I’ve decided to respond to student questions now via video. The latest collection are from Jess Barlow, and are copied below. The video responses are split into three videos - and there is a transcription of the responses at the end:
Which online tools and resources do you use to keep up to date with breaking news stories, and why do you use these?
Do you keep a personal Blog and if so how regularly do you update it, and why?
How important is Blogging to you personally, and in your opinion for online news production?
Alex Gamela looks at citizen journalism - or the lack of it - in the Portuguese media landscape
We’ve been watching a significant change in the Portuguese news media during the last few years. From national to local newspapers, radios and TV channels, everyone is building their presence online, with more or less aptitude or quality. Still, the effort is noticeable.
Portugal Diário is a exclusively online outlet that has recently gone through a deep redesign.
But this investment in new platforms of communication doesn’t mean the companies are following the latest trends, or leaving their somewhat conservative approach to the full possibilities of the web. The news websites in Portugal are mostly a repository for print content, since many don’t have exclusively online journalists, and the resources for online content are rather limited, especially as multimedia content is concerned, though slowly the tide is turning, mainly due to the efforts of major newspapers, that are trying to improve and take the step forward in online content.
This scenario, of slow and uneven development of new media content, is useful to explain why the interactivity between media and users is practically nonexistent. Many still don’t grasp the concept of participative/citizen journalism and community, but companies and newsroom managements aren’t the only ones to blame, since there are other factors to consider: (more…)
Another day, another set of questions from a journalism degree student - this time, one of my own, Azeem Ahmad. If you want to help him by answering the questions, post your comments below.
How important is blogging to you, and your business?
If my ‘business’ is education and freelance journalism, then: enormously important on every level: generating ideas, gathering information, publishing stories and ideas, and marketing and distributing those and, I suppose, myself as a journalist and (*cough*) academic. I find conversation extremely helpful in working through ideas and finding new information, and blogging is a wonderful way of having that conversation with some very well informed and intelligent people. I hope it makes me more intelligent and well informed in turn. (more…)
Share advertising and syndication revenue with writers.
The plan worked, except that there wasn’t enough revenue to share. Skoeps cash-flow was in the black, which means that, if investors refused to go forward, growth must have been minimal and could not have offset the initial investment in the near future.(more…)
Part four of this five-part series looks at how interactivity forms the basis of true online journalism, and explores ways to think about interactivity in practice. This will form part of a forthcoming book on online journalism - comments very much invited.
In his 2001 book Online Journalism, Jim Hall argues that, in the age of the web, interactivity could be added to impartiality, objectivity and truth as a core value of journalism. It is that important.
Interactivity is central to how journalism has been changed by the arrival of the internet. Whereas the news industries of print, radio and TV placed control firmly in the hands of the publishers and journalists, online you try to control people at your peril.
It is important to remember that people use the web on devices - whether a computer, mobile phone or PDA - with cultural histories of usefulness or utility, very different to the cultural histories of television, radio or even print.
People go online to do something. Companies that help with that process tend to prosper online. Those that attempt to curtail users’ ability to do things with their content often find themselves on the end of a backlash.
News is, of course, a service. But up until now news organisations have been under the mistaken impression that it is a product. The web is reminding them otherwise.
What is interactivity?
Interactivity is not video, or ‘multimedia’; it is not flashy bells and whistles. At its core, it is about giving the user control. (more…)
“The best pranks are the ones where the victim has absolutely no idea what is happening and this is true here. Some photoshop happy forummers on the Football365 Forum began adapting marathon photos from Flickr, Google Images and anywhere else they could get their hands on them.
“They then sent them in to the unsuspecting Sky News team with spectacular results:
Flickr has announced it will now be hosting video - with a maximum length of 90 seconds. The idea is that these are “long photos”, “capturing slices of life to share”
I’m not sure what the implications are for journalism or journalists (note the distinction). Could we see a July 7 moment, but with short video? Will it be easier for users to upload video to Flickr from their mobiles than it is to upload to YouTube? Can we expect better composed video on Flickr because it comes from a community of photographers? (If that matters to you)
I don’t know, which is why I’m calling for your comments and thoughts on this.
What happens when you bring together local journalists, bloggers, web publishers, online journalism experts and new media startups - and get them talking?
That was the question that JEEcamp sought to answer: an ‘unconference’ around journalism enterprise and entrepreneurship that looked to tackle some of the big questions facing news in 2008: how do you make money from news when information is free? Where is the funding for news startups? How do you generate community? What models work for news online? (more…)
The past decade has seen more change in the craft of journalism than perhaps any other. Some of the changes have erupted into the mainstream; others have nibbled at the edges. Paul Bradshaw counts the ways…
From a lecture to a conversation
Perhaps the biggest and most widely publicised change in journalism has been the increasing involvement of - and expectation of involvement by - the readers/audience. Yes, readers had always written letters, and occasionally phoned in tips, but the last ten years have seen the relationship between publisher and reader turn into something else entirely.
You could say it started with the accessibility of email, coupled with the less passive nature of the internet in general, as readers, listeners and watchers became “users”. But the change really gained momentum with… (more…)
Neaju, says Nicolas Kayser-Bril is “a smart way of making money using other people’s sweat … The total lack of journalistic work is a clever way to reduce costs. But it certainly doesn’t create any value for readers, who would have to fact-check themselves. For writers, the incentive to publish on Neaju instead of blogging is thin, as they lose control over content and leave behind any advertising revenue.“
NewsTrust.net, says Alex Gamela, is “A sort of Michelin guide for news media.”
The Panelist, finally, says Kayser-Bril, is “A niche publication for upper-middle class do-gooders, where a bunch of financial bloggers advises parents worried about the world and the assets they leave their children with.“
