Feb 17, 2009
February 17th, 2009 by Paul Bradshaw
Soon after I posted my frustration at journalism students being slow to adopt Twitter, I came up with an idea: you only really start using Twitter when there is a social reason – so why not help by creating those social connections? I posted a call-out to Twitter:
Anyone willing to ‘adopt’ a journalism student on Twitter and answer their questions about it?
The response (especially on a Sunday afternoon) was heartwarming – within less than an hour I had more than one ‘Twentor’ (thanks to Scott Keegan for that word) per student – responses below. Two days later and the effect has been noticeable – the majority of students had started chatting to their mentors and you could see the lights switching on. [Read more]
Jan 28, 2009
January 28th, 2009 by Paul Bradshaw
UPDATE: From the comments: similar lists now available for Norway and Sweden.
I will soon begin teaching my annual module in Online Journalism and one of the first things I get the students to do is set up a Twitter account. It’s often a struggle to demonstrate the usefulness of Twitter, so this time around, in addition to following each other, I’m going to give them 10 people to start following from the off. This is the list I’ve come up with – would welcome your suggestions for others:
- @davelee - former journalism student and excellent blogger who landed a plum job at the BBC after graduating. Get the point?
- @channel4news - example of how a news organisation can use Twitter in a personal, conversational way, rather than simply republishing its RSS feed (see also: @r4news, @mashable) [Read more]
Sep 22, 2008
September 22nd, 2008 by Paul Bradshaw
Robert Fisk
Legendary reporter Robert Fisk recently gave a public lecture in Wellington, New Zealand, writes Dave Lee, and offered some very strong personal thoughts on web journalism. Newswire reports:
“Mr Fisk said the internet had led to the erosion of quality writing. [Read more]
Jul 8, 2008
July 8th, 2008 by Paul Bradshaw
Newsquest has begun the roll out of a relaunch of its websites with the Lancashire Telegraph, Bradford Telegraph & Argus and York’s The Press.
Hold The Front Page describe it as a “modernised and revamped look”. Really? As Keri Davies put it: “ugh, what a mess”. Alex Lockwood: “looks like shoveldesign – can barely see the ‘Lancashire’ on the logo; national news more imp. than local comment?” John Thompson: “Too much noise and everything in three columns. Lead stories should run across two colums Text too small in places.” [Read more]
Feb 29, 2008
February 29th, 2008 by Paul Bradshaw
If you’re not one of the 3,000-plus people to have viewed Dave Lee’s video of the BBC’s “shambolic” coverage (or lack of) the UK earthquake this week, I’ve embedded it below. This deserves to be watched by everyone at the BBC (although interestingly, only Sky, who come out of this quite well, appear to be linking to it). For everyone else, the reaction from those who had just experienced the quake and are waiting for some acknowledgement from Auntie Beeb is just very very funny indeed.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=foD0YXHIknQ]
You can read Dave Lee’s commentary on this here.
In an equally amusing post, while the BBC were running ads and Sky were running around, Dave Lee rounded up people’s responses to the earthquake with the following intro:
“EARTHQUAKEEEEEE!!!! OH MY WORD! WHAT DO WE DO!? I know… we change our Facebook status….”
Teaching journalism students to Twitter – the Twentoring project