New Media and Journalism

This week I was delighted to conduct an interview with Kara Andrade, a promising young journalist who just graduated from U.C. Berkeley's School of Journalism. Kara is starting an internship at the San Jose Mercury News this coming week, so I was lucky to catch up with her.

I've been struck by Kara's work because it is innovative, almost fearless in its use of social software and new media, and covers interesting subjects. Most recently, Kara created a conversation about "God, Sex, and Family" in Second Life, which she discusses below. This work was part of a project supported by News21, a national initiative led by five leading research universities with the support of the Carnegie and Knight foundations to advance the news profession by helping to revitalize j-schools.

The interview shell included the following pieces (ok, maybe not quite this coherently):

1. Introductions
2. Description of the God, Sex, Family project.
3. Second Life as a platform and environment for journalism.
4. "I don't know if I am a journalist anymore ... "
5. Social media, and journalism.
6. Online vs traditional reporting.
7. Hyperlocal reporting and communities.

Interview with Kara Andrade. [mp3: 35 mb, 35']

Random Notes. The interview was conducted in my office at U.C. Berkeley; it was minimally edited. There are a few interruptions from construction noise in the background; we just talked over it. Approximate length: 35 minutes.