Keyword: onlinejournalism. The New York Times has an interesting article on Wikinews, which has gone fully live since I last reported on it. It makes a good point that the need for deadlines and topicality means users’ contributions to shaping articles may not be as important as in other Wiki projects: “Wikinews articles are short-lived, so there is a reduced feeling of contributing to a knowledge base that will last a lifetime,” the article quotes Erik Möller as saying (a “technology journalist in Berlin who drafted the original Wikinews project proposal”).

There’s a nod to other citizen journalist enterprises such as Korea’s OhMyNews which, it should be noted, still employs a team of editors. And the extremely useful IndyMedia, a collection of independent news sources with a focus on alternative and protest movements.

Thanks also to Dean Heeley for introducing me to Out There News, “a channel for filmmakers, journalists and anybody caught up in the news to reach a world audience.” with a current focus on Islam and the West. The site asks for “video, photos or articles which tell strong stories being ignored by mainstream media”. As well as considering them online publication the site says it will work to find outlets for them in broadcast and print.

Keyword: onlinejournalism. The web is an excellent place to source celebrity gossip and media whisperings. Popbitch and The Friday Thing* have already made a good name for themselves with said product – but The Media Guardian report on a new entry, Holy Moly!, whose founder describes himself as a businessman and not a journalist (despite once being an editor on said Popbitch). It’ll be interesting to see if the site does manage to make money from its target market of “stocking fillers”. In the meantime, the site design is making my brain bleed and I need to lie down…

*I tell a lie: The Friday Thing is more about analysing the media and current events, but is a good example of an email newsletter that’s made a name – and a little money – for itself.

Keyword: onlinejournalism. While searching for a definition of shovelware specific to news organisations, I came across this curious welcome speech of a conference from 2001 entitled “Playing the News: Interactive Narrative and Games“. It gives a number of useful links (many, sadly, dead) to examples of forms of online journalism, while the overview of the conference still suggests some creative ways of thinking around interactive methods of journalism.

Certainly I think the opportunities for using games within journalism have been vastly under-exploited, most likely because that sort of thinking comes from a computing paradigm, rather than the print and broadcast journalism paradigms which have dominated online newsrooms in the past decade. Even a simple quiz can engage the reader in ways that a clickable interactive fails to do, while reinforcing information and making it more memorable.

Anyway, here’s some of those useful links:

“MSNBC’s Rainforest simulation : http://www.msnbc.com/news/568276.asp

These are decision making elements that get a reader involved in thinking about the implications of decisions.

The Guardian’s Budget Game:http://www.guardian.co.uk/Budget_Game

Quiz Game:

News quizzes or quizzes related to a news story – here’s the Beatles one..

http://www.cnn.com/2000/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/04/beatles/index.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/newsquiz/0,5962,362873,00.html

The Helsingen Sanomat Head Hunter game is really just a feature column on how to be effective in a job interview – made into an interactive quiz…

http://www.helsinki-hs.net/webortage/headhunter/headhunter.html

Arcade Games with a learning component

The Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel has a whole series of things they have done… http://www.sun-sentinel.com/graphics/entertainment/ show the roach game…

Product tie-in game – done by the newspaper… our own Jesse Weisbeck did the Escape from Mars game… http://www.twincities.com/extra/promotions/mars_game.htm”

As I’m a lazy thing let me know which ones are dead and I’ll put a note.

Keyword: onlinejournalism. I don’t often post jobs here (i.e. I never have), but here’s an interesting ad for online editorial roles, with an impressive wage packet attached. Anyone else know of any jobs – or sites for jobs in online journalism/editorial – let me know.

Keyword: onlinejournalism. dotJournalism – one of the few British sites covering online journalism – has relaunched, now looking less like an offshoot of the NUJ website and more like a seventies bathroom (sorry). Style aside, there’s always some great content here, including this interview with Richard Burton, web editor of Telegraph.co.uk.

Keyword: onlinejournalism. If you have a blog about online journalism, let me know by posting a comment.

Keyword: onlinejournalism. From basic ‘shovelware’, where articles written for print are simply reproduced online, through articles with media clips and live Q&A sessions, to multimedia clickable interactives that combine text, sound, video and animation, online journalism seems to be a medium still trying to find its definitive voice. Whether there ever will be a definitive ‘form’ of online journalism is a question worth considering. Perhaps it’s more likely that most non-online journalism will take on its interactive qualities in some form or another, sooner or later: we already have the “text-us-your-opinions”, the “check our website”, and the “press the red button”.

Jonathon Dube of CyberJournalist.net has an excellent article about the range of online storytelling methods which includes some great examples of the various forms. Please comment if you have your own examples to add to the list.

UPDATE (Jan 8 05): Thanks for the comments. Dean highlights this Flash interactive from the Guardian about what the ‘threat alert levels’ actually mean. Simple idea that’s easy to do and works well. Likewise the Bird Flu interactive explaining how different countries were affected by the outbreak, as well as the science behind the disease – and this interactive on the Iraq elections. Giving more options to the user is this interactive on ethnic communities in London: the user can explore the map to see where different communities are concentrated.

Simon picked up on this article from the Jewish Post – it’s a good example of how not to do online journalism: the article runs for pages, paragraphs are too lengthy to read on screen, and there are no links or attempt to engage the user. Likewise this article on the 39th Superbowl – and this one too – gives the user nowhere to go next – although it does offer a printable version and email article option.

Much more like it is this Daily Mail article about the Soham case, which gives the user lots of options for further information, including archive stories and a slightly distasteful picture gallery.

Also worth looking at is a comparison of articles about the immigration issue: 1xtra’s involvement of the user by allowing them to post opinions, versus The Guardian’s more flat treatment.

Keyword: search. The Search Engine Journal’s article about using video search engines for promotion throws up some useful links: Google Video I’ve already reported on, but also listed are:Blinkx Video Search, Yahoo! Video Search, SingingFish, and Rathergood.com.