Category Archives: online journalism

USATODAY.com relaunches

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USA TOday April 19 07USATODAY.com has relaunched with, reportedly, more prominent user generated content:

MediaPost reports: “The revamped site, which went live Saturday, enables reader comments on each story and solicits users’ input in the form of photos and movie reviews. USA Today also is aping Digg, the new Netscape and other social news sites that allow readers to determine which stories are most important.”

Editor & Publisher explains: The site has incorporated technology developed by Pluck Corporation to “create a community around the news,” according to a release. Using the new features, users can see other news sources directly on the USA Today site; see others readers’ reactions to stories; recommend content and comments to each other; interact using comments and in public forums, upload digital photographs to the site; write arts and culture reviews of their own; and interact more with the newspaper’s staff.”

There certainly is a lot of UGC there – but the front page would benefit from being slimmed down from the whacking great five pages you have to scroll down (usability expert Jakob Nielsen says three Page Downs should be the maximum) – the best stuff takes two Page Downs to get to – photo galleries, video, blogs, and interactive graphics.

You can also read USA Today’s own blog post on the relaunch.

UPDATE (Apr 16 2007): The relaunch has been quite a success, as IIN reports “a dramatic 380% increase in registrations. Readers are also spending more time per visit on the site.”

Online Journalism students go live

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My class of 16 online journalism students have been posting to a live news website – the originally-named UCE news – covering West Midlands stories. Each student has been given a ‘correspondent’ role, so for instance there is a transport correspondent, politics correspondent, education, health, sport, fashion, music, and so on.

In addition, each student is supposed to maintain a ‘correspondent’s blog’ commenting on what they’re doing.

After a slow start the students seem to be posting articles pretty regularly, with some particularly prolific contributors (the sports correspondent posted six articles on Friday alone – mainly as the Birmingham-hosted European Championships was drawing to a close). I’ve been impressed with some of the online research techniques of some of the students too – for example Todd Nash’s article on speed cameras which came from a policeman’s blog, and Rachael Wilson’s piece on risks highlighted by an ambulance worker blogger. Todd may also have scooped the Birmingham Mail by spotting a story about illegal goods on their own forum – a search of their own site suggests they didn’t spot it themselves.

The quality of the blogs is mixed, but top of the pile is Charlotte Dunckley’s blog as music correspondent. Charlotte is recording her progress with lots of links and reflection on her role. Felicity Drinkwater is doing a similar job with her blog, as is Todd Nash. Jessica James’ blog, meanwhile, is a good example of journalistic transparency.

If you can take a look at either the site or the blogs and post some comments to the students, or to this post, that would be grand. Some still don’t seem to realise their work is on show for the world to see…

Note: the Interactive section has no entries yet for this year as the students won’t be producing those for another 8 weeks or so (although it may feature audio or video as they begin working with that).

More TV stations incorporate CJ video – as long as it attracts advertising

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Given my comments yesterday about the motivations behind online video, it’s interesting to see a piece in Broadcasting & Cable about a similar move with citizen journalism video:

“Starting this week, television stations owned by Fisher Communications, Journal Broadcast Group and Granite Broadcasting will join the ranks of MSNBC, Reuters and The Weather Channel by inviting “citizen journalists” to produce anything from online news footage to complete reports. The coverage could find its way onto local news broadcasts as well.”

But here’s the interesting bit:

“This is a revenue-driving initiative,” says Timur Yarnall, president/CEO of Broadcast Interactive. “If the video is not suitable to have advertising or is copyrighted material, it is not going up.”

Better make sure those starving orphans are sponsored by Nike, then…

Integrated multimedia newsroom helps FT make more money

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Wasn’t that the point? Anyway, here’s a perspective from America (Poynter). I’ve previously said that the trend for newspapers to adopt online video was not about journalism but about advertisers – some support for that comes from CEO John Ridding:

“We’re getting access to budget we didn’t have before with online video. We are beginning to tap into TV budgets. There are some big opportunities there if we get it right.”

UPDATE: You can read Ridding talking to Roy Greenslade about “substantial” investment in digital innovations and this being “the year of ft.com” at MediaGuardian.

Best of the journalism blogs (and creating RSS feeds of RSS feeds)

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Journalism.co.uk has set up a page pulling feeds from what they consider the ‘Best of the journalism blogs‘. Well, I’m one of them so I’m not going to argue with that. There’s an RSS feed as well, which would save you having to subscribe to the RSS feeds of all 15 blogs individually.

You can actually create a similar service on Wikio. Although the site has the occasional bug (like post summaries appearing in French), once you’ve subscribed to a number of RSS feeds a ‘subscribe’ button appears (top right) with a link to an RSS feed of all your feeds. The RSS feed combining all of the RSS feeds I subscribe to, for instance, is at http://rss.wikio.com/mywikio.rss?my=24124 (you’ll note a large amount of overlap with the Journalism.co.uk feed).

And if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can create something even more complex using Yahoo! Pipes (there’s a review in the printed version of today’s Press Gazette by Martin Stabe… yes, he’s also in the ‘Best Journalism Blogs’ list. And on that circular note…).

Online journalism documentary – and why video blogging is ‘a good thing’

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PBS have been doing a TV series called “News War: What’s Happening to the News”, which is a comprehensive history of journalism in the US. Of interest to us OJ types, however, are parts 19 and 20, ‘The New Universe of Online  Media’, and ‘The Revolution’s New Synergies’ which are available to watch on this page.

‘The New Universe of New Media’ features interviews with the team behind online TV news service Rocketboom, the founder of massively successful blog the Daily Kos, and Jeff Jarvis, as well as stuff about important events like the Trent Lott story (kept alive by bloggers) and Rathergate (a documentary’s veracity being questioned by bloggers).

‘The Revolution’s New Synergies’ is about how mainstream media have incorporated new media forms like blogs, and taken up leads through new media.

Bill Cammack gives a more thorough overview of the series, and the accusations that blogs lack original material, from a videoblogging perspective:

“With video blogs, I think [the lack of original reporting] is much less true. Granted, there are video blogs that are really videotaped versions of text blogs. Instead of typing the information they got from search engines, people sit in front of a video camera or webcam and talk about it. Not much difference from text blogs there in terms of lack of originality. ANYONE could do it who chooses to use a search engine to look up their chosen topic. What I’m talking about is the ability to show someone, anyone… somewhere, ANYWHERE (that has a viable internet connecton) something that they otherwise would not have been able to see. I don’t see any way that anyone could deny that visual and audio documentation of something that happened can be AS relevant and important, if not MORE SO than a shot, produced, scripted and edited news piece, such as the Frontline piece I’m currently commenting on.”

In other words, the very fact that you are filming video – assuming it is not of you talking – means you are creating original content. This is probably the most persuasive argument I’ve heard for bloggers taking up their video cameras and audio recorders – it (hopefully) forces you to leave the desk, and find material. Of course, it will not be searchable, and it will be harder for someone to scan. So it had better be good.

Five reasons for audio journalism: actuality, debate, emotion, background, podcast

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I’ve been grappling further with the issue of audio journalism and podcasting, and discussing the issue with ‘ podcasting expert’ Andrew Dubber. What is beginning to emerge from our discussions (audio versions in full below) includes the idea that audio does three things particularly well:

  • Actuality – the feeling of being there
  • Debate – the opportunity to interject, the tone of voice, another level
  • Emotion – the tone of the voice communicating more than words alone

What’s more, if the purpose of journalism is to convey what is happening, argues Dubber, then audio becomes a primary way of making your audience face the story.

There are other advantages to audio. It’s easier to edit than video – “it’s linear”. It’s less intrusive than a video camera if you want to record events.

Then we come across a fourth thing that audio can do well –

  • Providing background – in other words, next to an edited text interview the journalist can post the interview in full (what is sometimes called ‘wild footage’) much more quickly than if they were to transcribe the whole thing.

So here’s a question: should the online journalist just take a video camera with a view to only taking the audio track? “If you carry around a hammer everything’s going to look like a nail,” Dubber says – you run the risk of overlooking the audio in your search for images.

The fifth use of audio is really about distribution:

  • Podcasting. It’s about convenience – time shifting, people not having to visit your website.

But it’s also how the podcaster imagines their audience, about intimacy – “not announcement but conversation”. We should be thinking about the medium when we produce content, rather than producing content (e.g. newspaper news) which we stuff into different sized tubes.

So here’s some ideas: environment is important. The sound of heavy machinery behind an interview with a factory worker, for instance, or of field wildlife for a story about GM crops.

Leave the office, forget about the studio, and go out to record your podcast – ‘the sound of stuff happening’

Podcast #1: audio journalism (http://www.zshare.net/audio/dubber01_audiojourno-mp3.html)

Podcast #2: wild footage (http://www.zshare.net/audio/dubber02_wildfootage-mp3.html)

Podcast #3: podcasting (http://www.zshare.net/audio/dubber03_podcasting-mp3.html)

Let the Daily Mail know you care about comment integrity

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It seems the Daily Mail aren’t keen on criticism. According to Martin Belam, his comment posted on a Daily Mail story, ‘ Suicide generation: five-year-olds calling helpline‘, was edited to remove a line criticising the paper’s reporting:

The published comment reads:

“If you actually read the report ChildLine issued, it does not say that suicidal five year olds called ChildLine. It says that there were 42 phone calls by children between the ages of 5 AND 11. The other 96% of suicidal calls were by children 12 and over – which whilst it is still very sad.
– Martin Belam, Salzburg, Austria”

As Martin points out, he “appears to trail off mid-sentence. What I actually submitted was:

“The other 96% of suicidal calls were by children 12 and over – which whilst it is still very sad is nowhere near the picture of suicidal 5 year olds portrayed in this article.”

This is cowardly, against the spirit in which comments are invited, and I can’t think of any excuse the Mail can give. Space isn’t an issue here, nor is offensiveness or even grammar. If their only reason is to protect the ‘good name’ of their paper, they’ve scored a big own goal – as censoring commenters will create more bad publicity than any comment itself would. And that starts here – I invite you to go to the story and post a comment of your own criticising their comment ‘moderation‘. Will they publish them?

Create an RSS feed for your site (or others)

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A colleague has introduced me to FeedYes, a service that will create an RSS feed for your site, or indeed for sites you wish had one. Very useful for people running an indie news service who don’t have the time to get to grips with XML.

Clarification: this service is most useful for sites with no RSS or XML component at all. If you run a blog, for instance, most blog services include XML feeds by default, so you shouldn’t need this.

3 types of blog: closed, conduit and participant in the conversation

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An interesting model from Robin Hamman on different types of blog.

  • The ‘closed’ blog is your typical family/holiday/baby blog, aimed at a close circle of people;
  • the ‘conduit’ blog is the type of blog that people create when they really need a website – a repository of information for a limited audience;
  • The ‘participant’ blog is more complex. These “are connectors of ideas and people, but also of conversations that flow between them. Blogs of this sort have an audience potentially as big as the numbers actively engaged in the conversation.” I’m guessing that this blog is one of those

A commenter wants to add diary blogs – though these may fit in ‘closed’ or ‘participant’. I’d like to add the organisational news blog, though I suspect this would fit under ‘conduit’.

A nice model, though.