Lesson Learned!

A #TeachersDay thank you from News-O-Matic staff Liz Lane. #ThankATeacher @Sheriven @AnneArundelCC pic.twitter.com/UKI2GjuvZj

— News-O-Matic (@News_O_Matic) May 5, 2015

Here's my new storify

Using Storify

Here's a nifty tool to help you add social media and lots of other elements to your stories. We've been adding Tweets to blog posts, but a program called "Storify" lets you add not only Tweets but a LOT more.

Plus, it's fun and easy to use. Today in class, we'll learn how to do it.

Here's a Storify story I did in 2013 about Pope Francis.

Add social media to your blog!

Think about digging around in Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media to add some zip to your blogs.

For example, if you're writing about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, you can show your readers the flavor of the national discussion by adding some tweets, like this one:

Indiana family says their pizzeria won’t cater gay weddings #ReligiousFreedomRestorationAct http://t.co/BLYXmWBfz5 pic.twitter.com/XiL0xQJwYW
— WGN TV News (@WGNNews) April 2, 2015

Or, you could add an opinion like this one:

The #ReligiousFreedomRestorationAct denies my rights, our rights, human rights, and I CANNOT and WILL NOT stand by it #BoycottIndiana (2/2)
— Bernie Matthew (@berniematthew) March 29, 2015

You can also cut and paste a Facebook post that has some news about your topic. Don't rely on these embedded posts or Tweets to tell the whole story, though. You've still got to write a blog post that has some meat to it. (Not like this one!)

The New York Times

1 hr · 

Indiana’s top Republican lawmakers have plans to change a divisive measure billed as a religious freedom law, to make clear that it does not permit discrimination against gays and lesbians. The move comes a day after Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said he would not sign a similar bill.

Indiana Republicans to Revise Rights Bill to Prohibit Discrimination

Lawmakers on Thursday announced plans to revise the measure, making it clear that it does not permit discrimination against gay people.

NYTIMES.COM|BY MONICA DAVEY

Like · Comment · Share · 59313079

The Power of Social Media (and how to move photos around)

This is an example of how the words wrap around a photo when you 
move it to the left. This photo is sized "medium." This photo is from

an article in Wired magazine.

Yikes! Social media went crazy yesterday trying to decide whether a certain ugly dress was white/gold or black/blue.

CNBC called it "The Dress that Broke the Internet".

Politicians and celebrities had opinions. Kim Kardashian weighed in. So did Taylor Swift.

Buzzfeed reported that it broke its own record for Internet traffic, with 16 million hits in six hours.

From a Buzzfeed post about what it was like to work there while the site was taking on heavy traffic:

All eight dress posts have a combined 41 million views. The original had 28 million views (22 million on mobile) and logged 2.7 million votes. It has been read from every country in the world in five languages. It shaped conversations at dinner, in bars, on couches, over text, all driven by mobile and the ability to show your phone to your friend. Same picture, same device, but different colors! In less than 24 hours, people from every corner of the world were looking at each other’s phones at a post, on a site, run by a company totally optimized for social and mobile.

Here's a photo from Twitter that I sized
 small and moved to the right. I also
 made it link to the #thedress hashtag.

On Twitter, #thedress was a trending topic, and someone posted a photo of what appeared to be a tattoo of the dress on a hairy leg. Just in the time I've been writing this, there have been more than 600 new Tweets about #thedress.

Even the New York Times published an article on the dress, which explained why some people see colors differently than others.

Some people got really angry at other people about what color the dress is, as you can see from this photo from BuzzFeed's article about how some relationships were destroyed by the dress controversy.

So, what color is the dress? White and gold, of course!

Should we publish Charlie Hebdo cartoons?

On Jan. 7, gunmen in Paris killed 12 people in the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French magazine that had published provocative cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the chief prophet and central figure of the Islamic religion.

In the aftermath of the killings, many news organizations struggled with the decision of whether to republish the cartoons. On the one hand, they argued that freedom of speech and of the press should not be suppressed by religious extremists. On the other hand, the cartoons intentionally push the limits and are offensive to all Muslims.

What do YOU think? Read this Washington Post story, and then write a comment here saying what decision you might make.

Twitter How-To

Confused by Twitter? Here's a good tutorial on how to get started on Twitter.