When I read Rodney Brooks’ book Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us, I was struck by one insight. He wrote that Japan has an aging population, it will need help from Third-World immigrants. However, it does not want a flood of immigrants. So, Brooks says that they are trying to develop robot like [...]
So I see a car crash. I park the car, get out my camera and start shooting still photos and some video. Soon a Georgia State Police officer starts asking me questions like my name and address. At first I refuse, saying it is a public space. He gets a little more intimidating and maybe [...]
Michael Maier, founder and CEO of Blogform Publishing, provides insight into the possiblities of citizen journalism’s future in a discussion paper entitled Journalism without Journalists: Vision or Caricature? He wrote it for the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.
Here are highligths, starting with Maier writing about one of his own [...]
When I talk to my students about the truth and journalism, I always ask them about whose truth. I use embedded journalism in war zones as an example of journalism skewed by the journalists’ limited point of view. It is one thing to be inside a tank and writing about the war and another to be on the receiving end of the [...]
Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing, who recently closed down his own start-up the Enthusiast Group, explains what went wrong and why. He writes in part:
I feel like I have learned — the hard way — some truths about grassroots content and online community.
One lesson:
building a business on a core of user-submitted content is tough….In [...]
As you might know, the Harnisch Foundation under the direction of Ruth Ann Harnisch gave us a substantial gift to start the Center for for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University. We are up and running. Keep abreast of what is happening at SustainableJournalism.org 
Leonard Witt is the Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University and the chief blogger of PJNet. His academic interests include public and citizen journalism and how to get citizens' voices heard. He has spent most of his professional career as an award-winning journalist.