Tag Archives: Telegraph

US election coverage – who’s making the most of the web?

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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 →

Lessons in community from community editors: #1 Shane Richmond

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I’ve been speaking to news organisations’ community editors on the lessons they’ve learned from their time in the job. In the first of a sure to be irregular series, the Telegraph’s Shane Richmond:

1. The strongest community is one that belongs to its members Continue reading →

Why fantasy football may hold the key to the future of news

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This season, after years of loyalty to the BBC/Channel 4 fantasy football competition, I’ve switched to The Guardian’s. Their game takes advantage of the reams of player data now available to newspapers – not just goals scored, clean sheets and assists, but also clearances, interceptions, tackles, shots on target, and so on, making for a very different challenge indeed.

The move mirrors that made by The Telegraph a year ago when they introduced a Flash element to their match reports that allowed you to look at an incredible range of match statistics. As I wrote at the time: it’s like having your own ProZone.

What’s all this got to do with the future of news? This: data. It’s one of the few advantages that news organisations have, and they should be doing more with it. What the Guardian fantasy football and the Telegraph demonstrate is the flexibility of that data.

And if we can do it in sport, why aren’t we doing it more elsewhere? Schools tables, pollution records, crime data, geotagged information, and election results are just a few that spring to mind – can you add some more?

For a good example of a particularly creative use of data (again with a sport twist), see Channel 4’s alternative Olympics medals table, which matches medals results against various other country stats, such as human rights record.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to join my fantasy football friends’ league, search for Game 39 – or just post a comment below…

More database-related posts


Cartoons online – what are news organisations doing? (guest post)

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In a guest post for the OJB, The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation give an overview of how news organisations are treating cartoons online.

Cartoons have long been an essential part of British newspapers, so why do so many of those publications fail to do justice to drawn content on their websites?

The digital display of the web is a visual medium and cartoons and illustrations thrive on it. Yet many newsprint employers have not been quick to develop the advantages that drawn imagery offers as a digital communication tool and as existing sticky content for their sites and products. Continue reading →

MNA joins the rush to mobile news sites

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The Midlands News Association is the latest publisher to embrace the mobile web with mobile-friendly sites for the Express & Star and Shropshire Star. The sites were built by the Midland News Association’s online arm MNA Digital with mobile technology partner Wapple, based in Bromsgrove. Particularly impressive is how easy it is for users to make comments – normally one of the most difficult acts when viewing on a mobile.

The move comes barely a week after The Telegraph also (re)launched its mobile version, while Trinity Mirror has announced its plans to take 14 of its newspapers mobile in the next few months.

Mobile Computer has a good overview of the various national mobile services,

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Ten ways journalism has changed in the last ten years (Blogger’s Cut)

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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…

From a lecture to a conversation

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 →

“The first and the last word on a story”? Clarifying the 21st century newsroom

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It seems that Telegraph Digital Editor Ed Roussel is putting some of the principles of the 21st century newsroom into practice. Andy Dickinson, reporting on Rousel speaking at the Digital News Affairs conference, writes:

“In an interesting overview he outlined what may be a typical approach to a breaking news story:

  • 11:15 Alerts sms email desktop
  • 11:25 150 words, solicit reader help
  • 12:15 Updated story, images video
  • 13:15 Analysis, topic page
  • 15:15 Multiple angles – multimedia analysis etc.

“Shades of Paul B’s newsroom model in practice here.”

Then:

“In dismissing the idea (perhaps a myth) that the web was simply about breaking news and the paper about analysis, he said that the strategy  for your website was to be about the first and the last word on a story.”

It’s a cute little motto, and at first I thought it was another way of phrasing the point about the web being great for both speed (that’ll be the first word) and depth.

But then I began to think a bit more about it.

Should a news website ever seek to be the “last word” on a story?

Is a story ever finished online?

Are you not risking repeating the mistake of old media of making a definitive statement, of telling the public ‘how it is’?

If we’ve moved from a lecture to a conversation, does this make your news organisation the type of conversationalist who always wants to win the argument?

I’m hoping Roussel was more interested in the tidiness of the aphorism than its linguistic properties. But clarity is important. We should not seek to be the first, last or penultimate word, but the place where the best conversation is held – whether we’re doing the talking or not.

Another source of inspiration for journalism (Bas Timmers)

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Guest Blogger Bas Timmers is Newsroom Editor at Dutch broadsheet de Volkskrant.

‘A newspaper is like an oil tanker,’ editors in chief call out in despair again and again. Changing the direction is often slow and difficult. But that of course just depends on whether you have the right rudder or not. Because the captain is still steering the ship. Yes, journalists can be quite nasty and stubborn, but mutiny is still a step too far for most of them. Continue reading →

Wiki journalism: are wikis the new blogs?

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On Thursday I’ll be presenting my paper on wiki journalism at the Future of Newspapers conference in Cardiff. As previously reported, the full paper is available as a wiki online for anyone to add to or edit. You can also download a PDF of the ‘official’ version.

Based on a review of a number of case studies, and some literature on wikis, the paper proposes a taxonomy of wiki journalism, and outlines the opportunities and weaknesses of the form. The following is the edited highlights: Continue reading →