Category Archives: newspapers

US election coverage – who’s making the most of the web?

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Elections bring out the best in online journalism. News organisations have plenty of time to plan, there’s a global audience up for grabs, and the material lends itself to interactive treatment (voter opinions; candidates’ stances on various issues; statistics and databases; constant updates; personalisation).

Not only that, but the electorate is using the internet for election news more than any other medium apart from television (and here are some reasons why).

PaidContent has a good roundup of various UK editors’ views, and decides blogs, Twitter and data are the themes (more specifically, liveblogging and mapping). Continue reading →

Wiki journalism comes to the UK

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http://www.wiki-north-east.co.uk/
 
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 →

It’s time to relieve the stress of RSS. Newspapers, make your own readers!

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(This entry was originally posted by Dave Lee on jBlog)

A few days ago on this blog, Paul Bradshaw wrote what he called one of the most important posts he’s ever made. Here it is.

In it he describes how the era of the awkward, socially backward geek is nearly behind us. They’re not geeks, he says, they’re early adopters. And you’d better listen to them if you want to stay a step ahead of the game. Continue reading →

News and the maturation of the comic form

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Following the Liverpool Post’s imaginative use of comics in its coverage of the 50-foot, 37-tonne mechanical spider La Princess, Toronto’s Globe and Mail has this great graphic explanation of the financial crisis:

Financial crisis cartoon (Toronto’s The Globe and Mail)

Financial crisis cartoon (Toronto’s The Globe and Mail)

Here’s the Post’s graphic novel insert cover if you’re interested…

Liverpool Daily Post - Spider comic

Liverpool Daily Post - Spider comic

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Reasons not to ignore comments #2: The Daily Mail and Julie Moult

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UPDATE: A response from the Daily Mail’s Martin Clarke: “comments on the article in question were not published, because the story was already a few days old … If you want to complain about a story some days after it’s published you have to take a more traditional view of things and write to the editor”

I’ve blogged before about the problem with ignoring comments. But recently “marketing man gone native” blog Bloggerheads has been providing a rather stronger case.

Julie Moult is a journalist who wrote a particularly poorly informed non-story for the Daily Mail about UK MP Hazel Blears being Googlebombed (in short, Blears wasn’t Googlebombed at all: the top result for her name just happened to be a humorous image). Continue reading →

Cartoons online – what are news organisations doing? (guest post)

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In a guest post for the OJB, The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation give an overview of how news organisations are treating cartoons online.

Cartoons have long been an essential part of British newspapers, so why do so many of those publications fail to do justice to drawn content on their websites?

The digital display of the web is a visual medium and cartoons and illustrations thrive on it. Yet many newsprint employers have not been quick to develop the advantages that drawn imagery offers as a digital communication tool and as existing sticky content for their sites and products. Continue reading →

Mashups at the Liverpool Post: Yahoo Pipes for fashionistas

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It’s nice when you host some training and something of use comes out of it. Alison Gow, who recently attended my Social Media for Breaking News training, has used it to build a Yahoo Pipe. It “filters all the latest news, photos and quality blog posts from the world of Fashion for the Girls Behaving Stylishly team to place on their blog as a widget, and to help them spot trends quickly without having to trawl the web.”

Her post is worth reading if you’re interested in doing it yourself, littered as it is with useful red arrow-laden screengrabs.

MNA joins the rush to mobile news sites

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The Midlands News Association is the latest publisher to embrace the mobile web with mobile-friendly sites for the Express & Star and Shropshire Star. The sites were built by the Midland News Association’s online arm MNA Digital with mobile technology partner Wapple, based in Bromsgrove. Particularly impressive is how easy it is for users to make comments – normally one of the most difficult acts when viewing on a mobile.

The move comes barely a week after The Telegraph also (re)launched its mobile version, while Trinity Mirror has announced its plans to take 14 of its newspapers mobile in the next few months.

Mobile Computer has a good overview of the various national mobile services,

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Which mobile internet services do Flemish newspapers offer?

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Dorien Aerts takes a look at Flemish newspapers’ mobile efforts.

What kind of mobile internet services do newspapers in Flanders offer? Since the launch of the iPhone in Belgium a few weeks ago, the mobile internet has become a hot topic. It has ‘a face’ since then, and more and more people want to try it out. Here’s what’s being done…

  • De Standaard (publisher: Corelio)

One of Belgium’s quality papers, De Standaard has offered a mobile website to its readers since the 16th of June via m.standaard.be.

The service contains all kinds of news, from sports and politics to celebrity updates. Apart from that, the mobile website offers the weather forecast and up to date traffic information. Continue reading →

Did The Guardian miss a viral opportunity with their Ultimate Summer Pop Quiz?

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summer pop quiz

Last Friday the Guardian published it’s ‘Ultimate Summer Pop Quiz’ – a typically original take on the pop quiz format with a gloriously, insanely difficult set of over 100 questions such as “The opening lines of which post-punk song were inspired by the above passage from Notes From the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky?”

Having only managed 31 answers (and 24 guesses) over the weekend, I took to the web on Monday to see who else was doing it – and if it was on the web so I could send it to friends. Continue reading →