When it comes to news websites’ referral traffic, Google beats Facebook hands-down, with the search giant accounting for 40% compared to Facebook’s 26%. And yet hyperlocals, says publisher John Guinn, are making it harder for people to find them by not making the most of four simple SEO settings. In a guest post for OJB, John explains what those settings are — and how hyperlocal sites can use them to improve their SEO. Continue reading
LiveCity is a new data-driven project from Le Parisien that aims to bring together a range of public data sources to serve audiences across its webpages and apps. In a guest post for OJB, Project Director Stanislas de Livonnière, spoke to Steve Carufel about the challenge of aggregating one city’s dispersed open and live data feeds into a single set of dashboards and widgets that could be integrated into the outlet’s website and apps.
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Information overload image by James Marvin Phelps
It’s nothing new to say that email overload is one of the biggest problems we face in trying to organise our time. But let’s be more specific: there are, it seems to me, two core problems caused by email: firstly, reaching the end of a day and realising you’ve done nothing but respond to emails; and secondly, finding you are never relaxing because you are getting emails or email notifications on your phone.
I’ve tried various approaches to email management — and there is a whole literature of tips and guidance on the subject. Here are some of the techniques I’ve found work for me in solving the problems above (note: they may not work for everyone). Continue reading
My new book — Mobile-First Journalism, with Steve Hill — is published this week.
The book tackles various aspects of the new wave of mobile-centred publishing, from “mojo” techniques and creating mobile apps to native content and visual storytelling.
Along the way we also looked at the new critical issues raised by the shift, from strategic decisions involved in platform publishing, to fake news, trolling and verification.
It’s been a timely book — building on my experiences of designing the new MA in Multiplatform and Mobile Journalism at Birmingham City University (with some of the first students’ work inspiring parts of the book) — and fun to write.
I’ll be posting extracts from the book in the coming months…
Should independent hyperlocal news operations expect ‘cashback’ from mainstream publishers who use their copy? In a guest post for OJB, Jane Haynes speaks to Marc Reeves, editor of Birmingham Live, Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Post and Sunday Mercury.
“I’ve had a bit of a love hate relationship with hyperlocals over the years,” explains Marc.
“I started out loving them and then they started hating what we did,” he reflects with a smile. Continue reading
Knitting yarn optional. image by Rachel
As the summer begins, I’ve been recommending some things that my incoming students might do in preparation for their MA in Multiplatform and Mobile Journalism or MA in Data Journalism. I thought I’d share my advice here for anyone else starting a journalism course this Autumn… (oh, and these are just ideas — you don’t have to do all of these!)
When teaching journalism you notice quickly that the students who produce the most polished pieces of journalism are the ones who consume the most journalism. The more journalism that you read, watch, listen and use, the more journalistic conventions, techniques and tricks you absorb, and more instinctively reproduce. Continue reading
In an extended extract from the forthcoming second edition of the Data Journalism Handbook, I look at the different types of impact that data journalism can have, and how can better think about it.
If you’ve not seen Spotlight, the film about the Boston Globe’s investigation into institutional silence over child abuse, then you should watch it right now. More to the point — you should watch right through to the title cards right at the end.
In an epilogue to the film — this is a story about old-school-style data journalism, by the way — a list scrolls down the screen. It details the dozens and dozens of places where abuse scandals have been uncovered since the events of the film, from Akute, Nigeria, to Wollongong, Australia.
But the title cards also cause us to pause in our celebrations: one of the key figures involved in the scandal, it says, was reassigned to “one of the highest ranking Roman Catholic churches in the world.”
This is the challenge of impact in data journalism: is raising awareness of a problem “impact”? A mass audience, a feature film? Does the story have to result in penalties for those responsible for bad things? Or visible policy change? Is all impact good impact? Continue reading
