[Keyword: journalism, online journalism, citizen journalism, blogging]. Welcome back Press Gazette, which reports “The bulk of internet journalists in jail – 49 in total – shows that “authoritarian states are becoming more determined to control the internet,” said Joel Simon, the New York-based group’s executive director. “

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism, citizen journalism, blogging]. Anyone interested in the rise of citizen journalism and its take up by mainstream news organisations might want to attend the Citizen Journalism 2007 conference taking place in Birmingham on January 26, which is being organised by yours truly along with my colleague Sue Heseltine.

There are three excellent keynote speakers lined up:

Michael Hill is the newly appointed Head of Multimedia at Trinity Mirror who has already expressed a desire to make the most of citizen journalism.

Tom Reynolds is the blogger behind Random Acts of Reality and the author of ‘Blood, Sweat and Tea‘, a collection of blog posts that reached no.8 on Amazon.

And finally Vicky Taylor, the head of interactivity at the BBC, who recently announced they would start paying for viewer contributed content.

The speakers will be followed by lunch, workshop sessions and end with a panel discussion.

Details should be on mediaskills.org.uk shortly. In the meantime you can book a place for £80+VAT through Sarah Calhaem on 0121 204 9883 or email Sarah.Calhaem@uce.ac.uk

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism, citizen journalism, blogging]. Jeff Jarvis tells us how he did it.

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism]. Journalism.co.uk reports that “the unique user metric will replace page impressions as the mandatory minimum metric to be certified by ABC Electronic” – the only surprising thing being that it wasn’t the case before, given that with print publications ABC measures sales and not ‘number of pages read’.

UPDATE: Shane Richmond goes into much more detail about the various systems of measurement, and the potential flaws in unique user measurement.

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism]. That’s “more than half of its planned new product development spend,” reports Media Week, as the company “seeks to stabilise the business after announcing pre-tax losses of £49m in the last financial year.”

Chief executive Stevie Spring is quoted as saying: “Over the past two years, we spent all of our money on acquisitions to fill in gaps, but they didn’t deliver. It’s clear that our core business needed time and cash and we will be moving staff into our growth areas wherever we can.”

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism]. Jeff Jarvis has been speaking to Ed Roussel, head of online for the Telegraph, “about the paper-site’s scoop last night on the hiring of BBC Chairman Michael Grade by struggling ITV”, providing an insight into the workings of the newly integrated newspaper:

“Roussel said the Grade story was a model for how it should work on a new
platform that can cut across all media and tools: The story went online at 9:50
p.m. and in no time, they put up audio and video and more content, forcing those
competitors listed above to attribute the news to the Telegraph. Roussel said
there is no more debate about putting stories online first. “

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism]. You don’t get much more establishment than this: Journalism.co.uk reports that “The Pulitzer Prize Board has established new rules allowing newspapers to submit a full array of online material such as databases, interactive graphics, and streaming video for its journalism awards.”

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism, citizen journalism, blogging]. Press Gazette published its final issue with plenty of online journalism news – detailed below. Those wanting their fix of news from the excellent Martin Stabe should check out his own blog at http://www.martinstabe.com/blog/ (RSS feed generally only says something like ‘links for 2006-11-22″ but it’s worth clicking through to the site). Here’s those stories:

Web of dispute: Telegraph web supremacy claim dismissed by rivals

Telegraph editor Will Lewis has prompted a statistical battle between national papers after… Read More

Red website a likely priority as Hachette joins digital race

Hachette has become the fourth major consumer publisher this year to announce appointments to a… Read More

Dispatches website to challenge NHS postcode lottery

Channel 4’s Dispatches, is to launch a unique website designed to help viewers challenge the NHS… Read More

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism]. Flicking through Internet Newspapers, a book edited by Xigen Li and collecting a range of articles on the medium I came across an interesting piece of research by Xigen Li and Zhanwei Cao on the ‘Effect of Growing Internet Newspapers on Circulation of U.S. Print Newspapers’. Namely:

“First, the study found circulation of print newspapers has been declining since 1990. There was no difference in circulation changes between the two periods 1990 to 1994 and 1995 to 2000. The later period was marked by the popularity of internet newspapers.”

Sounds like the internet has been a scapegoat for a decline in readership which predates the World Wide Web…

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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

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism, citizen journalism, blogging]. The ghettoisation of citizen journalism continues, it seems, with the BBC’s announcement of a news programme based entirely on user-generated material. “Your News, which began a pilot run on Saturday,” reports Journalism.co.uk, “will feature stories, features and video proving most popular with viewers on TV and the internet.” This follows the previously reported announcement by Five News that they will pay for viewers’ clips – with possible plans to put it in a “special section” of the news. I’m told the advert requesting this viewer content closely resembles the advert at the end of You’ve Been Framed.

It would be nice to see user content integrated into the newsgathering process. The danger with these devoted sections and programmes is that citizen journalism becomes trivialised as an “And finally” item, or a “Your Views”-style TV letters page. Interestingly, the Five News website has its citizen journalism right on the front page: a sign that online, at least, the viewers are being taken seriously.

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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