A couple of recent emails have brought home to me just how many people are being taught the ‘News Diamond’ model I first proposed as part of my Model for a 21st Century Newsroom series.
So I’d love to know – are you teaching this? What has the reaction been like? Or are you a student learning about it? What do you think?
When I first blogged it I was disappointed by the lack of critical reaction. Come on people, add to it, pick it apart, remix it! Comments please.
The third part of the results of my survey of blogging journalists looks at how blogging has affected how stories are researched.
As journalists move onto gathering information for a story, the scope of easily accessible sources is made broader by journalists’ involvement in blogs. Continue reading
It’s Blog Action Day .Here are 88 ways to do something about poverty now.
And if you’re in the Midlands, here’s an 89th: go to the Birmingham Social Media Surgery, to support voluntary and community groups in the city. Credit to Nick Booth for getting things going; credit to the Birmingham blog community for demonstrating once again what a fantastic bunch of people they are.
If you know a language other than English and would like to help Blog Action Day translation work, please email Easton at easton@blogactionday.org.
I’d love to know what you’re doing, blogger or not.
On Friday I’ll be presenting at the End of Journalism conference at the University of Bedfordshire. A really interesting range of papers, which I’ll try to Twitter/Qik/blog about. If you’re going to be around too, let me know in the comments.
The second part of the results of my survey of blogging journalists looks at how blogs have affected how journalists generate story ideas and leads.
Blogging's effect on story ideas by industry
For blogging journalists, blogs have disrupted the traditional processes of journalism in a number of ways.
Respondents spoke of a clearer perception of audience needs and interests as a result of comments and visitor statistics, which in turn fed into the choice of topics and angles to cover. Continue reading
Back in June I distributed an online survey to find out how journalists with blogs felt their work had been affected by the technology. 200 blogging journalists responded in total, from 30 different countries.
The responses paint an interesting picture: in generating ideas and leads, in gathering information, in news production and post-publication, and most of all in the relationship with the audience, the networked, iterative and conversational nature of the blog format is changing how many journalists work in a number of ways. Continue reading
Blogging cartoon in Romanian
A couple weeks ago I published the ‘5 Stages of a Blogger’s Life‘ cartoon, drawn by Alex Hughes. It was an experiment to test a theory of mine: that cartoons could be particularly successful in increasing news website visitor numbers, and that news organisations should be doing more with them.
The results? In one week that cartoon got over 40,000 hits, making it the most popular single post ever on the Online Journalism Blog . Continue reading
I’ve been speaking to news organisations’ community editors on the lessons they’ve learned from their time in the job. In the first of a sure to be irregular series, the Telegraph’s Shane Richmond:
Trinity Mirror have launched a ‘wiki for the North East’ as a result of an internal contest to bring out innovative ideas. Web developer Louise Midgley, from North-East division ncjmedia, received a cash prize and will receive future share of any profits from her idea: wikinortheast.co.uk “an online archive covering all aspects of the North-East region”. Continue reading
Philip Meyer, author of the Vanishing Newspaper, is at it again, making a compelling point for the role of investigative journalism and original research in newspapers’ survival:
One of the rules of thumb for coping with substitute technology is to narrow your focus to the area that is the least vulnerable to substitution. Michael Porter included it in his list of six strategies in his book “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.” The railroads survived the threat from trucks on Interstate highways and airlines by focusing on the one thing they could still do better: moving bulk cargo across long distances. Continue reading
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