does — great ideas are bubbling up that are a good fit for a ‘real’ blog.

“This is really cool/interesting/infuriating/bat-shit-fucking-loco, and I’ve got a lot to say about it. Is this really the thing I should be putting on a lightweight service? I think it deserves a proper post.”

Bang, more ideas.

When you get really comfortable with something, you generally want to keep doing it. I recently sent off a bunch of FoI requests, for the first time in months. The next day all I could think about was sending more off, finding out other interesting things, and what that might lead to.

There’s no reason your blog shouldn’t work in the same way.

Unfortunately I can’t really answer the main question, as I’ve never been “in love” with blogging. I certainly never felt the strong pull that some did ((*Cough*Dave*cough*)).

On with the tangent

One thing that looks like it isn’t helping young journalists getting truly interested ((This comes from, you must understand, a terribly researched and utterly non-scientific survey.)) is the inclusion of blogging in journalism school courses. For example take this selection of blogs from University of Lincoln journalism students:

The brown ones are blogs that haven’t been updated in 60 days. For some of the others, they’re only saved because of a recent post after months of neglect.

These are just the ones that I’ve put in my feed reader because I think it’s likely they’ll be updated again. From the original list I had, I’ve excluded ones that hadn’t been updated in 2009. (I’ve also excluded Bradley King‘s regularly updated Hoof It, because I can’t even pretend to be interested in football.)

Roughly half of these blogs are non-updated ‘dinosaurs’. Most of the ones by first-year students also seem to have been created for assessment as part of the journalism course.

On her course blog Samantha Viner writes that:

[T]his is for my assessment, a minimum of 6 entries of at least 150 words each. (Link)

That isn’t blogging as self-motivated publishing. That’s work.

I’m generalising, but the kind of blogs that people want to read and—more importantly—want to write, are the ones that come out of enthusiasm and interest.

Or, to steal a phrase from John Gruber and Merlin Mann, the blogs that are the product of “obsession times voice“.

That’s why I read their sites: because they’re obviously passionate about what they say, and they have a distinctive way of saying it. By requiring 900 words spread over six instalments you suck all the meaning out of it. And all the fun.

I can see why this has happened at Lincoln. It’s sensible to have students that understand blogging, for many reasons—technological literacy, the increasing use of “new” and “social” media ((Threw up a bit in my mouth.)), ways to interact and communicate with others, etc. Feel free to add your own. I can probably even think of how they were made (fully) aware of it and its potential, and the person who convinced them that familiarity with the practice was a good idea. ((Dave, I’m looking at you again. It was that bloody guest lecture last year.))

That person fully embodied “obsession times voice”. He oozed it. It was unsightly at times. (Kidding. Sort of.) That kind of passion would surely have inspired students to have a go themselves, at least a little more than having it imposed from above. ((For the record, the thing that convinced me to blog somewhat regularly was buying a domain. “I’ve bought it, now I better do something with it,” was the logic.))

Hang on a second

I can finally answer the TNTJ question.

I love blogging. I love it because I can write stuff like this, put it online for nothing, and share it with anyone who’s interested. Twitter’s great. But it’s just another outlet for “obsession times voice“, the same as a blog.

On Twitter you get stuff like this, this, this, and this.

On blogs you get stuff like this, this, this, and this.

And I’m sure you can find examples that show why you love, loved, or will love them. They’re just methods of publishing, so publish away.

Original WordPress comments:

Mindy McAdams:

Yes — “It’s sens­ible to have stu­dents that under­stand blogging, for many reasons” — but if they treat it as a class assignment (“a min­imum of 6 entries of at least 150 words each”), they will never understand blogging, will they?

I have taken it for granted that assigning students to create and keep a blog is the best way to get them to under­stand blogging. But maybe there is a better way. Hm. Thinking about that now …

It’s for use when you have to open up an item in the built-in browser. For full-text feeds, I recommend Cameron Hunt’s Bullit.

Instructions for using Readability with NetNewsWire:

1. Go to the Readability website.
2. Choose your settings.
3. Right-click on the ‘Readability’ button. (Picture)
4. Choose “Copy link”.
5. Open TextEdit (or a similar application) and paste the link.
6. Save the file, with the ending .js (Picture)
7. Open NetNewsWire.
8. Open the scripts folder from the scripts menu. (Picture)
9. Copy in the file you just created.

Note: You should make sure JavaScript is enabled in NetNewsWire’s preferences for browsing web pages. Thanks Scott!. (Picture)

Also, when you save the JavaScript, make sure TextEdit is set to plain text mode. Otherwise you won’t be able to save it as a .js file.

That’s it. You can now access the Readability script from the scripts menu, or (as I prefer) give it a keyboard shortcut through the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane.

If you have any questions please leave a comment, but please note I can’t give any support for Readability or NetNewsWire (you should go pester them).

[Update: Thanks go to @briandoll on Twitter, for pointing out a redundant step.]

This originally received a lot of comments, and I won’t reproduce them here (though I’m glad so many people found this useful!).

Update 10.08am, December 27th, 2009

This method should work for JavaScript bookmarklets in general. Chris Pultz has a tutorial on how to use Diigo with NetNewsWire, for example.