Visual storytelling and data visualisation – a Storify of News Rewired
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Category Archives: blogs
Live Blogs outperform other online news formats by up to 300%
Comparison of time spent on a selection of Live Blogs, articles, and picture galleries at Guardian.co.uk, March to May 2011
In a guest post for OJB, Neil Thurman highlights a new research report that suggests that Live Blogs outperform other online news formats by up to 300% and are seen by readers as more transparent, trusted, and ‘factual’ than conventional online news stories.
Cross-post: Why I started self-publishing
The following was written for three:d, the newsletter of MeCCSA, the Media Communications and Cultural Studies Association (PDF, page 9).
Something has happened to self-publishing over the past few years. No longer the last resort for local historians and wannabe poets, it is now a sign of entrepreneurial spirit, an alternative to the limitations of attention-starved journalism, and a way of kicking against the pricks of mainstream publishing. Self-published books have almost tripled in number over the last five years, with a number of authors making the bestseller lists. More than one in ten ebooks bought by UK readers is now self-published.
This year I finally joined that group, as I made a long-planned move away from writing for traditional publishers towards publishing my own ebooks. In fact, I published three. So what’s the appeal? Continue reading
Jon Bounds: Why I’m giving up Birmingham: It’s Not Shit
Jon Bounds is one of Birmingham’s most established and best-known bloggers. In this guest post, cross-posted from his own blog, he explains why he’s auctioning off that site, the reasons he started it in the first place, and the problems with the ‘hyperlocal question’.
I started Birmingham: It’s Not Shit back in the May of 2002, before there were really such things as blogs in the mainstream and the term ‘hyperlocal’ was not even a glint in an irritating theorist’s eye.
Pretty much everything that’s ever been on it, and definitely everything technical was written or created by me. I’ve had a couple of ‘columnists’ for short whiles and a couple of bits of ‘holiday cover’ but that’s all.
The site was flat, hand coded HTML until I learned of PHP and wrote a simple news updating section. Later I discovered that there wasn’t only a name for such things but software out there to do it more prettily and better.
And now it, or sites like it, are either the future of the media or a disappointment to those that thought they should be.
But, it didn’t start because the media was dying, it started because the media was crap: crap at explaining why people connected emotionally with a place that—when looked at objectively—was a bit shit. Crap at self awareness, crap at understanding real life. The media has changed a little, but mostly the contents have just shifted in transit. Continue reading
A case study in following a field online: setting up feeds on CCGs
Over at Help Me Investigate Health I’ve just published a bunch of 20 places to keep up to date with clinical commissioning. It’s an example of something I’ve written about previously – setting up an online network infrastructure as a journalist. And below, I explain the process behind it:
Following CCGs across local newspapers and blogs
If you’re going to start scrutinising a field, it’s very useful to be kept up to date with developments in that field:
- Concerns raised in one local newspaper may be checked elsewhere;
- Specialist magazines may provide guides to jargon or processes that helps save you a lot of time;
- Politicians might raise concerns and get answers;
- And expert bloggers can provide leads and questions that you might want to follow up.
Rather than checking a list of websites on the off chance that one has been updated, a much more efficient way to keep up to date on what’s happening is to use a free RSS reader. Continue reading
Hyperlocal Voices: Simon Pipe, St Helena Online
After a short summer break, our Hyperlocal Voices series returns. In this issue we visit the tiny island South Atlantic island of Saint Helena. Perhaps best known for being the home of an exiled Napoleon, it is frequently described as one of the world’s most isolated islands. At just 10 x 5 miles, and with a population of 4,255 people, Simon Pipe’s St Helena Online, offered Damian Radcliffe an insight into a very different type of hyperlocal site. Continue reading
Get involved in a new HMI project: investigating CCGs
This year a collection of new groups will be given responsibility for £60bn of public health spending in England. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).
It’s a journalism basic to ‘follow the money’, but with over 200 of these groups and very few health journalists in the UK there’s an opportunity for student journalists and concerned citizens to play a key role in understanding what CCGs do – and scrutinising their activities.
There are a number of potential avenues to explore, from concerns about potential conflicts of interest in the new arrangements, to issues of accountability, whistleblowing, and efficiency.
In partnership with news organisations, we’re building a network of journalists, students and citizens to start pulling together information, exchanging tips and leads, and pursuing questions in the public interest.
If you want to get involved, contact me on paul@helpmeinvestigate.com or add your name via the form here.
*image from the BBC
Hyperlocal Voices: Matt Brown, Londonist
The fifth in our new series of Hyperlocal Voices explores the work done by the team behind the Londonist. Despite having a large geographic footprint – Londonist covers the whole of Greater London – the site is full of ultra-local content, as well as featuring stories and themes which span the whole of the capital.
Run by two members of staff and a raft of volunteers, Editor Matt Brown gave Damian Radcliffe an insight into the breadth and depth of the site. Continue reading
Two reasons why every journalist should know about scraping (cross-posted)
This was originally published on Journalism.co.uk – cross-posted here for convenience.
Journalists rely on two sources of competitive advantage: being able to work faster than others, and being able to get more information than others. For both of these reasons, I love scraping: it is both a great time-saver, and a great source of stories no one else has. Continue reading
How do you navigate a liveblog? The Guardian’s Second Screen solution
I’ve been using The Guardian’s clever Second Screen webpage-slash-app during much of the Olympics. It is, frankly, a little too clever for its own good, requiring a certain learning curve to understand its full functionality.
But one particular element has really caught my eye: the Twitter activity histogram.
In the diagram below – presented to users before they use Second Screen – this histogram is highlighted in the upper left corner.
What the histogram provides is an instant visual cue to help in hunting down key events.
Online Journalism Blog 