So the Medill project came to a successful conclusion.

I’m now a Master of Science in Journalism.

I’m still looking for some full time work, but I’ve managed to get a couple of freelance projects that will keep me fed and housed for a couple of months.  I’ll post more about them as they get closer to completion.

So, additional freelance projects seem like a good idea at this point.  It seems wise to split my job-search time between full time positions and additional freelance gigs, at least for the time being.

And it’s almost X-mas.  Hope you’re having a good one!

As many of you are probably aware, I’ve spent the last couple of months working on the Interactive Innovation Project for Fall 2009.  This is the capstone project of my year at Medill.

The project has been about obituaries in print and online, and about how obituaries drive readership to local media outlets.

One of the two major pieces of the project was to produce a report on the state of obituaries in America these days.  I had a pretty large hand in this aspect of the project, as I was one of the primary authors of the report.  I’m happy to say that today, that report has been released.

From the obitresearch.com blog about the project:

“To better understand the nature of our project and the role of Legacy.com in today’s obituary publishing industry, the Fall 2009 Interactive Innovation Project team at the Medill School of Journalism has been diligently researching the history and trends of American obituary writing. We have summarized our findings in a report that we have released this morning. In this report, we examine the nature of the contemporary American obituary, a phenomenon that constitutes an important content category for modern newspapers – and, increasingly, for publishers in other media.”

Read the full post here.

Download the report (PDF).

UPDATE: Oh, hey, look at this — we got a mention on the Washington Post Post Mortem blog!

UPDATE 2: Another mention, from an Editor & Publisher blog!

UPDATE 3: An article about the report appeared in the Vancouver Sun.

UPDATE 4 (12/8/2009): A story about the report appeared on the Northwestern University website.  We also got a link from Romenesko on Poynter.org

UPDATE 5 (12/11/2009): The AP wrote a story about the report, mentioning me by name.  That AP story has gotten republished all over, and even ended up on NPR’s Morning Edition.  Today, Michael S. Malone did an opinion piece for ABC News, which also mentions our report prominently.  Another article on Canada.com.  Oh, hey, look at this!  My buddy Jeff Billman wrote it up for a blog on the Philadelphia City Paper.  Here’s another article on Examiner.com.

The Japanese garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is one example of a complex adaptive system.

So this is an interesting thing.

I had two classes this quarter at Northwestern University, and they both had similar, but seperate objectives.

• First, it was a project to highlight my interactive graphic design skills.
• Secondly, it was a project to highlight my interactive storytelling skills.

Ok, so with the approval of the instructors for both classes, I created this microsite on the subject of complex adaptive systems.

Complex adaptive systems are one way to model lots and lots of different kinds of things that happen in the universe, at a variety of scales.  CAS models are used to understand everything from immune system responses to macroeconomic fluctuations, to sociological phenomena.

So why not take a look at it?  Features include:

• Fully object-oriented complex adaptive system simulator, coded from scratch in Flash CS4 (Actionscript 3).
• Introductory movie with all kinds of appropriated images from the creative commons and Prelinger archives
• Links to lots of complex systems resources, including a full programming framework to create your own multi-agent modeling schemes.

Understanding complex adaptive systems.

Media theorist and author of many influential books on advertising, corporate influence on culture, and too many more to name, weighs in on the future of the publishing business on Publishers’s Weekly.  Conclusion: The publishing business’s woes are short-term; good things are coming:

Behind the bad news, there is much to look forward to. Our industry has for too long favored those skilled at negotiating the corporate ladder and punished those who simply publish great books. Now that publishing has revealed itself to be a bad growth industry, it is free to rebuild itself as the vibrant, scaled and sustainable business the reading public can support.

via Soapbox: Well Be Back – 8/24/2009 – Publishers Weekly.

Web programmer Brett Yates works on his own terms at the COOP coworking space. Photo: Ian Monroe/Medill

Forget the cubicle, get off the couch, and ditch the coffee shop.

Freelance technology workers these days have a new way to get things done –coworking (enthusiasts insist there is no hyphen). A new coworking space, opened in January, aims to provide Chicago’s independent workers with a different kind of occupational environment.

The COOP is a hip office space where technology workers such as graphic designers, programmers, and Internet experts can rent a desk for a day, a week or a month at a time. Instead of punching the clock at a soulless cubicle farm, freelance workers can call their own shots. Instead of writing code on the couch at home, where a variety of diversions threaten to sabotage productivity, independent contractors and telecommuters can get the benefits of having an office without the expensive overhead of leasing their own space.

The COOP space, located on Fulton Market, once housed a chicken processing business. The exposed brick walls laden with art create a comfortable, relaxed workspace. Young entrepreneur Sam Rosen, 23, operates his web design business,One Design Company, in one section of the loft. The other portion is reserved for independent workers and freelancers to use for coworking. The easily reconfigurable loft space can comfortably house perhaps a half dozen such workers at a time.

Coworking enthusiasts say that the spaces aren’t just useful for getting work done, but also can be a resource for generating new business and for fleshing out new ideas. “It’s an incubator model,” said Rosen. “We’re not by any means asking for a stake in anyone’s venture, but the idea is if they come here and they’re starting up something, and it works, they’re going to need help. And we can help, or we know people to help. That’s cool, and that seems a lot more natural and nicer.”

The coworking movement began several years ago in California, but has rapidly become a global phenomenon. “It’s pretty widespread,” said Eric Marden, a freelance web programmer and coworking advocate. “It used to be where there would be one city in every state, and now multiple cities in the state, and sometimes multiple spaces in one city are happening, and that’s become more prominent. There’s a third one about to open in Austin.”

“It’s great,” said Brett Yates, a freelance computer programmer and patron of the COOP space. “I spent probably at least a year working out of my apartment, and doing that just kind of drove me insane. I started to find I was getting a lot less done – I’d go to coffee shops and get more done in two hours than in a full day at home.” That lack of productivity drove Yates to explore coworking. “I got out and kind of checked out a couple different places and this one seemed exactly like I was looking for.”

Chicago hasn’t yet gotten completely on board with the idea of coworking, but it’s catching on. “It was kind of a slow start for us, getting things out there and advertising,” said Linsey Burritt, a designer for One Design Company and a leader of the COOP. “People in Chicago haven’t heard about it as much as other cities.”

Workspaces at the COOP rent for $20 per day, $90 per week, or $300 per month, and include T-1 Internet access.

An informal “coworker visa” program lets members of one coworking space use the facilities of other coworking groups when they travel. Open sharing of ideas and resources is encouraged. “Any time we’ve communicated with anybody, people have come to us, or we’ve gone to them, people are with open arms,” Rosen said. “They’re like, ‘Here’s what I’ve got, let me help you. How can you help me?’ It makes the pie bigger.”

Marden was utilizing the COOP space to work on programming projects while visiting Chicago with his family. He helps run a similar space in Orlando, Fla., and traded ideas with Rosen and Burritt during his stay. “The coworking [in Florida] kind of grew out of our BarCamps [open conferences on technology and culture],” Marden said. “For us, it’s the physical hub now. Sort of the creative club house for all the stuff that was already happening all over the city, but it kind of lets us gel and have an area to work. We still all do our own thing, but we all kind of come together for that sort of stuff.”

Coworking may not yet be mainstream, but Rosen said it has caught the attention of many successful independent professionals. “We’re lucky because we’re busy, but you hear so much about how people are struggling,” Rosen said. “People who come here are not struggling. People who come in here are thriving. The people who are sitting down working, they’re here because they have too much work to do. They need a place to focus. That’s interesting.”

Note: This story was first published on the Medill Reports website on 4/28/2009, as well as on the Windy Citizen on 4/29/2008.  It’s republished here for my own archives.

MIT Professor Angela Belcher and the prototype battery she and her team created using a genetically engineered virus. Photo credit: Donna Coveney, courtesy of MIT

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have successfully demonstrated a technique for fabricating a better battery using a genetically engineered virus.

They announced their technique for the battery earlier this month, maintaining that it allows them to use a much wider variety of materials for potentially higher-capacity, rechargeable batteries.

The interdisciplinary team of MIT scientists combined research in biology, chemistry, engineering and advanced nanotechnology to fabricate the battery.

Dr. Chad Mirkin, professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, said he is glad to see demonstrations of practical applications of nanotechnology. This represents one of the latest applications of the ongoing advances in nanotechnology using genetically modified viruses.

“There are many examples of using genetically engineered viruses to manufacture nanomaterials,” Mirkin said. “It’s a merger of molecular biology and material science.” He said that research in this area has been almost exclusively focused on batteries.

Applications of this type of virus battery may one day include powering personal electronics and even electric vehicles. The manufacturing process requires no organic solvents and can occur at and below room temperature. The process is described as “environmentally benign,” because it requires fewer toxic components, according to MIT.

To manufacture the battery, the researchers used a genetically modified strain of the common M13 bacteriophage, a virus that consumes bacteria but which is harmless to humans. By altering the virus’s DNA, the researchers were able to fabricate a battery cathode.

To do so, they altered the viruses to bond with iron phosphate on one end of their structure, and then to attach themselves to single-walled carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are used by scientists as a kind of super-small scaffolding to build nano-scale structures, and for their electric properties.

A small change in the virus’s DNA produced an affinity for molecules of iron phosphate, and these molecules were built up by the virus into a structure known as nanowires. The researchers then experimented with ways of combining the nanowires with carbon nanotubes, which are excellent conductors of electricity.

They applied the idea of modifying the virus a second time to produce an affinity for bonding with carbon nanotubes. When the researchers incubated the viral iron phosphate nanowires in a suspension of carbon nanotubes, the viruses were drawn to the nanotubes, and they produced a highly conductive network in which electrons “percolate” through the carbon nanotubes on their way to the iron phosphate.

The researchers used this network as the cathode portion of their battery, and packaged the battery in a standard coin shape. The prototype was used in a simple circuit to light a green LED, and was demonstrated last month at a White House press briefing by Susan Hockfield, president of MIT.

The prototype maintained power after being charged and discharged at least 100 times in lab tests. While this falls short of current-generation lithium ion batteries, MIT Professor Angela Belcher stated she expects to improve  performance with further research. Belcher, lead researcher for the battery project, is an expert in the fields of material science, engineering and biological engineering.

“We expect them to be able to go much longer,” said Belcher in a press release.

Note: This article was first published on the Medill Reports site, on 4/9/2009.  Reprinted here for my own archival purposes.

This is the first video that I’ve turned in for Northwestern that hasn’t been completely terrible.  It’s a story about a group in Chicago that provides support services for the unemployed to assist in their job search called the Career Transitions Center.

Here’s the thing — journalism is transactional.  You rely on other people to feed you information that you can use to write your stories.  In exchange, your sources get to draw attention to the things that they think are important.

For instance, if you’re writing an article about a new business, you contact the business owner or spokesperson, and they talk to you, give you an interview, answer your questions, or whatever.  In return, they get to communicate their message to potential customers, they get to get the word out about their business.

Or how about if you’re interviewing a politician?  Well, again, they provide the journalist with information, and in return, they get to have their viewpoints publicized.

Perhaps you’re doing an article about health food, so you contact health experts for opinions.  In exchange for their opinions, they get their names in print, which helps to build their reputations as experts in their field.

But if you are a student, working on, oh, I don’t know, a graduate degree, for instance, and your work is only being distributed internally, or on a private website, then the transaction breaks down.  The source feeds you information, and they get nothing in return, because nobody (or only a small number of people) reads the finished reporting.

So there’s no incentive for anybody to talk to you, unless they are motivated solely by listening to themselves speak.

When I was working for the Orlando Weekly, I could simply disclose my affiliation with the newspaper, and whoever I was talking to would take me seriously enough to answer my questions.  But now that the only place that my writing is showing up is on a private website, nobody can be bothered to return my phone calls or provide me with any kind of useful information at all.  Particularly since my beat is business, where everyone is busy trying to make money, and I have nothing to offer them in the transaction of journalism.

Frankly, it’s pretty much bullshit.  Maybe I should just call myself a freelance journalist.  That would get me more respect.

I guess today it’s going to be back to the Land of Bridgeport. I’ve only got three story ideas so far, and that just ain’t going to fly when I need to be turning in three stories a week. I’m going to go down to to the South Side again today, and see if I can drum up some more interesting business stories.