Mike Rispoli
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As seen in:
Detroit Free Press,
HuffPost,
NJ.com,
Nieman Lab,
DEV Community,
Common Dreams,
NewsBreak,
Free Press,
CalMatters,
Privacy International,
The New Stack
and
Senior Director, Journalism & Civic Information @freepress. Boards: @njcivicinfo & @ucbsoj. Abolish the crime beat. Opinions/typos unfortunately mine
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Articles by Mike Rispoli
Mike Rispoli | Hospitality Net
Mike Rispoli is VP of Product Management at Laundris, a technology company modernizing how the hospitality industry manages commercial laundry and linen services.
Why Hotel Linen Management Is Stuck in the Past — and What to Do About It
It's time to stop counting by hand and put the clipboard down. The article argues that hotel linen management remains stuck on manual counts and clipboard tracking, and makes the case for RFID tagging to deliver item-level visibility, reduce shrinkage, and cut hidden costs. By Mike Rispoli, VP of Product Management, Laundris It's time to put the clipboard down. Photo by Laundris If you asked most hotel operators how many linens they actually own right now, most couldn't give you a confident answer.
Land A $195K Job With AI
We applied for a $195K Treasury job using AI and got wildly different results. When Sam Corcos (@samcorcos) posted a government IT specialist position requiring applicants to write a 10 page Great Gatsby analysis using AI, translate it into Spanish and Mandarin, and condense it into 200 words... we saw an opportunity to show you two completely different approaches to the same ambiguous problem.
Media policy: Local news for the people
Mike Rispoli testifying in the New Jersey Statehouse. Photo by Tim Karr, courtesy of Free Press. Illustration work by Erik Rodriguez. This piece is part of our Civic Media Series. Read the Civic Media Magazine and explore pieces from the series here. The market collapse of newspapers has hastened a growing crisis in which giant corporations and hedge funds dominate our ailing channels of news and civic information.
Setting Up Solid Cache on Heroku with a Single Database
I recently wanted to use Solid Cache for a new MVP I'm building out in Ruby on Rails. One thing I wanted was for this to all be deployed to a PaaS and in this case I was using Heroku. While I know Rails 8 pushes hard for Kamal and rolling your own deployment, for a lot of early projects it's nice to just have all the DevOps and CI/CD taken care of for you. This creates a problem when it comes to Solid Cache.
A letter from the Civic Media Magazine editors
As we witness the continued decline of local media, communities across America face an unprecedented era of rapid technological and social change without access to critical local information.
The Human Factor Remains Crucial
The rapid advancement of AI has fueled discussions about its potential to replace developers, particularly in industries like healthcare, where innovation and efficiency are critical. However, while AI tools can automate specific tasks, they cannot replace the expertise, intuition, and security-focused approach of skilled software engineers.
Why Developers Are Still Indispensable: Tips for C-Suite Executives on Balancing AI Automation With Human-Led Innovation
Lifestyle Report Lists NextGen Opinion Visionaries Accounting Consulting Finance Health and Wellness Insurance Legal Marketing and Public Relations Real Estate The rapid advancement of AI has sparked a new wave of speculation: Can machines replace developers? While AI has revolutionized productivity, offering tools to automate everything from code generation to system monitoring, it’s far from replacing the ingenuity of skilled engineers.
Kamal 2 Quick Start - the missing tutorial
Kamal is the new out of the box deployment tool that comes with Ruby on Rails. I'm assuming you already know this and are trying to get up and running quickly so let's skip the formality and get right into it. Step 1: Get Docker Yes, you do need to sign up for a Docker account first. Go to https://www.docker.com and sign up for an account. This will take you to your Docker Hub. From there you will want to select a private repository for your project unless you want your build artifacts made public.
Maximizing Headless Architecture: A Guide for Developer Teams
Headless or ‘composable’ commerce has captivated many e-commerce brands, offering a sleek, modular approach to building online experiences. However, the appeal of flexibility can sometimes hide the challenges of managing a headless setup. Headless can be a powerful asset or a source of technical and operational headaches for developer teams. How can developers know when headless makes sense and when it might be unnecessary?
Format on save for ERB and Ruby files in Zed IDE
Something that I really wanted when working with (Zed)[https://zed.dev] and Ruby on Rails was format on save ability for my .rb and .erb files. The setup is simple so I thought I'd give it a share: First open your settings.json file with cmnd + , or going to Zed -> Settings -> Open Settings.
Catalyzing civic media movement is our way out of the 'local news crisis'
We are at a pivotal moment. A shift in the tone and tenor of the conversation around the “local news crisis” has been happening for years, due much in part to the continued growth of the civic media space and the perpetual decline of the commercial newspaper business.
Commentary: Don’t enable clickbait
Just last week, we saw the latest of this troubling trend when the Los Angeles Times announced impending mass layoffs sparking an unprecedented newsroom walkout. This is a moment of crisis for the journalism industry, and the impact on California residents is even greater.
Columna: Deben legisladores garantizar la preservación del periodismo
Casi dos décadas de cierres de redacciones y despidos han dejado devastado el panorama de las noticias locales de California. La semana pasada vimos lo último de esta preocupante tendencia cuando Los Angeles Times anunció inminentes despidos masivos que provocaron una huelga sin precedentes en la redacción. Este es un momento de crisis para la industria del periodismo y el impacto para los residentes de California es aún mayor.
Lawmakers must ensure that preserving California journalism doesn’t enable clickbait
Stay up-to-date with free briefings on topics that matter to all Californians. Subscribe to CalMatters today for nonprofit news in your inbox. News publishers in California are divided over proposed legislation that would require tech giants to set aside money for newsrooms, which are essential to their platforms. Below, a digital media advocate says Assembly Bill 886 would favor larger outlets and incentivize clickbait .
Civic Media Series Archives – The Objective
Cierra Hinton on the imperative for media to use narrative as a tool to dismantle systemic oppression and redistribute power — instead of a device sustaining white supremacy and racism, classism, patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia, and xenophobia.
It’s time for civic media
This is the introduction to the Civic Media Series: A project of The Objective and Free Press. Read more from the series here. Dire warnings over the future of local news are being heard loud and clear across the country. Even as community-first local news models are increasingly being seen — and supported — as a critical foundation for a local news revival, more than 2,500 newspapers have folded since 2004.
The Rebirth of Local News
Democracy has, as is inevitable for a general policy journal, tended to focus on national domestic policy. But democracy is built and fortified at the local and state levels. Local newspapers and media have been decimated in recent years by falling ad revenue and predatory companies gutting newsrooms for a quick dollar. We wanted to focus on green shoots throughout the country, so we assembled a collection of experts working in and studying local news ecosystems.
A California Bill Would Break the Open Internet & Harm Local News
Over the past 15 years, the United States haslost more than half the newspaper reporters covering state and local beats. Runaway consolidation has decimated local news, and this crisis has disproportionately harmed low-income communities, people of color, rural communities and immigrants. The news crisis is prompting lawmakers to examine how to use public policy to keep communities informed.
Centering Community Voices Key to Solving the Local-News Crisis
Over the past 15 years, the United States has lost more than half the newspaper reporters covering state and local beats. Runaway media consolidation, mismanagement, new technologies and changing consumer habits have led to widespread job losses and newsroom closings. The decimation of local news has disproportionately harmed low-income communities, people of color, rural communities, and immigrants. And as news deserts expand, disinformation proliferating online has filled the void.
Opinion | Policies That Center Community Voices Are Key to Solving the Local-News Crisis
The future of local news is too important to be left to market forces, and the media conglomerates that got us into the local-news crisis aren't going to get us out of it. Over the past 15 years, the United States has lost more than half the newspaper reporters covering state and local beats. Runaway media consolidation, mismanagement, new technologies and changing consumer habits have led to widespread job losses and newsroom closings.
It’s time to build collective power to serve communities
Over the past few years, more lawmakers have begun to get serious about the collapse of the local news market and the threats it poses to civic participation and community health. The creation of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, the establishment of journalism commissions in Massachusetts and Illinois, and the introduction of several bills in Congress focused on local news — chief among them the Local Journalism Sustainability Act — have created an opportunity.
New Jersey Journalism Project Offers Hope Amid Local-News Crisis
Six years ago, Free Press launched the News Voices project in New Jersey to work with local communities to figure out how journalism could serve them in better and more responsive ways. Our belief is that an activated and people-powered constituency is a necessary ingredient to transform local journalism and reshape how communities stay informed and engaged.
Defund the crime beat
This story was originally published by NiemanLab and is republished here with permission. Let’s be honest: Crime coverage is terrible. It’s racist, classist, fear-based clickbait masking as journalism. It creates lasting harm for the communities that newsrooms are supposed to serve. And because it so rarely meets the public’s needs, it’s almost never newsworthy, despite what Grizzled Gary in his coffee-stained shirt says from his perch at the copy desk.
Government funds local news - and that’s a good thing
Public funding for journalism?!?! The shock! The horror! Got that knee-jerk reaction out of your system? Great. Because 2019 will be the year that more governments start funding local news — and that’s a good thing. If we’re serious about journalism’s essential role in our democracy, then we need to get serious about finding new ways to respond to how the collapse of local news is harming communities. First, we need to engage with and listen to those communities a lot more.
What Journalists Can Learn from Organizers: A Guide
It’s an important way for newsrooms to better listen to the public, incorporate community members’ perspectives in the newsgathering process, and reflect their experiences in the stories that emerge. Since 2015, Free Press’ News Voices project has taken an organizing approach to helping newsrooms engage with communities, build relationships and deepen trust to talk about what’s working — and what isn’t — in local news coverage.
37 people struggling to get by in New Jersey
April 13, 2018 “Humans of New Brunswick” by Wande Ogun This post was originally published by Free Press and is republished with permission. By Mike Rispoli When it comes to telling stories of economic hardship, what can journalists learn from social workers? From oral historians? From artists? From community advocates? It turns out, a lot.
Op-Ed: Sale of NJ’s Airwaves Could Address Local News Crisis
Nearly 2,000 journalists and media professionals throughout New Jersey have lost their jobs over the past decade. Dozens of news outlets have shut down. Consolidation has left several swaths of the state without any real coverage. Taken together, this crisis affects not only the business of journalism, but also how well our communities engage in civic life and with one another.
Drop the Charges Against Amy Goodman and Other Journalists Covering #NoDAPL
The images are shocking: security guards, armed with dogs and pepper spray, attacking peaceful Native Americans marching against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The footage from Democracy Now! is a brutal reminder that those in power will do anything to stop people from standing against injustice. The pipeline has faced strong resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and members of 280 other tribes in the United States and Canada, not to mention countless other groups working in solidarity.
Citizens, Journalists Work Together to Tell Atlantic City’s Story
This piece was co-written by Fiona Morgan. Atlantic City is a place of riches — not in terms of material wealth, but in terms of people, local history, neighborhoods and the overall sense of community. That message came through loud and clear Tuesday evening during the News Voices: New Jersey event at the Noyes Arts Garage, where more than 80 people came together for a conversation about how residents and journalists can work together to tell Atlantic City’s story.
Journalists and Residents Come Face-to-Face in New Brunswick
Journalism needs community support, and communities need the support of local journalists. That idea is at the heart of News Voices: New Jersey, Free Press’ community-engagement project. Last night in New Brunswick, more than 120 people demonstrated what’s possible when neighbors, church leaders, students, educators and journalists sit together at the same table.
Survey Shows Intense Interest in Local News, Wide Dissatisfaction with Coverage
One of the main goals of our News Voices: New Jersey project is to elevate the role of communities at their local media outlets. To that end, we asked our Garden State members to tell us how they consume news, what issues they care about, and how well they feel local media reflect their communities. More than 300 people responded — and their answers were informative. Over half of the respondents said their communities don’t get enough local coverage.
Free Press’ New Jersey Project Aims to Connect Newsrooms and Communities
The conversation about the future of journalism has long focused on how to save newspapers, how to adopt new technologies for reporting and distribution and how to find sustainable business models to preserve the news as we’ve known it. While these efforts are important, they focus on the business of journalism while overlooking journalism’s purpose — and the people it serves.
Karl Rove and Chris Christie discussed N.J. governor run while serving as U.S. Attorney
TRENTON -- Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie has tried to escape the shadow of former President George W. Bush, whose support for Christie has become a major line of attack by Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. But in an interview Tuesday and in congressional testimony last month, longtime Bush advisor Karl Rove said he had conversations with Christie about a possible run for governor while Christie was serving in the non-political position of U.S. attorney.
Kenyans face new privacy threats as State expands surveillance powers
The right to privacy is on the frontline of a struggle that has seen a number of other constitutionally protected rights threatened during the last few bloody months of Kenya's ongoing security crisis. After at least 64 people were killed in two attacks by Al Shabaab militants in late 2014, members of the ruling Jubilee Coalition swiftly moved to introduce an omnibus bill – the Security Laws (Amendment) Bill 2014.
The year that governments struck back: Seven things you need to know about privacy in 2014
Going into 2014, there were high hopes for advancing privacy protections and to finally have the debate around surveillance we've been clamoring for. In 2013, the right to privacy was “the right whose time has come”. Privacy was even Dictionary.com's word of the year. Europe was on the edge of passing new strong privacy laws, despite protests from industry and governments. Parliaments in Canada and the United Kingdom had pushed back against expanding surveillance laws.
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