Tag Archives: community

Interview: Charlie Beckett on SuperMedia

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“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]

Saving JournalismThis 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 →

Patterns for designing a reputation system

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Yahoo! have released a family of Reputation patterns:

“They don’t tell you how to lay out a page or where to put an interactive widget. Instead, they address how to design a reputation system for your social software.”

Why is this important? The patterns are a wonderful resource for any news organisation looking to plan a community element in which reputation performs a role. In my experience, reputation systems are pretty important in encouraging users to keep coming back to your online community – you could argue, for instance, that the number of friends in Facebook or followers in Twitter is one simple example. Plurk more explicitly uses ‘karma’, as does (in a much better way) Slashdot (for more on Slashdot and karma systems I thoroughly recommend Gatewatching by Axel Bruns).

Yahoo say these are “the first of several collections of social-design related patterns that we’re working on,” so worth keeping an eye on what comes next.

JEEcamp – when the cottage news industry met mainstream media

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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 →

UK online journalism innovators – what questions would you ask them? (JEEcamp)

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Friday will see over 40 of the UK’s innovators in online journalism (plus some from other countries) gather for JEEcamp – the Journalism Enterprise and Entrepreneurship unconference. They include people who have launched journalism startups like Scoopt and Yoosk; local journalists who oversee hyperlocal and blogger projects; freelancers with an eye on the digital future; and national journalists who have built online communities around their brands (for a full list – or to sign up to attend yourself, see the JEEcamp wiki).

The unconference will, broadly, discuss five areas. These are:

  1. Business models (including advertising)
    • Audience development (including communities)
    • Funding
      • Legals
      • Online news models

      But that’s just the start. Within those areas, what questions do you think we should be discussing? What questions would you ask?

      Magazines and online journalism: answers to a student questionnaire

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      Lucy Hart, a final year journalism degree student at South East Essex College has emailed me some questions. I always like to post the answers on my blog in case other students are thinking of asking the same. Here they are:

      How has online journalism affected magazines over the past few years? It is clear that they are constantly adding additional features to their websites, such as blogs and forums.

      The web (rather than online journalism) has affected magazines enormously, just as it has every part of the media. However, as magazine sales have not suffered the same across-the-board declines as newspapers, the changes have not been as pronounced, and they have reacted differently. Continue reading →

      German newspaper of record tries social media

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      In an attempt to reconnect with its readers, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) introduced a thematic and participatory website a few weeks ago.

      The translation of The Kindly Ones, a blockbuster book wherever it’s been released, landed in German bookstores last Saturday, February 23. Its controversial content (sex, Nazis and sadism) makes it a favorite conversation topic among the quality-newspaper-reading population. FAZ decided to organize this conversation. Continue reading →

      Job ad: Online Community Manager for Knight Foundation

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      Marc Fest, the Director of Communications at the Knight Foundation, tells me they are seeking a “digital media maven” to create for Knight “a vibrant online discussion community focused on journalism excellence, communities and issues of systemic change.” And they’ve asked for my assistance in finding that person.

      Happy to oblige – here’s the info, plus an old-fashioned Word attachment with more info: Continue reading →

      iPM: have they been reading my model for a 21st century newsroom?

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      Over at BBC Radio 4’s iPM website there’s an interesting experiment going on – and some good examples of my 21st century newsroom ideas in practice.

      1. Firstly, their ‘Rough Notes’ blog is a good example of the ‘draft’ stage of my News Diamond, with members of the team talking about what they’re working on (and comments facility for people to suggest stories – some very good ideas there, BTW). Also, posts labelled ‘In Production‘ allow you to see the work so far, while you can comment on the current running orders.
      2. Secondly, they have a Flickr page where users can upload images. Distributed Journalism, perhaps? Well, more like simple community.
      3. Thirdly, and perhaps best of all, they’ve made their del.ico.us account public, so readers can see what they’re reading. That’ll be the ‘What’ of my Five Ws and a H, then.

      The blurb, BTW, is: “We’ll source what we do through the best blogs, passionate ‘ear catching’ online debate as well as comments and recommendations of others. So what ends up on air will be shaped by listeners and bloggers.”

      Five W’s and a H that should come *after* every story (A model for the 21st century newsroom: pt3)

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      So far this model has looked at sourcing stories in the new media age, and reporting a news story in the new media age. In this third part I look at what should happen after a news story has been reported, using a familiar framework: the 5 Ws and a H – who, what, where, why, when and how.

      Five W’s and a H that should come *after* every story

      A web page – unlike a newspaper, magazine or broadcast – is never finished – or at least, can always be updated. Its permanence is central to its power, and relates directly to its connectivity (and therefore visibility).

      Once out there it can be linked to, commented on, discussed, dissected, tagged, bookmarked and sent to a friend. That can take place on the original news site, but it probably doesn’t. The story is no longer yours. So once the news site has added comments, a message board, ’email to a friend’ boxes and ‘bookmark this’ buttons, what more can it do? Continue reading →

      All quiet on the western front? Not quite.

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      German regional publisher WAZ just launched its new flagship website, Der Westen. New features include geotagging, blogs and keyword filtering, monitored from a futuristic-looking newsroom. Martin Stabe has the details.

      The concept, writes Der Spiegel, is to let users choose the centre of their world, their perspective on news. Der Westen then provides content around it.

      The FAZ today has an interview of blogger-turned-editor-in-chief Katharina Borchert. Numerous online ventures have been playing on regional papers’ turf, from local advertisers flocking to AdSense to local radios breaking news more rapidly, she says. To compete, paper brands must regain their offline roles as community leaders by enhancing the news hole with social features, Facebook-style. Continue reading →