Archive for September, 2008

It’s time to relieve the stress of RSS. Newspapers, make your own readers!

(This entry was originally posted by Dave Lee on jBlog) A few days ago on this blog, Paul Bradshaw wrote what he called one of the most important posts he’s ever made. Here it is. In it he describes how the era of the awkward, socially backward geek is nearly behind us. They’re not geeks, he says, they’re early adopters.
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5 stages of a blogger’s life

Hope you enjoy this. Concept by Paul Bradshaw, drawings by the wonderful Alex Hughes: Here are some Twitter avatar-size versions too: .

Speaking at BLOG08 – WLTM you

I’ve been asked to join a panel of European journalism types at the BLOG08 conference in Amsterdam on October 24 (“Journalism versus/ heart blogging” at 11.45). If you’re going to be there – or just in the neighbourhood – let me know and I’ll shout you a coffee.

Post more = rank higher. We knew it already, but here’s the evidence.

The second part of Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report is out, with more obvious headlines: the more you post, the better your blog does. Here’s the detail from TechCrunch: “Blogging is a volume game. The more you post, the more chances there are that someone else will link to one of your posts. (Technorati rank is based on the
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Writer’s Residence et al: just how stupid do you think journalism students are?

Writer’s Residence is a web service which thinks journalism students are stupid. “Student journalists worldwide can register for a free, one-year membership to an online writing portfolio Web site that they can use to show off their writing and demonstrate their web savvy to potential employers.” After that? “Membership costs only $8.29 US Dollars per month.”

Google are in the political journalism business – and they’re doing it better than you

Just go here. And discuss.

Maps, mashups and multimedia: online journalism students tackle interactivity

As a new semester begins it seems a good time to finally post about how my second year journalism degree students approached the ‘interactive’ element of their portfolio way back in May (yes, everything they do is interactive, but bear with me). For the first time I gave them an open brief in terms of what they did interactively (in
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Combine two maps with MapTube

Thanks to James Thornett for pointing out this wonderful tool. MapTube allows you to select any two or maps and combine them, so: “For example, to see a map of the London Underground overlayed on top of a map of population, go to the search page and enter the keywords “tube” and “population”. Then click on the two relevant maps
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News and the maturation of the comic form

Following the Liverpool Post’s imaginative use of comics in its coverage of the 50-foot, 37-tonne mechanical spider La Princess, Toronto’s Globe and Mail has this great graphic explanation of the financial crisis: Here’s the Post’s graphic novel insert cover if you’re interested…

They’re not “geeks” – they’re early adopters

Last week I was at a magazine publishers talking about social media platforms, when it was put to me that the platform I was talking about was “mainly used by Valley types”, and why should journalists invest time in a platform when the majority of readers of more conservative titles don’t use it? It’s a recurring question – so much
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