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June 29, 2009 • 8:14 am 0

Michael Jackson’s death makes journalists of all of us

The Iranian protests and the death of Michael Jackson signal a shift in the flow of news and the role of the audience. In both cases, much of news and information trickled online in fragments, via Twitter, blogs, Flickr and YouTube.

In the past, only the journalist would have access to these fragments. Their role would be to contact sources, assess and verify the information, and put together a definite account of what happened to be delivered as a package to the audience, in print or in a broadcast. This process would take place over the course of a day.

In the age of the internet, the public is increasingly being asked to take on this role, and often at a much faster pace.

Take the death of Michael Jackson. There was an explosion of activity on Twitter, much of it commenting on the validity of reports from TMZ and the Los Angeles Times that the superstar had died.

People turned to mainstream media, both on TV and online, to try to verify what they were hearing.  In a sense, the public were acting like journalists, following up news tips and cross-checking sources in an attempt to verify the information they were getting.

The same process took place during the Iranian protests.  With increasing restrictions on journalists, information about rallies, arrests and deaths were coming out via social media, leaving both journalists and the public to sort through the often conflicting accounts.

As the New York Times noted, “essentially, the news tips that reporters have always relied upon are now being aired in public”.

This does not mean there is no longer a role for the professional journalist. If anything, the need for a professional who can authenticate and contextualise the news is greater than ever before.

But there is also a need for a media-literate public, who has the ability to decipher the wealth of information coming to them. When big news breaks, we are all taking on the mantle of the journalist.

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Filed under: internet, journalism, social media , ,

June 19, 2009 • 7:55 am 0

Why Digital Britain report should back hyperlocal news sites

The back of the BBC Birmingham headquarters in...
Image via Wikipedia

The proposal to take money from the BBC licence fee to partly ITV regional news services was one of the headlines of theUK government’s Digital Britain report.

According to the proposal, a small part of the expected £200m digital switchover surplus would fund three ITV regional news pilots in Scotland, Wales and one English region from now until 2013.

The pilots are a response to ITV’s decision to pull out of regional news which it sees as a financial burden. It is a far cry from when regional news was a money-spinner for ITV, with its early evening bulletins often attracting more more viewers than the BBC’s bulletins.

The idea to take about £130m a year from the licence fee to fund a series of independent consortia of local providers in place of ITV’s current regional news service seems a dated approach to the provision of local news.

At a time when audiences are getting their news by mixing and matching old and new technologies, a focus on TV bulletins is ill-advised.

The Digital Britain proposal is an attempt to prop up a system of local and regional news that suited a 20th century audience.

Instead of throwing money at a handful of expensive TV news pilots, the UK government could instead set up a fund to support hundreds of low-cost, hyperlocal news sites.

Hyperlocal sites would address one of the weaknesses of regional TV news – the fact that often the coverage is not local enough.

These hyperlocal sites could pilot emerging pro-am models of journalism, seeking to involve local communties in covering issues of importance to them.

Using BBC money to kickstart a new wave of hyperlocal news sites would be an innovative and creative response to the challenges facing local news, and be more in keeping with the aim of fostering a truly digital Britain.

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Filed under: BBC, citizen journalism, internet, journalism , , ,

June 17, 2009 • 6:19 am 1

How Twitter creates social bonds with the Iranian protesters

Where is my vote? Iran election protest at UN ...
Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

Social media is clearly playing a crucial role as a communication and networking platform in the protests in Iran over the election results.

Much of the media attention has focused on the role of Twitter, with even talk of a Twitter Revolution taking place in Iran.

There is no doubt that Twitter has emerged as a powerful tool, used by protesters to organise, report and share what is happening on the ground in Iran.  And it demonstrates how new technologies allow people to bypass censorship by authoritarian governments.

But Twitter is more than a way to transmit information.  As a form of social media, Twitter is also a way to connect.

In this case, the content of an individual tweet may be less important than the emotional and relational content being transmitted. Researchers describe this distinction as contents-oriented communication versus connectedness-oriented communication.

The stream of tweets from Iran are creating a loose relationships between the people sending out the messages and those following them.

The effect is to create social bonds between people inside and outside of Iran.  Perhaps the clearest sign of this is the appeal for people to switch their location on Twitter to Tehran and change their time stamp to Iranian time.

The raw, unfiltered and immediate nature of Twitter is engaging people in shared experiences, even if they are miles away from Tehran.

What is unknown is the strength of these social bonds and whether the sense of connectedness created by social media such as Twitter will have an impact on events on the ground.

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Filed under: internet, journalism, social media , , , , ,

June 3, 2009 • 11:35 am 1

Jane Singer’s optimistic roadmap for journalism’s future

I am delighted that my friend and colleague Jane Singer has won a contest on the future of journalism held by the AEJMC.

Singer, from the University of Central Lancashire and University of Iowa was voted the winner for her entry, entitled, Bird’s-Eye View.

In her contribution, Singer is positive about the future of journalism, while acknowledging that shape of the industry is going through a period of upheaval and transformation.

She sees several emerging roles:

1) The incubating journalist: Undergraduate journalism education

In this stage, journalism students gain a university education that ideally develops abilities to learn, think, experiment, focus, socialize and grow, and prepares them for an entry-level job that includes training and practice in multiplatform content creation and maintenance, routine reporting, editing and self-editing, blogging and working with users.

2) The fledgling journalist: Entry-level employment

This is an entry-level journalist who tells stories across platforms with primary emphasis on maintaining the media organization’s website, including information gathering, posting stories, blogging and working with users.

3) Learning to fly: The newsroom apprenticeship

Singer sees this as the newsroom apprenticeship during which entry-level work expands over time to work on more sophisticated journalistic products.  This includes training and mentoring by more senior journalists, as well as working on more advanced forms of multimedia story-telling.

4) Taking wing: Senior journalists

These are the senior, more experienced journalists who, in Singer’s words, “produce the ‘value-added’ content, including most of the material that requires payment to access, either online or in the legacy product or both”. These are the journalists who provide analysis and commentary, or work on more in-depth multimedia specials, as well as mentoring younger journalists.

Singer’s roadmap for journalists presents a clear progression of skills and responsibilities. But it would also require an investment in the people in the newsroom, setting aside time for training and development.

Unfortunately, this could be an optimistic assessment, coming at a time when newsrooms are cutting back on staff and the remaining journalists are asked to do more with less.

Journalists are the prime resource of the news industry. An investment in the people that are the lifeblood of journalism is in investment in the future of journalism itself.

Filed under: AEJMC, academics, internet, journalism , , ,

May 1, 2009 • 1:41 pm 0

Words of advice for j-students from news professionals

At a time when journalism graduates are wondering about their prospects, and some question the value of going to j-school, my post for PBS Mediashift may offer some words of comfort.

The words come from a selection of seasoned news professionals, interviewed on a Flip minoHD camera at the recent International Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

In the clips, they talk about having a range of multimedia skills, being open-minded and following your passion.

Here’s one of the snippets of advice from Beth Frerking, assistant managing editor of Politico.com.

Filed under: education, internet, journalism , ,

April 28, 2009 • 11:27 am 0

Ex-BBC editor Rachel Nixon is new head of digital media at CBC News

Rachel NixonCBC has appointed the former BBC News online editor Rachel Nixon as its new director of Digital Media for CBC News.

Rachel Nixon is an award-winning journalist, having spend nine years with the internationally acclaimed BBCNews.com in a number of increasingly senior positions. In 2007, Rachel was named BBC World Service Editor of the Year for cross-platform editorial leadership.

Currently, Nixon is the global news director of Vancouver-based NowPublic.com, the world’s largest participatory news network.

In a note to staff,  Jennifer McGuire, Interim Publisher, CBC News and Executive Director, News Programming said:

Rachel will have the responsibility for charting the overall strategic direction for CBC News’ digital media unit-setting the right priorities, and overseeing the successful execution of the strategy.Her background in strategic planning, development, and delivery of editorial content makes her the ideal candidate for this role. She will be an excellent addition to the CBC News management team.

McGuire said Nixon will be responsible for the overall strategic direction of CBC News’ digital media unit, stressing that:

The renewal and expansion of high quality digital news content is critical to our continuing success in a financially challenging and increasingly competitive media environment.

Co-founder of NowPublic.com Michael Tippett described Nixon’s appointment as “a testament to her talents, hard work and experience”, adding that it was also:

a validation of the relevance of participatory news.  I hope that Rachel can carry with her the values and lessons of her experience here at NowPublic as she takes on this ambitious new project.

Nixon is due to take on the role on June 1.

(Full disclosure: I am married to Rachel and very proud of her).

Cross-post from Newslab.ca

Filed under: CBC, Canada, internet, journalism , ,

April 26, 2009 • 10:28 pm 0

State of Play’s dated view of journalism

Russell Crowe / Cal McAffrey
Image by Andre Portfolio via Flickr

Over the weekend, I went to see State of Play with high hopes. The original BBC drama about a journalist uncovering a conspiracy between government and business was nuanced, involved and gripping.

The Hollywood remake, based in Washington DC rather than London, was going to find it hard to live up to the original.

But the main weakness was its depiction of journalism in 2009.  In the Hollywood version, our hero is Russell Crowe, playing a disheveled, investigative reporter who is dismissive of the cub reporter responsible for writing the paper’s politics blog, played by Rachel McAdams.

As Los Angeles Times film writer, Patrick Goldstein noted:

“State of Play” didn’t just get its facts about journalism wrong, but its tone was off, too. The days of top gun investigative reporters are pretty much over.

Today’s journalists are less swaggering and self-involved, more nuanced and self-critical, especially in an era where every move a journalist makes is immediately analyzed and chewed over in a hundred blogs.

Hollywood hasn’t quite caught up to — or felt the pulse of — that new style of journalism.

The film presented an out-dated version of journalism.  The web was dismissed as the purview of “bloodsuckers and bloggers”.

And in a wonderfully anachronistic moment towards the end of the movie, McAdams’ young ingenue blogger talks about how people will want to read the story in newsprint, rather than on the web.

In the words of Goldstein:

At the film’s end, the reporter presses the SEND button and the presses miraculously begin to roll — print the legend, indeed!

In the year when one of the newspaper institutions of the US, the New York Times, won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for a story broken online, State of Play just feels out of step with the realities of journalism today.

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Filed under: Hollywood, internet, journalism , ,

April 22, 2009 • 10:03 am 1

Twitter adds depth to Austin Symposium on Online Journalism

One of the highlights of the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas this weekend came right at the end, once many people have left to enjoy the nightlife.

All-round online journalism expert Charlotte-Anne Lucas wrapped the two days of discussions by reflecting on the back-chat that was taking place on Twitter.

Her presentation captured the essense of the symposium, as well as illustrating how the reaction from audience.  The discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #isoj was one of my highlights from the conference, as it provided an additional layer of context to the presentations and panels.

It turned the one-to-many model of traditional conferences into a many-to-many model that added depth and raised the level of engagement.

Here’s Charlotte-Anne Lucas’ presentation:

Filed under: academics, internet, journalism, social media , , , ,

April 18, 2009 • 8:24 am 4

Has mobile come of age for news?

Everyone seems to be talking about mobile as the future for media at day two of the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas.

So I asked the Twitterverse: Is news on cellphones is coming of age or is it hype? Here are a selection of the responses:

picture-6picture-5picture-4picture-3picture-2picture-1picture-7picture-9picture-8

Filed under: Mobiles, internet, journalism, social media , ,

April 17, 2009 • 10:29 am 1

How citizen media is creating a new news cycle

Speaking at the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas, Rachel Nixon, Global News Director at NowPublic.com talked about a new news cycle.

The ability of people to witness and report the news to their network – Facebook, Twitter, etc – creates a emerging news cycle, argued Nixon.

In the past, she said, someone would witness an event, tell a reporter, who would filter and process the information, before feeding it back to the public as a produced news story.

Now people can share with each other what they saw or experienced, but “90% of the time, these people are not journalists.”

Nixon wanted to dispel some of the misconceptions about the notion of “citizen journalism”: primarily the idea that amateurs would replace professionals.

The people who come to NowPublic do so to share, discuss and be part of a community.

“There is not an army of people who want to be deployed at the drop of a hat,” she said. Instead that are a multiplicity of voices that are speaking online.

She described so-called “citizen journalism” as a global intelligence network that can enhance professional journalism.  The role of the reporter is to wrap themselves around this social media network.

Nixon explained how NowPublic has developed a tool called Scan, described as a listening engine for the live web, which aims to make sense of the wealth of information online.

She showed the early version of this tool and showed a mock-up of a new prototype that aims to add a layer of meaning to the stream of information in social media.

(Full disclosure: Rachel is also my wife).

Filed under: citizen journalism, internet, journalism, social media ,

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Alfred Hermida
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