Tag Archives: journalism

Journalism training orgs combine to form Shovelware Alliance

The UK’s three leading journalism training bodies have finally announced that they are to work together as part of a new ‘Joint journalism training council’.

The National Council for the Training of Journalists, the Broadcasting Journalism Training Council and the Periodicals Training Council – who have traditionally provided training for regional newspapers, broadcast journalists, and magazines respectively – have been encroaching on each others’ territories for a while as the industries converged.

It’s early days yet, but the statement doesn’t make encouraging reading for anyone with an interest in the potential of online journalism as a separate medium: the three “new skills and awareness that are and will be required of journalists aiming to work in multi platform news organisations” include:

“b. Developing ideas for repurposing and adding to print or broadcast news material for use on websites including the use of links, background material, writing for the website, the basics of search engine optimisation and use of basic content management systems. [my emphasis]

“c. Using video and audio equipment to produce content for websites and other platforms and publishing it.”

In other words, treating the website as a place to shovel – and possibly add to – content produced for another medium.

The statement does go on to say “It is recognised that this is not an exhaustive list”, but it’s not a promising start.

Blog08 – a video patchwork of impressions

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So I was speaking at Blog08 last Friday – here are my vlogged impressions upon my return…

…and here is a snippet of video to give you a taste of that A List Bloggers panel tackling, of all things, ‘Is blogging journalism?’ The American speaker is Loren Feldman – a reactionary trapped in a revolutionary’s body – the Brit is Pete Cashmore of Mashable. Continue reading →

Writer’s Residence et al: just how stupid do you think journalism students are?

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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 →

Semantic Journalism: Ideas

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Semantic journalism is a vision for the future of journalism. As the writer works on her article, her computer would gather data on the matter, from pictures to other articles to assessing global opinion trends. It would read through the Wikipedia pages of a given theme and summarize key concepts. A semantic algorithm would bring a selection of the most authoritative people on a subject.

The journalist is left with what she does best: checking and analyzing the data.

That means avoiding the pitfalls of redundant news content. That means escaping the trap of writing about topics without having a clue of what’s at stake. That means interviewing people who do things rather than those who talk about it.

This article is the first of a 4-part series. We’ll explore semantic hacks for newsgathering, writing and publishing in the coming weeks. Continue reading →

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]

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 →

Social bookmarking for journalists

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This was originally published in Press Gazette as Del.icio.us social bookmarking explained and Need some background info? Just follow the electronic trail.

How journalists can use web bookmarking services to manage, find and publish documents.

Every newspaper has a library, and most journalists have kept some sort of cuttings file for reference. But what if you could search that cuttings file like you search Google? What if you could find similar articles and documents? What if you could let your readers see your raw material?

That’s what online bookmarking – or ‘social bookmarking‘ – tools allow you to do. And they have enormous potential for journalists.

There are a number of social bookmarking services. Del.icio.us is best known and most widely used and supported. For this reason this article will focus mostly on Del.icio.us. Continue reading →

Some questions about blogging, from a student

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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 →

Two places I’ll be in May and June

Pay-for online venture aims at dethroning Le Monde

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Former Le Monde editor, Edwy Plenel, is launching an ambitious news website, Mediapart. He aims at “reinventing journalism” and offering “information of record”, Le Monde-style. No less.

The pun in “Mediapart” refers to “participation”, but also to “à part”, French for “different”. Difference lies first and foremost in the price: Access to the site requires a 9€ (£7, $13) monthly subscription. Quality journalism must be paid for, they say. These subscriptions will feed forty journalists, many of them coming from major traditional outlets.

The barrier is also supposed to allow for more qualitative contributions. Trolls must all be greedy, then.

Continue reading →