Tony Hirst takes a look at how different news websites are using interactivity to present different possibilities in the UK election. This post is cross-posted from the OUseful.Info blog:
So it seems like the General Election has been a Good Thing for the news media’s interactive developer teams… Here’s a quick round up of some of the interactives I’ve found… Continue reading
When Sky News needed a picture to illustrate a shooting at Waterloo Station, they found what they needed on Twitter: a photo of the crime scene taken by Joe Neale and posted to Twitter using Twitpic (used above, with permission).
Just one problem: they didn’t bother to tell Joe. Continue reading
This week the UK government released a report into social mobility. While mainstream reporting focused mainly on the broad picture, I wanted to read the original government report itself. Which publishers linked to it?
I’ve written and spoken extensively on the importance of linking, but it comes down to 2 core reasons:
Firstly, Google will rank a page more highly if it includes more outgoing links.
Secondly, people will return to your site more often if they know they can expect useful links.
So, get your act together, please what are news organisations doing to address this?
The more interesting of the sessions at the BBC’s Future of Journalism conference came on the second day.
Head of BBC Newsroom Peter Horrocks spent most of his session fielding questions from employees concerned about how their particular corner of the corporation would be affected by multimedia newsrooms. That aside, general themes from his presentation and responses to questions included:
The second panel, on user generated content, was probably the most interesting of the two days – mainly because it was also the most diverse, including Sky’s Simon Bucks and Paul Hambleton from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation alongside BBC Sport Online’s Claire Stocks, Matthew Eltringham from the BBC’s UGC hub, and Chris Russell from Future Media and Technology. Continue reading
Elections bring out the best in online journalism. News organisations have plenty of time to plan, there’s a global audience up for grabs, and the material lends itself to interactive treatment (voter opinions; candidates’ stances on various issues; statistics and databases; constant updates; personalisation).
Not only that, but the electorate is using the internet for election news more than any other medium apart from television (and here are some reasons why).
PaidContent has a good roundup of various UK editors’ views, and decides blogs, Twitter and data are the themes (more specifically, liveblogging and mapping). Continue reading
I’ve had an email about The Sky Young Journalist Awards which “aims to find and celebrate the very best journalist talent across online, television, radio and print.” Its aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds to report on local, national or international news stories that matter to them.
It sounds pretty worthy, so here’s the rest of the fluff: Continue reading
The following is a longer version of the article that appeared in Journalism.co.uk last week, with some extra tools and quotes.
It’s almost impossible to sum up Twitter in one line. To some, it is a way of delivering content to mobiles as headline text alerts. To others, it’s a social networking tool for getting contacts and leads. Some use it as a research tool for developing stories; and still others as a project management tool to gather a number of contributors together – for example, drivers posting updates on traffic.
In other words, it is what you make it and the only way to figure it out is to start using it. The following is a guide to getting started on Twitter as a journalist, and some of the things that can be done with it. Continue reading
If you’re not one of the 3,000-plus people to have viewed Dave Lee’s video of the BBC’s “shambolic” coverage (or lack of) the UK earthquake this week, I’ve embedded it below. This deserves to be watched by everyone at the BBC (although interestingly, only Sky, who come out of this quite well, appear to be linking to it). For everyone else, the reaction from those who had just experienced the quake and are waiting for some acknowledgement from Auntie Beeb is just very very funny indeed.
You can read Dave Lee’s commentary on this here.
In an equally amusing post, while the BBC were running ads and Sky were running around, Dave Lee rounded up people’s responses to the earthquake with the following intro:
“EARTHQUAKEEEEEE!!!! OH MY WORD! WHAT DO WE DO!? I know… we change our Facebook status….”
I’ve agreed to pass on the following call from Gregory Povey of MELD. Sounds a very worthy attempt to match new media and journalistic expertise:
MELD is a world first project: bringing together the best northern (UK) journalists and new media practitioners to explore what happens when the two worlds collide
Selected talent will be paid to attend a five-day residential lab where they will develop products and pitch them to industry partners. This is a fantastic opportunity to extend industry networks, develop new products and explore new routes to market Continue reading
In the first part of my model for the 21st century newsroom I looked at how a story might move through a number of stages from initial alert through to customisation. In part two I want to look at sourcing stories, and the role of journalism in a new media world.
The last century has seen three important changes for the news industry. It has moved… Continue reading
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