Category Archives: digital newsroom

In praise of Digital Editors

Posted on by
13

Sitting on a goldmine? (picture from Flickr)

I’m in sunny London tomorrow to sit on a panel talking digital with digital editors from Trinity mirror newspapers. So I’ve been giving some thought to the lot of a digital editor.

You could see the digital editor as the interface between the newsroom and your digital audience. You’d be right. But do that wrong and there is a danger that they are your only interface – the rest of the newsroom ‘hide’ behind them.

There is also a danger that a digital editor becomes a digital production sub. They are the ones that make the content that’s produced in the newsroom ‘web friendly’. They are the ones that find the links, pictures and (more often than not) add the tags to journalists content that not only make stuff SEO friendly (along with those headlines they re-write) but also ensure that all the related stuff hidden in the archives is magically made visible.

There is also an expectation that your digital editor would be the one trying out all the new stuff – video, data and all of that kind of thing. Making it happen.

On top of that they’ll be ‘managing community’; keeping the readers comments under control and posting to Facebook.

Whatever their lot, there’s a lot of it!

The nice thing is that (most) newsroooms are more enlightened places. They don’t sideline the digital editor to simply be the web monkey who sits in the corner (right?). The input of journalists, who can see the value to their own journalistic identity, is the norm rather than the exception (right?). Which got me thinking a little.

The outward facing nature of a digital in newsrooms is vital. No doubt about that. Reaching out to community and offering ways in to the newsroom and news process is really important. All those things like crowdsourcing etc (the stuff that relies on that shifting relationship) is empowered and powered by them. Digital editors are frontline staff. But what about the other direction?

In this ‘digital first’ world, especially in organisations where end-to-end production systems are making all content digital, the digital editor may be sitting on the most complete map of expertise and interests in your newsroom outside your editors head. Archived, tagged ready to go.

When we crowdsource, we make an effort to find the interested and informed parties in our audience and get them to work with the newsroom. But what about the interested and informed in the newsroom? Aren’t they a crowd worth pulling together as well?

A newsrooms, especially newspaper newsrooms, have a (long) collected history and knowledge built on the individuals who work there. Maybe in the rush to push things out and engage on multiple platforms, we miss what’s right in front of us.

Maybe this thinking harks back to the days of librarians – the human databases that could connect your story to an article 20 years ago. I’m not suggesting that digital editors are librarians but maybe, in a world where digital is the thing that ties newsrooms together, they are sitting on all the data that gives places the material you put out there in context.

So perhaps it isn’t just about finding out about what your audience is clicking. Maybe your digital ed could also be telling you what your journalists are writing about? When and how often?

Digital Journalism: Ethics and ethos

Posted on by
3

Twitter through up an interesting link to NYU’s  Journalism Handbook for Students: Ethics, Law and Good Practice. I was particually taken with their Ethics pledge which all students are expected to sign or “The final grade for a student registered in a journalism course will not be submitted to the Registrar”.

It begins with:

As a New York University journalism student, you are part of a community of scholars at a university recognized for its research. A scholar’s mission is to push forward the boundaries of knowledge; a journalist’s mission is to serve the public by seeking out and reporting the facts as accurately as possible. Good journalists and scholars share a commitment to the same principle: integrity in their work.

By signing this ethics pledge, you agree to maintain the highest standards of honesty and foster ethical behavior at all times. Anyone who fails to uphold these ethical standards has committed a serious violation of this agreement. Penalties can range from an F on an assignment to a failing grade in a course to expulsion, depending on the decision of the instructor in consultation with the Institute’s Ethics Committee.

Serious stuff.  The idea that an ethics comittee within an institution would consider, and rule upon,  proffessional ethics outside of the purley academic is challenging but, I think, right. Behaviour like Plagiarism is cited as the kind of behaviour that breaks the pledge and could get you hauled up.

Now we take plagiarism serioulsy but it’s an academic issue, there are serious punishments, but academic none the less. The ethics comittee oversees research activity. We also hammer home the Society of Editors code of conduct etc.  But I’d love it to be more directly asssociated with the professional ethics of journalism – more proffession based.

Defining a digital journalist.

The pledge chimed with me as I’m updating my Digital newsroom class for this year. The class handbook includes a page that outlines the ‘module ethic’:

This module is not about defining a digital newsroom.

This module looks at the way digital and online practice affects newsrooms
and how that, in turn, changes and develops individual journalism practice.

We will explore this by :

  • Looking at the context in which digital and online practice has
    developed and how that has changed newsroom practice
  • Looking at the tools used and evaluating how they can be used to
    create content.

You will use one to inform the other in a way that suits your practice.
As you do this module there are two things to keep in mind.

  • We are platform agnostics: You can be a newspaper, radio,
    magazine, TV or online journalist and still be digital
  • We are consumers and providers: Think about what it takes to
    produce the content you use everyday.

But most of all, remember: You are a digital journalist!

Whatever their motivation for getting in to journalism, whichever media they see themselves working in, understanding how digital tools and practice can fit in to their practice is what being a digital journalist is all about. That last bit is a given whether they like it or not.

I can’t get students to sign-up to it and if they ignore it there is no ‘ethos panel’ but at least we start from a common ground.

Image credit: WCN247 on flickr

Enhanced by Zemanta

Android audio editing apps: no joy for Journos?

Posted on by
10
Android robot logo.
Image via Wikipedia

I’m currently putting together stuff for my Digital Newsroom module for this year.

One of the things I ask the students to do is to record and edit a short audio vox-pop*.We have a number of audio recorders of varying levels of ‘quality’ at the Uni and access to Audacity and Adobe Audition. But I don’t stipulate what the audio should be recorded on or how it’s edited. My line is always ‘if you can do it and submit it by banging nails in to a piece of wood, go for it”.

I want the students to explore the range of resources that are out there and I’m always keen to add to the list of possible tools and resources they can use. So Uber blogger and font of endless multimedia journalism info Mark Luckie couldn’t have timed his latest post better.

The post highlights 3 Unique ways to record, edit, and publish your audio. It includes Monle, a four track editor for iphone/touch which is useful if you use you phone to record your audio interviews. Which got me thinking about the students who might want to use their mobile to record audio but don’t have an iphone or touch.

Android audio apps?

I see a lot of iphones at work but I also see a serious number of Android based phones so I thought I would do a quick scoot around and pick one or two apps that none Apple users could consider. And the result…

Nothing….

Nada….

Move along now, nothing to see.

Well, OK, there was one; ringdroid which, on the surface, looks pretty good. But that was it.

From my reading round its seem the stumbling block is  a dodgy audio api on android – delays etc. But I was genuinely surprised that there wasn’t at least an attempt to try. Maybe it’s too niche!

Iphone/touch is the platform of choice

I’m nervous of the eulogizing that goes on of the iphone/touch as the ‘tool of choice for multimedia journalists’ but I have to say that as an all in one device (the new touch in particular) it’s looking pretty good.

If you know about a good audio recording/editing app on Android or other mobile platforms for that matter, please let me know.

* Before the anti-vox brigade have a go I should say that this is part of a series of competency ‘tests’. I want to be sure that the students have exprimented with recording audio and vox is an easy ‘reason’ to record audio.

Update: Transom.org has a nice article looking at the Monle and Hindenburg audio apps.

Enhanced by Zemanta