Melody Kramer

Ditching WordPress for Jekyll

Built my own website using GitHub Pages and Jekyll.

Head over to melodykramer.github.io

This one will be going away shortly.

It’s snowing in DC. I’m not going to write a long note today, but if you get a chance today, take a look at the Capital Weather Gang Twitter feed.

You’ll notice that most of the information is crowdsourced from their audience. This isn’t by chance. And it’s really, really smart.

In 2011, the Washington Post launched free NWS Skywarn Spotter trainingfor anyone who wanted to learn more about…

Meet Mike Mahaffie. He’s  53-years-old and lives in Lewes, Delaware. His wife just retired from teaching and now works at a toy store. (He’s jealous.) In his words: “We’ve been married for over 26 years. Happily, I think. We share a love of music and the arts. We are re-entering the local theater life, now that the girls are grown. I act (and sing). Karen plays flute and is a trained music…

People Not In The News Commenting On The News: Meet Liz (@lizragland)

Meet Liz Ragland. She’s an Oklahoma native who now lives in DC. In her words: “In college, I started out as a broadcast journalism major but realized that TV news was not for me: too sensational and (at times) absolutely ridiculous. I ended up with a Bachelor’s in Mass Communications and have been working in the nonprofit sector most of my post-college career.”

Liz answered a lot of questions…

1. How To Use Reddit to Find Story Ideas

My favorite three subreddits to find story ideas are /r/AskReddit, /r/explainlikeimfive, and /r/todayILearned. Ask Reddit is a Q&A section of the site, similar to Quora or Ask Metafilter. Explain It Like I’m Five breaks down complex questions into easy-to-understand, parseable answers, and Today I Learned plucks out the most interesting fact from pieces.

Y…

People Not In the News Commenting On The News: Meet Lauren (@laurenkushner)

Meet Lauren Kushner. She works in advertising in Philadelphia, and was the first person to tell me her favorite food. (It’s bread.) Lauren gets a lot of her news from Twitter, but she also READS A TON OF NEWS. Seriously. Go down to the question about what she reads. She is reading everything.

Lauren answered lots of questions about how she gets her news. If you’d like to participate, please let…

People Who Don't Work in News Commenting on the News: Meet Sue (@SuglyIster)

Meet Sue Diaz. Sue lives in the St. Louis area and for the past 15 years, she’s been a librarian at Accenture. She loves traveling “by planes, trains, motorcycles, and [a] ’71 VW bus.” In her words: “Community service is near and dear to me: have worked on library & other boards, church & school, volunteer firefighter/EMT. I’m 50, married, with a resident 11 year old spelling bee champ. And our…

People Who Don't Work in News Commenting On the News: Meet Ashe (@ashedryden)

Meet Ashe Dryden. She’s a computer programmer from Oregon who frequently consultswith organizations on diversity issues. Outside of work, she knits. “I wanted to pick up a hobby that got me away from my computer,” she says. “I’m a programmer by trade and much of the socializing I was doing at the time was over the internet, mostly with men. Knitting was something creative I could do with my hands…

I watched SNL’s 40th anniversary show tonight. Like many Saturday Night Lives, this one was good for a while and then…not so good.

But it was saved by a series of montages featuring the best moments of past Saturday Night Live. Which brings me to the point of this late-night newsletter. Tonight, SNL again reiterated that archives are REALLY GOOD TO RESURFACE.

Archives:

1. are cheaper to…

I grew up in Philly and live in DC. I still check the news every single day in Philly. Why aren’t Philly news sites targeting me for some kind of newsletter or subscription package, in conjunction with the news sites where I currently live? Where’s my ex-pat news service? i.e.

1. news from places I care about that I no longer live in 2. news from places I currently live in 3. I don’t want to…

Today I walked to my friend Betty’s apartment to drop off some spaghetti and meatballs. Betty is 89 and lives just up the street. She doesn’t drive much anymore, though she still volunteers (at the White House, of all places.)

After we drank tea, I watched Betty read articles on her iPad. Her Internet was really slow. She kept accidentally clicking on the ads, or on parts of the story that she…

On Intentionality, Public Speaking, and Conferences

Over the past year, I spoke at 11 conferences, lectured at 11 universities, gave a presentation to the newsroom of the New York Times, gave another presentation to a hundred or so folks at the State Department, and spoke to the NPR Board twice.

This was new for me, and a bit scary at first. When the year started, I had only spoken occasionally and had a deep-seated fear of public speaking. This…

@tinysubversons makes bots. Here is a community-created resource he recently shared on how to make your own bot, if you’re so inclined. Here is a list of bots that he has created. My favorite bot he’s made is @twoheadlines, which mashes up headlines from two different news articles (and here’s a piece on how it works.) Wikipedia is often edited by bots. You can see the percentage of bots vs.…

Lynsey Smith (@misslynsey) had the best thing ever happen to her this week. Here's how she gets the news.

Meet Lynsey Smith. She lives in a rural town in Oregon named Oakland. “Most people assume I mean SF when I talk about Oakland,” she says. “I wasn’t born here but I grew up here and recently moved back. It’s no fun at all for a young unmarried person without kids, but there is a lot of positive change to be made here.”

Lynsey is a self-described news junkie. “I’ve been obsessed with current…

A Tiny Trick To Make Twitter More Useful If You're a Reporter / Want to Do Research On Something

Did you know that you can add a column to Tweetdeck that shows you either what people are looking at or what they’ve favorited? It’s fairly simple and I find it adds a lot of value (particularly if you’re a reporter or trying to do research within a certain industry.)

Here’s how:

1. Open Tweetdeck. 2. Search for a person. 3. Click on Favorites. 4. Click Add column. 5. Voila!

Here’s a screenshot…

People Not In News Commenting On The News: Meet Albert Lee (@urphillypal)

Meet Albert Lee, aka Mr. Philadelphia. Albert’s famous in Philly for his Instagram and Twitter feeds, on which he consistently and fervently championsthe City of Brotherly Love. Albert works for the Visitor’s Center and grew up in Philly. When I lived there, I frequently bumped into him around town — because he was everywhere. South Philly, West Philly, out on Boathouse Row. His photography is…

"I continue to seek a news source that is neither titillating nor tilted." - knitter Cat Bordhi

Meet Cat Bordhi. If you knit, you probably already know who she is. Cat is a rockstar within the knitting world — for her workshops, her sock patterns, and her versatildes. Her latest project is called Felfs – or felted footwear. She is donating 100% of her latest book and pattern’s proceeds to the research lab of Dr. David Kragat the University of Vermont Medical School.  Krag is working on…