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Making sense of the intersection between media, society and technology

April 2, 2009 • 3:19 pm 1

What journalists need to know about Twitter

The Globe and Mail’s Matthew Ingram is sharing the workshop about Twitter he held for some of the journalists at the newspaper.

The presentation is on Slideshare and free to share, download or embed.  Journalists should learn about Twitter and its potential, rather than dismissing it as a fad or waste of time.

At the very least, as Ingram points out, Twitter is a good way of reaching out to and connecting with users, promoting our stories and finding sources for stories.

Filed under: Web 2.0, internet, journalism, social media , , ,

March 11, 2009 • 12:58 pm 1

BBC allows video to be embedded

The BBC has started letting their video be embedded on other sites.  The first few videos are available on the technology section of the BBC News website (which I set up in 2001).

They include a video on Internet football fans and a report from the Bafta Video Game Awards.

Rory Cellan-Jones

As Andy Dickinson comments on an embedded BBC video on his blog, “How cool is that?

The BBC said there were “a huge number of tricky little issues to sort out and most of these have been complex business issues around rights, terms and conditions, etc.”.

The move is part of the BBC’s strategy to make its content more open to the public.

This year we are focusing on a number of projects which will make our content more open including some major changes to the News and Sport website content management and publishing systems.

According to the small print, “the BBC encourages you to embed its video and audio material on your website as long as you agree to a few terms”:

  • This is for use on your personal website
  • Use the supplied code and don’t edit the video or audio
  • The BBC can remove the content without notice
  • The BBC makes this content available at your own risk
  • Don’t put this content on sites that contain illegal or offensive material
  • Users accessing the video from outside the UK may see an error message
  • The embedding of BBC content is not a BBC endorsement of your website

So while you can embed the content, you are not allowed to remix or mash it up.

I would embed a video on this post but am prevented from doing so as the blog is hosted on WordPress.com.  Hopefully the WordPress team will create a short code to embed BBC video.


Filed under: BBC, Web 2.0, broadcast, journalism , , ,

March 3, 2009 • 10:35 am 1

Jon Stewart urges you to ’show us your tweets’

Now that the mainstream media, politicians and other “rotting corpses grabbing for any glimmer of relevance” have jumped on Twitter, Jon Stewart offers a refreshing satirical take on the phenonenon:

And of course, you can follow me on Twitter @hermida

Filed under: Web 2.0, innovation, internet, journalism

February 12, 2009 • 1:56 pm 8

Why new media is a generational term

Over at Journalism 2.0, Mark Briggs poses a question that has been bugging me for weeks – what do we call this new form of journalism and media?

As Mark points out:

The news industry calls it “new media” or “interactive media,” but that’s just differentiating it from legacy forms of publishing. Pretty much everything online is “interactive” and it’s not really “new” anymore.

Much as I don’t like the term, “new media”, it is a shorthand way to refer to a whole raft of trends, from online journalism to participatory media.

It is a bit like trying to define news – every journalist knows what you mean by it, but often struggles to come up with a good definition.

I teach a journalism course in a new first-year undergraduate concentration at the University of British Columbia called New Media and Society.

But my fellow instructors in English and Sociology who also teach in this stream have been debating is whether we should even use the term “new media”.

In class, I tell the students it’s a generic term for digital communication made possible through the use of computer technology, which is almost so general to be meaningless.

The word “new” is also a loaded term, as it has connotations of social progress through technology.

The problem with new media is that it a generational definition. New media is “new” to my generation and beyond. The Internet didn’t exist when I went to university 20 years ago. We barely had computers.

But to the 18-year-olds in my class, new media is not new. To them, it is just media.

The term “new media” reflects the difference between digital natives and digital immigrants.  To the immigrants, this is a new land, full of strange and confusing wonders.

To the natives, it is simply the world they know.

Perhaps when the newsrooms are full of digital natives, we will no longer need to use the term “new media”.

Filed under: Web 2.0, internet, journalism, new media , ,

January 26, 2009 • 4:16 pm 1

How to help students make sense of new media

For my latest post for PBS Mediashift, I’ve written about a new undergraduate course I am teaching at UBC:

The young men and women entering university today are digital natives who have grown up in a world of Microsoft, Google and Apple. They have lived through a time when the Internet went from being a highly specialized system used by scientists to a ubiquitous utility that defines how they engage with the world.

But while today’s students may blog and Twitter their way through class, many are unaware of how that same technology is fundamentally changing the way they live, play and learn.

This is the rationale for a new undergraduate foundation concentration at the University of British Columbia in New Media and Society, bringing together professors from Sociology, English and Journalism. It aims to equip students with the critical skills to engage in the emergent digital media landscape and understand what it means to be literate in an interconnected planet

I am teaching the journalism component of the course. Over the course of two semesters, first-year students are introduced to the development and impact of new media in a challenging and enriching learning environment. It is part of UBC’s Co-ordinated Arts Program that offers several thematic streams for new students with broad interests in the social sciences and humanities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Web 2.0, academics, internet, journalism, new media , , ,

January 22, 2009 • 4:05 pm 3

Principles of journalism as a word cloud

As I was preparing a lecture for my undergraduate class in new media and journalism, it occurred to me to create a word cloud of the nine principles of journalism from the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

Principles of journalism

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Filed under: Web 2.0, innovation, internet, journalism , , ,

January 20, 2009 • 10:50 am 1

Barack Obama’s White House starts blogging

As Barack Obama was taking the oath of office, the White House website received a radical makeover, notably with the launch of the White House Blog.

In an introductory entry, timed 12.01 EST, Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House, wrote:

Millions of Americans have powered President Obama’s journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country’s future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.

Having a blog direct from the White House is to be welcomed.

Image of White House blogThe challenge for the Obama administration will be maintaining a policy of communication, transparency and participation not just during the good times, but also when the new president comes under fire for difficult decisions.

However, maybe Phillips’ team could change the blog icon on the website – having a graphic of an old-style newspaper doesn’t exactly say “change”.

Filed under: Web 2.0, blogging, innovation, internet, media , , ,

January 6, 2009 • 11:06 am 4

Advice on how to land a job in journalism

There is no doubt that this is going to be a tough year for the media in Canada and beyond.

Journalism students graduating this year have the talent and the skills that the industry needs, but the question is whether news organisations will invest in them.

Even student journalism award winners are finding it tough. Azeem Ahmad, the winner of Birmingham University Student Journalist of the Year award sponsored by media group, Trinity Mirror, has talked about his struggle to find a suitable opening:

It’s not that there is a lack of job opportunities, but there is definitely a lot of competition for the more interesting roles, naturally. I believed that achieving my award would set me apart from the competition and make potential employers take more notice of me, but I’m still finding myself just as unsuccessful in getting my foot on the ladder as I did before I won the award.

His advice to budding journalists reflects how landing for a job has changed:

Blog as often as possible; subscribe to and read the key influencers/speakers in your chosen field – and comment too Let the author know you’ve read what they’ve written and agreed or disagreed with it; start and get involved in the discussions, engage with the community online and create one around yourself; join Twitter and become a networked journalist.  Engage, engage, engage – I can’t stress that enough.

This is career-seeking 2.0 for journalists. Dan Schawbel at Mashable provides some good advice in using social media for job-hunting.

Among the recommendations – create a video resume, capitalise on LinkedIn and tap into Twitter to network and make connections.

It is a far cry from mailing a CV and cover letter to the HR department.

Filed under: Web 2.0, internet, journalism, media, news , , ,

December 31, 2008 • 10:56 am 1

Predictions for 2009 for social media

Trendsspotting has put together this nifty slideshow of the predictions for 2009 by social media influencers:

(Via JD Lasica)

Filed under: Web 2.0, internet, media, social media , , , ,

December 22, 2008 • 11:08 am 2

2009 prediction: Guerilla journalism for the public good

Making predictions ia always a daunting prospective. But that was the challenge posed by David Cohn for this month’s Carnival of Journalism.

In order to avoid a stream of posts of how bad things may get for journalism in 2009, Cohn wanted us to be optimistic.

At a time of newsroom cuts, falling revenues and an economic crisis, there are still reasons to be positive.

At a time when the big news brands are in trouble, there is an opening for guerilla journalism start-ups.

Four of the most high-profile online community news services recently received an influx of cash from the Knight Foundation to strengthen their hometown reporting.

Newsroom layoffs are never good news. But they do create a pool of trained reporters that may enjoy the freedom of working for small, low-cost, news operations, based in the community and serving the community.

Over the next 12 months, we may see more of these guerilla news start-ups, experimenting with business models that prioritise public service rather than profit.

I have yet to meet a journalist who said they went into the profession for the pay. Perhaps the time has come for a realignment, moving away from journalism as a for-profit business and emphasising instead journalism as a public good.

Filed under: Web 2.0, internet, journalism, newspapers , ,

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Alfred Hermida
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