Is the future of print video?

[Keyword: ]. That’s the argument of Steve Outing’s article on Poynter, which reports the move of the Press Association’s project to convert regional newspaper journalists into video-journalists. It’s based on a report by David Dunkley Gyimah, senior lecturer at the University of Westminster,

“who has been doing some of the training for the program. He explains: “It’s the newspapers’ answer to thwart the BBC’s plans to introduce what’s termed ultralocal television.”
“He’s building a video-journalism website which among other things will showcase some of the video work being done by newspaper journalists. “

Sadly, that showcase, and David’s own site, the View, have a tendency to crash the less well-endowed browser, so the future may be a while off yet.

Related reading: The Newspaper Non-TV Show; Local papers forge links with BBC
Other newspapers with video coverage: TimesCast, HamptonRoads.tv and Delaware Online (A presenter called “Patti Petitte”?)

Digg.com allows users to decide the cover stories

[Keyword: ]. Another good pointer from Poynter (sorry): Digg.com

“a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control. With Digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.” It is gaining popularity rapidly. Business Week Online recently featured its founders.

“An interesting aspect is that Digg.com is considering expanding its range of topics, which has caused quite a bit of discussion among its users. Perhaps this system indeed could work with breaking news better than anything we know yet. Thousands of users who push a story to the front page might scoop all the wires and automated systems that take time to crawl the Web.“

Photo Phones get better as citizen journalism becomes more realistic

[Keyword: ]. Poynter reports on the next generation of mobile phones which will:

“be the equivalent of today’s high-end digital cameras — featuring an 8-megapixel camera capable of doing excellent-quality video.

“Another cool feature that’s coming: Storage will be on tiny SD cards, allowing a more convenient way to get images off the phone than what’s common today (using the phone network to e-mail an image to an Internet account). Just pull the card out of the phone and pop it in a reader.”

Online papers should charge readers, says Sorrell

[Keyword: ]. As reported in The Guardian: “Advertising guru Sir Martin Sorrell has told newspapers to start charging more for online content to rescue falling revenues.” He seems to be unaware of the fact that advertising revenue from online newspapers is one of the fastest rising sources of revenue for newspapers (and the reason Murdoch was so keen to explore that market).