Last chance to book a place on Citizen Journalism 2007

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[Keyword: , , , ]. If you want to listen to the BBC’s Head of Interactivity Vicky Taylor, best-selling blogger Tom Reynolds and Trinity Mirror’s Head of Multimedia Michael Hill, you’d better get a move on: booking closes tomorrow for the Citizen Journalism 2007 conference in Birmingham on January 26.

You can book online at MediaSkills.org’s page on the Citizen Journalism conference which will take place next Friday (January 26).

Hope to see you there.

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

CNET, journalists and the whole social net thing

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[Keyword: , ]. OK, this is getting eerie. Or perhaps my presentation at the AJE conference in Huddersfield on Friday just happens to take in too many things, but also on my list of Things To Talk About is the vague term of ‘social media’. Hey presto, Jemima Kiss writes a thorough piece on the subject at CommentUnlimited following a forum held by the Association of Online Publishers:

“Daniels outlined CNET’s move towards what Tim O’Reilly (the Web 2.0 guy) described as architected participation. She said CNET’s core mission was to interpret and filter content and that that will remain the same, but that the public have different expectations about the media they use and expect to be able to find and use their voice to participate in the community around it.

“Daniels said: “It may not necessarily be that many people but what they say is incredibly valuable. We want to enable those thought-leading people to engage with the site and give them a platform equal with our editorial team. And if we can get our thought leaders to contribute, the lurkers will benefit more.”

“Daniels was referring to CNET’s new-ish “My CNET” type feature, where users can set up their own profile page, add comments to stories, write their own blog and so on. The most frequent contributors can even get their byline on the front page – which CNET’s own journalists can’t.”

I could go on quoting, but you may as well read the article…

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

Wikis will be the new blogs

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[Keyword: , , ]. More perfect timing – as I prepare to talk about using wikis in teaching online journalism, The Telegraph’s Shane Richmond posts on how vandalism is the biggest threat to wikis’ widespread adoption (it’s a response to Bambi Francisco’s post ‘Why media will embrace wikis‘). He promises to write more tomorrow.

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

Note to journalism schools: give us new heroes

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[Keyword: , . Martin Stabe may well be able to add curriculum design to his CV after his latest post, which bemoans the fact that journalism students still seem to be unaware that the ‘print-only hack’ is not a viable career option any more. “Teach some new heroes,” suggests:

“You know, the people out there doing impressive stuff with new technologies right now. The war reporters traveling the world doing solo multimedia reporting; the investigative reporters using sophisticated software to take on the CIA, the laid-off print hacks going it alone to build successful online publications, the people bringing software development skills into journalism.

“Need a recent journalism film to dislodge Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford? Try Shattered Glass — a story where the fraudulent titular hack is found out by an online journalist. The hero there is Adam Penenberg, then of Forbes.com. A key part of the story is Penenberg’s scepticism about the phoney website the technologically-unsophisticated Glass had set up to disguise his made-up stories for the New Republic, er, magazine.”

I’ll certainly be passing on these examples in my Online Journalism module this coming semester, as well as suggesting that we communicate these career options during Induction Week (the first week of a student’s university course).

And as I happen to be speaking at the Association of Journalism Educators conference this Friday on a very similar subject, the timing of Stabe’s post couldn’t be better. Bring on the new breed of journalists!

PS: Mindy McAdams once had some similar thoughts at her blog.
PPS: Looks like this is a hot topic, with Andrew-Grant Adamson posting on the same topic here.

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

Promoting computer-assisted reporting in Britain

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[Keyword: , , ]. More from Martin Stabe, this time on the oft-overlooked skill of Computer Assisted Reporting. He and Heather Brooke are talking about setting up an organisation similar to the US’s National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting (NICAR) to promote the development of computer-assisted reporting in Britain.

If you’re a UK-based journalist interested in this, he asks you to join their “BICAR” listserve.

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

A wiki for leaking secrets

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[Keyword: , , ]. Martin Stabe reports on Wikileaks:

“A new service which claims to offer “an uncensorable version of WikiPedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis”. The site’s creators told Secrecy News that it is aimed primarily at those working in repressive regimes, but could also be used by those in government or corporations in democratic states.”

Stabe notes, however, that this is “a project that carries a high risk of being used irresponsibly and seems to abdicate all responsibility for the actions of its users.”

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

The silliest, and most destructive, debate in journalism

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[Keyword: , , , ]. More about the divisive debate about ‘mainstream’ versus ‘citizen’ journalism – including an example of a story that would have benefited from a bit of crowdsourcing.

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

Pocket journalism

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[Keyword: , , , ]. Normally in internet journalism, the world looks to the US to see how the medium is likely to take shape, but Clyde Bentley‘s piece about mobile phone journalism (cellphones to the Americans) on the Online Journalism Review shows one area where European news operations could pioneer:

“We are still installing a 3G network in the United States and it will be some time until it is ubiquitous. Japan and Korea are so far ahead they are looking at 4G and the European cell system upgraded to that level some time ago.

“People here can buy 3G telephones at any of the Orange, Carphone Warehouse, O2 or T-mobile shops that occupy every other doorway on High Street. As you watch the world go by from the second deck of a bus, the people around you check their e-mail or text messages, share photos, find a map to a restaurant or listen to music.”

So why hasn’t it happened already? In a way, it has, as the public have taken advantage of the multimedia devices in their pockets to film, photograph and text news events. September 11 was the first major news event where those involved were able to use mobile phones to call while it happened; July 7 and Buncefield introduced mobile phone images and video; while the hanging of Saddam Hussein has already thrown up footage apparently filmed by mobile phone. Sadly, news operations have been slow to do the same – really, every journalist should be given a cutting edge mobile phone as part of the job, but how likely is it that that is going to happen?

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

YouTube journalism

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[Keyword: , , , ]. The LA Times paints a colourful picture of what it describes as the ‘YouTube effect’ of ‘YouTube journalism’:

“A VIDEO SHOWS a line of people trudging up a snow-covered footpath. A shot is heard; the first person in line falls. A voice-over says, “They are killing them like dogs.” Another shot, and another body drops to the ground. A Chinese soldier fires his rifle again. Then a group of soldiers examines the bodies.

“These images were captured in the Himalayas by a member of a mountaineering expedition who claims to have stumbled on the killing. The video first aired on Romanian television, but it only gained worldwide attention when it was posted on YouTube, the video-sharing website. (To view it, go to YouTube.com and type “Tibet, ProTV, China”). Human rights groups say the slain Tibetan refugees included monks, women and children. The Chinese government had claimed the soldiers shot in self-defense after they were attacked by 70 refugees, but the video seems to render that explanation absurd. The U.S. ambassador to China lodged a complaint.”

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

BBC starts experimental citizen journalism project

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[Keyword: , , , ]. Journalism.co.uk reports on a citizen journalism project by the BBC in collaboration with the University of Brighton, Nokia and mobile and web engagement specialist Ymogen “to explore new multi-media story telling ideas using mobile phones and GPS”

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media