Social bookmarking for journalists

This was originally published in Press Gazette as Del.icio.us social bookmarking explained and Need some background info? Just follow the electronic trail.

How journalists can use web bookmarking services to manage, find and publish documents.

Every newspaper has a library, and most journalists have kept some sort of cuttings file for reference. But what if you could search that cuttings file like you search Google? What if you could find similar articles and documents? What if you could let your readers see your raw material?

That’s what online bookmarking – or ‘social bookmarking‘ – tools allow you to do. And they have enormous potential for journalists.

There are a number of social bookmarking services. Del.icio.us is best known and most widely used and supported. For this reason this article will focus mostly on Del.icio.us.

10 questions from a student: How has social networking transformed journalism? (Now with transcription)

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:

1. Which online tools and resources do you use to keep up to date with breaking news stories, and why do you use these?
2. Do you keep a personal Blog and if so how regularly do you update it, and why?
3. How important is Blogging to you personally, and in your opinion for online news production?

Video comments and a new review on JournalismEnterprise.com

The Online Journalism Blog’s sister site, JournalismEnterprise.com, has a review of the social bookmarking site socialmedian (currently in alpha). I’ve also added a video comment facility to the site, so if you’re on Seesmic you can post video comments on any of the sites reviewed on JE.com.

Also worth checking out is Alex Lockwood’s recent review of Friction.tv

Graph of the day

From Zooming In on Online Video, a toolbox of advice to “help newspapers of any size develop profitable video applications”.

How Portuguese News Websites (don’t) use Citizen Journalism

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:

Seesmic and Disqus providing video comments for blogs

It seems Seesmic is already fulfilling its promise as ‘the next Twitter’ insofar as it’s being used for previously unforeseen purposes. Last night I was able to post a video comment on a blog post thanks to a teamup between Seesmic and the comment tracking service Disqus.

Join the journalism and news entrepreneurs group

I’ve set up a Facebook group for journalism and news entrepreneurs – a place to network, share ideas and gather support. Join it if you think it’ll be useful.

PS: If you’ve not joined the Online Journalism Blog Facebook group, please do. It’s great.

Four more social media psychological complaints

Following my post on the Seven psychological complaints of bloggers and social media addicts, it appears there have been more syndromes identified. Here they are:

Meme Orphanism

Identified by KerryJ, sufferers exhibit intense feelings of alienation after missing out on viral ‘event’, e.g. Twitter Cartoon Day. See also: FOOcamp anxiety.

Wit Anxiety Gloom Syndrome (WAGS)

Identified by Sarah Hartley: “The sufferer feels what they have to add to the world is so humourous it must be shared – but only after every one of the 140 characters has been considered in depth. Stems from a deep-rooted phobia of “comment shame”.”

Community Disconnection Attack

Patient experiences disorientation upon becoming stranded from social media ‘anchors’ such as Facebook groups, Twitter, blog community etc. Triggers include: service outage; power or battery failure; loss of wifi signal.

User Account Phantasm

Patient is haunted by the ghosts of user accounts created but never used, or long since abandoned. Symptoms include random friend invites from imaginary MySpace users; emails from Plaxo; and Pownce files from the ghostly Dave Winer.

The Chinese earthquake and Twitter – crowdsourcing without managers

There’s been an earthquake in China, and the Twittersphere is alive with it. I’m going to write a post on this and keep adding to it through the next hour or so. Let me know anything interesting you’ve spotted @paulbradshaw

The first interesting point is Tweetburner: its most-clicked links shared on Twitter are almost entirely about the earthquake, and show some interesting uses:

1. A Google map of the earthquake location
2. A BBC blog post about Twitter coverage of the earthquake
3. A Twitter user’s tweet about experiencing the earthquake (in Shanghai)
4. A Google translation from Chinese to English of tweets from Twitterlocal
5. The Earthquake Center’s page on the earthquake
6. CNN’s report
7. A picture which appears to be capturing the earthquake in an office
8. A Summize search for ‘earthquake’

Here is crowdsourcing without the editorial management. How quickly otherwise would a journalist have thought of using Twitterlocal with a Google translation? And how soon before someone improves it so it only pulls tweets with the word ‘earthquake’, or more specific to the region affected? (It also emphasises the need for newspapers and broadcasters to have programmers on the team who could do this quickly)

Some questions about blogging, from a student

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.