Category Archives: twitter

Twitter shovelware and other microblogging experiments

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This post is part of a ‘blog carnival’. Read more at CarnivalOfJournalism.com. The story so far (in updates of 140 characters or less):

  1. I set up a Twitter account, toy with it for a few minutes, then ignore it.
  2. Months later, I return to my Twitter account to cover the Future of Newspapers conference – a perfect use for the technology.
  3. Following a tip from Martin Stabe, I use Twitterfeed to push my blog’s posts – and, equally importantly, comments – to my Twitter page, in the process probably doubling the total amount of ‘tweets’ overnight.
  4. At the same time, Martin comes at it from a different angle, and pushes his Twitter posts to his blog.
  5. Realise I am guilty of ‘Twitter-shovelware’
  6. Feel privately chuffed at inventing the phrase ‘Twitter-shovelware‘
  7. Think of a better use for Twitterfeed, and create a new Twitter account for my del.icio.us bookmarks tagged ‘onlinejournalism’. It already has an RSS feed, but feeding it to Twitter allows people to receive it on their mobiles or as a ‘river’ on their Twitter page.
  8. Realise I will probably annoy people who have to delete ten texts every day I do some bookmarking.
  9. Getting even more carried away, I realise I can also use Twitterfeed to create an aggregation of the 70+ online journalism-related RSS feeds I subscribe to.
  10. Decide to use Yahoo! Pipes as part of this, which has been on my ‘To Do’ list since May.
  11. Discover that Yahoo! Pipes not only generates an RSS feed, but also options for mobile and email alerts.
  12. But the process of setting up those alerts is not as usable as Twitter, so set up the Twitter ojblogaggregator account anyway (there are only around 20 feeds included so far, but will continue to add more as I iron out bugs).
  13. Also discover three other ‘online journalism’ Pipes, one of which has been created by a former student. Feel proud.
  14. Then realise he never finished it. Feel proud regardless.
  15. Also realise I can use ‘View Source’ to build on the work of the other OJ aggregator – and that anyone can do the same to build on mine.
  16. Result!

Three lessons about Twitter/microblogging

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Amy Gahran is learning about microblogging the Total Community Coverage in Cyberspace (some interesting reflections – well worth reading), which gave me a perfect reminder to finally publish a post I wrote in draft form a month or so back. So, for what it’s worth, here are three lessons I’ve learned about Twittering:

  1. Keep to a niche. If blogs are about niches, microblogging is about microniches. If you’re expecting people to put up with constant updates it’s got to be very specific. So, think Madeleine McCann, not ‘news headlines‘.
  2. Link to mobile-friendly pages if you can. When I get my Twitter updates from Press Gazette on my mobile phone and ‘click’ on the link, I get a very large designed-for-the-monitor page that I have to scroll down and across to read. I long ago stopped clicking on those links. If you’re giving tasters of your stories to people who may be viewing on their phones, you’re going to frustrate them if the full linked-to versions don’t use liquid designs or mobile stylesheets.
  3. Be part of the conversation. Martin Stabe has 114 followers; the publication he writes for has 66. Maybe it’s because Martin follows 92 other twitterers, whereas his publication (yes, Press Gazette again) only follows two (both members of staff).

Blogs and investigative journalism: publishing

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Part four of this draft book chapter looks at how blogs have changed the publishing of journalism through its possibilities for transparency, potential permanence over time, limitless space, and digital distribution systems (part one is here; part two here; part three here) . I would welcome any corrections, extra information or comments.

Publishing

Traditionally, news has always been subject to the pressures of time and space. Today’s news is tomorrow’s proverbial ‘fish and chip paper’ – news is required to be ‘new’; stories “have a 24 hour audition on the news stage, and if they don’t catch fire in that 24 hours, there’s no second chance” (Rosen, 2004). At the same time, part of the craft of journalism in the 20th century has been the ability to distil a complex story into a particular word count or time slot, while a talent of editors is their judgement in allocating space based on the pressures of the day’s competing stories.

In the 21st century, however, new media technologies have begun to challenge the limitations of time and space that defined the news media in the 20th. Continue reading →

California wildfires: a roundup

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How do you react to a local disaster in the new media age?

Martin Stabe:

San Diego TV station News 8 … has responded to the crisis on its patch by taking down its entire regular web site and replacing it with a rolling news blog, linking to YouTube videos of its key reports (including Himmel’s), plus Google Maps showing the location of the fire. Continue reading →

A Brazilian online journalism student writes… (Q&A)

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Brazilian online journalism student Gabriela Zago has emailed me a number of questions about wikis and OJ. Here are my responses (the links are mine):

Q. How did you came up with the idea of writing an article about wiki journalism in a wiki format? Has the text received any more changes and contributions after the version presented at the Future of Newspapers Conference [PDF]?

A: Last year Shane Richmond wrote a post on his blog in reaction to another post by Bambi Francisco. I wrote a post asking ‘are wikis the new blogs’ which was then written up into an article for Press Gazette. When the conference called for papers I thought it would be an interesting issue to explore further. I suppose this is an example of iterative journalism in action. Posting it as a wiki was an obvious way to experiment with the format (I also created a Wikipedia entry for ‘wiki journalism’). Neither have had any changes since the conference. Continue reading →