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Could get vicious.
“what you don’t probably realise among all the arguments abt working arrangements,hrs,rotas,salaries & the rest of that irrelevant crap is that,in many cases,subs will start disappearing on national papers nxt yr.I am being serious” -
New media is so much fun.
“forget abt a breaking news blog-you need a breaking news tumblelog where you can post text,SMS&pics/audio/video from e-mail to[.]an RSS feed.
It’s not hard.At all.The hardest part is giving up a touch of editorial control” -
Includes excellent roundup of links to thinkers on comment best practice.
“the best way to learn about the conversation online is to join in[.]engaging in the ideas there,bringing your journalism to the conversation:ask questions,ask for examples[.]Learn”
links for 2008-07-30
July 30th, 2008 — Delicious
links for 2008-07-29
July 29th, 2008 — Delicious
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The work of Ruud Elmendorp; Dutch freelance video journalist in Africa.
Jay Rosen transcript posted below
July 29th, 2008 — Media, Online, SMO, Social Networking
In case there is anyone out there who thinks they don’t have the time to listen to Jay Rosen for six minutes and eight seconds, below is a transcript of the video of Jay Rosen moderating the SABEW conference workshop, Using Social Networking in Business Reporting.
To watch the video, go to acidlabs, where you can also see a video of Jay Rosen defining citizen journalism. I would embed, but for some reason embedded video has been breaking my page recently.
Transcript of Jay Rosen’s SABEW workshop
July 29th, 2008 — Media, Online, Other blogs, Social Networking
TRANSCRIPT OF JAY ROSEN MODERATING THE SABEW WORKSHOP, USING SOCIAL NETWORKING IN BUSINESS REPORTING
SABEW
45th Annual Conference
April 27-29, Sheraton Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD
USING SOCIAL NETWORKING IN BUSINESS REPORTING
Jay Rosen, New York University and author of PressThink blog
It’s not about the technology … The whole art of doing any kind of social network reporting is in organizing people
This is one of the most important things about the internet. This is one of the things that’s changing the world most profoundly today - is the falling costs for people with the same interests, or people of like mind, to find each other, share information, pool their knowledge, collaborate, and publish.
I’m going to say it again. The falling cost for like minded people to find each other, share information, collaborate and publish back to the rest of the world, is a major factor changing government, politics, media, social life - at the same time.
USING SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS TO IMPROVE THE REPORTING OF A BEAT REPORTER
We’re trying to figure out how we can use Gillmore’s insights, and the tools that we have now - like blogging, social networking tools - to actually improve the reporting that a beat reporter does on their
the potential is there to mobilize thousands of people on a single story
beat, and we’re several months into that project, and I can tell you some of what we’ve learned from it.
LESSON ONE: SLOW & DIFFICULT WORK, NO BREAKTHROUGHS TO REPORT
Our first lesson is that this is slow and difficult work, and that we don’t have any breakthroughs so far. That it’s a lot easier to understand the concept ‘My readers know more than I do’, than it is to work out a regimen in which that knowledge can actually flow in and start influencing the articles, and scoops, and series and so forth. So it’s slow and difficult work. We don’t have breakthroughs to report yet.
LESSON TWO: THERE IS NO FORMULA
Secondly there is, and I know this is frustrating, no formula for doing it yet. Because we can’t easily point to somebody who uses social network reporting to complete their beat every day.
LESSON THREE: ECONOMIC REALITY LIMITS TIME TO DEVOTE TO SOMETHING NEW
Third, one of the things we’ve learned is, in the current economic climate in most newsrooms, especially in newspapers, reporters are under a great deal of pressure. They not only have to produce on deadline, they have to produce more than they used to. And, despite their enthusiasm for this project when they signed up for it in November, the economic realities of the newsroom are such that many of them have almost no time to devote to something new.
And this is very much getting in the way because the immediate pay-offs in terms of scoops, meeting your production quotas or breaking big stories so that you can explain to your bosses why you’re putting time into your network are not really there, so this has become very frustrating for some of our people and it’s very much a sign of the times and a sign of the economic climate out there.
LESSON FOUR: IT’S NOT ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY
My fourth lesson is by far the most important lesson that I’ve learned in this work.
It’s not about the technology. It’s not about what tools you use. It’s not about which blogging software you adopt. It’s not at all about whether you should use Facebook or Twitter or some of the other technologies that are out there. The whole art of doing any kind of social network reporting is in organizing people, and how people are engaged to help journalists, rather than the tools and technologies we have for reaching those people. And it’s hard to overestimate how important this is and how easy it is to forget it.
LESSON FIVE: THE TEN PER CENT RULE
The fifth important lesson is sometimes called, among those who study user-generated content, the ten per cent rule. The ten per cent rule is that if 100 people sign up for your network, if 100 people sign up for your citizen journalism project, about 10 of them will actually contribute anything in terms of content. Whether it’s a blog post, whether it’s comments in a thread, whether it’s tips sent in by email, about ten per cent will actively contribute. And one of those ten will become an extremely committed contributor, what is sometimes called super-contributors in online organizing.
THE CHALLENGE: GIVING YOUR AUDIENCE SOMETHING TO DO
And so the real challenge is not getting people to sign up or participate, it’s figuring out how to give them stuff they can do that actually makes its way into your report, so they can see the results of what they do. And if you can do that, people will participate.
THE POTENTIAL: MOBILIZING THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ON A SINGLE STORY
And so if you want to know why am I here talking to you about this, it’s because the potential is there to mobilize thousands of people on a single story.
WWW.TALKINGPOINTSMEMO.COM - a model internet news site
The model of an internet news organization is this one, because it is completely involved in filtering, processing, editing this huge inflow from readers, packaging it as news stories and blog posts, sending it back out which in turn stimulates more inflow from the readers.
Google Maps recommends kayaking
July 28th, 2008 — Just blogging
I always thought it was a joke when someone said there were directions in Google Maps to kayak across oceans. And yet, I accidentally stumbled upon just that when looking for some directions.
Not much logic behind the recommended kayak route - Seattle to Sydney. Wouldn’t something like San Diego to Brisbane (since I’m going to Brisbane) make more sense? But we’re kayaking some 12,700km (7,923m), there is no sense.
Jobs at News Digital Media
July 28th, 2008 — Journalists, Media
There are some pretty good jobs up for grabs at News Digital Media at the moment.
Due to the growth of the business we are currently looking for a talented and passionate Senior Video Journalist to produce journalistic video and multimedia content…
Digital Media Designer-Mobile (Part time)
Due to the growth of the business we are currently looking for a talented and passionate Designer who will be responsible for the design of mobile sites and mobile advertising campaigns as well as online and print creative.
It’s good to see a growing awareness of the importance of user friendly mobile content.
links for 2008-07-28
July 28th, 2008 — Delicious
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I’m all for mobile news-particularly as it relates to providing information in developing countries-but at this early stage I would say mobile is going to be part of a resurrection of local news providers.Uptake could be too slow to save the paper
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“..discussion about whether “Newspaper” still fits. It’s a legacy from an era when we tended to label ourselves and our groups by our medium, not by our function. It’s one of the cultural problems newspaper newsrooms have faced as they move online”
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Help Dave Cohn take “Journalism” out of his blog description.
“I don’t care about that word [”Journalism”] persay. What I care about is the open and honest exchange of information, as I believe THAT’S what is needed to keep a democracy strong.” -
I somewhat agree-I just can’t see chiefs of staff seeing it as anything other than a waste of time - could also be legal issues.
“Each reporter should take responsibility for the comments on[their]stories and[.]be encouraged to actively participate[.]” -
Training then needs implementation.
“The best multimedia journalists are sometimes those who take it upon themselves to learn[.]The online revolution[.]will never happen unless[.]organizations make a financial commitment to training their existing staff” -
“As money&consumers shift,what choice do we have but shift with them?None.The Web is our top priority[.]A lot of experienced news people[feel duped into ‘new’ jobs]-understandable,but also[.]irrelevant.We all need to just deal with it and turn the page.”
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A Queensland judge ruled against serving court documents via Facebook.
“in cases where[personal service is a]practical impossibility,substituted service can be ordered by the court[,allowing] documents to be served by some other means, usually by post.” -
“no matter[the]arguments in favor of a certain technology or against a certain methodology,the broken business model of newspapers remains[…] the problem of working out new business models for news organizations needs our attention”
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“Chris Hedges gives a sermon from his high-church pulpit decrying the devil internet-’Bloggers, unlike most established reporters, rarely admit errors’-I hope he corrects that gross and false generalization. But I doubt he will. Damned reporters.”
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Video has archive value too-don’t hide it
“archive video to create a long-tail business[.]Broadcasting is so accustomed to the idea of instant obsolescence (what we do today doesn’t matter tomorrow) that we miss opportunities for niche videos” -
“Web Integration on a Grander Scale.
I present a model for moving beyond reader comments, and activating community-member contributions and participation at the article level.” -
Stephen Quinn-prof at DeakinU
“conference about mobile media opens in KL July 24. [.]mostly about how publishers can use mobiles to increase their audiences.But hopefully will discuss mojo concept: how to use the mobile as a journalism tool for reporting” -
“Maybe the fact we can more easily share stories is good enough in and of itself,without needing to assess click through&business model potential[..]Can an online or mobile medium do word-of-mouth storytelling justice?Can it help to create community?”
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Putting video cameras in the hands of print reporters at the Star-Ledger.
“you understand immediately how[newspaper]works.“Here’s the pencil.There’s the door.See you at 6.”It’s fast,cheap&efficient.Take that culture of fast, cheap and efficient[ -
“Next time you’re stuck for ideas or inspiration I hope you’ll find something here to get your right brain firing. A tip: sometimes the best sources of inspiration often lie far outside your own creative field.”
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This could prove useful for those on a Twitter learning curve - Twitter commands quick reference guide.
“an exhaustive, ultra-portable, business-card-sized tweet sheet that you can download, print, cut out, and stick in your wallet or purse”
ABC Online - offline again
July 28th, 2008 — Media, News, Online
Two weeks ago I posted that Australia’s ABC Online was down, showing an ‘outage’ message.
At the time I thought it was because of the Pope’s visit to Australia, but now it’s down again. It would be interesting to know why they’re down, or what’s causing the down time.
Again, the message on the screengrab is the same:
We’re sorry…
We’re unable to supply the service you have requested. This may be due to unavoidable technical problems or very high load on our site. We apologise for any inconvenience and anticipate that normal service will resume shortly.
Google Reader trends
July 27th, 2008 — Delicious, Other blogs, Social Networking
I spend a lot of time reading RSS feeds - as evidenced by these screenshots from Google Reader.
I often come across things I’d like to write a post about but don’t have the time, so finally implemented delicious to post a daily links roundup here on the website.
It also allows me to at least make comment on a few things, even if I won’t go to the extent of a full post.
What Google Reader is less able to do is manage my growing addiction to Twitter - which is becoming an entire other reading list. I’m also on FriendFeed, but haven’t yet taken the full plunge there. I’m still a little intimidated by the torrent of information on display.
I don’t really use the ’share’ feature in Google Reader. I tag things as my Reading List, and share that instead. It’s currently feeding into my sidebar.
And my top 20 reads in Google Reader.
links for 2008-07-24
July 24th, 2008 — Delicious
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using “Twitter to turn my notetaking process into live coverage
1. Use a separate Twitter account to post live coverage
2. Use Friendfeed for backup.
3. Tell your Twitter followers about Friendfeed
4. Alert your regular Twitter posse -
“So, what’s the new business model of the future, besides laying off 40 employees? Oh I know, laying off 40 more 6 months from now. Got it.”
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In a case of - we realise someone does it better than us, but we can serve our readers well by acknowledging that, Chicago Tribune “silently released a new “(beta test)” feature, an EveryBlock-enabled police blotter”
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Good to see Connecting Up 08 conference material is online.
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I’m really liking this 10,000 words…should have been onto it earlier
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More good stuff
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Amy Gahran: I use Twitter to turn my notetaking process into live coverage for interested people.
links to Romenesko -
“Overall, I love the idea of asking for input from young journalists, and I think many of the ideas they came up with are pretty cool! I’ll be excited to discover what comes of this.”
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To consider-if a digital native can’t craft content, can they complain about their lack of influence?
“That’s certainly a core theme, that newsrooms are cutting into their meat and bone, leaving them with tech-savvy but journalistically immature staff…”
links for 2008-07-23
July 23rd, 2008 — Delicious
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“The Brisbane Media Map is a comprehensive guide to Brisbane’s Media and Creative Industries, offering information about businesses, service providers, communities and regulators.”
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“No wacky morphing tools here; just the features journalists need”
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“In this digital age it is a must that every journalist have a personal website that demonstrates [their] work. [these] are incorporating interactivity, blogs, video, audio, photos [..] which speak volumes more than traditional résumés”
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“…photos of young women in bikinis. Traffic skyrocketed. But that performance indicator wasn’t consistent with the goal of the site - to build a consistent local audience using the Web site for utility”
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LoJo:important emerging frontier for media content and services that [.] local media ignore at their peril
* Web-based mapping tech becoming simpler
* Mobile phones gaining”location awareness”
* market for car-based navigation systems growing fast -
Snap. This is the only decent comeback I’ve seen yet.
via Romenesko
“Adam Lashinsky fired back: ‘In the old school, we like to get it right the first time.’ “ -
“Highway Africa, which has become the biggest annual gathering of African journalists and has a strong element of how technology is changing journalism. A key theme this year is citizen journalism.”
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“but any news organization without a developing mobile strategy is toast. Among other things, I expect this will flatten or otherwise significantly change the online usage curve we see at news sites where the peak happens during daytime office hours.”
A wending path does lead
July 23rd, 2008 — News, Online, SMO, Social Networking
As the internet leads a wending path, a range of discussions (starting with Jeff Jarvis and on to Stilgherrian’s comments section) brought me to news.com.au’s live Twitter coverage of the pope at WYD08 on http://twitter.com/popedownunder.