Archive for June, 2009

St Petersburg Times: cautiously embracing the web, assiduously reporting Scientology

With its recent in-depth coverage of the Church of Scientology, Florida’s St Petersburg Times demonstrates some interesting and sometimes imaginative ways of handling a contentious issue, both in print and online. OJB looks at where the Times got it right – and how it might do better in the future.

Daily express website relaunching

Express.co.uk is about to undergo a redesign. I broke the news here, and there’s a good review of the new look (still currently in beta) at econsultancy.

Even “heavy newspaper readers” spend a quarter of their media time online

Some research from The Media Audit makes a pretty strong point about how quickly media consumers’ behaviour is changing: “The Internet now represents 32.5% of the typical “media day” for all U.S. adults when compared to daily exposure to newspaper, radio, TV and outdoor advertising. “Even those who are considered heavy newspaper readers spend about as much time online today
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ABCe: please sort out your terrible website (again)

In March, I appealed to the Audit Bureau of Circulations to sort out its terrible ABCe website. It’s had a redesign. Here’s a list of its latest problems.

J-Tweeters: Are they journalists or tweeters? Does it matter?

I follow the BBC World, the Guardian and the New York Times through my Twitter account, among other news services, but I get more news and information from the friends I follow on the microblogging service. My friends just happen to read stories from a wide variety of sources and pass along the kind of information they are interested in,
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Telegraph plans to expand MPs database site in build up to election (Q&A)

I asked Tim Rowell, Digital Publisher at Telegraph.co.uk 3 questions about how they dealt with the MPs expenses story online. The main headline is that the new domain hosting the expenses database – parliament.telegraph.co.uk -will expand in the run-up to the next election along with the MP expenses database itself. There are also curious “legal reasons” given for disabling the embed/email option
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MPs expenses data: now it’s The Telegraph’s turn

The Telegraph have finally published their MPs’ expenses data online – and it’s worth the wait. Here are some initial thoughts and reactions: Firstly, they’ve made user behaviour an editorial feature. In plain English: they’re showing the most searched-for MPs and constituencies, which is not only potentially interesting in itself, but also makes it easier for the majority of users
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UK investigative journalism foundation established – asks for pledges of support

There have been rumblings for a while about the establishment of a UK investigation foundation, and now it’s here. They’re not accepting cash at the moment, just pledges of support and help. So go help them. Here’s their open letter:

Meanwhile, A.nnotate puts all MPs expense PDFs online for free annotation

On the day that Parliament released MPs’ expenses in their ‘official’ form, I was hawking around on Twitter trying to find a good way to crowdsource analysis of the documents (this was before The Guardian’s crowdsourcing tool went live). Central to the problem was that the expenses were presented in search-unfriendly PDFs. So I was looking for a place people
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The Guardian’s tool to crowdsource MPs’ expenses data: time to play

      Investigate your MP’s expenses via kwout So here’s The Guardian’s crowdsourcing tool for MPs’ expenses. If you’ve not already, you should have a play: it’s a dream. There are over 77,000 documents to get through – and in less than 24 hours users have gone through over 50,000 of those. You wonder how long it took The Telegraph
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