A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about ‘Universities Without Walls‘. At its heart was a belief that community is an asset for news organisations, and reputation in at least one community is an asset journalists should be actively cultivating. I’ve recently been asking students – at both City University London and Birmingham City University – to complete assignments
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This post forms part of the Carnival of Journalism, whose theme this month is universities’ roles in their local community. In traditional journalism the concept of community is a broad one, typically used when the speaker really means ‘audience’, or ‘market’. In a networked age, however, a community is an asset: it is a much more significant source of information
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Thanks to the massive interest in hyperlocal blogs a lot of journalism courses are either asking their students to create hyperlocal websites, or finding their students are creating them anyway. This post is to ask what your own experiences are on these lines? PS: I’ve also created a Google Group on the topic should you want to exchange tips with
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On Monday The Guardian published an article about data journalism and the future of journalism. As part of that I was asked what university courses taught data journalism. I could only think of Glyn Mottershead at Cardiff and – probably – Steve Hill at Southampton Solent. So let me ask: are you involved in – or study on – a
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I’ve just run through an exercise with my class of students from the MA in Television and Interactive Content at Birmingham City University. The exercises are intended to get them to think about the web as more than just a repository of content, but a platform that people use in different ways depending on who they are and what they
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Teaching has begun in the new academic year and once again I’m handing out a list of recommended RSS feeds. Last year this came in the form of an OPML file, but this year I’m using Google Reader bundles (instructions on how to create one of your own are here). There are 50 feeds in all – 5 feeds in
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I’ve just finished looking at the work from the Diploma stage of my MA in Online Journalism, and – if you’ll forgive the effusiveness – boy is it good. The work includes data visualisation, Flash, video, mapping and game journalism – in short, everything you’d want from a group of people who are not merely learning how to do journalism
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The Times and Sunday Times have launched their new paywalled sites at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/ and http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/. But while the sites have some good features, which I was shown at a preview last night, I still can’t work out why users would want to pay for two different websites covering the same subjects … What’s on offer? The plan is to replace
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For the last few years, I’ve had a problem. It’s a problem with deadlines, and momentum. Here’s how it goes: Every year, students in my undergraduate Online Journalism module run a live news website – Birmingham Recycled. Six weeks into the module, students have to submit a ‘snapshot’ portfolio for the first of 2 assignment deadlines… And this is where
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