#access journalism

[odinsblog]

Remember what CBS’s former CEO, Les Moonves, said about giving Trump billions in free airtime?

It’s happening all over again.

CNN is enabling Trump today, and tomorrow they’ll pretend they were always fighting against him.

If selling out America to a rapist traitor who sold secrets to Russia makes them richer, CNN does not give a single fuck.

The media is complicit.

[alanshemper]

[protoslacker]

As Bender himself writes, Vance “excoriates the news media” generally speaking, but “regularly takes questions from news organizations and almost never directly criticizes the reporters who line up to parry with him.” In other words, Vance is nice to Bender. So it would be rude to not be nice to Vance. This is Vance’s reward for granting access.

Dan Froomkin at Press Watch. Vance’s racist attacks are just ‘rabble-rousing’ to the New York Times

[readingsquotes]

I watched these creators work tirelessly to document and cover the convention with more dedication and rigor than I've seen from some legacy journalists. They interviewed surrogates and lawmakers, asking thoughtful questions and demanding accountability on issues like LGBTQ rights, healthcare access, and a ceasefire in Gaza.

....As Edward Wasserman, professor of journalism and former dean of Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley told me last year, national news publications often rely on access journalism and serve primarily wealthy audiences, and that shapes their coverage, making them less likely to hold powerful people to account. "For all its claims about independence and bringing a critical gaze to policy," he said, "there are vast areas where the [traditional] press is in lock step with the people who own and run the country." 

...I also hope that the DNC continues to credential creators who challenge mainstream Democrat policies. I found it concerning that Hasan Piker was unceremoniously kicked out of a room he was streaming from after interviewing uncommitted delegates, allegedly due to a space issue.

[apollos-boyfriend]

lunchly having mold problems is bad enough for their image but giving ro a first-hand account of the mold is possibly the worst possible scenario for them. ro kill

[nondelphic]

creatives, please use alt text

one of the first things i learned in journalism school was how to write alt image descriptions.

at first, it felt tedious. every single photo or graphic required a description, and if we skipped it—or wrote a lazy one—our professors didn’t hesitate to fail us. at the time, i didn’t fully understand why it mattered. but now, i’m so grateful they drilled it into us. if i’d never gone to journalism school, i might have never known how vital alt text is.

for those unfamiliar, alt text (short for “alternative text”) is a written description of an image. it allows people who use screen readers to know what’s in an image, making content accessible to those who are blind, visually impaired, or have other disabilities that prevent them from viewing images. you're basically translating visual content into words.

as creatives, whether we’re writers, artists, photographers, or meme page admins, we have a responsibility to make our work accessible. after all, what’s the point of creating something if a huge portion of your audience can’t engage with it?

why alt text matters

it ensures accessibility - a visually impaired person using a screen reader should be able to understand the context of an image just as easily as a sighted person.

it’s inclusive - adding alt text isn’t just for people with disabilities. sometimes, images don’t load due to bad internet, and alt text helps everyone understand what’s missing.

it’s good practice - if your work exists online, you want it to be as widely understood as possible. accessibility makes your content stronger.

okay, but how do i write alt text?

writing alt text isn’t as hard as it might seem! here are some tips:

be concise but descriptive - describe the essential elements of the image. what would someone need to know to get the gist of it?

include context - if the image is part of a larger story, explain its relevance. for example, “a black cat sitting on a pumpkin, used to illustrate a halloween-themed story.”

don’t overthink it - you don’t need to describe every pixel. just focus on the most important details.

alt text and ai tools

in the era of chatgpt and microsoft copilot, we’ve got a major advantage: ai tools can now generate alt text for you!

while these tools aren’t perfect and often need a bit of tweaking, they’re a great starting point. platforms like adobe, microsoft, and even some social media apps have built-in options for generating descriptions. if you’re overwhelmed by the idea of writing alt text from scratch, let ai do the heavy lifting, and then refine it.

a creative responsibility

alt text isn’t just for journalists or big companies, it’s for all of us.

as creatives, we have the power to make the internet a more inclusive place. whether you’re posting a masterpiece, a meme, or a picture of your cat, take a moment to add alt text.

adding alt image description is SO EASY and quick and we all need to get better at adding it to our posts. i, myself, am not perfect. on here, for example, i've been really bad about writing alt image descriptions, and it's something i'm very disappointed in myself for. (i hereby pledge to do better, and please call me out for lacking in the future!)

writing alt text is not only about respecting your audience, but it's also about recognizing disabled people's right to engage with your work.

accessibility isn’t optional !!

[psychhound]

[ID: a banner for a game. it is light tan with a crumpled paper texture, and reads "with breath & sword" in large blue font, and "a solo-journaling game that helps you fight anxiety as you fight monster" below it in smaller font. there is lineart of gauntlets lying over a sword with some flowers at the bottom. end ID]

You find yourself tied to the monsters. The scratchy feeling in your chest. The way your hands tremble. The sweat that dots your upper lip when your senses are telling you a monster is close, again, now, and it’s your job to fight it. To stand up for your ideals and stand up to the threat. Whether you tame it, or this is truly a monster that needs to be slain, only time will tell.

 You know you will succeed. You always have before. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be a challenge.

 Grab your gear. Put on your boots. You know how to find it. You know what to do.

 First, you just need to steady yourself.

[ID: a page spread from the game. it shows "step four" on one side, which goes over the five aspects of the game's oracle. on the other side it shows the first oracle component, where something you can taste determines what your heroic core is. the page is minimally designed, with a blue border and text on a white background, tan accents, and one image of a dragon. end ID]

With Breath & Sword is a solo-journaling TTRPG to help players combat anxiety. 

In the game, you play as a monster-fighter, who is being summoned once again due to the presence of a new monster. Each time a monster appears, you struggle with the emotional effects of the magic: effects that look a lot like anxiety. You must steady yourself before you go off to fight: in the game and in real life.

Over the course of WB&S, players will participate in grounding methods and breathing techniques to calm themselves from an anxiety attack. These methods also serve as the game's oracle in order to determine how the story goes. 

What You'll Need:

A safe space to play 

A method of writing or recording

[ID: a page spread from the game. it is the section called "the science" and goes over the psychology behind the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, the 4-7-8 breathing method, and destroying journaling. it has a few lines about narrative and play therapy, and that the creator of the game used these methods in his social work with neurodivergent teens and adults. end ID]

check out the game on itch now!!

[upennmanuscripts]

Exciting news for people who love reading research about manuscripts but don't have money!

[neat-deadandlive-things]

Having just looked up the submission cost to the journal Ecology, I will be printing out 100 copies of my manuscript and handing it out on street corners instead of traditionally publishing. Much more cost effective and more people will read it that way.

[superlinguo]

Himalayan Linguistics turns 20: Celebrating two decades of Diamond Open Access publish

The publication of Himalayan Linguistics issue 23(1) marks 20 years of the journal. To celebrate this milestone, the current team of editors, including myself, teamed up with two key former editors to write a special editorial about the history of the journal. Below are some excerpts from this history, as well as the article list for HL23(1) and a newly published Archives piece.

In early 2004, the first issue of Himalayan Linguistics was published. This first issue contained a single article: “An Analysis of Syntax and Prosody Interactions in a Dolakhā Newar: Rendition of The Mahābhārata”, by Carol Genetti and Keith Slater. In 2024, with the publication of Issue 23.1, Himalayan Linguistics celebrates twenty years of publishing fee-free Open Access research scholarship on the languages of the Himalayas. In these twenty years, Himalayan Linguistics has published almost 200 pieces of scholarship, all freely available online. In this special introductory article, we chart the history of the journal and look to its future. In its twenty years of publication, Himalayan Linguistics has published 144 original research articles, 18 review articles, and 14 Archive and Field Reports. The Archive publications include grammars, dictionaries, text collections and extended descriptive works. Himalayan Linguistics is well-placed to continue into the next twenty years. Indeed, the need for accessible online journals, which do not gatekeep with article processing charges, is even greater. The rise of digital-first research publication has seen an even contraction and concentration in the publishing market, which is now predominantly an oligopoly of a few giant commercial publishers (Larivière et al. 2015). This landscape creates a barrier, particularly for scholars who cannot afford processing fees.

Himalayan Linguistics, Volume 23, Issue 1, 2024

Editorial: Twenty years of Himalayan Linguistics Lauren Gawne, Gregory Anderson, You-Jing Lin,  Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carol Genetti,

Spoken and sung vowels produced by bilingual Nepali speakers: A brief comparison Arnav Darnal,

A corpus-based study of cassifiers and measure words in Khortha Netra P. Paudyal

The grammar and meaning of atemporal complement clauses in Assamese: A cognitive linguistics approach Bisalakshi Sawarni, Gautam K. Borah

Possessive prefixes in Proto-Kusunda Augie Spendley

Expressing inner sensations in Denjongke: A contrast with the general Tibetic pattern Juha Sakari Yliniemi

New in Archives and Field Reports

Facts and attitudes: on the so-called ‘factual’ markers of the modern Tibetic languages [HL ARCHIVE 14] Bettina Zeisler

You can read all of Himalayan Linguistics, always Open Access at: https://escholarship.org/uc/himalayanlinguistics

[onethousand825days]

instead of saying "sorry for taking up space" or "sorry for being a burden" I'm supposed to say "thank you for letting me take up space." and so far this small change in wording has helped

this sort of "apologizing for your existence" is a learned behavior that stems from putting yourself beneath your abuser and submitting to them (usually as a form of fawning or attempting to lessen the abuse but that probably goes without saying). saying "thank you" instead of "sorry" allows you to still express your gratitude for being taken care of and given space to exist, but does it without putting yourself beneath the other person

it's just a small change in wording but if you're the kind of person who finds themselves compulsively apologizing for their existence, it might be helpful to try

[chronicblackdespondency]

why do all my dads play guitar

[icicleteeth]

You know a non insignificant reason for dragging my feet on taking the computer back to the store for repairs Again is that every time ive done it, i have to rip all my stickers off before taking it in… Like sure half of them are normal cute stickers but the other half is candygore and a moogle with a glock, like im stressed enough being back there for pc problems again, i dont want to have to answer questions about my immaculate taste in stickers too 🙅

[falsenote]

have been instinctively skipping the popular reviews on letterboxd no matter the movie for ages which is why i am just now seeing that in a review for la notte brava someone referred to bolognini as a closeted homosexual

[wrishwrosh]

found a copy of close range: wyoming stories by annie proulx on the street which i think is certainly an omen or portent or talisman of good luck

[sendmyresignation]

@overalls tagged me to share 9 books I want to read in 2025 <3

Tried to pick a collection I actually felt some sort of incentive to get to soonest: excitement, needing to get to something for a project or personal research hole, or, in the case of gay new york, because I borrowed it from a friend ^_^. Really made an effort to not just include nonfiction.

To keep it going, I will tag @antspaul @forhaloes @milfygerard @thatshitkrejci @void-flesh @punk-pins and literally anyone else who would like to share, I'm genuinely interested!