the earley edition » Media Monologues http://earleyedition.com David Earley - exploring digital journalism and cross-platform delivery of new media Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:16:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Merry Christmas from the earley edition! http://earleyedition.com/2011/12/26/merry-christmas-from-the-earley-edition/ http://earleyedition.com/2011/12/26/merry-christmas-from-the-earley-edition/#comments Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:50:53 +0000 Dave Earley http://earleyedition.com/?p=1655 It’s been a long year for me, but an almost non-existent one for the earley edition. Blogging is dead, long live the blog (in 2012)!

For those who didn’t know, I’ve been online editor at Quest Community Newspapers – questnews.com.au – for almost 18 months now! Time flies, and the last six months of the new website has been like a speeding freight train. A few nudges here and there to make sure it stays on track, but expect to be crushed if you get in the way. Sometimes I have to get in the way, so the last six months has been a particularly hard slog (more so for my family, who have seen me briefly and sometimes not at all), but I’m looking forward to a bigger and better 2012. Not just at work, but here too at the earley edition!

In the last few weeks I’ve had Kristofor Lawson on deck full time as my deputy online editor at Quest, so there are exciting times ahead. 2012 is going to be massive, prepare to be blown away ;) It definitely won’t be less work with an extra set of hands!

Anyway, here’s a fun earley edition Christmas message, featuring the indomitable first edition (Miss 2), and introducing the second edition (Mr 0.75). [abridged version]

]]> http://earleyedition.com/2011/12/26/merry-christmas-from-the-earley-edition/feed/ 0 the digital media edition – issue 4 http://earleyedition.com/2011/01/06/the-digital-media-edition-issue-4/ http://earleyedition.com/2011/01/06/the-digital-media-edition-issue-4/#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2011 03:07:31 +0000 Dave Earley http://earleyedition.com/?p=1579 digital media reading list

10 Predictions for the News Media in 2011

In many ways, 2010 was finally the year of mobile for news media [...] In 2011, the focus on mobile will continue to grow [...] but the greater focus for news media in 2011 will be on re-imagining its approach to the open social web.

The Power of Twitter in Information Discovery | Both Sides of the Table

It surprises me how many really smart people I meet still doubt the power of Twitter. I think some of this stems from the early days of Twitter when it was presumed that it was a technology to tell people what you ate for lunch.

79% of all U.S. Moms with Kids Under 18 are Active on Social Media

Six Social Media Trends for 2011

MediaShift . How Storify Helps Integrate Social Streams Into Articles

For me, curation is part of the all-important process of telling stories and connecting people around these stories. Storytelling is about involving people, finding out new information and providing context so people can find out why that particular story is meaningful to them. Storify is one of the new curation tools.

10 Trends That Are Shaping Global Media Consumption

developed nations are fragmenting while developing ones are booming. This is as true for TV and newspapers (newspapers!) as it is for online video and mobile phones, the latter of which is poised to become the most ubiquitous media device in history.

Five reasons why Facebook Credits will save newspapers

1. Social gaming is the new crossword puzzle – and it’s worth $6bn worldwide
2. No self-assembly required: let Zuckerberg worry about it

3. Wall? What wall? It may be paid-for, but it’s certainly not hidden
4. Your mum could do it
5. Selectivity breeds success – without subscription, you can concentrate on added-value

The 18 Most Innovative Alternative News Stories Of 2010

As the definition of journalism is changing, so is our understanding of what constitutes a news story.
Technologists, reporters and citizen journalists continued to push the boundaries of innovative storytelling this year.

Twitter to be allowed in courts

Twitter can be used in courts but users will need the judge’s permission first and this could be refused in criminal trials, the country’s top judge said today.

1 Billion Peoples’ Interests Now Tracked by AddThis

AddThis [...] announced today that it now offers publishers information about the types of interests their readers and content sharers have demonstrated on the other sites they have visited.

Web Ad Spending Overtakes Newspaper Ad Spending

Online ad spending is about to overtake total ad spending for newspapers.
So says eMarketer, which predicts that Web ad dollars will hit $25.8 billion in the U.S. in 2010, while newspaper ad dollars, for both print and online, will get to $25.7 billion.

Age no longer much of a digital dividing line, says Pew study

New research from Pew indicates that older people are becoming about as skilled online as younger ones.

A Bivings Study: how are US newspapers doing on Facebook?

“newspaper online interactivity report looking at Facebook fan engagement amongst the top 100 US newspapers (determined by circulation).
The aim of the study was to compare large and small newspapers across the United States by looking at the numbers of fans that interacted with the newspaper and amongst themselves via posted content on Facebook Fan pages. “

Nieman Reports issue on beats/rounds

“Beats form the backbone of a newsroom, so what happens when resources shrink, new voices emerge and platforms multiply? Which topics stick around? What new beats emerge? As Twitter cranks up the demand for constant interaction, how do beat reporters handle the daily grind? How do journalists connect with news consumers in a time of information overload? “

Common Sense Journalism: Networked neighborhoods study

“Out of London, an interesting set of documents forms a study of online network neighborhood news sites, how people use them and the impact on those who do use them.
[...] the general thrust is this: “The research shows that they serve to enhance the sense of belonging, democratic influence, neighbourliness and involvement in their area. Participants claim more positive attitudes towards public agencies where representatives of those agencies are engaging online.”

How Twitter and del.icio.us are alike – Dave Winer

1. As a way to share links.
2. As a way to speak your mind.

Saving del.icio.us – Dave Winer

1. The Data
2. The Domain

3. The API

News is Not a Story

Part of on-going series of essays, Local Media in a Postmodern World:
“The belief expressed in this piece is that the concept of “the story” is archaic in a world of real time streams and flows of news, and if we closely examine the word, we find it completely unsuitable for new journalism.”

Are Twitter photos free to use? Not so fast – Lost Remote

“A judge has refused to dismiss copyright claims against AFP, which used Twitpic photos of the Haiti earthquake without permission from the originating photographer. “

Flipboard’s Mike McCue: Web format has ‘contaminated’ online journalism

“The problem with journalism on the web today is that it’s being contaminated by the web form factor.
Journalism is being pushed into a space where I don’t think it should ever go, where it’s trying to support the monetization model of the Web by driving page views. “

How to do better than Groupon in building local advertising market share

Journalism.co.uk’s top five journalism bloggers and tweeters in 2010

Top five news, features and blog posts on Journalism.co.uk in 2010 (by page views)

Newspaper Launches Hyper-Local Location-Based Service

“It shows a traditional media outlet again thinking beyond the boundaries of the print edition and even of their website. The opportunities to monetize a locally-relevant LBS (location-based service) are profound. It’s a chance for local advertisers to serve relevant messages to a hip and trendy audience in an emerging platform, but one that is custom to their community.”

How a small Arkansas TV station uses Facebook, Twitter to drive audience to newscasts, website | Poynter.

1. Get everyone involved.
2. At a minimum, post items four or five hours before the news begins to push to the newscast.

3. Find an internal social media guru, and let that person lead the charge.
4. Make sure your website is updated often, and the stories also get shared on the appropriate social media.

1860s map shows slavery populations in the United States

Ten newsroom New Year’s resolutions for 2011 – Lost Remote

1. Build a mobile version of your site.
2. Get an app version of your site.

3. Do a Skype video remote.
4. Innovate, Fail, Innovate Again.
5. Give Your Team “Innovation Time Off.”
6. Send Your Digital Media Pro to a Seminar or Convention
7. Clean Up That Site!
8. Embrace Continuous News
9. Expand Your Social Media
10. Engage Your Audience

Scraping for Journalism: A Guide for Collecting Data – ProPublica

65% of internet users have paid for online content | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

Overview

Nearly two-thirds of internet users – 65% – have paid to download or access some kind of online content from the internet, ranging from music to games to news articles to adult material. Music, software, and apps are the most popular content that internet users have paid to access or download, although the range of paid online content is quite varied and widespread.

If an App Is Your Content Strategy, You Are Doomed

“Venture capitalist Fred Wilson makes exactly this point in a blog post Thursday, in which he argues that the economics around mobile platforms such as the iPhone and the iPad — and other tablets, presumably — will likely come to look a lot like the economics of the web itself, in which closing off access to content via paywalls and walled gardens has not proven to be a very successful long-term approach (with a few notable exceptions such as The Economist and the Wall Street Journal).”

Forecasting the Mashup of 2011 — The Media Equation – NYTimes.com

So let’s stipulate that the sky is falling and will continue to do so. Rather than look back at the creative destruction that has taken place, I thought it would be worthwhile to click on the future. Here, in no particular order — because the way forward is paved with chaos — are some of the developments you and I will be talking about in the coming year.
- THE END OF VERTICALS
- HYBRIDS FOR THE NEWS HIGHWAY
- TELEVISED SOCIAL MEDIA
- THE NONLINEAR GRID
- PRINT LOOKS FOR A PAYDAY
- TRENDS TOO NUMEROUS TO ELUCIDATE

Why digital newsstands stink – FortuneTech

“For one thing we know that Apple has sold a lot of iPads — somewhere in the order of 13 or 14 million in nine months.
We also know — thanks to last week’s Audit Bureau of Circulations numbers — that iPad magazine sales have gone in the opposite direction. Wired’s collapse from 100,000 iPad copies in June to 23,000 in November was most dramatic”

Google Digital Newsstand Aims to Muscle In on Apple – WSJ.com

“In recent weeks, these people say, Google has told publishers it would take a smaller slice on any sales they make of Android apps than the 30% cut Apple typically takes on iTunes sales. Google has also proposed giving publishers certain personal data about app buyers to help with marketing related products or services.”

MediaShift . Your Guide to Hyper-Local News

Three-year-old post (Dec 2007) from MediaShift, but interesting to look back and see what has, or hasn’t, been implemented in great suggestions for “methods for collecting hyperlocal news”.

Information is Beautiful makes Debtris

New Daytum iPhone App Makes Beautiful Charts & Graphs About Your Life

HTML5 and Visualization on the Web

‘Converged’ journalism and building online communities

Ed Walker presents some notes, along with his powerpoint presentations from two conferences:
- NCTJ: Being a ‘fully converged’ journalist
- News:Rewired: Building an online community from scratch

Disrupting the Traditional News Syndication Model

Four predictions for how traditional news syndication will be disrupted in 2011:
- Social network for news distribution
- Human editorial judgment redux
- Free content disrupts again, but differently
- News organizations take back control

Hyperlocal voices: James Hatts, SE1

This week’s Hyperlocal Voices interview looks at the long-running SE1 website, which boasts half a million visits every month. Despite being over 12 years old, the site remains at the cutting edge of online journalism, being among the first experimenters with the Google Maps API and Audioboo.

Crisis-Mapping Platform Ushahidi Announces Crowdmap:CI, “Check-ins With a Purpose”

“Sometimes users just want to drop quick notes that represent data points allowing them to enter details later. For instance: the locations of wells while touring a rural village, or potholes around a metropolitan city, or simply dropping pins while on a vacation for the memories of where to return to. Crowdmap:CI is an attempt to make this data entry process quicker, allowing users to focus on location first, and everything else later.”

The NJ News Co-op

“a co-op to support the emerging local news ecosystem in otherwise-deprived New Jersey.
The idea is that the scattered, independent members of that ecosystem need help to (1) curate and share the best of what they do across all media and get them more attention; (2) organize them to create collaborative works of journalism; to train them in skills from journalism to new media to business; and (3) begin to fill in the blanks that the ecosystem and the market leave with beat reporting and investigations.”

Is Quora the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years? — Scobleizer

Infographic on the power of WordPress | Reportr.net

FAQ: Data journalism, laziness, information overload & localism | Online Journalism Blog

“the following questions from a journalist, and my answers, were worth publishing in case anyone has the same questions:
Q: Simon Rogers, Editor of the Datablog, said that he thinks in the future simply publishing the raw data will become acceptable journalism. Do you not think that an approach like this to raw data is lazy journalism? And equally, do you think that would be a type of journalism that the public will really be able to engage with?
A: It’s not lazy at all, and to think otherwise is pure journalistic egoism.”

24 hours in the life of social media

TED Curator Chris Anderson on Crowd Accelerated Innovation

“I believe that the arrival of free online video may turn out to be just as significant a media development as the arrival of print. It is creating new global communities, granting their members both the means and the motivation to step up their skills and broaden their imaginations. It is unleashing an unprecedented wave of innovation in thousands of different disciplines: some trivial, some niche in the extreme, some central to solving humanity’s problems. In short, it is boosting the net sum of global talent. It is helping the world get smarter.”

Why Google Dropped Groupon and Local Just Doesn’t Scale

“Mr. Kedrosky: I don’t care about specials in a three-block area of Brooklyn. I just don’t care. So yes, there’s definitely a billion-dollar hyper-local ad market but the right way to see it is there’s a $15,000 local ad market. There’s a whole bunch of many, many small markets. The whole idea of many companies or people is to get 1% of a giant number, but local doesn’t work that way. “

Journalism in the Age of Data

Social Media Marketing: Facebook + Twitter Aren’t Enough

Finding the time to keep up with social media

Life after Delicious

A collection of links talking about the death of Delicious, and figuring out how to move, save, preserve content.

Quora info articles

A small collection of articles about Quora – so hot right now.

How to Hire Coders

Start early; Stalk them; Understand them; Pimp yourself; Qualify them; Look at alternatives.

Blog Design 101

a resource – keep up to date

Everything the Internet Knows About Me (Because I Asked It To) – Digits – WSJ

Fantastic look at how patterns of behaviour are represented through your online social graph.
“Zach is outreach editor for The Wall Street Journal, where he helps manage the newspaper’s relationship with companies like Twitter and Foursquare. Below, he explains one way that he makes use of those and other services.”

What happens to print journalists after they lose their jobs?

Of the 140 staff made redundant at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 82 responded to her survey during November and December. 18 months on from the loss of their jobs at the P-I in March 2009, here’s what she found:

OJR: Journalism’s problem isn’t the internet or advertising, it’s attitude

“What’s the biggest problem facing the journalism industry? The online explosion of content and competition, jobs cuts, the advertising crisis? According to the Online Journalism Review’s Robert Niles, there are too many journalists who are “wallowing in a culture of failure” and he urges more to step off of the familiar pathway in journalism.”

Getting Text Out of an Image-Only PDF – ProPublica

“When a PDF contains just images of text, as they do in scanned documents, then the problem isn’t just how to convert them into neat tabular data, but how to extract any text, period. In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to write a program to extract the data into tabular format.”

Courtney Love’s Tweets Lead to Unique Defamation Showdown

Should “celebrities, like the news media, be liable for what happens if they intentionally put untrue and damaging statements” on social media?

“a medical expert plans to testify that even if Love’s statements were untrue, her mental state was not “subjectively malicious” enough to justify the defamation lawsuit. That claim — something akin to an insanity defense for social media — suggests that Twitter was so appealing and addictive for Love that she had no appreciation for how the comments she posted would be received by others.”

The Game Layer on Top of the World

 ”Valedictorian is just a status level. If we called a valedictorian a White Knight Paladin Level 20, people would work a lot harder””

]]> http://earleyedition.com/2011/01/06/the-digital-media-edition-issue-4/feed/ 0 the digital media edition – issue 3 http://earleyedition.com/2010/12/21/the-digital-media-edition-issue-3/ http://earleyedition.com/2010/12/21/the-digital-media-edition-issue-3/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:40:08 +0000 Dave Earley http://earleyedition.com/?p=1569 digital
media reading list

contents:

  • So You Want to Be a Journalist
  • Infographic: How to make money
    on the web
  • The Register Citizen Open
    Newsroom Project | Bringing the Outside In
  • Walk In, Grab a Muffin and
    Watch a Newspaper Reinvent Itself
  • Clark
    launches hyper-local media play
  • When All Content Is
    Personalized, Who Needs TV Networks?
  • Why Big Brands Are Dominating
    Social Media
  • Hands-on: CNN’s Stunning
    New iPad App
  • Facebook creator Mark
    Zuckerberg – Person of the Year 2010 – TIME
  • Person of the Year 2010 – Why
    TIME chose Mark Zuckerberg
  • Look how many newspapers are
    still sold every day in the UK
  • We Need New Ways of Judging the
    Success of Websites
  • What will 2011 bring for
    journalism? Clay Shirky predicts widespread disruptions for syndication
  • Paywalls: looking for a
    suitable model at News International and The New York Times
  • Scripting News: The Paywall may
    be journalism’s Maginot Line
  • Dave Winer: A Web Trust to
    Publish and Store Our Creative Work
  • How Copyright Takes Away Rights
    From Consumers
  • Social Media and the End of
    Age, Race, and Gender
  • Bloggers and legacy media
    deserve fair credit for stories
  • Digital media can herald a new
    golden age for foreign reporting
  • Wikileaks – a documentary
    | Online Journalism Blog
  • Groupon, Google, and value on
    the Internet : The New Yorker
  • The State of the Blogosphere
    2010
  • Mobile Reporting Tools pocket
    guide
  • RJI iPad research shows tablet
    subscriptions will cannibalize print subscriptions
  • iPad news apps may diminish
    newspaper print subscriptions in 2011
  • When’s the Best Time to
    Publish Blog Posts? (or any content online)
  • Square: the mobile phone gadget
    that could revolutionise payments
  • Twitter co-founder, Jack
    Dorsey’s global ambition for Square
  • Blockbuster laughed at Netflix
    partnership offer in 2000
  • Yahoo! Gets Hyper-Local
    (limited beta)
  • 8 Percent of Online Americans
    Use Twitter
  • A brief history of how new
    media is transforming old media
  • How to be a data journalist | guardian.co.uk
  • Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a
    Media Entity
  • DIY Data Tool Needlebase Now
    Available to Everyone
  • 10 More Ways to
    Improve Your Multimedia Right Now
  • Reflections of a Newsosaur:
    ‘Objective’ journalism is over. Let’s move on.
  • The Ultimate Mobile
    Journalism Reporting Tools Gear Guide
  • Interviews from #ONA10 with
    Smart People (Online News Association conference 2010)
  • Transparency for journalists:
    AllThingsD shows what it can look like
  • Figment.com Aims for Young
    Readers and Writers
  • Can you defame someone with a
    hyperlink?
  • Why Groupon Could Own Your
    Brand’s Future
  • Rupert Murdoch’s Tablet
    Tabloid: How He Can Pull It Off
  • The Future of Media Gradually
    Coming Into Focus
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" id=emailbody>
style='width:97.64%'>

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/BTBYG0yjhaE/watch?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">YouTube
– So You Want to Be a Journalist

A humorous look at
the lofty expectations some new journalism grads have about walking out of
university and into a metro daily.

Do you want to work
at Quest Newspapers? No, I want to work at the New York Times.

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/NcDmqgBOiXI/making-money-on-the-web?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Infographic:
How to make money on the web

Another fun
one.  Making money on the web is like child’s play.

Follow these simple
step-by-step instructions to become the next multi-billionaire media baron.

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/Uv9oDM8ooXE/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">The
Register Citizen Open Newsroom Project | Bringing the Outside In

face=Georgia>Posted: 06 Dec 2010 03:36 PM PST

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/aIbCB0YIpc8/16towns.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Walk In,
Grab a Muffin and Watch a Newspaper Reinvent Itself

face=Georgia>Posted: 15 Dec 2010 08:53 PM PST

"The Register
Citizen has six times the readership online that it has in print, and its
new building is designed to mirror the open, collaborative culture of the
Web. The business plan is based on making The Register Citizen’s Web
site a magnet for all things local and thus an attractive place for
advertisers, sponsors and others who can replace declining newspaper
subscribers and advertisers."

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/C4DGgT5fLvU/story-e6frg996-1225972302155?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Clark
launches hyper-local media play

face=Georgia>Posted: 19 Dec 2010 08:07 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Everymap.com.au is part of Streetcorner.com.au,
which also comprises a series of hyper-local citizen journalism sites
dedicated to different Sydney
precincts.
The business model for both sites – and a third which is expected to launch
next year – will be local business advertising, Ms Clark said."

 

When
All Content Is Personalized, Who Needs TV Networks?

In all these cases, one thing
is clear: The world is gradually moving toward on-demand viewing based on personalized
recommendations. But in a world where viewers choose what to watch based on
their own personal interests, what happens to the gatekeepers who
previously had toiled to make sure people tuned in to a certain show at a
certain time?

Perhaps the best example of
this comes from Netflix’s recommendations engine: its streaming
service doesn’t thrive because it offers users the hottest new
releases, but because it consistently serves up content that is relevant to
the user.

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/jxJ_9AsOTvs/post?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Why Big
Brands Are Dominating Social Media

face=Georgia>Posted: 15 Dec 2010 05:13 PM PST

face=Georgia>"The dominance of big marketers is in many ways a
straightforward matter of resources. For example, Pepsico’s Gatorade has a
group of full-time staff who man their "Mission Control" room,
monitoring and participating in social media 24 hours a day. Smaller brands
may not be able to afford that."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/3Z59WmEQKeQ/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Hands-on:
CNN’s Stunning New iPad App

face=Georgia>Posted: 15 Dec 2010 05:11 PM PST

face=Georgia>"CNN’s highly visual new iPad app [brings]
— all of its articles and videos from CNN.com, as well as live
breaking news video coverage and hourly radio updates — to the iPad
for free.

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/uG8S3JIkCnc/0,28804,2036683_2037183,00.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Facebook
creator Mark Zuckerberg – Person of the Year 2010 – TIME

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/BmuqtjG7YzM/0,28804,2036683_2037181,00.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Person
of the Year 2010 – Why TIME chose Mark Zuckerberg

 

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/3h594VS57rA/newspapers-abcs?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Look how
many newspapers are still sold every day in the UK

face=Georgia>Posted: 15 Dec 2010 05:06 PM PST

face=Georgia>"In a country with an adult (15+) population of
50m, that’s pretty good penetration. If we allow for the fact that most
titles will be read by two or three people, then it shows that we remain a
nation of avid newspaper-readers"

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/XewTlzRAr1c/we-need-new-ways-of-judging-the-success-of-websites?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">We Need
New Ways of Judging the Success of Websites

face=Georgia>Posted: 15 Dec 2010 05:05 PM PST

One way to
look at things might be: unique visitors per month, divided by employees.
Size of staff is something of
a predictor of size of traffic, it turns out! If you have no staff, you
cannot make the traffic, for one thing.

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/F96e8Ur-7DE/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">What
will 2011 bring for journalism? Clay Shirky predicts widespread disruptions
for syndication

face=Georgia>Posted: 15 Dec 2010 05:03 PM PST

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/LGdB0ZYQTp8/newspapers_online_paywalls_looking_for_a.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Paywalls:
looking for a suitable model at News International and The New York Times

face=Georgia>Posted: 15 Dec 2010 02:41 PM PST

face=Georgia>"In November 2010, Notw.co.uk attracted just
643,000 unique users, decreasing from 960,000 in October"

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/BnXSNK2nuok/thePaywallMayBeJournalisms.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Scripting
News: The Paywall may be journalism’s Maginot Line

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:53 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Here’s one way of looking at what both Groupon
and local news organizations do — they put smart hard-working people into
the field to keep tabs on what people in the community are doing. Some of
what they are doing is robbing and killing each other, that’s what news is
interested in. Another part of what they’re doing is buying from and selling
to each other. Groupon is making huge bucks on that."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/ZUpMNCqXbz0/a-web-trust-to-publish-an_b_796231.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Dave
Winer: A Web Trust to Publish and Store Our Creative Work

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:48 PM PST

face=Georgia>"we need a new kind of institution that is is
part news organization, university, library and foundation — that acts as
a guarantor of best-possible freedom from corporate and government
limitations"

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/tqkOn0QYSQw/how-copyright-takes-away-rights-consumers.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">How
Copyright Takes Away Rights From Consumers

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:44 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Copyright quite frequently is removing rights
from the public. Julian Sanchez points us to a fascinating new paper from
law professor John Tehranian, which tries to bring user rights back into
the discussion of copyright."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/4xbOdcqXzXA/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Social
Media and the End of Age, Race, and Gender

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:36 PM PST

face=Georgia>Social media is taking the "old-school
demographics," as Johanna Blakley calls them — race, gender, age –
out of the equation and taking your interests into consideration.

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/g0sKuGet77E/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Bloggers
and legacy media deserve fair credit for stories

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:34 PM PST

face=Georgia>When does a news story become sufficiently established
as to become a fact of life, free for the taking without requiring a tip of
the hat or a wag of the finger to anybody?

Knox says the length of time you continue to give credit for a scoop
depends on the circumstances.

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/ed0R9z4JcIY/digital-media-new-golden-age-foreign-reporting?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Digital
media can herald a new golden age for foreign reporting

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:30 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Some much valued aspects of foreign reporting
from past decades may be lost but the innovation and opportunity afforded
by digital technology seem likely to herald a new golden age for those
interested in reporting the world."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/In8TWbxKXKg/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Wikileaks
– a documentary | Online Journalism Blog

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:28 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Here’s a well-produced (even in rough-cut
form) documentary on Wikileaks by Swedish network SVT, published on YouTube
in 4 parts. It covers quite a bit of the history of the organisation, the
lessons it learned and the partnerships it made along the way – all
of which provide valuable insights for any student of journalism as a
practice or a cultural form"

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/ppt4kMy4y5w/101220ta_talk_surowiecki?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Groupon,
Google, and value on the Internet : The New Yorker

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:23 PM PST

face=Georgia>"The history of the Internet is, in part, a
series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over
the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere
fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for
less than a million dollars. Time and again, businesses with seemingly
dicey prospects have ended up becoming huge successes, and price tags that
once seemed absurd have turned out to be bargains."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/18LWPzIWvgI/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">The
State of the Blogosphere 2010

face=Georgia>Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:20 PM PST

face=Georgia>Nice to look at if statistics turn you on – from
Technorati’s annual report

face=Arial> 

face=Arial> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/Pf7Jfgdhiq8/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Mobile
Reporting Tools pocket guide

face=Georgia>Posted: 12 Dec 2010 09:23 PM PST

face=Georgia>"a pocket guide that journalism organizations and
educators can use to help prep and remind journalists in the field of the
mobile reporting tools best practices."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/a0hRZcwXF_U/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">RJI iPad
research shows tablet subscriptions will cannibalize print subscriptions

face=Georgia>Posted: 12 Dec 2010 09:19 PM PST

face=Georgia>"The vast majority of those who read at least an
hour’s worth of news [...] said they are either very likely (71.8%) or
somewhat likely (21.2%) to use a newspaper’s app [...] as opposed to the
newspaper’s website."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/OFu-JG1rBPU/ipad-news-survey?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">iPad
news apps may diminish newspaper print subscriptions in 2011

face=Georgia>Posted: 12 Dec 2010 09:13 PM PST

face=Georgia>"The vast majority of those who read at least an
hour’s worth of news [...] said they are either very likely (71.8%) or
somewhat likely (21.2%) to use a newspaper’s app [...] as opposed to the
newspaper’s website."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/Y3y9upiF47g/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">When’s
the Best Time to Publish Blog Posts?

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/W7eRGRE0GwE/When-is-the-Best-Time-to-Publish-Blog-Posts-Infographic.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">When is
the Best Time to Publish Blog Posts? [Infographic]

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/ekPpS_YNuV0/Square-the-mobile-phone-gadget-that-could-revolutionise-payments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Square:
the mobile phone gadget that could revolutionise payments

face=Georgia>Posted: 12 Dec 2010 05:56 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, has
launched Square, a gadget for mobile phones that could change
business."

face=Georgia> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/ZcRdCXRbgOo/Twitter-co-founder-Jack-Dorseys-global-ambition-for-Square.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Twitter
co-founder, Jack Dorsey’s global ambition for Square

face=Georgia>Posted: 12 Dec 2010 05:57 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Jack Dorsey, most famous for co-founding
Twitter, has announced his ambition for Square, his new mobile payments
tool, to become the transactional technology of choice for businesses of
all sizes the world over. "

face=Georgia> 

face=Arial> 

face=Arial> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/yl9LcGdAae8/8301-31001_3-20025235-261.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Blockbuster
laughed at Netflix partnership offer

face=Georgia>Posted: 12 Dec 2010 04:24 PM PST

face=Georgia>"It’s easy to kick Blockbuster, which filed for
bankruptcy protection in September, now that they’re down, but the
company’s overconfidence regarding Netflix can provide lessons today.
"We were I think five years to $500 million and another three years to
a $1 billion, all because of the subscription model."
"McCarthy told the Unofficial Stanford blog that for Blockbuster it
was a classic case of the innovator’s dilemma: "You end up competing
with a business that you initially ignored."

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/jn1Z69U6MI0/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Yahoo!
Gets Hyper-Local (limited beta)

face=Georgia>Posted: 12 Dec 2010 04:06 PM PST

face=Georgia>"With rich hyper-local content, this new product
provides people a truly personalized experience across desktop and mobile,
enabling them to discover and contribute to the best local news, deals, and
events nearby, all in one place."

face=Arial> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/vqh0Pe2knKI/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">8 Percent
of Online Americans Use Twitter

face=Georgia>Posted: 09 Dec 2010 05:55 PM PST

face=Georgia>Overall, eight percent of U.S. online adults use Twitter,
or six percent of the total American adult population. Including 14 percent
of 18 to 29-year-olds. Pew interviewed more than 20,000 people for the
survey.

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/mlRX1DdrSew/42018.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">A brief
history of how new media is transforming old media

face=Georgia>Posted: 09 Dec 2010 04:54 PM PST

face=Georgia>Media is not a passive observer in politics, but an
active agent
1. From the Iraq
War to Wikileaks
2. How new media exposes the contradiction at the heart of old media
3. How new media can transform old media
"The bottom line is that the model of journalism that prioritises
objectivity is probably dead.
Its efficacy was always exaggerated, but in a world where journalistic
judgement and knowledge of the underlying facts of a story are so easily
challenged and surpassed, journalists can no longer pretend to be offering
an impartial, authoritative, god’s-eye-view of the news."

face=Georgia> 

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

face="Times New Roman"> title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/wRVbCyT5TYc/data-journalism-how-to-guide?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">How to be a data journalist | News | guardian.co.uk

face=Georgia>From getting the data to visualising it

face=Georgia> 

face=Georgia>The above article was put together by Paul Bradshaw,
based on a series of Data Journalism how-to posts (linked below) on his own
website, onlinejournalismblog.com,. While not part of the
‘new’ reading list, these are good information to keep in the
cupboard for future reference if you’re interested in giving it a go
some day.

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/ur5k136wRLE/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Data
journalism pt1: Finding data

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/SBAYRbwPvXc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Data
journalism pt2: Interrogating data src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/O-xcbNxBnYM/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Data
journalism pt3: visualising data – charts and graphs

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/-8APcjVFHnc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Data journalism
pt4: visualising data – tools and publishing

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/hrgX7WlWvPA/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Data
journalism pt5: Mashing data

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

face=Arial> 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/SKasRtwtp8Q/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Like It
or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity

face=Georgia>Posted: 08 Dec 2010 02:05 PM PST

face=Georgia>"The fact is that freedom of the press, like
freedom of speech in general, is a crucial part of the fabric of a free
society. Every action that impinges on those freedoms is a loss for
society, and a step down a slippery slope — and that applies to
everything that falls under the term “press,” regardless of
whether we agree with its methods or its leaders."

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/dfnCUSbQA4k/awesome_diy_data_tool_needlebase_now_available_to.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Awesome:
DIY Data Tool Needlebase Now Available to Everyone

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 11:08 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Needlebase allows you to view web pages through
a virtual browser, point and click to train it in understanding what fields
on that page are of interest to you and how those fields relate to each
other. Then the program goes and scrapes the data from all of those fields,
publishes them into a table, list or map, and recommends merges of cells
that appear to be mistakenly separate. It’s very cool and it lets
non-technical people do things with data quickly and easily that we used to
require the assistance of someone more technical to do."

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/KwTjq3_QcFw/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">MediaStorm’s
10 More Ways to Improve Your Multimedia Right Now

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 11:06 PM PST

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/UIbNIjIurko/objective-journalism-is-over-lets-move.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Reflections
of a Newsosaur: ‘Objective’ journalism is over. Let’s
move on.

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 10:52 PM PST

face=Georgia>"No fewer than 92% of Americans today “use
multiple platforms to get their daily news,” according to a survey
conducted earlier this year by the Pew Research
Center. However, 70%
of respondents felt the volume of news was overwhelming and 50% said they
looked to others to help them divine its significance."

This represents a golden opportunity, if you believe, as I do, that
journalists not only possess valuable insights into the matters they cover
but also have an absolute obligation to share their perspectives with the
public after diligently gleaning all sides of a story in an ethical and
open-minded manner.

For journalists to be able to report effectively on the news and its
significance, we have to replace the intellectually indefensible pretense
of objectivity with a more authentic standard that journalists actually can
live up to.

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

face=Georgia> 

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

 

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/uk-H8Pvs2jU/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">The Ultimate
Mobile Journalism Reporting Tools Gear Guide

 

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/_gyEjCtTMYY/interviews-from-ona10-with-smart-people?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Interviews
from #ONA10 with Smart People

 

 

 

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/sLDrSrcU4eM/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Transparency
for journalists: AllThingsD shows what it can look like

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 05:47 PM PST

face=Georgia>What can other news organizations and independent
journalists learn from the AllThingsD approach to transparency?
* Publish your key disclosures in one place.
* Leave what to disclose up to the individual.
* Make it easy for journalists to update their statements.

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/UDmzVLRtd18/06figment.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Figment.com
Aims for Young Readers and Writers – NYTimes.com

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 05:29 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Figment.com will be unveiled on Monday as an
experiment in online literature, a free platform for young people to read
and write fiction, both on their computers and on their cellphones. Users
are invited to write novels, short stories and poems, collaborate with
other writers and give and receive feedback on the work posted on the site.
"

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/3lZl_pOo-LQ/can-you-defame-someone-with-a-mere-hyperlink.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Can you
defame someone with a hyperlink?

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 05:14 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Crookes says that, by linking to defamatory
articles, Newton
became a "publisher" of that material."

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/2rWJpnGZeRo/article?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Why
Groupon Could Own Your Brand’s Future

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 05:08 PM PST

face=Georgia>Groupon’s success should have every CMO pondering what
a future tyranny of price could mean for sales and margins.
– Price has always been a somewhat artificial construct.
– Value — the driver behind price — is impossible to discuss objectively.
– Sales, discounts and promotions erase these beliefs, or premiums.
– Therefore, Groupon isn’t a distribution or sampling tactic, but rather a
repricing strategy.

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/ty09zSZvsZ8/does_rumored_partnership_with.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Rupert
Murdoch’s Tablet Tabloid: How He Can Pull It Off

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 04:59 PM PST

face=Georgia>"In other words, Murdoch’s willing to lose money
and risk reaching a smaller audience in order to achieve something
historic. "

face=Georgia> src="cid:image001.gif@01CBA123.0C435E20"/>

title="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digitaledition/~3/plhIB99WE8A/240186-the-future-of-media-gradually-coming-into-focus?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">The
Future of Media Gradually Coming Into Focus

face=Georgia>Posted: 07 Dec 2010 04:46 PM PST

face=Georgia>"Newsrooms of the future are likely to be built
around the topics they cover (Wall Street, Sports, New York City) instead
of the medium they are in (newspapers, television, radio) because they will
likely have to transcend any one medium and distribute on several so they
can highlight their strength of coverage of their particular subject matter
and bring in the revenue they need to support a healthy news
organization."

face=Arial>
]]> http://earleyedition.com/2010/12/21/the-digital-media-edition-issue-3/feed/ 0 Decline, yes. Fall? Maybe not. http://earleyedition.com/2009/10/16/decline-and-fall/ http://earleyedition.com/2009/10/16/decline-and-fall/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:08:37 +0000 Dave Earley http://earleyedition.com/?p=1494 Given the timing, this post may seem like a response to Round 4 of Public Broadcasters vs Rupert Murdoch, otherwise known as ABC managing director Mark Scott’s speech at the AN Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism the other night. It’s not. Instead, it’s a response to a journal article that was published three months ago.

Geoffrey Barker wrote a scathing attack on journalism and newspaper managers in July, reminiscent of Jason Whittaker’s appraisal a few months ago on his blog, importanceofideas.com, where he lambasted the entire managerial hierarchy of Australian print media.
In Barker’s essay, The Crumbling Estate, written for the Griffith Review, he presents 10 trends he says are “throttling the life, authority and influence out of newspapers”.
He rightly asks:

“whether the declines in circulation and revenue result partly from decisions by companies’ managers who, desperate to ensure newspapers’ survival, have embraced a range of practices damaging to the craft of journalism”.

Summarised, Barker’s 10 trends killing (newspaper) journalism in Australia are:

  1. Managerialism displacing journalism as the dominant newsroom culture
  2. Perpetual efforts to cut costs and staff
  3. Changing work habits cutting journalists off from outside world
  4. Young journalists less likely to see the job as a vocation and more of a stepping stone
  5. Journalists out-gunned, out-thought, out-paid by armies of communications advisers
  6. Cost-cuts that lead to buying more content from notable international papers
  7. Avoiding difficult issues and highlighting sensationalist material, emphasising sex and sport
  8. Breakdown in separation between editorial and advertising
  9. Little sustained investigative journalism
  10. Downplay coverage of foreign and national news in favour of local news

Indicative of the relative lack of technological progress made by Australian newspapers, Barker says:

“the strategic decisions made by newspapers to defend themselves against technological change and economic difficulties have only worsened their situation”.

and:

“despite their vigour, newspapers are increasingly at risk from their misguided attempts to save themselves”.

On having recently left an Australian newspaper, I can say there is clearly truth in the statements about newspapers not embracing technological change. At the same time, however, I am quick to defend those involved in the production of newspaper websites, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Variously, newspapers are increasingly aware and openly acknowledging that they must be news “outlets” or companies, not just news “papers”. In that recognition, they are admirably going about the work of catching up on years of pig-headedness (and I’m being generous there – not all who are trying to catch up are necessarily working hard in the right direction). Years ago people were trying new things – promising things that had the potential to blossom into new media production experiments that, while not necessarily game changing, would have at least been industry leading.

At fault in that lost potential is not online news teams, who I think genuinely want nothing more than to grow and better inform their audience in exciting and innovative ways. Rather, an industry downturn combined with management’s perceived lack of value in pursuing new platforms or distribution ideas and other decisions like those mentioned by Barker – particularly staff cutbacks or hiring freezes – are at fault. With staff cutbacks, online teams are largely limited to moderating comments and producing image galleries of scantily clad women, instead of implementing additional content of constantly refining quality (the only thing that might be worth paying for?).

It’s positive, as it should be, that Barker sees the Australian newspaper industry as redeemable. In what way can it redeem itself? Well, that’s the trick question. And by redeem I mean make money while at the same time doing the work that can again be called that of the “Fourth Estate”.

UPDATE
Related reading and a superfluous explanation (that I’ve had to retype on my iPhone after losing half of it just before publishing the post):

On the way to catch my flight to Sydney early Wednesday morning I was reading John Birmingham’s piece in The Monthly, Mash-up: A short history of the media future.

During the flight I read The Crumbling Estate, mentioned above, and wrote the majority of this blog post as a kind of summary before going off on a tangent that kept a somewhat less than tenuous link to Barker’s essay topic.

It wasn’t until exiting the plane – and after having written this – that I started to read Jason Wilson’s New Matilda piece, News Corpus Christi (which prompted the despondent tweet below) and then Mark Scott’s speech on the Decline and Fall of the Rupertan Empire.

Some may have seen the below tweet, written immediately having read Jason Wilson’s piece. No offence intended towards either Jason or John, who I both admire and respect, but I felt I had just read a nearly carbon copy article by both men. The arguments, the examples, the conclusions – they all read the same and reminded me of all the similar “ponderings” I’d read before. And so I tweeted:

“Talk talk talk.We all keep saying the same things re future of journalism #foj. slightly #jaded :(

Mr Scott’s words were slightly more uplifting in their ushering of fantastical visions of our future utopia. And in reference to the tweet, it is not lost on me that I what I have written proposes nothing new and is far less erudite than what either Jason or John have written. But there you go. I may later talk about how I have never had to consider the business side of our glorious media future, being but a mere minion. It’s a reality I will now likely have to consider.

]]> http://earleyedition.com/2009/10/16/decline-and-fall/feed/ 7 Energise your innovation – just get moving http://earleyedition.com/2008/11/14/energise-your-innovation-just-get-moving/ http://earleyedition.com/2008/11/14/energise-your-innovation-just-get-moving/#comments Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:50:50 +0000 Dave Earley http://earleyedition.com/2008/11/14/energise-your-innovation-just-get-moving/ Don’t let the pace of change, in any form of digital media or content creation, hold you back from being creative, from expressing your ideas and input to the change you want to see in your newsroom.

I pore over content and my feed reader, trying to perfect comment, and content, so that it is comprehensive, definitive, and unable to be questioned. I feel the need to cover the issue from all angles, as if I must attempt to encompass the breadth and wealth of thought out there. And yet I’m overwhelmed by the quantity of more, better, reasoned, experienced content creators out there, and so hesitate to speak.

The speed of change is so quick that, even if I could reach that point of perfection, it would be out of date within days, hours, or even minutes. So, inspired by this post by Bryan Murley from Innovation in College Media, I commit to not being overwhelmed.
In that post, Bryan harks back to something he wrote in 2006.

We can’t allow ourselves to get so overwhelmed with the pace of change that we become immobilized by the sheer volume of change that is taking place.

And with that, I welcome you back to the earley edition.

It is not that comment will be spurious or ill-formed, but I will shoot my thoughts and ideas on digital innovation from the hip with confidence, within reason and, hopefully, with an accuracy that will make my contribution to the crowd worthwhile.

Read on, friends.

Bryan’s Innovation in College Media post featured in October’s Carnival of Journalism, hosted by Will Sullivan at Journerdism.

]]> http://earleyedition.com/2008/11/14/energise-your-innovation-just-get-moving/feed/ 0 Digital journalism – attempt first, succeed later http://earleyedition.com/2008/05/02/digital-journalism-attempt-first-succeed-later/ http://earleyedition.com/2008/05/02/digital-journalism-attempt-first-succeed-later/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 19:40:53 +0000 Dave Earley http://earleyedition.com/2008/05/02/digital-journalism-attempt-first-succeed-later/ Digital media isn’t about a perfect product straight out of the box, it’s about taking the first step and just having a crack.

You’ve got NO EXCUSE
via News Videographer

I’m extremely impressed with these high school student journalists and the site. If they can do this, you really have NO EXCUSE.

Just have a go. Try your hand, you never know the amazing stories you can tell in new ways. You only learn through experience.

As part of that, there must be a culture within newsrooms that allows the freedom to fail in respect to digital media. You only fix mistakes by making them, and if people are going to learn the new skills they’re going to have to not be afraid to make mistakes.

Encourage your newsroom to change.

The most basic things to encourage self-learning in are video and audio recording. Don’t even worry about editing skills if people have zero experience or are discouraged. Just teach them to hit record. Give the result to someone else to edit/craft, and then give feedback.

]]> http://earleyedition.com/2008/05/02/digital-journalism-attempt-first-succeed-later/feed/ 0