Results matching “bloggers vs jou 1”

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announces its third annual Knight News Challenge, a contest that will grant up to US$5 million for ideas that transform local community news with the help of digital tools like social media, Web 2.0 or multimedia content. A new "incubator" site, the News Challenge Garage, was created in order to offer online criticism and advice for applicants.

The New York Times (NYT) Moscow bureau has created a Russian-language blog whose title reads "Tell the Americans and the entire world about Russia", reported Marketing Media Review.

The viewpoints featured on the blogs are translated into English and will be published on the newspaper's official site, even if the tone of the content is negative. The issues discussed in the blogs are suggested by NYT journalists and include translated NYT news stories about Russia.

 Russian bloggers had the chance to pose questions to one of Barack Obama's advisor, who answered the inquiries and studied the nearly 500 comments left on the blog.

Source: Marketing Media Review

New media like blogs may be helping to "demystify" the Middle East and advocate peace journalism, even though it may seem as though there are more bloggers than readers, according to Jaron Gilinsky, journalist and documentary filmmaker in Jerusalem.

Since 2004, the number of new, "citizen-generated" media and reporters at the US political conventions has significantly increased. It has become more difficult to differentiate between independent bloggers and traditional ones as traditional media is adopting a "multi-platform" method, according to Media Shift's Mark Glaser.

Saudi bloggers launched a campaign complaining about the publication of "gruesome" images portraying a decapitated 15-month-old boy in some of the country's newspapers. Although the letters that were sent out to the editors and columnists weren't answered, the event put into question privacy issues and called for the need to have a standard when it comes to publishing photographs.

Dr. Samir Arar, a psychologist from Jeddah's family-counselling Maharat Centre and a psychology professor at King Abdulaziz University, pointed out that whether or not violent images should be printed must be a matter of adding "relevance to the news story" and not to "appeal to voyeurism", reported Arab News.

According to Arar, reporters publish crime stories in order to "elicit strong reactions" that might help boost paper sales.

However, he said that the problem is that the stories may affect children and those who are sensitive to such content, including the people linked to a particular event.

NewsCred, a news aggregator site that ranks the credibility of online news stories, launches in a beta. The site lets users gauge a story, its author and the publication's credibility and then directs it towards an algorithm that decides the most "prominent headlines", according to Media Channel.

NewsCred was established following the increase in digital alternative news sources as well as a reaction to a study that found that less than a fifth of Americans believe what is written in news articles, reported Journalism.co.uk.

Google will set up a blog headquarters for bloggers who will be covering the Democratic convention in Denver next week, as well as for the Republican convention next month.

The move shows the development of new media, as Google competes with other well-established media outlets by providing users with the chance to use its YouTube site as well as other social media services in order to report on political events.

Around 500 bloggers paid US$ 100 to be able to access the "Big Tent" blogging facility, reports European Journalism Centre.

Source: European Journalism Centre

Clark Fredricksen of Crosscut writes, "Today, a newspaper without a posse of blogs is so passé."

Sprouting up across the US Pacific Northwest, bloggers -- often reincarnates of the newspaper political reporters of old -- are leading today's political discussion.

Chris Mulick's Olympia Dispatch, "might be the best Washington political blog you've never heard of," writes Fredricksen, of the blogger who delivers "legislative scoops"  with plenty of humor.

Mapes on Politics, authored by blogger Jeff Mapes, has got Oregon's Legislature pegged. According to Seattle Times chief political reporter David Postman, Mapes has "deeper and better understanding of Oregon politics than almost anyone."

"What Mapes is to The Oregonian," writes Fredricksen, "David Postman is to The Seattle Times -- and more." Postman on Politics has the advantage focusing solely on blogging.

"I realize I'm lucky in having the blog as my primary job, while others still have to write for the paper as well," Postman said. "I have the luxury of being able to cover issues and people statewide, and don't have to worry about writing for the paper."

Source: Crosscut

In the latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, Stephen Franklin writes about his experience coaching bloggers and journalists in Cairo. Although Franklin acknowledges that most journalism coming out of Egypt is currently written with a conservative Islamic bent, often on the defensive, he writes "I hope the tug of competition will gradually convince them that good journalism--not journalism in service of a cause--is their best bet, both commercially and in terms of helping their society."

There's reason to think "good journalism" will win out. Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger interviewed by Franklin, leaned close to tell the Chicago Tribune staffer, "I want to learn how to be credible. I want people to believe me. I want to know how you journalists work. I want to report news. Facts. No ideology."

Abbas' sentiments echo the findings of a study published this May by Lawrence Pintak, of the American University in Cairo, who found that Arab journalists see themselves as "agents of political and social change."

Franklin's report, and Wael Abbas' thoughts, are particularly poignant, given the recent four-year prison term sentenced to a 22-year-old former law student, who criticized President Hosni Mubarak on his blog.

Source: Columbia Journalism Review

Mike Leary, Philadephia Inquirer's managing editor, announced last week that the paper would be publishing certain stories online only after they have been published in print, apart from breaking news stories.

Even though the new policy provoked some criticism from Steve Outing and Jeff Jarvis, it is meant to be a strategic leap towards formulating "complementary differentiation between the roles of the print and online operations", according to Poynter.org's Amy Gahran.

Differentiating between print and online operations may be the key to helping papers that are in financial trouble. One of the strengths of print may be feature stories, whereas the Web's immediacy allows for a possibly better environment for breaking news coverage.

The move may be seen as restricting bloggers by limiting the stories they may work on, so as not to publish content that is in progress for the print edition.

However, Chris Krewson, the paper's executive editor for online/news mentioned that it is blogging that is the "easiest" method for breaking news coverage. In fact, he pointed out that there was a 700% increase in traffic on Philly.com blogs.

"There's no quicker way to break news than on a blog, and no better way for us to leverage our staffing advantage over other local media. In addition, beat reporters with blogs say the process has helped them cultivate and nurture sources," said Krewson.

Gahran wrote that eventhough it would be "nice" to have news organizations reporting on breaking news, enterprise and feature stories as well as interacting with the community, financial difficulties may not permit that.

Source: Poynter Romenesko

See also:
US: Philadelphia Inquirer managing editor takes "backward step"?

Jody Rosen's recently Slate piece, Dude, You Stole My Article, has sparked renewed the debate in the blogosphere about plagiarism, fair use and the link economy.

Rosen recently chronicled the discovery that one of her articles had been plagiarized (four paragraphs nearly verbatim) in a small alt-weekly, The Bulletin, published outside of Houston, Texas. It turns out Rosen's Jimmy Buffet article was just the beginning - as Rosen dug through the Bulletin's archives, she quickly realized most, if not all of the articles, were mosaics of stolen prose, lifted from Slate, USA Today, The Dallas Observer, Rolling Stone, the Boston Globe, and more.  

Although the Bulletin seems a clear cut case - "the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism" writes Rosen - more often, bloggers and journalists are at odds when "Fair Use" borders on abuse.

Tammi Marcoullier of Publishing 2.0, recently wrote about having quotes lifted from her article without attribution, during her tenure as a Washington Post blogger. Nick Carr has been widely criticized for not including links in a recent Atlantic article, by critics who argue that mentioning an author or source (without a URL) isn't sufficient when a hyperlink is so easy. And it seems the AP controversy over Fair Use, which had the self-righteous of the blogosphere so enraged, has only just subsided.

So how can journalists and bloggers play "fair"?

ePluribus Media recommends the following:

-Summarize the article and attribute it to its original source, including title, date, publication, author and URL

-If you need to quote from an article and you're unsure if your use constitutes as Fair Use, contact the copyright owner and simply ask permission. For example, for the AP:

    E-mail: apdigital@ap.org
    Fax: +1-212-621-5488.

-If you are unable to find contact information for the copywright holder, post a disclaimer, citing "fair use" under Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 with your contact information

-Last, if a copyright holder asks you to remove material, do so in a considerate and timely manner. If you don't? The copyright holder may contact the ISP the offending material is hosted by and the entire site can be disabled.

Sources: Publishing 2.0, Slate, ePluribus Media

In a memo to his staff Mike Leary, Philadelphia Inquirer's managing editor, announced that the paper would now publish "signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews" online only after they have been published in print, but that the paper wouldn't stop publishing immediate breaking news online.

Bloggers may be the ones who have to adapt the most to the new policy, since they may work on content that may "end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first", according to the memo.

"What's long held back the newspaper industry and gotten it in the current mess has been holding back online innovation that might impact the legacy product (print)," said Steve Outing in his blog, after calling the new policy "backward".

In his BuzzMachine blog, Jeff Jarvis criticized the editor's memo, saying that "even the slowest" in the "dying" newspaper industry would not do something like this.

"They know that the Internet is the present and the future and the paper is the past. Protecting the past is no strategy for the future," said Jarvis.

On the other hand, citizen journalist Bill Dennis said, "By offering for free what their would-be competitors would have to offer for a fee, newspapers' free Web sites are an anti-competitive act."

Source: Poynter Romenesko, BuzzMachine, SteveOuting.com

The News of the World, one of the UK's most popular newspapers, is relaunching its website next week. The newspaper are currently running a beta version test.



The new site will add a series of football blogs written by fans of Premier League clubs, give greater prominence to video content, adopt new templates, and offer an improved search facility.

The newspaper has pre-selected fanzine editors and supporters from unofficial club websites to write the blogs about their teams. Considering the grey legal area of bloggers, especially unpaid volunteers, Gary Thompson, associate editor of NoW.co.uk said, "The same rules will apply to them [bloggers] as to our chief sports writers. The rules of libel apply to them as much as anyone else."

The site has a redesigned homepage, adopting The Sun Online's page template, to make more content accessible above the fold. It has also added a tab feature to make navigation easier.

The new site will run on a technology system called Scenic, which also runs the websites of other News International titles, Times Online and Sun Online. The new-look site is replacing the pop-up feature by embedding a new video player supplied by Kit Digital - formerly Roo Media - into the top right of the homepage and across story pages.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Do women face a glass ceiling in the blogosphere? Organizers and attendees of BlogHer, the three-year-old conference attended by more than a thousand female bloggers, think so.

Last year, a study co-authored by BlogHer and Compass Partners found that 36 million women (about 11 percent of all US women) participate in the blogosphere each week, and 15 million of them have their own blogs.

Yet, when Techcult, a technology Web site, ranked its top 100 Web celebrities, only 11 of them were women. And last year, Forbes.com created a similar list, naming just 3 women on its list of 25.

"It's disheartening and frustrating," said Allison Blass, a BlogHer attendee whose personal blog at www.lemonade-life.com is about living with Type 1 diabetes.

Created in 2005 to help female bloggers gain exposure, this year's San Francisco event "has since evolved into a corporate-sponsored Oprah-inflected version of a '60s consciousness-raising group," reported the New York Times.

"These days, there is money to be made, fame to be earned and influence to be gained," reports NYT. "And though women and men are creating blogs in roughly equal numbers, many women at the conference... belie(ve) that they are not taken as seriously as their male counterparts... Nor, they said, were they making much money, even though corporations seem to be making money from them."

The conference hosted seminars like "How to Take Names and Be Taken Seriously as a Political Blogger," where many women said that their male colleagues and major media groups undercut them, and linked to them less often.

Megan McArdle, who blogs for the Atlantic monthly about economic issues, did no attend the conference, but noted "Women get dismissed in ways that men don't." "(McArdle) added that women are taught not to be aggressive and analytical in the way that the political blogosphere demands, and are more likely to receive blog comments on how they look, rather than what they say," reported NYT.

Confronting the issue head on, and encouraging those women fighting the tide, Enkay recently created the first Top 100 Female Bloggers list and NxE created a 50 most influential female bloggers list, earlier this month.

Sources: The New York Times, About.com

It is known by now that the US newspaper industry is in a turbulent state, as print circulation decreases and ad revenue goes down. As newspapers downsize and more focus is put on Web-based news sources, the future of broadcast journalism may be in jeopardy, according to Variety magazine's Brian Lowry.

Broadcast media frequently use newspaper stories as their sources, sometimes not even crediting them, according to Lowry. But what they fail to realize at this stage is that what happens to the newspaper industry might have an impact on them; something that Lowry calls the "domino effect".  

"The thinness in assembling TV and radio news -- and the manner in which they use newspapers as de facto tip sheets and newsgathering surrogates -- has long been one of broadcasting's dirty little secrets," he said.

In today's changing world, news sources do not only include newspaper reporters but also bloggers, websites and citizen journalists.

"Although a few Web-based enterprises have begun to invest in original reporting, most are satisfied to engage in opinion and let conventional news outfits do the heavy lifting," he said.

Broadcast media is seeing declining audience figures and has had to come up with money-saving solutions. One way to do that has been to use citizen journalists, who will be paid a given fee for their contribution.

"Stations will survive, but the mind boggles at the sources from which they'll derive news as the dominos topple. In-depth and investigative reporting are already dwindling, creating an information stream that's often a mile wide and an inch deep," Lowry said.

Source: Variety