Author: Joe Wilcox

Events by Joe Wilcox
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There’s Nothing Sweet About CES

It’s Zero Day in the desert, when technology vendors stampede the gambling mecca’s convention center groveling for attention. A narcissist gangbang couldn’t be more self-absorbed or self-seeking attention than this lot. Their annual pilgrimage to the Consumer Electronics Show is an abomination of noise, and it is a metaphor for the fall of 21st Century civilization.

Forget climate change. CES will kill us all first—if not this one than look to 2050. Climate change scientists warn of rising sea levels causing global disaster by that year. The hot air coming out of each CES will doom the planet sooner. You want to stop carbon emissions? Disband the Consumer Electronics Show. 

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Critters by Joe Wilcox
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Remembering Bubba

When I started Flickr a Day one year ago, I envisioned a photographic storytelling project, That was 2015. For 2016, I shift storytelling to broader venues but can’t promise daily delivery. Our first installment time travels 10 years to June 2006, when our family inherited lost baby bunny Bubba.

While walking our Kensington, Md. neighborhood on the evening of the third, we came across a couple clasping a tiny rabbit; their cat caught the bunny a day earlier. They desperately sought someone to care for the animal. As house-rabbit owners, we obliged, with the intention of taking Bubba to a wildlife rescue center the next day. He didn’t live long enough to be rescued, 

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News Media by Joe Wilcox
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Frak That!

The major reason I won’t continue Flickr a Day for a second year is my new project, which rapidly is evolving; your input could help shape its development—and would be hugely appreciated. I’ll start with some background.

Seven months ago, fellow journalist Randall Kennedy unexpectedly emailed asking if I had any start-up ideas. He lived with his family on an island paradise off the East Coast of Africa, running a school, which had closed. He wondered about returning to journalism, or being a trade analyst—like me, both roles he had filled in the past. What he really wanted to know: Is writing a viable profession in what I call the Google free economy? 

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Apple by Joe Wilcox
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Apple Lost My Heart to Google in 2015

Whoa, the difference a year makes: On Jan. 1, 2015, my main computing devices were 13.3-inch MacBook Pro Retina Display, iPad Air, and iPhone 6—oh yeah, Apple Watch, joined them six months later. My mainstays at the start of 2016: Chromebook Pixel LS, Pixel C, Nexus 6P, and Huawei Watch. I abandoned Apple and there are no plans to return. I choose the Google lifestyle instead.

I have changed computing platforms too often during the past two decades. From the December day in 1998 when carting iMac out of CompUSA, no matter what the switch, I always returned to Apple products, even after boycotting the company during second half 2012. My last rally was months ago, before giving up Apple Watch, iPad Air 2, iPhone 6 Plus, the 6s Plus (for a single day), and MBP. I don’t expect to ever go back. The allure is gone. 

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Photo by Joe Wilcox
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Flickr a Day 365: ‘Cat Scratch Fever’

My favorite photo of the 365 is Day 38 “Master of Venice” by Alexis Bross. Cats are such an Internet stereotype how could I not conclude the series with another—conceding that Flickr a Day has too many. Additional Days: 51, 143, 201, 220, and 302.

In choosing the feline that would end the series, I favored habitat shots and ignored facial closeups or handsome subjects. None of the finalists is ugly, per se, but only the last two do I find to be attractive. I never imagined seeing more cat photos than I could possible tolerate, until selecting our winner.

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News Media by Joe Wilcox
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Journalism Matters

Over on Google+ today, Alex Hernandez reminisces on 2015’s closing by looking at content from years past. Among them: Dan Lyon’s February 2012 missive “Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool“. Hey, I vaguely remember that indictment of Silicon Valley journalism. Alex, who runs tech-news site Techaeris writes in response to the nearly four-year old story:  “I’m working really hard to not be a ‘Valley Press’ site—as Scott Wilson rants about often—and after reading this and a few other articles today, I may be reforming the way we approach things.

Jack Weisz mentions me in a comment, to which I responded and to another from Alex. While both responses reiterate principles posted to this site many times before, end-of-year reflection is good time to present them again. 

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News Media by Joe Wilcox
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Flack Attack

Yesterday, while catching up on days of RSS-feed news, I stopped grazing and actually read TechCrunch Christmas Eve post “#MisguidedPR: The Industry’s Internal Crisis” by Colin Jordan, who is—what many of my peers would call—a flack. I rarely use the descriptor, deeming it as condescending. But for this post, the term fits.

The commentary’s objective is clear: To encourage his colleagues to abandon past public relations strategies that are obsolete today. Part of the problem he identifies is imbalance: There are way many more flacks than there are journalists (but perhaps not bloggers, I must add). Using U.S. Department of Labor statistics, he finds “5.7 PR professionals for every one journalist”. Because I do my own reporting rather than source someone else, whenever possible (most often), I checked the data. 

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Web by Joe Wilcox
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Tweet This and That!

My ninth Twitter anniversary is come and passed without my noticing. Looking at the archive the service graciously provides, first tweet was on Dec. 26, 2006 about, of all things, Microsoft Zune. Now there’s a device for the archaeological tech trash heap, eh? The tweet topic must have been traumatic, because the next isn’t until Jan. 2, 2007. 🙂

The same month I signed up for Twitter, Ziff Davis hired me to run the Microsoft Watch blog created by the esteemed Mary Jo Foley. Editors planned to build brand around a core of so-called star bloggers, putting personalities before content. But six months later, Ziff sold off the enterprise group, of which MW was part, to an investment group that had other ideas. My tenure ended on April 30, 2009, after bankers took more control over Ziff Davis Enterprise during to Econolypse. I was overpaid, they said. 

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Journalism by Joe Wilcox
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Responsible Reporting Section 3 ‘What You Must Do’: Chapter IX

I owe you an apology. Months ago I promised to finish serializing my ebook Responsible Reporting: Field Guide for Bloggers, Journalists, and Other Online News Gatherers, before releasing it into the public domain. The last installment was in mid-October, with one chapter and the Afterword remaining. As I prepare for the New Year, not leaving loose ends is top of mind. Thus, with a huge sorry, this evening I present the closing chapter (but exclude the outdated March 2014 Afterward), The book will release into the public domain to start 2016.

I have posted from Chapter IX before, on Dec. 30, 2014: “You Could Study Journalism, or Learn as Much Watching These Five Films“. Each movie teaches lessons about responsible reporting—some by illuminating irresponsible and/or unethical behavior. The last in the list expresses in an exchange between characters something that should be embedded into the synapses of every 21st Century news gatherer: 

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