There was no shortage of September 11 coverage in the news yesterday since we just embarked on the tenth anniversary of one of the worst national tragedies in U.S. history. Every traditional news outlet you can think of ran something yesterday that was hyper-patriotic and 9/11 related to varying degrees of success. Frankly, a lot of it was forced and underwhelming.

Because it was a Sunday, there was a lot of pressure on editors and art directors to come up with something bold, creative, tasteful, and eye-catching. Not exactly a small task.

This morning, the folks at the Poynter Institute came up with their list of the 25 most moving 9/11 front pages nationwide. There are some great photos, illustrations, fonts, etc., used by publications that are on this short list, and the folks at the Seattle Times should be glad to know they made the cut.

The golden reflection beaming off of the twin towers may not win the art production staff at the Times any official awards but they did a good job and it’s great to see the people at Poynter give them a nod.

Head over to Poynter’s site to view the other 24 front pages from yesterday that stood out from every other publication nationwide.

Microsoft recently announced that the consumer version of Office 2010  will soon be available for free: Office Web Apps. This might just make Google start sweating. If not, it should.

Let’s face it: given the choice between Google Docs and the polished, well-tested and universally approved Microsoft Office, which would you choose? Yep, Office. After all, then you know your recipient will be able to open, read and edit the document, know how it works and not have to sign up for any new account. Office is the industry standard. Now you can access the docs everywhere, without e-mailing them, carrying them on a flash drive or bringing your laptop to the site where you need your docs. You can log into any PC and get your stuff. You can get the docs on your mobile phone. It’s where you are when you need it. Read more…

Journalism faces an unprecedented existentialist crisis, due to the economy, new digital platforms, and dwindling advertising revenues.  In collaboration with the Online News Association and the UW Journalism program, we hosted this forward-looking forum on potential future models of news.

Read more…

The Multimedia Storytelling class Part II will be working more on how to compile these videos together, but for now, I thought you might like to see the order they were meant to be in. We envisioned a series of stories that would explore the changing media landscape, beginning with traditional media, transitioning to citizen journalism and even experimenting with our own user-generated content. The videos were all filmed using inexpensive Flip cameras.

Read more…