Online Journalism Blog

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.

Charlotte Dunckley is a final year journalism degree students who has already launched a fanzine and is in the process of turning it into a commercially viable magazine - Things.

She recently popped in for an ad hoc tutorial and I asked her about her web strategy.

“I don’t have a website,” she replied.

“But you have a blog?”

“Yes.”

“Facebook?”

“Yes. And a MySpace page. With 800 friends.”

“So you do have a web strategy.” (more…)

A few weeks ago I wrote an 800-word piece for UK Press Gazette on how journalism has changed in the past decade. My original draft was almost 1200 words - here then is the original ‘Blogger’s Cut’ for your delectation…

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…)

In the second part of this five-part series, I explore how adaptability has not only become a key quality for the journalist - but for the information they deal with on a daily basis too. This will form part of a forthcoming book on online journalism - comments very much invited.

The adaptable journalist

A key skill for any journalist in the new media age, whatever medium they’re working in, is adaptability. The age of the journalist who only writes text, or who only records video, or audio, is passing. Today, the newspaper and magazine, the television and the radio programme all have an accompanying website. And that website is, increasingly, filled with a whole range of media, which could include any of the following:

• (Hyper)Text
• Audio
• Video
• Still images
• Audio slideshows
• Animation
• Flash interactivity
• Database-driven elements
• Blogs
• Microblogging/Text/email alerts (Twitter)
• Community elements - forums, wikis, social networking, polls, surveys
• Live chats
• Mapping
• Mashups

This does not mean that the online journalist has to be an expert in all of these fields, but they should have media literacy in as many of these fields as possible: in other words, a good online journalist should be able to see a story and think:

• ‘That story would have real impact on video’;
• or: ‘A Flash interactive could explain this better than anything else’;
• or ‘This story would benefit from me linking to the original reports and some blog commentary’;
• or ‘Involving the community in this story would really engage, and hopefully bring out some great leads’. (more…)

On Friday I wrote about my frustrations with teaching student journalists to Twitter - which generated some very helpful debate. Having dwelt on my experiences I’ve come up with the following idea for integrating Twitter into newsrooms:

Make it an internal tool first.

What I mean is: employ Twitter as a way of keeping journalists in touch with other members of their team, and their editors, via their mobile phones.

Here’s how it would work: (more…)

Stefan Lewandowski has very kindly created a Facebook app for the Online Journalism Blog.

Check it out, install it, laugh, cry, enjoy.

So far this model has looked at sourcing stories in the new media age, and reporting a news story in the new media age. In this third part I look at what should happen after a news story has been reported, using a familiar framework: the 5 Ws and a H - who, what, where, why, when and how.

A web page - unlike a newspaper, magazine or broadcast - is never finished - or at least, can always be updated. Its permanence is central to its power, and relates directly to its connectivity (and therefore visibility).

Once out there it can be linked to, commented on, discussed, dissected, tagged, bookmarked and sent to a friend. That can take place on the original news site, but it probably doesn’t. The story is no longer yours. So once the news site has added comments, a message board, ‘email to a friend’ boxes and ‘bookmark this’ buttons, what more can it do? (more…)

The Washington Post have followed up their playful Facebook app Compass with the more functional newsTracker - and it’s very good indeed.

Not only can you specify which topics you want ‘fed’ to your page - but you can also include custom searches (which is why mine has no current matches - they’re very specific).

The ‘Hot News’ tag cloud is nice - but the ‘Friends’ Search Terms’ really takes advantage of the social element of Facebook technology - although it does raise possible privacy issues (Blog Friends does a similar thing very well).

Add the application here.

Read Rob Curley’s blog entry on the tool here.

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…)

A colleague of mine once wrote a hugely entertaining blog post entitled ‘How to go to uni‘. As the new term begins, here’s my supplement: How to be a journalism student. (Note: there is now a wiki if you want to add extra tips/corrections/clarifications). 

1. Read the news. Amazingly, some journalism students don’t read newspapers. I don’t know why they want to write news, but chances are they won’t if they don’t read it. And yes, that means newspapers, in print or online. For the most part newspapers dictate the news agenda that broadcast news and magazines then follow. But yes, watch television news and listen to radio news as well, and read magazines. And do all of this often, and do it critically. (more…)