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blogs: aejmc news , other journalism & boblog

About this site...

For most visitors, this home page is here to anchor the links in the top right corner: My Radford page is for Radford University students looking for information about my courses or the blog items and bookmarks that are sometimes related to what we do in class.

Boblog is my "for fun" blog and echoes a few of my bookmarks and Twitter (@bobstep) posts. I've moved my more professorial Other Journalism blog to Wordpress because the original host for that site is going out of business (see OJ blog archive). After years of manually updating a home page for the AEJMC Newspaper Division, I've addded a co-editor and an easier-to use blog-style AEJMC News version, whose RSS feed should appear in the right column of this page after the "Other Journalism" headlines. (This page has a bunch of embedded widgets that I'm demonstrating for students in my intro Web Production class. A redesign of this text-dense old page may be my own class project... of something I'll continut to put off until some summer evening.)

At Radford, I'm an assistant professor in a new RU School of Communication

I'm a fan of the One Laptop Per Child project, where I volunteered some wiki contributions last year.

The right column of this page is full of links to Web sites I use and recommend, including one that allows you to play my favorite old newspaper movie. Click the picture to use a new window, or see the player at the bottom of the page.

The rest of this left column has some personal chronology and links to things I've written on the Web or on paper.

In August 2007 I added the Scottish tartan background to celebrate moving to the "home of the Highlanders" -- Radford University in Radford, Va. I joined the Media Studies Department, which merged into our new School of Communication a year later.

"Bob" (or "Robby") is short for Robert Bruce, and my becoming a "Highlander" might have some Glasgow ancestors smiling. Some even had the same name as a county next to Radford, my inspiration for using using one of the "Montgomery" clan tartans.

My mother's ancestors were Irish and would at least approve of the color. And my Polish relatives may be amused that the county across the river is named Pulaski. What's that song about "coming home to a place he'd never been before"? (Wrong song and mountains, but I'm getting the same feeling.)

Tools: This page is made with very old fashioned HTML, but I'll redesign it someday. I've also tried most of the blogging software platforms and keep demos around, as mentioned above. I used Radio Userland for seven years, but have returned to Blogger. I've also learned a lot about Drupal here and at UT Knoxville, as well as the community site KnoxViews. Along with teaching news writing and online journalism for three years at UT, my best contribution was as a catalyst, convincing a terrific programmer to master the Django toolkit to create TNJN.com.

Before UT, I taught at Emerson College in Boston, where I started blogging. While belatedly finishing my dissertation, I joined the blogging group at Harvard's Berkman Center. Its blog server started out on Userland's Manila content-manager software before migrating to WordPress.

I've also used free WordPress servers at Blogsome.com and WordPress.com, which I recommend to students these days as a great starting place, along with Blogger.com.

Lots of links: My blogs and the right column of this page have long been ways to share links to interesting sites. My del.icio.us bookmarks do that in an even bigger way, with more than 1,000 links tagged with dozens of keywords for information categories you can combine.  For instance, use http://del.icio.us/bstepno/django to see my links related to the site-construction framework by that name, or make that django+Holovaty for links related to a particular Django co-author. 

About me and this home page...

I started writing with and about computers when The Hartford Courant put one of its first Atex editing terminals on my desk some 25 years ago. (Out of nostalgia, I grabbed the Web address couranteer.com, although I've never exactly decided what to do with it, so it just jumps to the old blog.) A few years of writing for a software company inspired me to write a 1988 master's thesis about hypertext, well before the Web spread that word around the world. I have been publishing on the Web since 1994 in one form or another, at least trying to keep track of useful resources.

My beat had been "higher education" for most of my newspaper career, and I have been in and out of my own higher education ever since: Three times as a grad student (of culture + computers + communication) and then as a teacher, starting with summer school at UNC Chapel Hill in 1998.

This "stepno.com" domain and home page aren't just an ego trip. During the school year, the link on top takes students to course material at Radford. (My previous academic creations are archived at stepno.com/unc, stepno.com/ec.) The rest of this page makes a handy parking space for past, present and future projects, personal news, and a right column full of links I use myself and recommend to others, as well as a few mild-mannered amusements. As the banner suggests, you can reach me by e-mail as

If you're another Stepno, or looking for one, (If you thought the "stepno" address was short for "step number," in either a computer-coding or 12-step sense, you're in the wrong place -- but feel free to look around.)

My main Web spaces:

• My old Other Journalism Weblog was for thoughts, notes and headlines about news reporting, personal and "pro-am" community journalism on the Web, demos of technical tricks, and (less often) photos and news of personal events. The blog's left column has links to essay-style pages that I update from time to time, usually to preserve link that might get lost in the calendar-accessed daily blog entries. Blogging itself can be an "other journalism," hence the name.


• For several years I sorted out my newspaper-related blog items as a subset to link with the website I manage for a journalism educators' group, the AEJMC Newspaper Division. I've also saved my notes from my Digital Archives panel at the AEJMC 2006 national convention in San Francisco.


• In 2003 I started listening to audio weblog "podcasts" and in 2004 I started thinking about having one of my own, as well as writing what I knew about the history of that new medium. I decided to make it a "hobby" site about folk music, rather than pretend to be in the news business, and called it "podfolk." The testing was a success, but I decided I had no time to record audio podcasts. The site continued as an infrequent text-only blog about music, a place to hang some of my photos of musicians, and a "maybe someday I'll get back to it" item on the to-do list.


• My Red Liner Weblog takes its name from the site's Harvard-crimson motif and the MBTA subway I used to take to get to Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet & Society for Thursday night blogger meetings. (See the disclaimer in the blog's right margin.) Originally, "Red Liner" was a combination of notes on issues that came up at Berkman meetings and an excuse to learn to use the Manila community blogging system. For a while it continued mostly for classroom demonstrations and special situations.


• About Weblogs, my original year-2000 discussion page about the subject, survives, with many updates, as a sidebar to my main weblog. Newer pages there explain RSS Syndication, podcasting and video blogging.


• AEJMC Newspaper is the home page I update now and then for the newspaper division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, along with the newspaper-related weblog items I mentioned above.


• My old Boston-based "Resources for Reporters" collection of more than 1,200 Web bookmarks for my students, became a New England Society of Professional Journalists Resources database for a couple of years, but did not survive a change of SPJ sysadmins.

• My Emerson College faculty archive of pages created for courses in the Department of Journalism and the Institute for Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson. Here are samples of student work in my online journalism classes.


• My grad school archive of pages built at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism & Mass Communication, 1994-1999.

Old News: After four years of teaching in "all but the dissertation" limbo, I officially became "Dr. Bob" on Dec. 21, 2003, the day of winter graduation at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism & Mass Communication in Chapel Hill. More "who am I?" biographical information is at the top of my earlier home page. My old freelance/consulting resume may be of interest to a few people.

Research and writing

• An MIT conference paper based on a dissertation chapter about the visual evolution of WRAL OnLine.
• A rediscovered ASCII copy of my 1988 Wesleyan University MALS master's project, "Approaching hypertext: Cognitive models and usability of an electronic book technology."
• My oldest online "writing sample," a Hartford Courant feature story that was revived along with the New England Fiddle Contest. Contest organizers had both the story and a photo of mine in a press kit in 1980 -- and put them online 20 years later.
• For a journalism history conference, I started digging into The Evening Graphic of the Roaring Twenties, and I'm still researching its themes of visual literacy, newsroom cultures, evolving ethics, and blurred lines between news and entertainment. That work led me to become an associate of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture project. I'm investigating the presentation of newspaper reporters in classic radio dramas, movies and novels, including some connected to the Evening Graphic.
• Computers also blur lines between "real" and "virtual" communities. Those communities don't have to be as computer-oriented as engineers or bloggers. For example, I've written about online yacht clubs (for Soundings) and I've sung along with computer-assisted folksingers.
• More stories, scattered across the past 30 years -- from PC World, Soundings, The Boston Globe, The Hartford Courant and its Sunday magazine. (Note: For a couple of those, you'll have to imagine the yellowing newsprint of the originals.)

Nuts and bolts: This page and those linked to it were created with a variety of computers and software, including (new in December 2007) a cute little green laptop.org One Laptop Per Child machine in Linux terminal mode, as well as Macs and PCs with BBEdit, Nvu, Notetab,  Dreamweaver, Arachnophilia, Emacs, SSH, Pico and Userland Radio.

Thanks to my friend Richard Silverman, former occupant of what we informally call "The Robert S. Stepno Chair in Mathematics" at Wesleyan University, for hosting this page and helping me learn to be a little more of a geek... (I wonder if my Dad's big brown chair is still in some math grad student's office?) And what's all this nonsense about typing "chainsaw murderer" into "Google" and clicking "I'm feeling lucky?"

• Google.com usually finds whatever I'm looking for online, but I also visit Amazon's A9.com and other search engines. Know your sources: Whois can help identify owners of Web domains, while Who Owns What? identifies owners of mass media companies. The Center for Public Integrity lets you search for television, radio, cable, broadband and newspaper companies within ZIP code areas. Here's Radford
• I use del.icio.us to make my bookmark list searchable using overlapping categories and keywords, but rarely have time to go back and delete dead links. Combine keywords with a slash and a plus sign, like this: del.icio.us/bstepno/radford+technology
• Archive.org is a great place to find old Web pages, copyright-free music, and even classic films like "His Girl Friday" (left), my favorite newspaper movie.
• Wikipedia offers anyone the opportunity to inform or misinform you, and you can do the same for them. Go to any page on a topic you know something about, then check its "history" and "discussion" tabs to see how the "facts" have changed.
• Craigslist is almost everywhere, including Southwest Virginia, where Radford ads appear in both the Blacksburg and Roanoke sections.

news biz buzz

• J-blogs: My own blue, green and red weblogs have never attempted to match Jim Romenesko's daily newsbiz news or Jon Dube's Cyberjournalist. EditorsWeblog has an international news business focus; the Lost Remote knows what's going on with television news online, and Editor & Publisher still keeps track of the newspaper industry, including its online incarnation. Paid Content, Smartmobs and J.D. Lasica's Social Media add online media perspectives.
• Media watchdogs and support organizations: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Center for Public Integrity, the Media Giraffe Project, and tthe Society of Professional Journalists.
• And more: The Poynter Institute, PR Watch, the American Society of Journalists & Authors, the National Association of Science Writers, the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press.
• Before the Web, we had to look for insider journalism news at the "JRs" -- American, Columbia -- to which you can add the Online Journalism Review: AJR, CJR and OJR.

Virginia news

• I started to explore my new home in the summer of 2007, using Virginia news and Radford area news, via Topix... and...
• The Tartan, Radford student newspaper.
• RU Whim student magazine online.
• New River Voice
• New River Valley News
• WVRU
• Roanoke Times
• BlueRidge Muse, a topnotch "citizen journalist" weblog in Floyd.
• Washington Post Virginia politics page
• InRich from the Richmond Times-Dispatch
• ... and more.

old news friends

• My "own" news media: The Hartford Courant, Soundings, the Raleigh News & Observer, where my Web-editing adventures began at  Nando.net, and WRAL OnLine, where I did my dissertation research. 
• In Boston my news bookmarks were Boston.com, the Boston Herald, Boston Phoenix, Community Newspapers, the Weekly Dig for an "alternative" edge,  Adam Gaffin's Boston Online for local lore and news, and Dave Winer's ScriptingNews for the latest in the blog-tech world.
• In Knoxville, my "visit daily" news links were KnoxNews, The Daily Beacon, tnjn.com (which I had a small hand in starting), the Metro Pulse, WUOT-FM (NPR), WBIR TV, WATE TV, WVLT TV, plus KnoxViews  and the KnoxBlab.

blogs and feeds

• 
• While living in the Boston area, I was an early member of the Thursday night circle of bloggers that Dave Winer started at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center, a great introduction to blogs as more than personal online diaries or favorite-links lists. 
• A blogger formerly known as South Knox Bubba helped me find my way to Knoxville, where he had assembled a whole Rocky Top Brigade of Tennessee bloggers under an inspiring constitution, single malt and all.
• "Daily Me" style feed aggregator services are now part of everything from Bloglines and Netvines, or my.Yahoo and i.Google, to most Web browsers.
• For more about the history of  blogs, RSS, podcasts, aggregators and more aggregators, follow the links in the left column of my weblog.

headline news

• For comparison when a big story breaks, see the international collection of headlines at news.google.com. (It's an automated search, so expect some idiosyncrasies.)
• Slashdot and CNet, both good for a technical perspective on the news. For information about information, I visit Resource Shelf, among other places that I may get around to listing here.
• The Christian Science Monitor has thoughtful coverage of world and national issues.
• For more world and national news, I check the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Reuters, The Irish Times, and The Yomiuri Shimbun (in English). Also, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, AR, PRI, PBS, ABC News.
• The Associated Press Web pages, for today's news, enter through the Cape Cod Times or Mass Live.

magazines and other pastimes

• For more information, The Atlantic recognizes that an ocean, a good magazine and a good website have depth in common. Online, the magazine's searchable archives go back to the days when hypertext was just a glimmer in Vannevar Bush's eye.
• Other magazines in my life: Wired, Editor & Publisher, Mother Jones, Harpers, Adbusters, Dirty Linen, Sing Out!, Folio, InfoWorld, MacWorld, PC World and Soundings.
• Life is also music: The Mudcat Cafe, an amazing archive and conversation about of traditional and not-so-traditional songs. Live music: LEAF, near Asheville, N.C., is one of the best music and dance festivals I've been to -- so good that they have fall and spring editions. Other past haunts: In Connecticut, The Sounding Board and the Jovial Crew at the Griswold Inn. In the Boston area, The Burren, Club Passim, Johnny D's and Ryles. In Knoxville, the Bijou, WDVX Blueplate Specials, the Laurel Theatre,  the Tennessee Theatre and the Timewarp Tea Room. 

Journalism at the Movies

"His Girl Friday" began as a Broadway play titled "The Front Page." In it, "Hildy Johnson" was a male reporter trying to escape his boss. The added complication of making the reporter the editor's ex-wife -- a Hildebrand-to-Hildegarde sex-change -- is the His Girl Friday innovation. The two-guys script was made into a movie a couple of times. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon took on the starring roles in the 1970s, but Archive.org has a free copy of the original from 1931. Adolphe Menjou as Walter Burns may be a more believable tough-guy editor, if less romantic than Cary Grant, but Pat O'Brien is certainly no Rosalind Russell. See for yourself:

photo by R.S. Stepno

That's probably a Sunday Boston paper or Springfield Union. The past week's Daily Hampshire Gazettes are stacked on the radiator in this photo taken by my father. I started delivering the Gazette in junior high school and still remember columns by Arthur Hoppe making me laugh--the first byline that ever stuck with me.

Closing thought: When today's 12-year-olds are turning gray and entering their anec-dotage, will they wax nostalgic about something digital they read, listened to or watched -- or created as their first Web page, Facebook account, blog, podcast or Twitter feed? I wonder.