Online Journalism Blog

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. (more…)

Over at Press Gazette you’ll find my latest article on using social bookmarking for journalism - split into three areas: managing cuttings; sourcing information; and publishing. Let me know if you have any personal experiences with bookmarking services - are there better services than Delicious?

Sometimes I feel like my vision of the future is slowly coming true in front of my eyes. Yesterday I discovered that the Birmingham Post features writer Jo Ind has started incorporating Del.icio.us social bookmarks into her articles. If you look at the bottom of this health article you’ll see the following line:

“To learn more about Select Research and the body volume index, see Jo Ind’s suggested links or visit her blog.”

Jo Ind’s suggested links are on Del.icio.us The tool is also being used by Radio 4’s iPM, as previously reported and Jemima Kiss integrates her feed into her Guardian blog as the PDA ‘Newsbucket’ (much as this blog and many others do as an albeit more prosaic “delicious feed”).

But phrasing the link as ’suggested links’ (rather than ‘iPM Delicious’) and positioning it at the bottom of an article rather than as a sidebar widget is a better idea, and closer to what I was suggesting in the ‘What’ of my ‘Five Ws and a H that should come after every story’.

I’m currently preparing an article on social bookmarking for journalists. Does anyone know of any other examples of it being used in public by journalists?

Oh, and by the way: to learn more about delicious and social bookmarking, see my suggested links here and here.

The Guardian has brought its typical idiosyncratic approach to social bookmarking with the launch of ‘Clippings’. But for once I think they’ve missed the mark.

By clicking on the scissors icon () next to a story users can now ‘clip’ an article to their own account. They could do this before anyway - but importantly, the revamped service means they can see others’ saved stories and subscribe to a feed, or publish their own feed elsewhere.

These are welcome additions to an older service, but there are some glaring oversights. (more…)

Over at BBC Radio 4’s iPM website there’s an interesting experiment going on - and some good examples of my 21st century newsroom ideas in practice.

1. Firstly, their ‘Rough Notes’ blog is a good example of the ‘draft’ stage of my News Diamond, with members of the team talking about what they’re working on (and comments facility for people to suggest stories - some very good ideas there, BTW). Also, posts labelled ‘In Production‘ allow you to see the work so far, while you can comment on the current running orders.
2. Secondly, they have a Flickr page where users can upload images. Distributed Journalism, perhaps? Well, more like simple community.
3. Thirdly, and perhaps best of all, they’ve made their del.ico.us account public, so readers can see what they’re reading. That’ll be the ‘What’ of my Five Ws and a H, then.

The blurb, BTW, is: “We’ll source what we do through the best blogs, passionate ‘ear catching’ online debate as well as comments and recommendations of others. So what ends up on air will be shaped by listeners and bloggers.”

In the first part of my model for the 21st century newsroom I looked at how a story might move through a number of stages from initial alert through to customisation. In part two I want to look at sourcing stories, and the role of journalism in a new media world.

The last century has seen three important changes for the news industry. It has moved… (more…)