Writer’s Residence is a web service which thinks journalism students are stupid.
“Student journalists worldwide can register for a free, one-year membership to an online writing portfolio Web site that they can use to show off their writing and demonstrate their web savvy to potential employers.”
After that? “Membership costs only $8.29 US Dollars per month.” Continue reading
There’s a great interview with NPR’s Andy Carvin over at Poynter where he talks about their coverage of Hurricane Gustav. It’s a classic example of what I’ve previously called ‘Distributed Journalism’, and a lesson for any news organisation in how news production has changed: Continue reading
“This book is my manifesto for the media as a journalist but also as a citizen of the world. As a journalist you are constantly being told that the news media have enormous power to shape society and events, to change lives and history. So why are we so careless as a society about the future of journalism itself ?” [1]
This is how Charlie Beckett presents his book “SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), in which he tackles the main challenges to journalistic practice in our days, and its influence to maintain free and democratic societies .
Charlie Beckett is a journalist with a 20 yearscareer at the BBC and ITN, and he is also the founding Director of POLIS, a think tank about journalism and society at the London School of Economics. “SuperMedia” is a work that gathers and structures several streams of thought about the future of Journalism as a essential service to contemporary societies, and how the changes in the news industry, beyond inevitable, are necessary.
Alex Gamela posed a few questions to Charlie Beckett about his book (Portuguese version available here). Continue reading
I’ve decided to respond to student questions now via video. The latest collection are from Jess Barlow, and are copied below. The video responses are split into three videos – and there is a transcription of the responses at the end:
Alex Gamela looks at citizen journalism – or the lack of it – in the Portuguese media landscape
We’ve been watching a significant change in the Portuguese news media during the last few years. From national to local newspapers, radios and TV channels, everyone is building their presence online, with more or less aptitude or quality. Still, the effort is noticeable.
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But this investment in new platforms of communication doesn’t mean the companies are following the latest trends, or leaving their somewhat conservative approach to the full possibilities of the web. The news websites in Portugal are mostly a repository for print content, since many don’t have exclusively online journalists, and the resources for online content are rather limited, especially as multimedia content is concerned, though slowly the tide is turning, mainly due to the efforts of major newspapers, that are trying to improve and take the step forward in online content.
This scenario, of slow and uneven development of new media content, is useful to explain why the interactivity between media and users is practically nonexistent. Many still don’t grasp the concept of participative/citizen journalism and community, but companies and newsroom managements aren’t the only ones to blame, since there are other factors to consider: Continue reading
Another day, another set of questions from a journalism degree student – this time, one of my own, Azeem Ahmad. If you want to help him by answering the questions, post your comments below.
How important is blogging to you, and your business?
If my ‘business’ is education and freelance journalism, then: enormously important on every level: generating ideas, gathering information, publishing stories and ideas, and marketing and distributing those and, I suppose, myself as a journalist and (*cough*) academic. I find conversation extremely helpful in working through ideas and finding new information, and blogging is a wonderful way of having that conversation with some very well informed and intelligent people. I hope it makes me more intelligent and well informed in turn. Continue reading
Skoeps.nl, a citizen-journalism venture, closed down last week after its owners declared it unprofitable. The business plan seemed simple enough to succeed:
The plan worked, except that there wasn’t enough revenue to share. Skoeps cash-flow was in the black, which means that, if investors refused to go forward, growth must have been minimal and could not have offset the initial investment in the near future. Continue reading
Flickr has announced it will now be hosting video – with a maximum length of 90 seconds. The idea is that these are “long photos”, “capturing slices of life to share”
I’m not sure what the implications are for journalism or journalists (note the distinction). Could we see a July 7 moment, but with short video? Will it be easier for users to upload video to Flickr from their mobiles than it is to upload to YouTube? Can we expect better composed video on Flickr because it comes from a community of photographers? (If that matters to you)
I don’t know, which is why I’m calling for your comments and thoughts on this.
What happens when you bring together local journalists, bloggers, web publishers, online journalism experts and new media startups – and get them talking?
That was the question that JEEcamp sought to answer: an ‘unconference’ around journalism enterprise and entrepreneurship that looked to tackle some of the big questions facing news in 2008: how do you make money from news when information is free? Where is the funding for news startups? How do you generate community? What models work for news online? Continue reading
A few weeks ago I wrote an 800-word piece for UK Press Gazette on how journalism has changed in the past decade. My original draft was almost 1200 words – here then is the original ‘Blogger’s Cut’ for your delectation…
The past decade has seen more change in the craft of journalism than perhaps any other. Some of the changes have erupted into the mainstream; others have nibbled at the edges. Paul Bradshaw counts the ways…
Perhaps the biggest and most widely publicised change in journalism has been the increasing involvement of – and expectation of involvement by – the readers/audience. Yes, readers had always written letters, and occasionally phoned in tips, but the last ten years have seen the relationship between publisher and reader turn into something else entirely.
You could say it started with the accessibility of email, coupled with the less passive nature of the internet in general, as readers, listeners and watchers became “users”. But the change really gained momentum with… Continue reading
Online Journalism Blog 