[Keyword: online journalism, computer assisted reporting]. Here’s a good set of tips from the Online Journalism Review on using the internet to improve your journalism. “Online writers can solicit leads and advice from readers through open source reporting, or even ask readers to report a story themselves, through a distributed reporting project.”

This really forces you to re-think some of the fundamental work processes of journalism. Open Source Reporting, for instance, involves you announcing the topic you wish to investigate, and inviting readers to “submit leads, tips, sources and ideas”, with the potential benefits outweighing the potential loss of a scoop.

[Keyword: online journalism]. Martin Stabe responds to criticism of the Press Gazette Citizen Journalism awards in the latest issue (including from myself), demonstrating neatly how journalism is becoming more of a ‘dialogue’ as consumers become producers.

He sums up the objections in four areas:

• Protectionist (“they’re not real journalists, but we are”)
• Overbroad (“most of it’s not intended to be journalism”)
• Narrow (“Why only images and video?”)
• Redundancy (“Journalists are citizens too”)

It seems to me that the debate around the terminology (including the NUJ’s much-ridiculed decision to prefer the term “witness contributors”) is a moot one. Clearly the term has gained currency, however meaningless its constituent parts (yes, we’re all citizens, so that part is redundant; and yes, much of the journalism was never intended to be so).

We could come up with alternative suggestions for years to come, but the essential point is this: people (generally) understand what you mean by ‘citizen journalism’, and it’s nothing to do with its constituent parts – the phrase has taken on a life of its own, and it’s too late to stop it.

Citizen journalism means articles, images, video, audio and interactive media produced by those not employed directly by news organisations to do so. That includes people lucky (or unlucky) enough to be able to take pictures or footage of a major event; it includes bloggers/podcasters/vodcasters writing/broadcasting about their areas of expertise (or not); it includes those writing for citizen journalism projects such as Ohmynews and Bayosphere, whether they publish journalism elsewhere or not; it includes alternative media projects such as IndyMedia; it even, if you want to go this far, includes people writing in to your letters page.

Now let’s get onto the more important question: where’s the good stuff?

[Keyword: online journalism]. Here’s a great and well-considered article by Eric Kintz on the need for bloggers to ignore the principle of frequent posting. More important in a world swamped with bloggers, is to write quality posts and get involved in the blogosphere. It’s quite a wake-up call – although it should be remembered that many bloggers (myself included) use their blogs as diaries-cum-bookmarks: a place to store all those useful sites and articles they come across from day to day.

For citizen journalists, however, the following points he make are particularly worth considering:

“#6: Frequent posting drives poor content quality – The pressure of daily posting drives many bloggers to re-purpose other bloggers’ content or give quick un-insightful comments on the news. Few bloggers have enough time (or expertise) to write daily thought leadership pieces, thus adding to the clutter. Some of the most insightful –and most quoted- marketing thought blogging leaders are actually infrequent posters, from Sam Decker to Charlene Li or Randi Baseler.

“#7: Frequent posting threatens the credibility of the blogosphere – as many bloggers re-purpose existing content under the pressure of daily posting, they do not take the time to do any sort of due diligence and conduct effective research. Errors snowball in the blogosphere as they spread from one blogger to the other. The collective wisdom of user generated content was supposed to provide an alternative to biased traditional media content – it is instead echoing the thoughts and biases of a few.

“#8 – Frequent posting will push corporate bloggers into the hands of PR agencies – As they struggle with bandwidth constraints as well as peer pressure to join the blogosphere, more and more companies will resort to partnering with their PR agencies to create blogs. The blogosphere will in turn lose some of its effectiveness and value.”

[Keyword: online journalism]. Hold the Front Page reports on the latest move into online video by The Telegraph & Argus in Bradford.

“The T&A TV News service is being updated with a new video news story every day and has already broken one big exclusive – the first interview of any kind with Ayaz Ali, the Bradford charity worker freed after 20 days in an Israeli prison following his arrest over alleged connections with terrorist organisations.”

[Keyword: online journalism]. The Press Gazette reports News International chairman Les Hinton revealing “plans for The Times to launch a broadband service called Times TV.”

“Research shows a doubling of brand commitment when newspapers are added to a TV schedule. And that the brands most often recommended to a friend, or searched for online, or asked for at retailers, are those that are most heavily advertised. Anywhere.”

You can also read more on the Times itself, which expands:

“The service, called Times TV, will initially consist of news clips from third-party providers, but the newspaper plans to expand the service by encouraging its readers to contribute their own material — so long as it is newsworthy.”

[Keyword: online journalism]. Journalism.co.uk reports on a new content brokering agency due to launch next week: ScooptWords – an extension of “citizen photojournalism agency” Scoopt.

The article reports that bloggers will be able to “place a button on their website indicating an article is available for re-publication. Publishers then use the service to make a transaction earning them syndication rights to re-print the post. … [The service is] working with contributors to bloggers network Nightcap Syndication, many of whom are already published journalists seeking commissions. The service will “actively push” members’ work to newsdesks.”

The article goes on to neatly summarise:

“The move is the latest in a wave of collaborations that illustrate the increasing value of blogs to printed media. The relaunched Guardian carries a daily blog opinion round-up inside its front page, BlogBurst provides pre-approved weblog articles to US newspaper websites, Associated Press last week began showing bloggers’ commentary next to stories syndicated to its customers and the International Herald Tribune is to carry stories written by contributors to Korean citizen
journalism network OhmyNews.”

[Keyword: online journalism]. There’s a great ‘Reporter’s Guide to Online News Delivery’ in the latest Press Gazette which covers a good range of material such as:

• A history of British online journalism (that refreshingly goes much earlier than 1994’s Electronic Telegraph)
• How newspapers should make use of new media (by one of the best writers in the area, The Guardian’s Simon Waldman)
• How journalists should adapt to new media

As if that wasn’t enough, there are also interviews with OhMyNews’ Oh Yeonho, Craigslist’s Jim Buckmaster, and Google News’ Krishna Bharat (PS: nice move to optimise the URLs for search engine rankings).

Online journalism junkies will also want to sign up for the Press Gazette journalism discussion website at http://discuss.aol.co.uk/journalism/home.asp and have their say when it goes live.

[Keyword: online journalism]. I Want Media reports on The International Herald Tribune’s move to carry citizen journalist stories in a new partnership with OhMyNews. You’ll find more at http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1786356,00.html
and http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=17042&hed=Writing+Your+Own+News

[Keyword: online journalism]. Thanks to Mindy McAdams for drawing my attention to Steve Safran’s list of “six straight-to-the-point lessons for online journalists to learn before their city gets flooded” based pn his own experiences. Even if you optimistically expect never to have to cover a flood, this is a great insight into what makes a good editor.

[Keyword: online journalism]. A question that desperately needs asking as print operations rush to produce their own online video bulletins – and answered at length at OJR. The rub is, those used to reporting stories for print may have to re-think their news priorities, as some things simply work better in pictures. Here’s some quotes:

“Media executives say yes, it’s true that you can, for the most part, map the popularity of online video to what’s popular on broadcast television. Live and late breaking coverage, celebrities and sex, and innately visual stories work very well.

“Bart Feder, CEO of The FeedRoom, says that visual stories in particular are the ones that tend to be the most viral types of video. His company helps other companies and news organizations, including the New York Times and BusinessWeek, publish and monitor their online video.

“…evergreen content, or videos that aren’t pegged to a specific news event, can continue to draw traffic well beyond its air date. Over time, the residual interest can rack up large traffic numbers.

“Broadcasters have also found success with exclusive, in-depth content. The Associated Press, which syndicates its video to about 1200 sites, says they’ve drawn traffic with interviews.

“Jim Kathman, product manager for the AP’s online video network, said that a segment that summarizes the major news events of the day, called “One-Minute World,” has started to do very well.”