Could the BBC be funded by a tax on web and mobile? In France President Sarkozy has just announced that, from next year,
“prime-time advertising on public television will be phased out, with the lost revenues to be replaced by taxes collected from internet, mobile phone and commercial broadcasting companies Continue reading
I’ve had an email about The Sky Young Journalist Awards which “aims to find and celebrate the very best journalist talent across online, television, radio and print.” Its aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds to report on local, national or international news stories that matter to them.
It sounds pretty worthy, so here’s the rest of the fluff: Continue reading
What should the BBC be doing with its news online? Here’s my call for your contributions. Please help spread the word by embedding this video yourself – and let me know where your video is in the comments.
Two approaches to reporting on war have crossed my virtual desk recently. First, a broadcast journalist at ITV News told me about their video blogs from Afghanistan – embedded below:
Second, Reuters send me a press release about ‘Bearing Witness, “a unique multimedia package and online documentary to mark 5 years of reporting war in Iraq”
Watch the video. Then, go to http://iraq.reuters.com/
Spot the difference? Continue reading
The Online Journalism Atlas continues, with Kristine Lowe looking at online journalism in Norway, where some newspapers make more money online than in print. Got any information about your own country’s online journalism? Add it here.
Norway is one of the most newspaper-reading in countries in the world, a fact also reflected in the country’s online media environment. In contrast to many other countries, Norwegians seem to prefer news-driven sites with journalistic content to all others.
Early adoption has put Norwegian online media at a great at advantage, some of the online players even earn good money. Continue reading
Following this week’s post about Archant’s experiences with geotagging, Andrew Williams looks at how the BBC is using the technology in its prototype hyperlocal web service.
The latest incarnation of the BBC’s troubled local television scheme could be up and running by the end of the year, it was revealed last week. Academics and journalists at the Broadcast News and the Active Citizen Conference at Leeds University were given a sneak preview of a prototype BBC hyper-local web service which makes extensive use of mapping and geotagging in order to allow the audience to access a range of multimedia content linked to a local area of their own choosing.
BBC Yorkshire’s Catherine Hearne, who gave the talk, said, “The idea is that, subject to approval, we will be offering 60 local sites across the UK, and it will transform the way that people can actively engage with their local broadcaster.” Continue reading
On Thursday I’ll be presenting my paper on wiki journalism at the Future of Newspapers conference in Cardiff. As previously reported, the full paper is available as a wiki online for anyone to add to or edit. You can also download a PDF of the ‘official’ version.
Based on a review of a number of case studies, and some literature on wikis, the paper proposes a taxonomy of wiki journalism, and outlines the opportunities and weaknesses of the form. The following is the edited highlights: Continue reading
The latest batch of statistics from the Center for Media Research includes some interesting findings on media consumption. Firstly: readers/viewers apparently have an A-level-essay approach to news: ‘compare and contrast’:
“respondents reported using many of those brands daily or, in the case of Internet news sites, many times a day. The reasons given for visiting a number of sources included “every news event has at least two sides,” to “get all the facts,” to “form my own opinion,” or to find specific types of content, such as local news.”
Secondly, the internet is the second “most useful” medium, after television – 8% ahead of newspapers.
There’s some cute categorisation of news consumers based on motivation: “citizen readers,” “news lovers,” and “digital cynics” make up a combined 75%, with the other quarter consisting of “traditionalists”, “headliners”, “uninvolved”, and “few main sources” (not quite so catchy, that one). Click the link for more pigeonholing.
“In an experiment in applying consumer-level social media tools to newsgathering, Teddler used his Blackberry to send 140-character text-message updates to the microblogging site Twitter and emailed pictures taken using the phone’s camera to the photo-sharing site Flickr.”
The experiment seems to be part of a growing trend among news organisations away from relying on in-house systems, and using freely available tools like Twitter (Guardian, etc.), Google Maps (BBC Berkshire), Facebook (Mail & Guardian, Sky), YouTube (The Mirror, BBC’s Ben Hammersley, etc.) and even WordPress (various local paper blogs). As Julian March,Sky.com’s editor, says: “The attraction is that a reporter can update his story or his page directly from his mobile phone without having to go through the CMS or someone who has access to the CMS back at base.”
It’s also part of the new “iterative” journalism – a journalism that is always “work in progress”, that conversation-not-lecture that Dan Gillmor identified. Seems those ideas are finally taking shape.
ITV News are to “air citizen reporters’ videos”, according to The Guardian. ‘Uploaded’ (oh dear.) will “allow members of the public to post video clips on the Uploaded website via mobile phone or webcam, responding to a daily “debate of the day” set by ITV News.”
Yep, it’s the old ‘charitable gesture’ approach to citizen journalism. ITV choose the topic, choose the responses, and, by the sounds of things, even choose the correspondents (“a national network of citizen correspondents,” says the article, which also mentions 100 people who have “signed up”).
ITV news editor, Deborah Turness is quoted as saying: “news has remained a one-way street in a two-way world.” But the two-way system of ‘Uploaded’ has one very large lane for ITV, and one very narrow one for its audience.
“Sometimes the media is guilty of underestimating the audience,” she continues. “People do have really interesting and relevant things to say and Uploaded will give us real diversity of opinion and experience.”
How diverse?
“The Uploaded segment within the news bulletins is likely to be about 60 seconds.”
Ah, that diverse. Great. Another citizen journalism ghetto.
So here’s my suggestion: Stop recycling old formats for new media. Stop treating the audience’s contribution like an ‘And Finally’ section. Start understanding how interactivity works: it’s about giving control to the user. Giving control over subject matter. Giving control over time. Giving control over ranking. I’m not suggesting getting rid of editorial roles entirely, but if you’re going to do something like this, for God’s sake do it properly.
I’m inclined to agree with Jeff Jarvis, who said of the CNN-YouTube election debate experiment:
TV doesn’t know how to have a conversation. TV knows how to perform. The event’s moderator, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, behaved almost apologetically about the intrusion of these real people, who speak without benefit of make-up.
‘Uploaded’ is not citizen journalism. It’s a vox pops without having to pay professional camerapeople.
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