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Some startling and remarkably ill-informed comments about blogs, this time from journalist and author Pete Hamill.
On a talk show promoting his new book, Hamill was disparaging about blogs, advising young journalists not to “waste their time” blogging. Instead they should try to get a job on a newspaper “no matter how small, where there’s an [...]

Apple’s iPhone has generated a great deal of buzz, with many articles appearing in the mainstream media. But the biggest beneficiary has been the blogosphere, according to Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
The traffic generated by the phone is “higher than any product launch we’ve monitored”, Nielsen BuzzMetric’s Pete Blackshaw told Netly News. Some 1.5% of all blog posts [...]

Podcasters in Canada worried about copyright and other legal issues should head over to Creative Commons Canada.
It has put together a legal guide for Canadian podcasters, to guide them through the myriad of rules and regulations.
It covers such issues as “fair dealing”, use of trademarks and pubicity rights, as well a discussion of copyright.
The [...]

For all the hype surrounding citizen journalism, there is little research into how much interest there is in this kind of content.
A poll on public interest in the murder trial of Robert Pickton in Canada suggests that most people still rely on the mainstream media for their news.
It found that only one out of four [...]

A story from Vancouver illustrates how teens, teachers and parents are still grappling over how to deal with Facebook. In this case, a teenager was expelled from school for setting up a Facebook group in which she said she would kick her teacher.
The school saw this as a threat to the teacher and expelled the [...]

This graphical representation in Business Week of what people do online hold no surprises. But it is a clear and easy to understand way of explaining who is writing blogs, joining social networks or simply online but not participating.

Click here to see a larger version.

CBC has admitted that its Facebook experiment has been hijacked by special interest groups, in particular the pro-life/anti-abortion lobby.
There were signs that this was going to happen just days after the Great Canadian Wishlist was launched.
Tod Maffin, writing in the official Inside the CBC blog, explained how the top wishes were dominated by political causes [...]

This is a must for print reporters struggling to adapt to a multimedia world.
There is a free online course on NewsU on the basics of audio reporting and editing. The course was put together by Andrew DeVigal, multimedia editor for The New York Times.
As the course notes say:
Sound plays a vital role in online [...]

BBC World television is mounting a big push in the US with a range of interactive billboard ads.
The campaign takes advantage of text messaging to present an image which reflects a pressing issue in the US to pose difficult questions.
And it seems to be working, at least with Digg users, hitting the [...]

Following on from my post on Wednesday, expressing concerns about a study on the accountability of news websites, the researchers have amended their findings.
The original assessment by the University of Maryland’s International Center for Media and the Public Agenda gave the BBC a poor rating in transparency and openness.
I noticed that the study [...]