Monthly Archives: February 2008

JEEcamp – the Journalism Enterprise and Entrepreneurship unconference

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JEEcamp banner

On March 14 I will be hosting an ‘unconference’ around journalism enterprise and entrepreneurship. Rick Waghorn, of MyFootballWriter.com, will make the keynote speech.

JEEcamp is an opportunity for a range of people to get together to talk about how on earth journalists and publishers can make a living from journalism in the era of free information, what the challenges are, and what we’ve learned so far.

It is also an opportunity for people with different skills and experiences to network, share those experiences, and perhaps suggest partnerships or new projects.

Attendees might have launched their own journalism project – or worked on one within a mainstream organisation. Or they might just have lots of great ideas, or knowledge about the area.

Anyone can attend by signing up on the event wiki at http://jeecamp.pbwiki.com/ – first come, first served. To add your name, click ‘Edit Page’ – the password is ‘jee‘.

JEEcamp will take place on

Friday March 14 at The Bond in Digbeth, Birmingham (map)

Attendees will be asked to pay £20 towards the costs of the venue – if sponsorship is acquired that money will go to a charity decided by vote.

UPDATE: The event is now listed on Facebook if you want to add yourself there too.

My first Online Journalism lecture – twittered

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Last week I began the new class of Online Journalism. First task: getting students signed up to Twitter. Then, I asked half the class to ‘twitter’ my lecture on, er, what Twitter is. I then asked the other half to twitter me talking about the news diamond. While I gave the lecture I had my Twitter page on screen so that students could see the twitters coming in as I spoke. The result is shown below – start from the bottom and work upwards. Forgive the poor image quality – I reduced it to 8 colours to make the file size reasonable. Continue reading →

The Online Journalism Blog readers’ map – normal service is resumed

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Thanks to all those who have so far added themselves to the OJB readers’ map – it looks very impressive. I had a couple emails from people who arrived at the map to find it called something else – ‘Mark Weber’ or ‘Félix Bahón’. One of the problems of making it editable, it seems, is people accidentally changing the name of the map itself.

UPDATE: Another is that people can accidentally edit each others’ entries, and so Laura Oliver of Journalism.co.uk in London has suddenly been reassigned to the role of video journalist at Sydney’s Telegraph.

Anyway, the map is now back to its original name with some instructions in the description as well as here.

If your entry has been incorrectly amended you can edit it by clicking on your placemark or listing in the left hand column. Then go to the top of the left hand column and click ‘Edit’. Both the map name and the selected placemark become editable.

It seems Google Maps has some way to go before being intuitive enough for the average reader to contribute to.

Meanwhile, looking forward to seeing more readers popping up, particularly in those hard-to-reach places…

…and after those Google Maps mashups, what better time to start playing with this stuff?

Feb 5, 2008: the day Super Tuesday became the ‘Mashup Election’

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If news organisations thought they were starting to ‘get’ this whole internet journalism thing, yesterday may make them think again.

At 8pm GMT yesterday I received a breathless email from Azeem Ahmad, a student from the journalism degree I teach on:

“Tell me you have seen the Google Maps/Twitter mash up of the American Super Tuesday voters.. it’s amazing! The pointer is flying all over the world, from Spain to England, and all through the various parts of America.”

Logging onto Twitter I found a similar buzz from Martin Stabe and Kevin Anderson:

“Enthralled by Twitter and Google Maps super mashup. I could be entertained for hours”

A quick search on Terraminds (image below) showed it wasn’t just us journo nerds: Twitter was alive with chatter about the mashup – one tweet in particular was worth noting: Continue reading →

Journalist, map thyself

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I’d like you to help me out with a little mapping demonstration. I’ve created a map of Online Journalism Blog readers – here. I’d love if you could add yourself to the map. If you’ve never done this before (and what better way to start?), this is how:

  1. make sure you’re signed in to Google,
  3. search for your postcode/zip code/street address,
    address search
  4. click ‘Save to my maps’ on the box that appears – select the OJB readers option from the drop-down and click ‘Save’.
    savetomaps.gif

    savetomapsdrop.gif

  5. You can then edit the entry – change the title to your name and add any biographical details you want (e.g. link to your blog) in the Description box. Then click OK.
    editdetails.gif

I’m hoping that a) this will allow OJB readers to network with each other more easily; and b) this will provide a platform for experimentation/mashups (perhaps a mashup with WiredJournalists.com?) – if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

But it’s only as powerful as its members, so map away!

Listen to this blog’s posts

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So I signed up to automatic podcast generator Odiogo. The result: a podcast feed for all of my posts. Useful for accessibility – and recommended on that basis if nothing else. The automated reading of posts is surprisingly natural. But one big problem: because I use the <more> strip in WordPress to prevent my homepage being dominated by lengthy posts, this also truncates the feed, and so the audio only runs to that point.

UPDATE: Some tips were given below, plus an email from Odiogo themselves as follows:

“some WordPress plugins such as DualFeeds or CopyFeed  create a full RSS feed, including the text after the more tag.

“Please note that these plugins have not been tested by Odiogo – we don’t know if they are compatible with WordPress.com and cannot be held responsible if they cause any issue to your blog.“