Category Archives: online journalism

Media website editors network site – a plug

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“Online resource and discussion area for media website editors” the Digital Editors Network gets a plug in the latest Press Gazette letters page. It’s pretty quiet at the moment, both in terms of posts and comments, and it’s not clear whether media website editors have been invited to post to the site, or only comment (I’m guessing the latter). As word gets around (and I hope I’m helping here) it may be one to watch, particularly with regard to Johnston Press.

Express relaunches online, Star to follow

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Express website 19 April 07Journalism.co.uk reports on the relaunch of the Express, with the Daily Star to follow, including:

  • “unique content and an archive which allows readers to search past stories and the community areas of the site.
  • “a string of blogs from its Sunday and Daily journalists.
  • “MYExpress facility that enables users to have their own space on the site. This area can be to personalised by filtering some content, such as weather and horoscopes, and uploading pictures. It will also be possible for users to browse through other users’ profiles.”
  • And “a deal had been done with a video supplier and that video and podcasts would be added to the mix in the coming weeks once the initial launch was completed.”

Sounds pretty good for a Desmond-owned publication (not difficult, admittedly), although in reality it’s a website that looks like it was created by someone who was once told what this web 2.0 thing is all about, but wasn’t really listening. Or, in other words, new media through an old media hack’s eyes.

The blogs are basically opinion columns (no links), I can’t find the “community areas”, and of course there’s no video yet. MYExpress is the most impressive – I can imagine Express readers too dazzled by MySpace social networking away with other Disgusteds, although there’s not much to it apart from a blogging service, personalised homepage and ability to search other profiles. Oh, and the online journalists are ghettoised in a separate team.

Anyway, welcome to the 21st century, Express.

Students revel in video

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Last week I had the tall task of introducing students to online video in barely three hours. Thankfully they were thoroughly engaged in the subject – particularly enjoying the examples I showed (most of them in my previous post on four types of video journalism.

In order to get them using the editing software (rather than Avid I picked something free that anyone can download – Windows Movie Maker) I sent them out to record video diaries for their blogs, with the emphasis on movement, personality, and mise en scene.

The draft results indicated they’d got the idea. I’m waiting to see the finished versions but below is Felicity’s reflections on being Communities Correspondent (Polish & Jewish), which is nice and breezy for 20 mins’ work and shows good use of movement (if not great audio at the start):

Trinity Mirror to revamp local websites

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Liverpool Echo April 19 07According to Holdthefrontpage.co.uk Trinity Mirror is to upgrade its sites with “breaking news, video, audio, blogs and user-generated content.”

This includes a training programme with “a series of week-long video journalism courses and a series of one-day multimedia workshops, which will be attended by more than 70 journalists in the North West region before being rolled out across the division.”

Herald-Tribune shows the way for Flash and database journalism

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I’m still scooping my jaw from the floor after looking at the Herald-Tribune’s Flash interactive on how complaints about teachers are handled. Not only does this use Flash cleverly – particularly to illustrate the complex process through which complaints go (now try doing that in print), along with audio clips – but it’s integrated with a database so you can search by district and school, keyword, or even map, a great example of database-driven journalism. From Journalistopia:

“It took the Herald-Tribune 14 months and repeated threats of legal action to obtain the database under Florida’s public records law.

“Even then, some information turned out to be so inaccurate that the Herald-Tribune decided to create its own version, reviewing 30,000 pages of administrative documents to build a database […]”

Inspirational.

BBC, UGC and online video

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Some insights into the workings of the BBC, UGC and online video from Shane Richmond’s latest post:

“At a time when most newspapers, including this one, are trying to encourage user participation and comments on their sites, the BBC is questioning the need to host those conversations.

“Instead they’re linking their content out to the likes of YouTube, Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Encourage the conversation but let it happen elsewhere.

“The burden of moderation is simply too great. Like us, the BBC moderates comments received from readers, mostly for legal reasons, but as Tom pointed out: “What we call moderation, readers call censorship.”

“The more successful you are at attracting reader responses, he explained, the bigger the problem gets.”

Also:

“One week in November last year, the BBC news site published around 500 pieces of video.

“Analysing the traffic for those clips later, they found that just 30 of them accounted for about half the traffic. They have learned some lessons about what type of video clips work online but mostly they learned to focus on doing less better.”