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Bookmarks for September 23rd through March 16th

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These are my links for September 23rd through March 16th:

Bookmarks for August 25th through September 20th

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These are my links for August 25th through September 20th:

Bookmarks for July 27th through August 6th

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These are my links for July 27th through August 6th:

  • How blogs became part of BBC News « Reportr.net – "The story of how blogging is changing journalism at the BBC is told in my research paper, The Blogging BBC: Journalism blogs at “the world’s most trusted news organisation”, published in the August edition of Journalism Practice." and the blog post has lots more interesting stuff around the subject of blogging inside a media organisation
  • Local online news video advertising: 6 ways to monetize content | Online Journalism Blog – The last in a three-part series on local online news video in the US. This time it's all about the money
  • Social Media and the New Distributors « Reinventing the Newsroom – "Even when publishers embrace social media, I worry that they may see it primarily as a way for readers to talk among themselves. " and other interesting musings on the way social media is becoming distribution from Jason Fry
  • Internet Isn’t Killing Papers, We Are | Tech Business – Here's a challenging view : "Newspapers have had to refund advertisers ad dollars in the millions to compensate for having cheated their customers with inflated circulation numbers. In addition to the direct cost, there’s been an indirect cost in terms of trust and loyalty. Advertisers like having an independent means of verifying the impact of their ads."
  • "Graceful Hacks" – UX, IA and interaction design tips for hack days – currybetdotnet – 4 August, 2009 – The mighty Martin Belam has "some tips about how to avoid your hack looking like this unfortunate baby rhino". Stylesheets, layout and more for lovely looking pages and apps
  • Rupert Murdoch plans charge for all news websites by next summer | Media | The Guardian – "Quality journalism is not cheap," said Murdoch. "The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."
  • Communications not dented by downturn | Ofcom – "The recession is failing to dent our love of communications, with UK consumers spending more time than ever before watching TV, using their mobile phone and surfing the internet." There are some interesting stats on how different ages connect to the web with an apparent dip in the over 50's.
  • Local online news video design and usability: What’s working, what’s not – Part 2 of Vadim's US based study of local video. This part looks at usability and the way video is presented
  • A lesson from Patchwork Nation: Frameworks for Reporting – Chris Amico reflects on how the Patchwork nation (a formidiable 'demographic' reporting project) has informed his approach to data driven journalism. I can't really pick a quote here to reflect the tone. What struck me was that the whole piece carries the tone that this has really worked for Chris. The technology and process have slipped in to place.
  • Social videography – the future of short-term multimedia? – "I would argue that videography is the answer for sustainable short-term multimedia. Furthermore, video journalists need to utilize YouTube, Vimeo and other social media sites to secure this growing community of video enthusiasts." This in the light of what seems to be a concerted push towards short-form, user generated, quick news hits with a short shelf life.
  • FT Bosses Launch PR Offensive For Paid-Content Model | paidContent – "Editor Lionel Barber (pictured) tells Channel 4 in an interview (embedded after the jump) that there is now “an inexorable momentum behind charging for content” " Because we can't work out any better way whilst the industry is running around looking at ways to retain bonkers profit margins. (ok, I added that last bit)
  • The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN.” – Nigel Barlow asks if ESPN's 'not on our dime buddy' take on social media will become the norm. I hope not.
  • WSJ’s New Policy: Won’t Take Herd Embargoes – Paid Content takes the announcment that the WSJ will not take embargos and links it with the policy of measuring their output on the wires. News as commodity according to Robert Thomson "Even a headstart of a few seconds is priceless for a commodities trader or a bond dealer". Is This is what breaking news on the web really means in the new world of newspapers?
  • 20 + mind-blowing social media statistics | Blog | Econsultancy – Including great presentation throw-aways to freak out exexutives like "if YouTube were a country, it would be the third most-populated place in the world." or "Every single month, more than a billion photos are uploaded to the [facebook]."
  • Video Views on Msnbc.com Mobile Properties Climb; Mobile Video Viewers Prefer the Phone for News – Lots of interesting stats but bare in mind that the survey only asked people who already get video on their mobile.
  • Local online news video: What’s working and what’s not in content | Online Journalism Blog – Vadim Lavrusik looks at what is working and whats not in US newspaper video. Interesting start to a three part series
  • Augmented Reality Twitter is the Coolest Thing Ever – "TwittARound, an application for the iPhone 3GS that uses the GPS, compass and camera to show where Tweets are coming from. " And there is some fantastic video to prove it. Must resist 3GS buying spree
  • Journalists Are News Companies’ Most Valuable Asset – Publishing 2.0 – Using Politico as an example Scott Karp thinks about the shifting power of the journo in not only producing but also packaging the news. "does focusing on journalists as news companies’ most valuable asset mean that news companies should be exclusively in the content production business? That’s a significant shift from the industrial printing and distribution business." Of course this idea needs developing as it treads perilously close to the "only work for online journalism" trap. But nice thinking none the less
  • What would you do with a journalist? « Talk About Local (alpha) – Very interesting article and one that offers good advice. "So if you run or contribute to a hyperlocal website, forum etc imagine waking up one day to find a nice shiny shrink-wrapped journalist on your doorstep with passable modern media skills and all the classic attributes a journalist should have (I said ‘imagine’ not all journalists are NOWesque in the same way not all hyperlocal bloggers are foaming mad Sid Nutters). And imagine that journalist is yours for say a day a week or can work with a herd of local blogs over the week. What would you do with them?"
  • What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later – Great presentation – social media is like teen sex….or is it
  • Sly Bailey attacks BBC plan to share web video – "We are interested in real partnerships. We did not see that in what this [deal] offers, we are not here to build the BBC brand for them," said Bailey, speaking to MediaGuardian.co.uk." In other words, show me the money.
  • Introducing GrowthSpur - – Recovering Journalist Mark Potts introduces his new venture, Growthspur. Backed by his experiences with backfence he hopes "The company will provide a suite of tools and services that will take a lot of the guesswork out of starting or running local sites and turn them into successful, sustainable businesses" This involves a no profit no pay model of support and training for hyperlocal sites. Nice idea. Silo the knowledge of journos and make it pay where everyone can see the traction – local ads.
  • Crucial reading on the evolution of news, as it stands today – Invisible Inkling – Ryan Sholin pulls together some of what he thinks "would be the most important footnotes in the Summer 2009 chapter of the book someone surely must be writing at this point, here are some recent favorites:"
  • Video Watching Now More Popular Than Social Networks – A new survey reveals, amongst other things, an Interesting angle on everyone is watching on PC .."on the cord-cutting myth front, Pew says that of the 22 percent of American adults who have cut back on their television subscriptions in the last year, 32 percent say they’ve connected their computers to their TVs to watch web video."
  • NewsInnovation videos from @newsmatters: – Judith at Journalism.co.uk has been working like a demon with the old cut and paste of google embed to bring this great round up of video featuring @kevglobal, @currybet, @markng, @simonw, @willperrin talking about all aspects of the media. The video with Martin Moore and Mark Ng of the Media Standards Trust talking about their project with the AP might be interesting in the current circumstnces.
  • Local newspapers in peril: The town without news | The Economist – Thanks to Jo Geary for pointing me to this cracking article (and comments) about the impact (or otherwise) of the death of local newspapers. A really interesting read
  • AOL Newsroom Now Has (Wow) 1,500 Writers – Techcrunch continue a bit of an AOL series with the news that "AOL now has 1,500 people writing content across its scores of content sub-brands, we’ve confirmed. Around 1,000 of those people are working full time for AOL, the rest are freelancing. " A lot compared to some. Minor leagues compared to others. That said AOL could prove an interesting model for critical mass content producers – just big enough…
  • Newspapers on Twitter – how the Guardian, FT and Times are winning | Online Journalism Blog – "National newspapers have a total of 1,068,898 followers across their 120 official Twitter accounts – with the Guardian, Times and FT the only three papers in the top 10" That and a whole load more interesting facts about newspapers on twitter
  • Twitter Drives Traffic to Media Websites – "Micro-blogging site Twitter has become a key source of traffic to other content-driven websites, including news and entertainment ones, Hitwise reports."
  • Who needs newspapers when you have Twitter? | Salon News – Long Tail and free, Chris Anderson starts out obtuse but raises some good points in this salon interview
  • Q&A: Nick Bell on the opportunities offered by online video – The man at quickTV and his advice on video "be clear about your objectives, whether advertising or otherwise: consider what footage you already have and whether a re-edit or more is needed. Then, make the clip web-ready to optimise engagement, response rates and accountability, through the interactive and dynamic features that are currently available. Finally, publish wisely and try not to become too complacent when you see the great results start coming through… "
  • MSN Wants Local Papers’ News Feeds | paidContent:UK – MSN go hyperlocal and have their eyes on broader content – "The site’s executive producer Peter Bale tells Telegraph.co.uk: We are hoping to take feeds from local newspapers and tag every piece of information to a map. Hyper-local news online has never been more important and we think this is a really interesting growth area.” " Wonder if the regionals will think the same.
  • Opposition to BBC’s newspaper video-sharing plans grow (the links) – Laura outlines the reaction to the Beebs new video plans
  • Computer Assisted Reporting – James Ball with another take on recent crowdsource journalism project Help me investigate – "It would be a crying shame if the brilliantly intentioned – and rather nicely executed – social journalism project that is HMI actually ended up stifling a fledgling journalistic field. Maybe I’m far too negative. But it does seem the risk is there."
  • Eleven-word snippets can infringe copyright, rules ECJ – I appreciate that in bookmarking this I'm risking a lawsuit. But what the hell."The copying and reproduction of just 11 words of a news article can be copyright infringement, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled. Europe's highest court has said that a clippings service's copying could be unlawful."
  • Media: National Public Radio’s Digital Makeover – Vivian Schiller talks about the changes at NPR but it's here take on philanthropic support for journalism that caught my interest. A worthwhile read all round
  • Toy Chest (Online or Downloadable Tools for Building Projects) – simon willison pointed me to this wiki site with a whole load of great apps and sites for mashups, visulisation and more
  • Hack Day tools for non-developers – "We’re about to run our second internal hack day at the Guardian" says Simon Willison and he is crowdsourcing ideas for tools for non-developers to use. As is often the case, the crowd comes up trumps.
  • The Nichepaper Manifesto – Starting with the unarguable "Journalists didn't make 20th century newspapers profitable — readers did." and ending with "Nichepapers, in contrast, do meaningful stuff that matters the most. The great failing of 20th century news is that monopoly power became a substitute for meaningful value creation. At root, that's the lesson that newspapers are learning the hard way." Umair Haque sets out his manifesto for what a nichepaper actually is with ome good examples along the way
  • Is Crowdfunding the Future of Journalism? – Leah Betancourt has a great "lay of the land" style article on crowdsourcing, funding, charity and more as models to sustain journalism
  • Why Comments Matter – "Keep the comment threads at the end of news stories. But doing that is not enough… you need to have your journalists participate actively in the discussions. If you do all of that, you can host great discussions at the end of your news stories and who wouldn't want that?"
  • How to: write the perfect press release for journalists – Journalism.co.uk offer a "crowdsourced guide" to writing the perfect press release
  • Not-for-profit news deep in the heart of Texas | News Innovation – A round up of views on not-for-profit newsrooms off the back of "the announcement that the Texas Tribune acquired the Texas Weekly, a subscription newsletter devoted to Texas politics and government".This continues to underline my feeling that philanthropy is the overriding business model in the US. A divergence point for the UK/US watchers
  • Social Journalism: Curate the Real-Time Web – "What’s Social Journalism? It’s what you do when you gather information in social media channels and then report it to your readers" – Journo link tool Publish2 announce more focused social media aggregation for their site. They call it a "HUGE value creation opportunity."
  • 22 futures of journalism, 2009 timeline – The almighty link has "a timeline of 22 articles and blog posts from this year that contain some idea about what the journalism will look like in the future." An interesting set of articles and an intersting way to display them
  • BBC will share online video with papers – Press Gazette – The nationals get first bite of this (limited) cherry. My thinking is that they should have done this the other way round and talked to the big regionals where, for once, there centralized IT could have worked to allow a quick roll-out. Perhaps the regionals are just too commercial?
  • Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments – Government advice on twitter made available in "a generic template Twitter strategy for government Departments." Interesting stuff
  • It’s Twitter time – right now! – Be excited. The ever generous 02 have allowed us to use text messaging on twitter (thanks for that guys) How to set up twitter on your 02 mobile.
  • BBC guidelines for Embedding video on external sites – In the light of the BBC's announcement for video sharing with some newspapers here are their guidelines on how you can use their content
  • The future of video blogging – @documentally thinks this could be the future of video blogs. I'm not sure about that. It's technology I've seen before but the existence of Google's street view gives it the contextual hook that people now 'get it'. This has real uses (and causes some issues) for news 'reporting' show the whole scene. – ultimate visual transparency.
  • Advancing the Story Doing data online – Deborah Potter looks at the Data Bay, an effort by Florida TV station WFLA-TV and the Tampa Tribune to do a bit of a Guardian Data store (or, to be fair, vice versa).

Bookmarks for June 5th through July 27th

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These are my links for June 5th through July 27th:

  • Journalism should look to collaboration, not charity – Jeff Jarvis is pretty free with the word charity here. Is it the charity that supports the organisation? Is the work of unpaid bloggers, citizen journos and UGC charity work? Why does it have to be a business model? Surely charity and profit are different? But there is an uncomfortable truth in here – charity will be a big part of the way new operates in future.
  • SourcedFrom / Plugin for WordPress – This looks interesting "Make your WordPress posts/pages available for re-publishing to other WordPress sites using our open-source (free) plugin for WordPress. "
  • 6 Sites that are changing the way you follow the news – Nice round up of news tracking tools – "The way we read the news is changing, so it only makes sense that the way we follow the news should change as well. Even relatively new news aggregators like Google News seem antiquated compared to these game-changing tools."
  • Audience VS. Traffic – Patricia Handschiegel ponders the reality of measuring and attracting audience. For Pat it's all Bad analytics and baner numbers; smoke and mirrors "Newspapers are dying because they did not put enough real time into truly developing audiences for their sites. Guess who is next.
  • Attributor: Program the Web – Roy Greenslade pointed me to this service. I think we'll see more of this. Think penny aggregate legal action working on the same model as aggregate advertising. I'm wondering how good their algorithm ninja skills are to make it really work on pics and video. But I can see execs looking at this as a packaged solution and being swayed.
  • MyReporter.com – Ryan Sholin pegged this 'ask your local journo a question site " as one of his favorite Knight Batton sites. It's a nice idea that keeps a local focus and taps in to the ephemera of daily life well. Innovative more for what it makes the publication do rather than what it does, but interesting none the less
  • A Tale of Two Formats | lo-fi, hi-style – Kirk Mastin shoots a little feature with a hi-qual cam and a flip (actually taped to the other camera) You can see the same film back to back in his video and it pretty much proves that it isn't what you shoot with but who's doing the pointing. Good post.
  • Charging for Access to News Sites – "Undeniably, there is money to be made in digital publishing with free reader access, but whether that revenue leads to profits depends upon the scale and scope of the organization. The potential revenue does not appear to be of the magnitude that will support the massive operations of existing news organizations."
  • Free Final Cut Pro Video Tutorials – Lynda.com are offering "nearly three hours of free video training content for Apple’s latest release of Final Cut Studio." Great stuff
  • Paper Is Still the Medium, in Britain, for the Big Scoop – The NYT takes a look at UK newspapers (and our relationship with scoops and the web) with an envious eye. "Tim Luckhurst, a former editor of The Scotsman and now a journalism professor at the University of Kent. “I think that makes British journalism a little more like blogging.”"
  • In the news cycle, memes spread more like a heartbeat than a virus – A very sensible take on the recent memetracker study that is in danger of cementing the usual erroneous received wisdom on blogs and mainstream media. The report really shows that it's more "a series of handoffs between blogs and mainstream media." Collaborative rather than parasitic and one where that collaboration is often only acknowledged from by one party
  • Poynter Online – Archived Chat: What Are Practical Ways to Teach Social Media Skills in Journalism School? – Ryan Sholin, shares tips on how to teach journalists to use social media effectively via the medium of Coverit live
  • About – Multimedia Standards (Beta) – A cracking resource from "a group of undergraduate and graduate students" at the University of Miami. Worth a look is The Grid – a matrix of media clips from thinkers and doers in multimedia
  • The plural of anecdote is not data – Replace intern with work-experience student and you get some idea of why the hype around the story of a 15 year old telling old men what young people like and don't is worth some thought. This article by Suw is 'good' think.
  • The Independent’s experiments with debate visualisation tool: Q&A – Paul B looks at the Independents experiments with mind map/linkage tool Q&A. Interesting stuff
  • Time lag of different media sites on reporting a story – "[T]he CNN Political Ticker tends to report a story/quote 19.5 hours before it reaches the peak. And 56 means that the CNN Political Ticker reported 56 out of top 100 most important stories/quotes" – An interesting research study
  • The Flowing Data guide to visualisations | News | guardian.co.uk – "It seems like every week there's a new Web application that promises to harness the power of the masses and unlock the secrets within large datasets…. Let's take a look at what's available now." – Nice article
  • Lack of Web Traffic May Be Reason for Froomkin’s Dismissal – The story of one journalists journey from one mainstream publication to another (yes the huff is mainstream) which I think a bit of a 2+2=5 article that uses one sensible point and conflates that with another to produce a post that will have curmudgeons and web geeks equally foaming.
  • Study Measures the Chatter of the News Cycle – A genuninly interesting study but. of course, the spin on this is the way MSM drives blogs but it's still dissapointing to see the more important and potentially bigger issue of stories sourced from new media (and I would like this to be more than blogs) and how that is referenced in the MSM.
  • 10 Web Apps To Build The Next Big Thing Without Writing Any Code – "Ever wished that someone would overlay some data that fascinates you on a Google Map? Ever have an idea for a new desktop widget to take the computing world by storm? Well, no matter what your skill level is, there are tools out there in the world that will help you realize your dreams just by dragging-and-dropping what you need and in the order you want it?" Here are ten apps that will let you do just that. Some I had heard of, some not. All are worth some investigation
  • 8 Reasons journalists need a curation system – "The growth of life streams means that “those who can filter out what’s important will matter more,” according to web strategist Jeremiah Owyang. CUNY Professor Jeff Jarvis’ makes a similar point that “every minute of a journalist’s time will need to go to adding unique value to the news ecosystem: reporting, curating, organizing.”
  • Leading your staff into the Twitterverse « Pursuing the Complete Community Connection – A tip sheet I for editors, newsroom leaders, and journalists who are not experienced with Twitter. A nice round up with a link to a post with more links and resources
  • 4iP | 4iP invests in Mapumental – "Mapumental is mySociety’s new travel map project. Mapumental takes the nation’s bus, train, tram, tube and boat timetables and turns them into a service that does vastly more than imagined by traditional journey planners."
  • Source of UFO scare revealed – A nice follow up to a local story that proved a real hit for the local paper. What caught my eye on this though was the demand for an attribution if the local press picked it up. The bitter voice of experience or freelancer testing the way the local press work. Whatever it is I hope the press respect it.
  • 10 things you need to understand to save journalism – Justin McLachlan – I like number 5. Believe that what you have is what we want. Passion. Something that often goes in the apprent effectiveness of technology
  • Spot.Us, pioneer of crowdfunded journalism, preps for expansion – Dave Cohn talks about Spot.us in an interview that goes beyond the basics and adds more transparency to Dave's, already sterling, efforts
  • Saturday Post: If You Are In The Path Of A Disruptive Technology You Are Toast – Goodbye Newspaper Companies – SiliconValleyWatcher – "If you are in the path of a disruptive technology you are toast. Disruptive technologies disrupt." but perhaps worse is the pain of admitting so to the people who state the bleeding obvious at you whilst you wait for it to hit
  • Innovations In News – See new multimedia and data projects from Slate and the Washington Post and "get behinds the scenes information on how the different projects were created."
  • The Fundamental Training Need :: The Scoop – "yeah, teach those CAR and multimedia skills. Have everybody Twitter. But please, let’s find a way to address the fact that for many journalists, Microsoft Word is the primary tool for organizing any and all kinds of information" I think the best way to do that is to teach them CAR and all that stuff and wean them away.
  • YouTube – reporterscenter’s Channel – "The YouTube Reporters' Center is a new resource to help you learn more about how to report the news. It features some of the nation's top journalists and news organizations sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting."
  • How To Save The Newspapers, Vol. XII: Outlaw Linking – "Of all the misguided schemes put forth lately to save newspapers (micropayments! blame Google!), the one put forth by Judge Richard Posner has to be the most jaw-dropping. He suggests that linking to copyrighted material should be outlawed." And let's not kid ourselves that execs all over the world have not thought this would be a good idea
  • FriendFeed, Syphilis And The Perfection Of Online Mobs – "I want to compare FriendFeed to Syphilis" is certainly an interesting line in. But Arrington's points about the centralising nature of social apps (twitter less so) are an interesting thought piece
  • Less is more. The tweet(ed) revolution. | Matter/Anti-Matter – CNET News – It's not a story it's a wave. Just one of the elements of this article that makes it an interesting read – less for the Jarvis led attempt to make the world like a google app and more for the take on the role of journalists as filters
  • How Journalists Use Social Media – Some interesting stats on the % of journalists using rss in this report
  • Flickr zaps photos: Bad for citizen journalism – Flickr censorship or a problem with people not reading T&C's. This story of an apparrent act of censorship by Flickr raises interesting questions
  • What all local news websites need: A Welcome mat | Dan Mason – Dan Mason looks at how easy it is to connect on news sites "To be fair, local websites have travelled a huge distance in the last two years, with committed journalists doing their best against the odds. But this exercise brought home how ‘media; is truly only half the story now and forever. ‘Social’ comes first. No relationship. No journalism. No business."
  • What Are The New Obligations Of Readers? – Chris O'Brien resists the guilt trip and asks should it be the repsponsability of the audience to follow the comments in a story. A comment suggests that it should be the journo who updates the story based on comments. The truth is somewhere in the middle but the idea that it's the sole responsibility of the commentators to carry a story forward after being served it by the journo is didactic and lazy.
  • Moving pictures – Web video is more intimate than television and more immediate than
    print. You've likely got your viewer's undivided attention for the
    three minutes it takes to watch your film. What are you going to show them?
  • How to Search Twitter – A nice round up of simple ways to use google to search twitter. Using the Site: keyword and wildcard for searching profile and favorites for keywords is a simple but always worth being reminded on the simple. Great stuff.
  • Plane crash – This story of how a day out turned in to an exercise in mobile reporting is a great example of how technology has opened the door to on the spot content gathering. And of course its great that no one died
  • NUJ stimulus plan to save local news – This is serious right? "Tax breaks for local media who meet clearly defined public purposes. Create incentives for investment in quality local journalism that is rooted in our communities." Who decides what is quality?
  • Making money from content online – presentation | Online Journalism Blog – Paul Bradshaw shares a recent presentation on making money online. As he says " It’s intentionally provocative – and I’m sure you’re intelligent enough to read the real points I’m making here" but the truth is, they don't call it the blindingly obvious for nothing. Sometimes this stuff just needs saying and it's great that Paul is around to say it.
  • Best RSS feeds for information graphics – Nicolas Rapp has a stunning collection of RSS feeds for all things data and visualisation. Just subscribe, organise and get visual goodness in your in box everyday.
  • It’s old-fashioned journalism from the bunker and there’s more to come, says Telegraph – Journalism.co.uk give good account of the way the Telegraph have worked the MP's expenses scandel. Is it just me or does this carping on about what great journalism ignore feel a little hollow. I mean, don't get me wrong its good journalism, but isn't this what you are supposed to do? Isn't that your job?
  • Journalism beta = lazy reporting – When journos err its an honest mistake. When bloggers do it's gossip and rumour. It's all down to intent you see. Proper journos always intend the best. More of the gnostic journalism school of old media defense strategies.
  • BUSTED: bing defender is Microsoft employee – and have they deleted my post on bing’s usability from bing? – File this one as another example of IP being the enemy of anonymity. A microsoft employee tries to big up bing – gets found out.
  • What skills are most important for an online journalist? News Frontier – Renee Barnes is looking for your views on the 8 skils/skillsets that young journos should learn
  • Skills needed by today’s journalists – Mindy responds to Renee Barnes' post on eight skills for new journalists, with a re-ordering of the number
  • ASH-10 Blogging as Social Processing – Pete Ashton, through the medium of Paul Bradshaw, explores the idea that an online relationship may hide the hidden depths of a real person. Some nice thoughts.
  • 16 Things You Learn In J-School – Journalism fundamentals that still need repeating – especially the inverted pyramid one. They don't call it the blindingly obvious for nothing.
  • Modeling The True Value Of Social Networks: 2009 Edition – TechCrunch put a dollar value on social networks
  • How the web changed the economics of news – in all media – Paul Bradshaw realizes that in "Listening to news executives talk about micropayments, Kindles, public subsidies, micropayments, collusion, blocking Google and anything else that might save their businesses, it occurs to me that they may have missed some developments in, ah, well, the past ten years. For those and anyone else who is interested, I offer the following primer on how things have changed." Jolly good it is to.
  • The Media Business: THE END OF JOURNALISM? – Robert Picard thinks that "Many of the voices and opinions, however, misunderstand the nature of journalism. It is not business model; it is not a job; it is not a company; it is not an industry; it is not a form of media; it is not a distribution platform.". What is it then Rob? "journalism is an activity."
  • "It’s SunTalk Wot Won It" – Martin Belam looks at the impact different regulations have on the different media covering UK elections

Bookmarks for May 8th through June 5th

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These are my links for May 8th through June 5th:

  • OUP Dictionary Team monitors Twitterer’s tweets – Ahh. Metamediajournalism. Apparently " A recent study out of Harvard confirms Twitter is all vanity" erm. Yes. and….
  • The Birmingham Mail’s Gareth Barry letter: why so late on the web? – A lot of praise for Birmingham Post editor Steve Dyson for engaging with Jo in the comments on this subject. What it does is give the most open example I've seen in a while of the judgment calls needed around a 'web as well' strategy
  • Obama speech: An analysis – The BBC try adding analysis to the speech. I think this works well but it would be better with an option to comment/engage with each one as well
  • Tips and thoughts for journalists from Bloomberg’s former multimedia editor – Last week (Thursday May 28) Bloomberg’s former multimedia editor, Abhik Sen, spoke to journalism students at City University on a range of topics. Some good points. I especcially like – think flavour not facts. But I'm not sure I agree that the telegraph story is as good an exemplar as he would like.
  • How open are your lines of communication? – Alison Gow lays a challenge down – of sorts. "I'd love reporters to spend a week where none of their stories were featured in the newspaper – they would only be able to get their information out online, via a blog, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, a wiki – hell, they could even arrange a meeting at a local cafe and talk to people – anything but the printed page. I think it would be an eye-opener for everyone involved"
  • Help Me Investigate: Paul Bradshaw on Crowdsourcing Investigative Reporting – Ryan Sholin talks to Paul about his new website helpmeinvestigate
  • What hyperinterest Web pages would look like – A follow up to a previous post with more flesh on the bones
  • Mass audience for news is dead – "Imagine a news Web site that’s a portal to everything people used to read in newspapers plus a bunch of things that newspapers were never able to provide. A cool idea, I think, but first it requires newspapers to embrace two provocative ideas:

    1. The mass audience is dead.
    2. The product of newspaper Web sites is not news."

    Lots to ponder here but, for me, the real point to mull over is number 2. Should we be asking if a newspaper website be about news

  • Increase in UK online display advertising activity – "Online display advertising activity in the UK has increased year-on-year despite the current economic climates, figures from Nielsen Online for the first quarter of 2009 are suggesting."
  • Journalists are ‘egomaniacs’, so pay walls won’t work – More interesting to me, in this round up of a recent conference is the view of Alan Murray from the WSJ that "the mix of classic training and new multimedia is not conducive to great reporting". Some interesting tidbits in this.
  • Blog Archive Help Me Investigate and game mechanics – Paul Bradshaw reveals that his new venture- helpmeinvestigate – -is really all just a game. A serious game.
  • Why Can’t PR Do Digital? – OK it's aimed at PR people but isn't getting out in to your community and pushing the value of journalism a little about PR too?
  • 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization – A cracking round up of all kinds of visualization goodness
  • Why Twitter may never sell – A great article about why Twitter may never sell itself to a Google or Microsoft.A lesson for newspapers?: "If you don’t want to be a platform, I don’t know what you should be aspiring to be."
  • The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave – I'm still not quite sure what it does but it sounds like plenty of people are ready to load it with tests as soon as it appears
  • Topsy – A website that searches Twitter. If you search for a term the results will be tweets that contain your search term and a little bubble that tells you how many other people tweeted that term or a link. A neat way to find people tweeting about a subject but it needs a bit of playing with to get the vibe of it
  • Three ways to become a good Documentary Journalist – Making the case for a different type of journalism and documentary Kurt Lancaster crits Jigar Mehta's piece in the NYT "It’s not breaking-news, a political analysis, nor a unraveling of a crisis, but there are three reasons why I think this is a strong piece, reflecting three elements of strong documentary journalism"
  • Wikipedia bans Church of Scientology – “The bottom line is that whoever acquires Twitter will in essence take possession of an army of millions (soon to be tens of millions) of humans who are actively, accurately, and enthusiastically meta-tagging pages.”
  • Whoever aquires twitter… – “The bottom line is that whoever acquires Twitter will in essence take possession of an army of millions (soon to be tens of millions) of humans who are actively, accurately, and enthusiastically meta-tagging pages.” – great qote
  • Four observations about charging for news that are often overlooked Nieman Journalism Lab – An essential addition to the paywall debate. Seward's last point is particularly good – "Even if pay walls are the future of newspapers, they aren’t the future of news." Think about what you are 'saving' here
  • Social media success doesn’t start with ROI – David Meerman Scott makes some good points about ROI in this post from David Spark. No answers to what should replace it but that doesnt make the comments any less valid.
  • Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference? – A nice article on the differences between pages and groups. As more newspapers get turfed off their profiles this could be useful
  • Subscriptions Only Work "Selling Weird Porn," Says Arianna Huffington – The huffster makes a good point but if people want news like people want porn they why not!
  • Publishing an online newswire – A nice little post about the ways to use Publish2. The comments are equally as good for ideas
  • So Long Sections? – Essentially this article is talking about the joys of the semantic web as it would apply to a more familiar concept 'sections'
  • The convicts in the News – The reality of website journalism in France reported at Le Monde "The logic is to be the first to upload information to be tracked by Google. "Most of us were inexperienced and had no school of journalism," she recalls. If we wanted to make a phone call to verify the information, let us do. But that was not what we wanted. The most important was to work at full speed. " It does loose a little in translation but interesting stuff
  • ITV’s CRR should be updated, says OFT – "The Office of Fair Trading has today advised the Competition Commission to consider updating CRR, the mechanism that protects advertisers from ITV1 abusing its dominant position in the UK TV ad market." This seems like a good idea and a really, really bad idea in equal measure. On the one hand you give back ITV the opportunity to generate more revenue but you introduce a scary president for online video ads no?
  • Audio reporting tool Audioboo experiments with paid-for account for ITV | Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog – I don't know why but I hold a special place for audioBoo. I suppose it was the first web2.0 kind of app that I witnessed created, grow and develop(purley online you understand I had nothing to do with building it) that I used and thought this is an instant 'yes' for journos and the media. Now the 'how do they make money on this' question gets answered – "This Saturday ITV.com is planning to use the tool as part of its FA Cup Final coverage: fans using the Audioboo iPhone app will be able to submit their audio reactions to the site." Great stuff. This years coveritlive goes network!
  • So Much For Twitter’s Trending Topics To Indicate Breaking News – Robin Wauters bemoans the missed chance we have with Twitter's trending topics "We already know Twitter can be quite the source for breaking news, but critics have in the past correctly pointed out that one should be aware of the fact that the mob isn’t always right, and unverified claims on the micro-sharing service – often from a single user or even a single message – can quickly lead to false or incomplete stories circulating rapidly and viciously until the dust settles and the truth surfaces." I see the point but as for the use for breaking news it just illustrates the need to be part of it, building your own networks rather than simply skimming trending topics. But I think the point about the users of twitter taking a bit more care is well made. Use it or lose it some may say.
  • 20 Free Buzz Monitoring Tools – A list of free tools to track the social media chatter
  • Professor Todd Gitlin’s Keynote speech on journalism – "What I do know is that journalism is too important to be left to those business interests. Leaving it to the myopic, inept, greedy, unlucky, and floundering managers of the nation’s newspapers to rescue journalism on their own would be like leaving it to the investment wizards at the American International Group (AIG), Citibank, and Goldman Sachs, to create a workable, just global credit system on the strength of their good will, their hard-earned knowledge, and their fidelity to the public good. " 'nuff said
  • Semantic technology gains publishing foothold – Well, one technology in particular -OpenCalais. What is it? It's" a Thomson Reuters project to improve electronic publishing by adding computer-readable labels to content, has attracted the attention of several media publishing organizations, including CNET. " One of number of semantic technologies around this article is one of many that makes me think this was a good move by Reuters
  • The golden age of data journalism – Mr Anderson asks what we need to do to get a UK version of all this open gov goodness happening elsewhere in the world "We probably don't need to tell readers of the Datablog that it's the golden age of data journalism, but we'll give you some ammunition for the next time you have to convince data sceptics. "
  • Headlines and Deadlines: The end may be nigh but you don’t have to keep telling me… – If you run in to Alison Gow then have a chat – she's a planet brain on this digital stuff – but she offers some advice for topics to avoid I'm very interested in what people have to say about the future of news – whether they think the newspaper industry has a future or not – but I'm just not engaged by people wanting to drone on about, for example, the Journalists bad, Bloggers good debate.
  • The Life and Times of A Twitter Link – A marketers view in some respects but interesting none the less. "The moral of the story is that twitter is like any social event you've ever attended. You can't expect the person you've just met to know what you told someone in a previous conversation. So get involved, have fun and make connections with your consumers."
  • Where to Stalk Journalists on Twitter – A nice post that does exactly what it says on the tin. A round up sites that list journalists and journo orgs on twtter
  • GonzoCamp report: An emerging role for journalism when mixed with technology – Some simple but interesting ideas from GonzoCamp. A lot of semantic thinking but I especially like the “nutrition label for your journalism” idea of whose-news.com
  • Twitter poses risks for papers – Other Views – MiamiHerald.com – It's certainly an attractive idea – that twitter ups the risks of leaks from the newsroom. The basis of the argument? that "Technologies never brag about what they don't do; they're too busy wowing us with their tricks to admit to their failings." Of course the reality is that things like twitter claim nothing of the sort. The users do. It is always down to the user to control their use and if journos are leaking then it says everything about the culture they sweat in than the platform they use to express their frustration
  • An view on the Future of Journalism from oz – It's a union view so there is the usual bashing of "bedroom bloggers" but the video intro is interesting and the report, some interesting insights. Given that these guys did a world tour to get the best insights it would be an interesting read for anyone.
  • Digital Inclusion, Social Capital and Digital Barn Raising – Digital Engagement – A great roundup of ideas and projects to help grow hyperlocal and grass-routes community projects "As someone said, we are very good at talking about these issues, and maybe piloting … but not at taking entrepreneurial action and scaling up. I certainly remember similar discussions 10-12 years ago when I think that there were in fact more local online communities in the first flush of enthusiasm for the Net." Some interesting stuff here.
  • Confessions of a former online producer – Interesting 'essay' musing on the practice and future of newspapers and local journalism "Unless local users conscientiously seek and support local substantive journalism with money, real local news will continue to be spotty at best, barely afloat in a sea of nearly-naked celebs."
  • Why journalists deserve low pay | csmonitor.com – Shameless (or should that be sinful) linkbait for the Christian science monitor that is generating a lot of linking. "Journalism must innovate and create new means of gathering, processing, and distributing information so it provides content and services that readers, listeners, and viewers cannot receive elsewhere. And these must provide sufficient value so audiences and users are willing to pay a reasonable price. " Shame they don't allow the debate on comments – that would add value
  • TimePress – Put Your Blog Posts in a Time Line with this WordPress plugin – This plugin could be a really interesting addition to a newspapers kit if using wordpress blogs. Perhaps a dedicated sports blog that could track to a timeline of the teams performance over the year. It also includes twitter integration.
  • When the Times Wire crackles » Nieman Journalism Lab – Zachary M. Seward uses google reader and an earlier version of the Timeswire to track the NYTimes' publishing cycle. Interesting
  • Times Wire – The New York Times – I like the way the user can chose the streams. Nothing radical you may think but how many newspaper sites have you seen with a single page of tens of RSS feeds. This might be a less daunting option.
  • Newspapers: There is No Magic Bullet – "There is no magic bullet. In fact, most of the bullets just listed are of the dumb-dumb variety (as opposed to dum-dum, nitpickers). They reflect the thinking of executives and journalists who don't really understand the business of journalism, the reality of the new Internet-driven world, or what consumers are looking for these days."
  • Roy Greenslade: How council-run newspaper journalists defend their jobs | Media | guardian.co.uk – The news that council papers have NUJ type journos working for them gives Greenslade food for thought. He's been clear on his thoughts about council newspapers "But I have not given any thought to the journalists who produce the material for such publications. You have to admit: they do have a point." I think this is a pretty shoddy admission. Perhaps it was convenient to assume it was all PR bunnies. Or maybe this fuss was about protecting jobs and not journalism or democracy?
  • In defence of council-run papers – A letter from 14 NUJ members An obvious but overlooked facet of the council newspapers are evil debate – they employ proper journalists and pay a decent wage. But FleetStreetBlues lays down a challenge – "Now let's hope the East End Life team use that same fire and passion when covering the next Tower Hamlets council meeting. Remember, it's not the council bosses who pay your wages. It's the taxpayers.
  • Facebook Remains Stubbornly Proud Of Position On Holocaust Denial – Not being a regular facebook user I have missed this storm over their stance on 'free speech' – "Facebook is apparently done talking about Holocaust denial for now. A couple of groups that got more out of hand than the rest were taken down, but the company’s policy of permitting the groups on the site remains. " Michaels point is that there is free speech and then things that are just plain wrong. A hard logic to sustain even if the gut says it's right. A difficult topic but a principle that would trouble anyone moderating forums and comments as we all find our own level as to what is an acceptable level of free speech in a community.
  • Three ideas to make newspaper pay walls work – "Newspaper publishers need to get round the table and launch their own PayPal. It’s the only way it can work. I should be able to use the same account for every single newspaper on the planet. Or, at the very least, in the UK. But really, the planet. A PayPal for newspapers would be a revolution. It means I can keep track of what I’m reading, and spending, and not have to worry about signing in to 30 different sites."
  • Guido’s Plan to Save the Indy – Guy Fawkes’ blog – Uber politico blogger Guido Fawkes suggest a way to save the Indie. "The Indy should therefore enthusiastically embrace the socially liberal Notting Hill Cameroons, in all their weed tolerating, groovy green glory. Become the modernised news brand that Cameroons are not embarrassed to be supported by…"
  • Murdoch’s Secret Plan to Charge for Content – "According to a knowledgeable source, the team is said to be “looking at hardware” to deliver the content in a “user-friendly way”—a prospect that will surely catch the attention of the developers of Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader."
  • Non-For-Profit Isn’t A Business Model For Newspapers – "the reason why they have a decent shot at surviving isn’t because of that philanthropic support—it’s because of their entrepreneurial spirit and lean cost structure, two things most newspaper companies are lacking." It's the mindset not the money that is important.

Bookmarks for April 22nd through May 8th

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These are my links for April 22nd through May 8th:

  • Digital Inclusion: The Evidence — Digital Engagement – A cracking presentation with a huge range of stats on digital inclusion – are we really talking to all our audience when we go online?
  • Teaching Online Journalism » Multimedia journalism teaching: 10 things I learned – Mindy has some great ideas and isnights based on her experiences of teaching multimedia this year
  • NewBizNews: Hyperlocal « BuzzMachine – "For the New Business Models for News Project at CUNY a key model we want to build is hyperlocal. " More from Cuny and Jarvis on possible models for the future of journalism
  • The "Future of Journalism” heard – Not the place you'd expect a round up of the "Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet hearing on the "Future of Journalism," (a great site none the less) but a nice selection of links that would be of interest to all, not just the US.
  • New hyperlocal sites for towns without newspapers – Big(ish) newspaper group stake claim on web shock. "In every town, there will already be a person who writes match reports for football games, businesses who like to talk about their work, churches who host events every week. We want to co-ordinate that activity. " Interesting move by AND but time will tell if it's really hyperlocal or more of the same. The phrase "We want to co-ordinate that activity" doesnt make me confident for the former.
  • NewBizNews: Metro « BuzzMachine – "This is the third of three strategies for a sustainable future of news that we’ll be working on at the CUNY New Business Models for News Project It’s the most complex and the most important: What can fill the void when (I used to say if) a metro paper dies? "
  • David Simon, Creator of Acclaimed HBO Series "The Wire": As Profit Motive Guts Newspapers, Communities Lose Out – A full transcript of Simon's evidence gives a more rounded view of his take on the issues than a lot of the blog talk gave him credit for. I still can't buy the contradition of relaxing anti-trust and 'it was the shareholders that did it' but this is the source stuff – so you cam make your own mind up.
  • David Simon: Dead-Wrong Dinosaur – Gawker do a bit of a job on Wire creator David Simon and his apparently anti-blog sentiment "Simon told the Senate Commerce Committee today bloggers don't go to city council meetings, or know what the hell is going on if they do — a clichéd, out of touch refrain common among newspapermen who can't be bothered to do any reporting on the assertion." It's a shame Simon chose bloggers as his lever to try and force congress to 'save newspapers'. A bit like bankers blaming bank customers. Good ammo but wrong target David.
  • News Corp Q1 results: Ad plunge at newspapers prompts Murdoch online rethink – Lots of interesting things off the back of Murdochs comments, for example, "He suggested that one of News Corp's main newspaper assets, for example The Sun or Australia's The Daily Telegraph could start charging for online access within a year or so." But I also like the throw away statement about audience, facebook and revenue. Why would be interested in audience unless they bring ad revenue!
  • @Google – @Twitter To Start Indexing Links For Search – Santosh Jayaram, Twitter’s new VP of Operations has been speaking at some conference/panel thing. According to Techcrunch, " The most interesting thing is that Twitter Search will soon begin crawling the links that people tweet out and indexing them. This immediately takes Twitter Search, which is still a very basic service, to the next level." I agree. Twitter is fast becoming my new source of interesting stuff and this kind of search will really open things up
  • MediaShift Idea Lab . Journalism’s 3.0 Business Model(s) – Dan Glimour gives over space on Media Shift to Jeremy Pennycook, a graduate student, and an interesting take on the state of the industry " This isn't a knockout punch, no deus-ex-machima to save us, but this is probably closer to reality. It isn't glamorous and it isn't easy, but from the ashes of legacy media, new journalists can arise and rebuild a more agile, vibrant, and diverse industry with the same core values and goals."
  • FIPP 09: Charging for content or e-commerce – how will mags make money? – Roberto Civita joins the GMG's Carolyn McCall in gently introducing the mag industry to the concept of this new fangled online thing and the vexing issue of paywalls. This stuff has to be embraced – "Civita was adamant that magazines will continue and that the industry shouldn’t get hung up on what platform this happens on (”I really don’t think it makes any difference if we’re talking about paper or the new e-papers”) – it’s the quality of the product that matters"
  • When a reporter opens his multimedia toolbox – A google translation of an interview with French Multimedia journo Antonin Sabot.
  • Ridiculous or Radical? Idea #1: Stop making video – "I know it’s heresy to say it. But are we wasting time concentrating on video journalism?" I say no but agree that it has to have its place.
  • YouTube River Diverted Into The Google Social Ocean As Well – You could link Youtube and google together "but starting today, if you sign up for a new YouTube account, you automatically get a Google account to go with it." Might be a less frustrating way to sign up for a google id!
  • Top 10 Tools of the Social Media Swiss Army Knife – "social media is essentially a Swiss Army knife. And a Roman legion of social media experts can't tell you more about social media than a simple Swiss Army knife can. Social media is a tool."
  • Emily Bell on The Future of Journalism – "Emily's topic was Journalism Ten Years From Now – a massively contentious topic as advertising revenues and print circulations plummet, editorial staffs shrink, new digital and social media platforms spring up everywhere and knowledgeable amateurs with blogs provide an increasing number of alternative, authoritative information sources."
  • Find journalism links to share on Twitter – How do you find links to share with your followers on Twitter? If your followers are interested in journalism, Kevin Sablan has one easy way.
  • Seth’s Blog: Thinking about business models – A business model is the architecture of a business or project. It has four elements:

    1. What compelling reason exists for people to give you money? (or votes or donations)
    2. How do you acquire what you're selling for less than it costs to sell it?
    3. What structural insulation do you have from relentless commoditization and a price war?
    4. How will strangers find out about the business and decide to become customers?

    Seth Godin thinks about how the four fit together and which elements are important for new media

  • A confab with Matt Thompson: Noodling the future of context – Matt Thompson is a 2008-2009 Donald W. Reynolds Fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute and his work and input in to a recent think tank debate in Washington DC generated some interesting points on dealing with news "in context".
  • Does Anyone Trust the Media? – eMarketer – People around the world do trust the media, but to varying degrees. Thanks to @markmedia for the pointer to this study of 'trust' in the media around the world. The use of the definition "online news" concerns me a little as that could include newspaper websites. But it makes for interesting contrasts
  • My 21 Tips for Starting a Successful Blog | The Wardman Wire – Darren Rowse at Problogger has posted about things that potential bloggers (”Pre-Bloggers”) need to think about. This article is Matt Wardman's response to this article and top 21 points for pre-bloggers to think about. Very interesting it is to.
  • Online first journalism – "It’s time for some short-takes: stuff I find interesting around the blogosphere for journalist bloggers" A nice round up of blogging jouno related stuff.
  • Gimmick or utility? News connections – Mindy has mixed feelings about the Washington Post's cute Evri widgets "I feel divided about these. On the one hand, they are fun to play with. They make me curious, and I click on them. On the other hand, I don’t think I have ever clicked one of the story links below the graphic — which would seem to be the reason the graphic exists."
  • 7 Harsh Truths about running online communities – "The ultimate harsh truth is that your users will be talking about your website, services and products, whether you want them to or not. The only question is whether you want to engage in that discussion."
  • 3Rs of Blogging – Redirect, Reuse, Recycle – "In today’s world, we pay a lot of attention toward ways to minimize waste of any kind. The 3 Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle) have become rallying cries for those hoping to maximize our use of limited resources. " A great article about making the most of missing and underperfomring blog posts. There is also a promise of, what looks like, a great new wordpress plugin to help
  • World’s Best Headlines: BBC News – Jakob Nielsen likes the BBC headlines "Precise communication in a handful of words? The editors at BBC News achieve it every day, offering remarkable headline usability"
  • The value of a newsletter – Craig McGinty says that "If there is one thing I stress to any website owner big or small it is the importance of offering a newsletter service." and he has a graph to prove it. Well thought out support for the value of newsletters from Craig.
  • 85 Resources to Pass the Time During Your Next Furlough – Another mega list of resources to wade through. Why not do 2 a day towards your five-a-day of web upskilling
  • Town halls hit back in council newspapers row – Don't blame us for your problems say council leaders. When it comes to the council run newspapers are killing regional newspapers fight they say that "Councils do not operate their own publications to jeopardise the future of the local paper. As the LGA's research shows, most magazines are only distributed a handful of times a year and are not significant competitors for advertising revenue.
  • Social Bites – Like Sound Bites But Different – I missed this, but I like the idea. Not sure making tweets so structured is something to sweat over but the concepts and motivation are spot on

    "A social bite is a short piece of text to describe an article, post or idea which is easy to understand and easy to distribute through viral networks. A social bite must still carry the post’s message and goal but in a way that quickly impacts with users in essence"

  • Jeff Jarvis: Advice for specialist journalists – Adam picks up a post from Jo Geary with video of "Jeff Jarvis – associate professor at City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, Guardian columnist and author of Buzzmachine.com – speaking at SXSWi 09."
    Jeff suggests that journalists need to establish personal connections to an audience in order to survive the current industry turmoil.
  • Journalists must change thinking to change industry | Save the Media – “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein. When I read this Einstein quote (which was posted in an office at my kids’ elementary school), I thought: Wow! Einstein could have said this today about the newspaper industry.
  • TV3.0 Journalism and political challenges of TV in the digital age – A (google)translated version of a German academic paper on internet TV and USG
  • Yet another ‘why journalists should use Twitter’ post – It may be 'yet another' but Alison always brings something extra to the table – "So, while the Twitter canon is extensive enough without me adding to it, I thought I'd lay out why I think journalists should use Twitter. Just in case my J-student needs some extra ammo…"
  • graphic designr » Creating graphics with Google Docs – This short, easy how – to on the way you can create interactive graphics using google docs is one of a number of short intros to core technical skills for journalists
  • The Mainstream Adoption Curve – A nice graphic that illustrates the way that the new, fast becomes the old
  • Five things a ‘complete journalist’ should know today – "a quick list of 5 basic tech skills that college journalists should possess to enhance their chances for career success"
  • How to turn online social networking into real-life relationships – "The following tips for expanding your network and contacts in a digital environment will help you translate those online connections into lasting real-world relationships."
  • FLYP : A multimedia magazine – behind the scenes – Flyp has some presentation problems – the page VS. multimedia screen paradigm needs work – but the content is good and this article puts some flesh on the people behind it.
  • High Time We Set the Record Straight on Newspaper ‘Myths’ – "Let's set the record straight: Newspapers still enjoy considerable readership and deliver strong results for advertisers. More Americans read printed newspapers than watch the Super Bowl. More Americans read printed newspapers than own dogs. Newspapers and their Web sites reach a larger audience than ever before." Yes, all god points but it's still not an excuse to rest on your laurels
  • Video Viewing Exceeds E-mail Use, Nielsen Reports – Can this be true! "Visitors to video sites now exceeds users of Web-based e-mail, according to a report released today by The Nielsen Company. The study reports on monthly unique visits to various Web sites and online applications. "
  • 64 Things Every Geek Should Know – LaptopLogic.com – Lots of (what to most will be) uber geek stuff. Like how to bypass website blocking – "What is a horrific situation for an average computer user is a simple irritation for an everyday geek. To bypass a website block/filter, simply enter that websites IP address in instead of the actual site address. "
  • New Voices: New Voices Invests in Eight Hyperlocal News Sites – "Eight hyperlocal community media projects from across the United States have been selected as this year’s New Voices grant winners. Each will receive up to $25,000 in start-up funding over the next two years."..and man, won't they be closely watched
  • Multimedia toolkit: 55 sites you should know about – A great resource
  • Introducing The Long News – "[T]he idea behind The Long News: to try to identify news stories whose significance seems likely to grow, rather than diminish, over time."
  • The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging … And When To Use Each One – An interesting presentation on the types of blogging with some 'values' attached to each
  • The OJB guide to open news APIs – part 1: Guardian, NYT and Daylife – "In the first of a series, Peter Clark, founder of Broadersheet, takes a look at three of the leading APIs for people looking to build news-based web projects and mashups."
  • Twitter Quickstart Guide – "…don’t know quite how to get started with this Twitter thingy, this post is for you. (It’s also for anyone else who wants to get into the warm, scented waters of Twitter, but hasn’t; or those who have signed up but are not yet fully addicted. You know who you are…)"

    A nice intro

  • Proof that council papers are competing with local press – "the net effect, of course, is to undermine the commercial local media still further, reducing income from advertising and causing sales to fall."

Bookmarks for April 14th through April 22nd

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These are my links for April 14th through April 22nd:

  • The blurring of journalist career paths – What journalists need to do (and how they need to think) in this new digital economy
  • Some SXSW-inspired thoughts about online communities, affinity, and the rules of engagement. – I've been thinking a lot about the idea of friends, followers and the like. I'm pondering how affinity, as a concept, ties these things together and whether getting people in the media to buy the concept is a way of getting better community relations. So this post from a while back pushed the right buttons for me. Esspecially the idea that "the end game is the connection, not the transaction."
  • Mandelson puts the brakes on newspaper distribution – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic – "The business secretary, Peter Mandelson, ruled yesterday that publishers will no longer be obliged to supply newsagents who order their papers." I don't know why but this really smells of a really, really bad idea. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised that Mandelson is courting the big companies.
  • Newspaper websites need to improve their readability – "Most newspaper websites are doing a bad design job in making their stories readable." A cracking post on the good and bad of online page design by Malcolm Coles
  • Ten Ways To Improve Your Multimedia Production Right Now – A great post with great tips.
  • Appreciating the inverted pyramid – "The inverted pyramid, it runs out, isn’t the devil’s spawn after all. It’s just another tool for storytelling and one that I think editors and reporters may need to spend a little more time exploring." Very true.
  • Former local journalist in new online venture – News of a local journo setting up a local news site. What caught my eye was (apart from a journo setting up on their own) was the comments about avoiding badmouthing your ex-employer. I agree. You're never going to compete. A competitive collaboration is a better bet
  • The DeOnté Rawlings Shooting (washingtonpost.com) – Agreat interactive from the washington post
  • "Introducing Information Architecture at The Guardian" – Martin Belam posts his notes from – "'Introducing Information Architecture at The Guardian', which explained a bit about my role there and how the site is structured." Great stuff and who'd have know there was a wookipedia
  • Why journalists should learn to code (and why some shouldn’t bother) – "Both sides have valid arguments: learning basic HTML, CSS or other programming languages helps journalists create their own online content and understand the parameters of technical journalism. On the other hand, refusing to learn coding may be more than just stubbornness or old media thinking. " I agree that knowing some html is a good skill. Is it coding? No, I don't think so. Maybe we need to claim it as Online shorthand. Can you tag at more than 100 tags a minute?
  • Newspapers continue to talk a bad game… – Dan Thornton gets brain ache trying to understand the confused message coming from newspapers and the broader industry as they try and react to digital – "Lumping together so many disaprate businesses into one homogeneous ‘newspapers’ group is always going to result in a bit of schizophrenia, but when you’re attempting to discuss an industry, it’s a bit unavoidable.
  • Breaking news online: How two Pulitzer finalists used the web – A look at how the finalists for in the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news used the medium – very helpful stuff
  • Journalists lessons from the movie "State of Play" – What we can learn about what journalism needs from the movies
  • Analysis on 2009 SSND multimedia entries and winners – Some nice reflection on student winners of US Society of News design sponsored College News Design Contest
  • PLEASE STAND BY: Indiana Jones and the Quest for Web Traffic: A true tale about the real cost of digital churnalism – "[T]alented journalists like Susan – with a decade of experience and a showreel the length of a Martin Scorsese film – are left sidelined and ever more frustrated by a desperate land grab to bring in exactly the same kind of stories as everyone else. Welcome to the future of new media journalism." Sad but true stories from the industry
  • 10 Exceptional WordPress Hacks – 10 new and totally killer WordPress hacks to make your blog stand out from the crowd. As usual, we won’t just list the hacks alone. In each entry, you’ll find an explanation of the code as well as the kinds of problems that the hack solves.
  • Overview of live video over the internet – "…there are many low-cost options available right now that should be putting pressure even on dedicated video conferencing businesses and services included in IPTV (Internet Protocol Television)"
  • producing online video journalism – "breaking into online video journalism without breaking the bank."
  • ‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers – Everyblock gets a look from the NYTimes “In many cities, the local blog scene is so rich and deep that even if a newspaper goes away, there would be still be plenty of stuff for us to publish,” said Mr. Holovaty of EveryBlock.
  • Canada’s Community Newspapers – "Some of the fastest-growing ethnic communities in Canada—be they South Asian, Chinese, Hispanic or European—still prefer to get a little ink on their fingers while reading the news. Advertisers have started to clue in."
  • The content cascade: How content will flow in digital news enterprises – "Rather than trying to redefine “the basic unit of news” — it used to be the story; is it now the fact, or the topic, the issue, or what? — and what that implies for the work of journalists, going forward it will be most useful to think about content as a cascade, as in a stream running down a rocky glen, always moving, dividing, uniting, filling pools here and there, constantly finding new niches to fill."
  • Newspapers must grow their online news market share. Can they? – It’s very much a “fire, ready, aim” process
  • Q&A: Canon helps usher in the video SLR era – "In an interview with CNET News, Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon's professional products marketing division talked about not just video, but also OLED displays, the arrival of rival full-frame SLRs from Sony and Nikon, changing flash card and file format standards, wireless networking, and more. "
  • Newsplastic: Electronic ink + flexible screens + wireless – "But the possibilities [of e-paper] really start to hit home when you watch these YouTube videos of laboratory-stage e-reader technology. Note that the following video of Plastic Logic's flexible screen is almost 3 years old. "
  • [Types of ]Online Video Ads: A Bag of Tricks – "Some of the formats are not much different from ads you might see on television; others harness the interactivity of the Internet to engage viewers."
  • Local media ownership rules may be relaxed in quick-fix bill – "It is would be consistent that rather than have Digital Britain as a report it is turned into a white paper or bill of some sort. "A change in the competition regime for newspapers does not require legislative change, just a new interpretation by the Competition Commission and OFT of the definition of the scope of the marketplace," the newspaper industry insider added.
  • Research: Going Web-Only Could Kill Your Newspaper | paidContent:UK – "With the economics of news forcing the likes of Seattle-PI and Christian Science Monitor to abandon print for the web, doubtless dozens of other publishers are mulling the same option. Not so fast – ditching the dead tree could lose publishers the bulk of their revenue and even a sizable chunk of their web traffic, say researchers from London’s City University."
  • GunnMap 2 – great map builder
  • Create your own infographic with a few clicks using GunnMap – GunnMap is an application that allows users to upload their own data, customize the colors and then download the resulting infographic. It seemed too good to be true, so I tested it out for II readers to find out if this could really be the answer for quick-and-easy graphics. Although it has it’s limitations, I have decided that GunnMap is definitely worth checking out.
  • Beet.TV: Akamai Seeks Standardization of Video Players with Big Industry Initiative – "Akamai is working on an open source video player initiative with the IAB, Adobe and Microsoft and others to to develop standards. Tim says this is essential for advertising in videos and the growth of the industry. The industry group is called the Open Video Player Initiative."
  • Former editor to study decline of regional newspapers – "Neil Fowler has been awarded the Guardian Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and will look at the post-war history of local press and more recent developments such as the impact of digital technology and the internet."
  • Social media is good for you – "Does the rapid stream of news that constant digital connectedness brings us (via social networks and the likes of twitter) make us less compassionate? Does it mess with our moral compass?"
  • Journalism Online: Part of the Web $2.0 Goldrush – Ken Doctor comes up with a good list of pros and cons for new start-up online journalism. Interesting stuff.
  • What is Good Journalism? – Richard Sambrook finds a great presentation made up of quotes that try and answer the titular question.
  • Why top-down syndication is broken – "Greg Elin of the Sunlight Foundation reacts to a presentation by the AP’s vice president and director of strategy Jim Kennedy on a “new model for news consumption,” given via teleconference to the room." Essentially this boils down to 'you have to let us play with you or your model is rubbish' with a detour in to share the process if you're not going to share the outcome.
  • Herding Cats – "Best of luck to the latest effort to unite the newspaper industry. They'll soon learn that one of the penalties of being the rough draft of history is that you need to be able to learn from that history."
  • Defending “rule-breaking” journalism – "One of my colleagues, for example, suggested that the post was irresponsible and that such rule-breaking is one of the reasons there is a “credibility gap” between bloggers and mainstream journalists."
  • Avid Introduces VideoSpin 2.0 – Version 2.0 of avids free video editor. You'll need to pay to get the better codecs but even that is dirt cheap. Only for XP/Vista though
  • Using Twitter to Publish Breaking News from the Field – "The resulting method uses e-mail as the interface for posting short headlines (which are actually Twitter messages, or "tweets") to the Web site. If you can send an e-mail, you can post breaking news."
  • Using Data Visualization as a Reporting Tool Can Reveal Story’s Shape – "More and more, though, some reporters are using data visualization tools to find the story hidden in the data."
  • Nielsen Says Online Video Usage Soars – Online video continues to expand — now up 40% versus the same levels a year ago.
  • How to Build an Emmy-Winning Videojournalism Department – "It really boils down to making the right choices about what you spend time on. Yes, it is worth months of time to produce 50 video segments – count 'em! – commemorating the 50th anniversary of Motown Records. Crazy, yes, but worth it if you look at the hit count. Yes, it is worth sending a videographer out at 12:01 a.m. to do a clip of disgraced former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick leaving jail, knowing that everything associated with him goes off the charts. "
  • Five predictions about US newspapers: Pt 3: There will still be print newspapers in 15 years – "Nothing sparks innovation like the threat of death."
  • WSJ & the Kindle: Puzzling Relationship – "Could this Kindle story be an attempt by the Journal to nudge Amazon in a favorable business direction? The possibility is strong enough that I’m personally very skeptical about the WSJ article’s key claim. Either a more nuanced headline or stronger sourcing would have made this story less of an ethical gray area."
  • Faster Future: Publishing possibilities now and beyond: Lego Man: Why the next web is about meta data, first – "It is what the semantic web seeks to achieve, taking us beyond the node-focused world of social networks and towards the meta data (connections) of the networked world. So we shift from focusing on social networks as some kind of goal towards a mission to enable our transformation into global digital social beings, constructed from and expressed as meta data across a silo-free web."
  • 6 Blogs, 3 Cheat Sheets and 1 Degree | Megan Taylor: Web Journalist – I’ve been spending some more time looking at design elements on various blogs, how colors and typography and borders are used to make even a simple layout look amazing. I’ve also been collecting resources to keep in mind when working on Web sites.
  • How the Ian Tomlinson G20 video spread The Guardian brand across the media – Martin Belam does a great round up of the way the G20 video from the Guardian made it round the media; online and off. Great examples and thoughtful conclusions. Essential stuff.
  • Lego Man: Why the next web is about meta data, first – "It is what the semantic web seeks to achieve, taking us beyond the node-focused world of social networks and towards the meta data (connections) of the networked world."
  • Cambridge news go head to head with the Nationals – The Cambridge news go head to head with the likes of the FT, Guardian and Crains for Most Significant Contribution to Future Newspaper Success – for their video content!
  • The unstoppable rise of the citizen cameraman – "We've still to discover why a policeman knocked Tomlinson to the ground and why he died a few minutes later. If and when we do, it will be words and not pictures that tell us." Which completely ignores the fact that the two together are so powerful

Bookmarks for March 23rd through April 13th

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These are my links for March 23rd through April 13th:

Interesting links for Monday

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Here is what I’ve been scanning today whilst getting my head around validation paperwork

Shirky, Seattle and interesting stuff for Monday

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The big read today, for everyone, has been Clay Shirky’s essay on thinking the unthinkable . A more cogent discussion of the issues around newspapers would be hard to find. Lots chimed with me and to pick one part to quote kind-of defeats the structure of the piece. So worth a read though.

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

On the heals of Shirky’s essay comes news that the Seattle P-I is to publish last edition Tuesday. Given Clay’s take and the general shifting to the recognition that change is, well, inevitable, they may feel like they are in a goldfish bowl but this will be one closley watched (re)start for a paper going online.

We don’t have reporters, editors or producers—everyone will do and be everything. Everyone will write, edit, take photos and shoot video, produce multimedia and curate the home page. That’ll be a training challenge for everyone, but we’re all up for the challenge and totally ready to pick up all these skills.

Other stuff that I read today included