Just to clarify: I have no objection to anyone having personal limits on the number of people they follow on Twitter – only imposing that on others. Here are some of the many reasons people set limits. I’d love to know yours. Continue reading
OK, I’ve had enough. That’s it. I’ve had enough of people suggesting we should all have limits on the number of people followed on Twitter. The tweet that did it? Peter King, who suggested “Twitter should cap how many people you can follow at 10% of the # of people following you. Put a premium on the # you follow.” and “Twitter needs to be a place for leaders to lead. Otherwise we’ll cancel each other out.”
Yeah, that’s what we need: more leaders. And forcing people to broadcast to an audience before they can listen to anyone.
Many people have a ‘quality not quantity’ strategy with Twitter where they restrict themselves to following a certain number of Twitterers. But by using certain tools and adopting a certain mindset, I think you can have both quality and quantity. So here’s how I ‘follow’ 2,500 people on Twitter: Continue reading
Charles Arthur of The Guardian makes his point pretty plain: “If I had one piece of advice to a journalist starting out now, it would be: learn to code”
“Let’s be clear that I’m not saying “code” as in “get deep into C++ or Java” … I mean it in the sense of having a nodding acquaintance with methods of programming, and perhaps a few languages, so that when something comes along where you’ll need, say, to transform data from one form to another, you can. Or where you need to make your own life easier by automating some process or other.
” … None of which is saying you shouldn’t be talking to your sources, and questioning what you’re told, and trying to find other means of finding stuff out from people. But nowadays, computers are a sort of primary source too. You’ve got to learn to interrogate them effectively – and quote them meaningfully – too.”
This happened last November but is timeless stuff: Douglas Rushkoff speaking. Full video is below but here are some choice quotes: Continue reading
Gather round, gather round for this month’s Carnival of Journalism, which addresses the timely question of ‘How do you financially support journalism online?’. I’ll be updating this post as the carnival performers put on their outsized business heads and add their peacock-like contributions.
The following is a comment I posted on Standupkid’s Localtvnews blog, a response to the David Carr NYT column ‘Let’s invent an iTunes for News’. The comment ended up being so lengthy I thought I’d better reproduce it here:
The whole iTunes idea is flawed on so many levels: mainly as people are willing to pay for music because they play it over and over again. News is disposable. Also, an individual piece of music tends to be unique – but when an earthquake happens, it’s not like the only way you can find out what happens is by paying a dollar to download the article about it. Put another way, how much effort does it take to compose, rehearse and record a track? Now how much time does it take a journalist to write a standard article? Very little journalism has value approaching that of music and yes, perhaps we’d pay for it, but how would we find it? And how could we produce it often enough to be viable? (Note that most musicians do not make a living from their music – would an iTunes for news mean the same for journalists?). Continue reading
The latest in this series comes from Lindsay Bruce, Community Editor at the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette
Without a great deal of prior knowledge of blogging and life online I had assumed wrongly that users of online communities were very much a sub-culture, using language and concepts I would not understand.
My friend talks ‘at me’ about outdated Java script – I feared it would be a similar scenario.
But this has proven not to be the case. The online communities I represent are filled and fuelled by people from all walks of life, with varying degrees of IT knowledge and experience.
No two bloggers can be categorised in the same way and no two contributors post information on exactly the same subjects.
The users, therefore, have forged themselves into a new counter culture, using what technology is available to them to promote themselves, provide information and diary their lives.
They are defined by their passion for their geographical communities not their abilities with online media.
They fly in the face of any computer / internet stereotypes – where else would you find a WWII Veteran alongside a mum cataloguing the challenges of life with a special needs chid?
The online community permeates all demographics of society – the faceless blogger could be anyone from anywhere – united with other community users by his membership of the online community for his postcode area.
The nuggets of information gleamed from the community sites to some may seem insignificant.
Who would want to read that there are roadworks in Middlesbrough when you live in Stockton?
The answer is simple, and pivotal to the success of the online communities; someone cares, so we do too.
But more than that, as a journalist myself, I would have cut off my arm in my early days in search of a splash, to have access to a ‘virtual patch’.
Each contributor acts as a key, opening the door to the community they represent. What they know, and share online, is valuable, worthwhile and should be treated as such by people like me who interact with bloggers.
What takes a seasoned writer 10 minutes to knock out can take a new blogger an evening, or even a whole day. I personally make it a point to thank the bloggers and email them regularly to encourage them and assert the worth of their contributions.
As a blogger myself, for my church, I can personally vouch for the unimaginable amount of publicity at my disposal when I upload information, post videos and podcast on our community websites.
People who favour the web over the traditional evening newspaper can view and comment on all aspects of church life. We reach people with our ‘message’ in a way we could not through the paper.
But likewise, the online community provides a new way for the print product to remain relevant and also reach a new generation.
Currently we are pioneering our work with youth bloggers.
These 16-19s, known to have little or no interaction with their local newspaper, are signing up every day to offer their opinions, review gigs, diary events and most importantly, inform us and discuss local news issues.
The Gazette to them is something they now have ownership of.
We have given them a platform and now have a growing number of young adults with an affiliation to the Gazette and a belief in its worth.
The following is a presentation I made to journalists in Kiev about new media business models for news. Most of the detail you can find in part 5 of the Model for a 21st Century Newsroom. You can also find links to the statistics about advertising here and here; and more links about business models here.
Before the year ends please allow me to publicly congratulate Azeem Ahmad on winning the Birmingham City University ‘Student Online Journalist of the Year’ award, sponsored by Trinity Mirror.
Azeem graduated this year from the journalism degree. For his final year project he worked as the Web Editor for ENO (Environmental News Online), along with Editor Rachael Wilson.
Azeem built the site from scratch using open source content management system Joomla, a raft of plugins, and even survived a hacker attack. But more importantly, he has probably grasped the workings of a networked environment better than any other student, using Twitter particularly effectively, building RSS mashups, learning about search engine optimisation, and exploring the vagaries of online communities. With Rachael he managed a team of second year journalism students as they learned online journalism on the job – the first time I’d tried such a model, which seemed to work very well.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Azeem’s blog entries and seeing the problems he faced in building and maintaining the site both technically and editorially. But, unsurprisingly in the current environment, Azeem has not yet landed a permanent journalism job and so is not blogging as often these days. I’m hoping that changes in ’09. Good luck, Azeem.
Online Journalism Blog 