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How the Associated Press managed to get a copy of Palin's book ahead of publication and conduct a much-heralded fact check that detailed where her claims didn't line up with reality.
Filed under: Links
November 21, 2009 • 5:09 pm 0
links for 2009-11-21
November 20, 2009 • 7:54 pm 0
Video: Gina Trapani makes sense of Google Wave
I have a Google Wave account though I haven’t had the time to investigate its potential.
At first glance, Google Wave can be bewildering, but it does seem to offer a strong platform for collaboration and could be a valuable tool for journalism.
Gina Trapani wrote the Complete Guide to Google Wave and sums it up in this keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York.
(Via Tris Hussey)
Filed under: Google, innovation, internet, journalism, social media , Gina Trapani, Google Wave
• 5:10 pm 0
links for 2009-11-20
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BBC director general Mark Thompson: Public space is not-for-profit space, not by accident but by design. It exists not to make money but to serve the public and it is accountable to them.
Filed under: Links
November 19, 2009 • 9:01 pm 0
BBC News website adds SEO friendly headlines
The BBC has made changes to its news website to make its headlines more SEO friendly.
The headlines appearing on index pages are short and concise as usual, but clicking through to the story reveals a longer headline with search keywords.
For example, the index headline on the story on Google’s Chrome browser is “Google previews operating system”, which lacks search keywords.
But click on the story page, the headline becomes “Google previews Chrome open source operating system.”
And the report on the Fort Hood killings has an index headline of “Killings prompt US Army inquiry”, while the story page has the more descriptive “Gates orders Army inquiry after Fort Hood killings.”
The changes have just been introduced as older stories still have the same index and page headlines.
The short headlines were a result of length restrictions as the content was distributed on other platforms, including Ceefax.
It meant that journalists tended to have limited room for keywords. The new BBC headlines are applying standard search engine optimization tips.
BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann explains the changes in a post on the BBC Editors blog.
The front page headlines will remain limited to between 31 and 33 characters and will continue to appear on Ceefax and Digital Text, as they do now, along with the top four paragraphs of each story.
The space constraints on those platforms mean that on the website the headlines have always been short – which, it has to be said, also has its merits, making them easy to scan and fit into lists. They will also continue to appear on mobiles.
The new longer headlines will be up to 55 characters (with spaces) and will aim to include any key words which we might expect a search engine user to type in when searching for news about that particular topic.
So the lead story on the EU presidency has an index and story page headline of “Belgian PM named as EU president.”
But the title tag of the page has a SEO friendly headline: Belgian PM Van Rompuy is named as EU president.”
The BBC News website has had journalists working on search engine optimisation for some time.
I wonder if the list of most popular stories now reflects what people are searching for on Google.
Filed under: BBC, internet, journalism, new media , BBC, headlines, search engine optimization, SEO
• 10:38 am 0
Tom Rosenstiel on the future of journalism
Director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom Rosenstiel, on the future of journalism at Minnesota Public Radio. He talks about the potential to produce better journalism now then ever before.
His concerns: the unbundling of content and the challenge of monetising civic news.
Filed under: journalism, media, news, online , Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom Rosenstiel
November 17, 2009 • 10:24 am 0
YouTube Direct to channel citizen journalism to news outlets
With the launch of YouTube Direct, YouTube is positioning itself as a key intermediary between the media and the public.
YouTube Direct is described as “a new tool that allows media organizations to request, review and rebroadcast YouTube clips directly from YouTube users.”
Or as Mashable put it, “YouTube is letting anyone launch their own iReport-type site.”
Several news organisations are already using the service: ABC News, the Huffington Post, NPR, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post.
It clearly provides a way for media organisations to collect, filter and publish user-created content, without having to invest in costly systems to process the material.
What is also interesting is that it closely ties YouTube into the newsgathering operations of media outlets.
And there is, of course, a video on YouTube, explaining the new service
Filed under: YouTube, internet, journalism, social media , citizen journalism, YouTube, YouTube Direct
November 12, 2009 • 10:48 pm 0
Listed in the top 50 blogs about journalism
This list of top 50 journalism blogs offers a good starting point for tapping into current trends in the media. It includes:
Blogs that focus on citizen, or grassroot, journalism, personal blogs from professional reporters, journalism school-supported blogs, blogs on a new media focus, organizational blogs and self-professed bipartisan resource blogs that provide primary resources for investigative writing.
There is a broad cross-section, from Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
Some of the categorisation of the blogs is a little strange. Jon Dube’s CyberJournalist.net is under the label “citizen journalism”.
This blog makes the list, which is wonderful. Though it is wrongly labelled as “school-supported blogs”, rather than “personal blogs”.
Still, this is a minor quibble about a list that should be on the readings of all journalism students.
Filed under: academics, blogs, journalism, new media
November 11, 2009 • 12:03 pm 4
Why journalists are uneasy talking about Twitter as journalism
Putting the words Twitter and journalism into the same sentence seems to provoke a spasm from professional journalists.
At a “curated unconference” hosted by Reuters Thomson in London, the value of Twitter in journalism was once again under scrutiny.
The report in The Guardian suggests there was a deep-seated level of unease in talking about Twitter as journalism.
The head of the BBC’s global news division, Richard Sambrook, argued:
Twitter is good at gossip, promoting people’s interest, and entertaining, but it is also good in some news-related fields. It isn’t journalism, but it is good in transporting eyewitness pictures and live tweets, as it is in providing links to sites of interest.
And Jeremy Gaunt from Reuters also looked at Twitter from the perspective of a professional journalist:
Twitter is not an alternative to journalism. The role of the journalist changes from a gatekeeper of information to a gatewatcher. In case of an event or a catastrophe it might be his role to curate the live stream of Twitter and social media platforms. So he is still fact-checking.
While both of these are valid points, I would suggest that they miss the point. The argument “Twitter isn’t journalism” reminds me of the way journalists used to say “blogging isn’t journalism.”
The important point to note is that Twitter is a communications platform, much like the magazine is. A magazine may or may not be a platform for news and information. Similarly, Twitter is a platform on which journalism is taking place – it is just happening the way journalism has taken place in the past.
Twitter provides a platform for distributed journalism, where the value lies not in the individual tweet, but the combined and networked nature of the platform.
I have called this ambient journalism in an academic paper I presented at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff in September, and due to be published next year.
Rather than arguing about whether Twitter is or isn’t journalism, we should shift the conversation to understanding the journalism taking place on this platform and its relationship to established journalism norms and practices.
Let’s avoid a rerun of the “blogging isn’t journalism” debate.
Filed under: blogging, journalism, new media, social media , Richard Sambrook, Twitter
November 10, 2009 • 11:35 am 1
The disconnect between newspaper execs and readers over paid content
Paul Bradshaw drew my attention to a study by the American Press Institute on the attitudes of newspaper executives to digital content.
The study (PDF) shows a shocking disconnect between the attitudes of executives and those of readers. 75% of execs thought that readers would return to the print product is they could not access the newspaper content online.
This was in sharp contrast to the reaction of the readers. Only 30% said they would return to print. Most would go to other websites and TV for their local news if their local newspaper website was no longer available.
The findings are all the more relevant given the current debate about locking content behind paywalls.
The API study found that nearly 60 percent of execs were considering charging for news, with 25% expected to start doing this in the next six months.
However, in its recommendations, the study sounded a note of warning for execs thinking about charging for print copy online:
For paid content to succeed, it must go well beyond repurposed print content and old models. Audiences are most likely to pay for unique content that is not available elsewhere for free. Fully paid blocks of repurposed local area newspaper content have not proven to be a significant revenue source for news websites that have tried this strategy.
If a news organisation is going to consider charging for content, it needs to view it from the perspective of the audience.
The value of news and information is not determined by execs in a newsroom/boardroom. Rather, the value is determined by the audience.
Filed under: journalism
November 8, 2009 • 4:11 pm 0
An introduction to social media for journalists
Valuable social networking presentation for the News21 Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education.
It’s by Jeremy Rue, multimedia training instructor for the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
(Via Graphicdesignr)
Filed under: academics, internet, journalism, social media, social networking , social media, social networking
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