Results matching “joi ito tool ta”

The Printcasting model is on its way to "democratise" print publishing in more cities in the US, it was announced last week. The initiative, financed by the winnings of the 2008 Knight News Challenge, has made its first newspaper partnership with Denver-based MediaNews Group. The publishing group controls 54 daily newspapers in 11 states, including The Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News.

The project originated out of the newspaper, the Bakersfield Californian and first went public in March to cater for the town of Bakersfield, California.

The Internet was responsible for Barack Obama's election to the White House, Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post claims. Although this statement will inevitably incite dissenting views, in the context of Huffington's talk on the power of the Internet it does not seem wholly unreasonable. Huffington was speaking at the Activate Conference 09, convened to discuss the social implications of the rise of the Internet and technology.  

The conference reiterated discussions of technological and cultural trends, which are conditioning not only how news needs to be presented, but how these new forms of diffusion can directly affect politics and society.

 

Do you speak Twitter? Come on, Tweeple... It's time to get with the program. Yes, you Tweeple, people of the Twitter universe, or Twitterverse. Whether you are a newetter (a new tweeter), an occasionitter (an occasional Tweeter) or a seasoned reportwitters (you guessed it, reporter-style twitterer), an entire range of Twitter vocabulary has arrived. 

Twitter asks its users one question: "What are you doing right now?" It is a simple enough concept; 'tweeters' answer this question and their response enters the real time feeds of those who follow them, but it is becoming increasingly useful for reporters and papers as the social network attracts more and more users. Essentially, journalists can use Twitter in three ways: to find stories and other information and to track events, to publicise their work, and to connect with readers.

A real time feed of breaking news and thought

Twitter is an extremely useful journalistic resource: reporters can use it to watch for breaking news, follow sources and search for information. "It's like monitoring another wire service," said Robb Montgomery, CEO of Visual Editors. It can be used to get an idea of which topics are attracting interest and what people are talking about right now. There is a list of top 'trending topics' on the Twitter home page. It is a real time search, ahead of even Google in terms of timeliness.

The useful information can sometimes be hard to find amongst multiple messages about what users had for breakfast, or what they thought about last night's TV show, but as Noam Cohen said in Global Journalist "it turns out that when a million people stare at their navels, more than a few of them will also notice that the ground is shaking, the plane is nosediving, the police are shooting." Twitter is particularly relevant during events that involve large numbers of members of the public, and a shining example of its effectiveness arose after a US Airways flight landed on the Hudson River and the first picture of the plane was posted to Twitter by an observer. Online news editor at Sky News Jon Gripton, discussing his reasons for appointing a Twitter correspondent, said "it is effectively another news feed. It helps us source eyewitnesses and photos and other people who are on the scene of an event." It is also crucial for following conferences, for example.

Applications such as Tweetdeck allow users to sort their contacts into groups and to search more and more easily for Tweets on specific topics. The custom of adopting hash-tags to make searching easier has been widely adopted: if a user is tweeting about a particular subject they can add a tag into their tweet, such as #IranElection, #Mumbai, #Gaza. The hash or pound symbol distinguishes the tag from random mentions of the same word, and is a custom developed by Twitter users.

Twitter's fame as a news source grew curing the terrorist attacks on Mumbai last November, and during the ongoing conflict in Iran following the election on June 12, Twitter has come into its own, with those inside Iran using the social network to stay in touch and communicate with the outside world while phone networks are down and many websites are blocked. News outlets turned to the service for the latest updates, as they were forced to abandon the principle of only relying on their trusted sources for information due to what the New York Times described as a "news vacuum."

Questions about the reliability of Twitter have also been highlighted by events in Iran. Clearly, it is impossible to judge the authenticity of Tweets from a non-trusted source. During 'normal' circumstances, a journalist would be able to contact the 'Tweeter' for more details and verification, but that is currently overwhelmingly difficult. Journalists who incorporate news obtained by Twitter into their reporting should always be careful to stress their uncertainty about the source.

Publishing: one-to-many

According to a Harvard Business study, there is a small group of very active Twitter users: it found that "the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets."  Researchers Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski concluded that "Twitter resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network": in other words, perfect for journalists looking to publicise their work. It is simple enough to use as a publicising tool: send a link to the story with a Twitter-friendly headline, which should generally be casual and chatty, even more so than web headlines.

It is without doubt a good way to attract extra readers. One of the advantages of Twitter to spread the word is that it is viral, users frequently "re-tweet" the links that they have enjoyed. A CNN breaking news feed, not actually started by CNN but purchased by the news outlet when it gained substantial recognition, was the second Twitter feed to reach one million followers and now has well over 2 million. The New York Times main feed has 1,238,673 followers at time of publishing, and the Guardian has 25,009 on its main feed, though far more on its Guardian Tech account: 782,662. Many news organisations now have multiple Twitter feeds for their different sections. Montgomery stressed the need to "explore" the best policy for your newsroom when deciding whether to stick to one or split them

Some feeds are generated automatically, and for many journalists and bloggers it has become second nature to 'tweet' an article immediately after publishing. Robb Montgomery believes that the "more successful Twitterers have moved beyond auto-tweeting their RSS feed" to make their tweets more personal. "You want to show that there's a real person there."

A social tool for branding

As well as using Twitter as a one-to-many publishing mechanism, journalists can also take advantage of the social element of Twitter, using it to connect with their readers and to receive feedback on articles. It is a contact point between reporter and reader, making the journalist more accessible. "You can run quick polls, get a pulse, get some ideas," said Montgomery. Twitter can be used as part of a journalist's own personal branding, to develop their own network of followers, depending on their personality as well as their reputation as a journalist. This could be particularly helpful for freelance journalists and bloggers.

Newspapers' advice to staff

Many news outlets have become concerned about the way that their employees use social networks such as Twitter. New York Times executive editor Bill Keller called for a "zone of trust" after reporters Jennifer 8. Lee, Michael Luo and Brian Stelter sent 'tweets' on what executives were saying about the how the paper might charge for online content, amongst other things during a staff strategy meeting. Shortly after, the New York Times announced the appointment of social media editor Jen Preston via Twitter. She is to concentrate "full-time on expanding the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers," including, it seems, policing Twitter use.

The Wall Street Journal's advice on Twitter in a staff memo is that "business and pleasure should not be mixed" and although "common sense should prevail," staff meetings should not be discussed on social networks. The Washington Post's guidelines also mentions its reliance on reporters' common sense. The AP's new rules tell reporters "Don't report things or break news that we haven't published, no matter the format, and that includes retweeting unconfirmed information not fit for AP's wires."

Embracing Twitter seems to be essential for journalists and newsrooms in today's media landscape. This does not mean that all reporters should be tweeting all day long, and certainly does not mean that they should believe everything they read, but they should familiarise themselves with the site and work out how they want to use it. A newsroom policy might be necessary to encourage or warn journalists with regards to how the paper would like to see it used, and if possible, a social media expert could monitor and coordinate the paper's efforts. It is not necessary for journalists to embrace every aspect of Twitter, but most who try it find something beneficial.

On Tuesday 30 June at 15.00 London time, Robb Montgomery, CEO of Visual Editors will be speaking at a WEF webinar on "How the real time web can improve your newspaper's journalism." More details here.

YouTube today launched its Reporter's Centre, an online educational platform where journalists offer advice on reporting and news gathering techniques to would-be citizen reporters.

The centre offers a selection of how-to videos with some of the industry's leading figures giving seminars on core reporting methods, such as how to conduct interviews, how to verify facts and, lessons on maintaining standards and ethics. (See below for a list which reads like a who's who of the news sector.)

June 24 marked Outside.in's launch of the beta version of its latest product: Outside.in for Publishers. Outside.in for Publishers has many functionalities. The powerful tool extends any site's local news coverage to the hyperlocal neighborhood level, as well as serving as a "flexible, self-service platform that allows anyone to easily create hundreds or thousands of new high-quality pages for their site, each focused on a hyperlocal neighborhood with targeted advertising inventory," according to the site's press release.

The product is a result of the increasing sentiment that today's local media companies "are forced to do more with less." It appears that the goal for Outside.in for Publishers is to serve publishers by bridging the gap between local bloggers and the publishers themselves. This would heighten productivity by simply having more web pages and inventory. Local bloggers also get the bang for their buck in that more traffic will be directed their way.

This past weekend, Google News announced a new feature to enhance its search engine capabilities. The new feature allows online readers to search for articles and headlines specific to the author that they are interested in by simply clicking on the hyper-linked text of the journalist's name.

The enhancement is designed to aid users to sift through the 25,000 news sources that Google News aggregates. This is exciting news for journalists in the way that it assists them in promoting their work as part of their own brand. The update is great news for readers who are fans of certain writers, too.

Tomorrow's journalists: multimedia experts, gadget geeks, engineers and entrepreneurs?

The afternoon was kicked off with a look at the way technological progress had irreversibly helped modify the journalist's job description, as well as society's expectations of the news and its relationship with this.

Everyone agreed that the Internet had become a vital part of the journalist's toolkit and Google was specifically singled out as an effective research tool, particularly as a powerful search engine. Although, Andrés Azócar, journalism director at Chile's Diego Portales University said that as students were becoming more reliant on Google, they were also becoming less capable of retaining information for themselves.

After testing the practice with a small percentage of users, Google News has started recognizing Wikipedia articles as news sources in its round-up of the web's top stories. For many Internet users, the popular online encyclopedia represents a handy source to quickly learn about a subject that's in the news.

The number of Wikipedia links on the Google News landing page is not overwhelming; a recent visit revealed just three of the dozens of links on the site belonged to the online encyclopedia.

The recently released iPhone 3GS, the third generation of the revolutionary mobile device from Apple, offers many new features that have generated excitement about its potential to greatly expand citizen journalism, a field becoming increasingly important in areas of the world where press freedom is in jeopardy. The prevalence of publicly generated content has risen considerably this year already, with incidents such as the war in Gaza and the election protests in Iran spurring a surge in camera phone video uploads to news sites and YouTube, offering perspectives on events often unobtainable by traditional media outlets.

For the iPhone 3GS, the newly added video recording and editing capabilities as well as direct to YouTube uploading will make capturing that newsworthy event much easier for the layman dabbling in citizen journalism, an aspect of the phone noted by founder and CEO of citizen journalism site GroundReport, Rachel Sterne. Sterne explains that "Helping people report on the ground, wherever they are, will only increase the speed of newsgathering." However there are a few features Apple did not add to the iPhone 3GS and its new OS that could present frustrating limitations to the phone's functionality as a tool for journalists in the field.

As the controversy over the recent election in Iran and the subsequent media response have made abundantly clear, social media like Twitter are playing an increasing role in the world of journalism. While today's working journalists must learn how these tools will affect their jobs on the fly, j-schools have a great opportunity to instruct the next generation of journalists before they enter the newsroom.

In a column on Mashable, Vadim Lavrusik - himself a journalism student at Columbia University - outlines "10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media." Lavrusik spoke with professors and deans at some of the top j-schools in the US, who told him how their respective schools have integrated lessons about how new technology can assist in reporting and provide a tool for promotion and self-branding on the web. The questions Lavrusik raises regarding ethics and social media are perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the article, and could have real consequences for students.

Integrated journalists for integrated newsrooms

Almost everyone present agreed that journalism schools had a duty to train students across all media disciplines, with everyone having the opportunity to learn about print, web, video and audio platforms regardless if they were specialising in newspaper, broadcasting or online journalism.

As for content, the educators had differing views on the importance of choosing a specialist field, with some saying it was important to cater to the needs of the industry and the wider community. Recent outbreaks in bird and swine flu as well as the global downturn were cited as examples of areas where journalistic expertise was lacking, with Doreen Weisenhaus, associate professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong, saying there was a great need for health journalists, particularly in Asia, where bird flu was first detected. She also said that as a key financial hub, Asia was calling out for journalists trained in financial reporting. Others made similar points about science and business journalism.

The tabloid press is proliferating at a surprising speed in Serbia, to the extent that the country can claim to be the state possessing the greatest number of titles per habitant.  This development is having interesting repercussions on mainstream reporting style.

The already impressive list of 200 dailies is  increasing with the frequent arrival of new tabloid titles, such as Kurir, Press, Pravda, Alo and Grom.   The wave of new newspapers is somewhat surprising as according to surveys only 9% of the population actually use the press as a information tool. According to the Belgrade based Vreme publication, the privileged position of the tabloid press lies very much in the nature of its contents and its involvement in the forming of public opinion. 

Nine projects with a strong focus on crowdsourcing, mobile technology and digital investigative journalism have been named winners of the 2009 Knight News Challenge.

The winners (see below for details) will each win a share of a $2 million investment fund that is part of a 5-year $25 million global initiative set up by the Knight Foundation. The organisation is offering financial assistance to enterprising groups and individuals committed to developing and delivering "bold community news and social media experiments."

Joining the rising trend of niche news on the web, UK publishers the Yorkshire Evening Post and KM Group are set to launch several hyperlocal sites and for the communities surrounding Leeds and Kent, respectively.

The Yorkshire Evening Post will introduce 20 sites for the Leeds region containing news, information, sports and entertainment. Most sites will also feature audio and video

The trusted and often dubbed 'journalist's bible,' has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. The 2009 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook includes updates with the lingo of the much-hailed and rapidly growing micro-blogging site, Twitter.com, and other entries to remain current with the ever changing written word.

The verb phrases, "to Twitter", and "to Tweet" are now recognized and validated by the prestigious Associated Press as "Twitter" is described as a social networking website where users can emit, "Tweets," or short messages. Another term now defined in the 2009 edition that describes short messages, but is not necessarily exclusive to the Twitter-sphere, is "text" and its cousins, "texting" and "texted."

Westminster announced yesterday that the length of time government records had to be kept secret would be cut from thirty years to twenty.  Additionally, Justice Secretary, Jack Straw is considering the extension of the Freedom of Information Act to more bodies responsible for the handling and spending of public money.


The proposals require that all official documents be available to public access after twenty years of their production.  This does not, however, include documents deemed 'sensitive', Royal family or Cabinet papers.

Whilst newspapers worry about falling circulation and cable news network viewers are dropping like flies, National Public Radio (NPR) is doing just fine. NPR's has retained its dazzling ratings and has not seen its 'listenership' decrease. In fact, NPR has been able to keep the number of listeners on the rise every year for the past nine years. This past March, NPR revealed that it had an astounding 23.6 million listeners tuning in every week by the end of 2008.

So, what is so special about NPR that makes it seemingly immune to the financial crisis that has caused some newspapers to file for bankruptcy or disappear all together? In an article written by Josh Catone for Mashable.com, a social media website guide, Catone says NPR has "a three-pronged strategy that is helping them not only grow now, but also prepare for the future media landscape."

Google launched its made-over news site last month to celebrate the seventh anniversary of Google News.  The changes are both aesthetic and functional.

The search engine has taken the opportunity to develop interconnections with its partners in news provision.  The section pages have been modernized with the categories such as 'Top Stories', 'Business' and 'World' incorporating featured videos and photos provided by Google's partners.  The news section's multimedia format has been bolstered by areas designated for popular stories and images, found on the right side of the screen.  You Tube logos have been added to news videos, so that the user can more easily identify video content.  New colour frames have been added to respective sections on the homepage.

This week Microsoft unveiled its new search engine, Bing, aimed at challenging market dominator Google as the world's second most popular search tool after Yahoo and AOL.

Launched on Wednesday, the European version was available to use in Beta mode while in the States the decision was made for Bing to go live. Bing was coined thus for it is supposed to represent the "sound of found," although some say it is already floundering.

Speaking at the Google I/O Developer Conference that took place in San Francisco between May 27-28, Google has unveiled Google Wave, a new online communication service.

Described as a "personal communication and collaboration tool," Google Wave allows users to chat and share documents including audio files, videos and photos in real-time.

UK-based PageSuite, a software development company which creates digital publications, has come up with a new software tool that will enable readers of newspapers on the web to search for key words and phrases. The search results appear instantly highlighted.

Currently, such a function is possible with the website versions of a newspaper, but few electronic titles offer the option. Outside the UK, El País' English-language version, produced in conjunction with the International Herald Tribune, is a good example of a newspaper e-edition where this service is already available.

Apture has created technology that aims to make flat web pages more three-dimensional: the third dimension being boxes that pop-up to show the reader further multimedia assets relating to an article. At first glance it does not sound too ground-breaking, but taking a closer look, the implications for both readers and publishers are considerable. The Editors Weblog spoke to co-founder and CEO Tristan Harris about how Apture works and how it can help publishers.

Harris described what inspired him to start working on Apture. He and his co-founders came up with the idea while studying at Stanford, during conversations with the Knight Fellows. Frustrated with the fact that despite the web being "truly the richest medium we have ever had to communicate with, with all the computational power and multimedia assets" it has "this flat characteristic of flat story-telling," they decided to try to do something about it.

Easy access to multiple multimedia sources

Apture has created a media search engine that allows writers to "quickly leverage all the media that's available on the web, in many different APIs and digital libraries," Harris explained. The journalist highlights keywords in the text, such as the name of a person, place, event, or a certain topic, and a box will then appear with a list of possible media assets to link to. These include reference tools such as Wikipedia, IMDB, Amazon, Twitter search, even the US Congress, photos from Flickr or Yahoo, videos from YouTube or Daily Motion, maps from Google Maps, documents from Scribd, and the journalist can pick what assets they feel are apppropriate - possibly more than one - and set up a link.

When the reader clicks on the hyperlink, instead of opening in a different browser window, another small box appears to display the article snippet, video, photo or map which the reader can consult without losing their place in the original article. And as Apture allows journalists to clip a specific section of a video or link to a certain quote in a book, the box will hopefully offer them only the most relevant information. Readers can click through to the original site by clicking on a link within the box.

For individual publishers, their own archives and assets can be incorporated into the search engine. Apture has also developed deals with some clients so that any Apture users can access their archives: for example Reuters videos, or snippets from New York Times, BBC or Washington Post articles. Apture just added Google Books and NPR audio podcasts to the asset list.

The technology is free to blogs and websites with fewer than 5 million page views per month. Harris added that as the company is "getting a lot of valuable information from people using it," meaning that the system is getting better and better. Larger publishers pay "hundreds and thousands a month" to use Apture, however. Harris explained that they are willing to do this because the tool creates a "more compelling experience on their websites," as shown by the fact that there is "a proven difference" in user's engagement with pages.

Benefits for publishers

According to Harris, putting one or more Apture links on a page leads to 2 or 3 minutes added engagement time. Looking at Comscore media matrix data, he clarified, it appears that 20 to 30% of publishers' traffic is lost to search. If a paper does not answer a reader's questions, it is extremely easy for the reader to just leave. Harris believes that if journalists are thoughtful and thorough about the links they add throughout a whole site, you could imagine that the publication "may well be able to double the amount of time spent on the site." And obviously, more time spent on the site means more advertising money.

As well as this financial benefit, Harris described a less tangible but arguably equally valuable advantage of using Apture: the fact that it allows newspapers to be a more effective guide for their readers and to offer them a more coherent reading experience. When a paper sends their readers away, either by linking to an external source or just not providing enough information, it is "severing its relationship with you as your guide to that information." By using Apture to supply necessary background information in multiple different formats while keeping the reader on its site, a news organisation can "be the guide to an entire web's worth of resources, but retain a relationship with that reader," Harris asserted. The fact that publishers are "the owners of that relationship" puts "a lot more power in their hands," he added.

For those publishers contemplating offering their content back to Apture, one concern might be that by displaying their content in boxes on other sites via Apture, they could end up losing traffic. Harris stressed, however, that readers can always go back to the source, and that rather than trying to remove traffic from websites, Apture sees its role as "providing an opportunity for those media partners to get their content in front of new eyeballs that they would not have seen before."

What next?

"What we are really doing is creating an efficiency in the market that really wasn't there before," Harris concluded. Apture is connecting information "in a way that wasn't possible before." He said that the company intends to improve its current product by continuing to integrate new content partners and bring costs down. He also hopes to create new products that will "transform the medium, changing the way that people interact with the web," and which are "not constrained to the two dimensions that we've had up until now."

The advantages offered by online journalism are numerous, and products such as Apture's should be welcomed by journalists striving to find better ways to tell their story in a multimedia environment. The fact that the Internet allows us to see, hear or find out more about pretty much anything and consequently make a story richer and more meaningful is something which papers should take advantage of. Arguably, going a step further and creating their own new multimedia experiences should be a priority for newspapers, but using existing content to supplement their articles is a good start. 

"The media has a duty to wrongfully accused", wrote Eamonn O'Neil on the Guardian's website yesterday.  Sadly though,  journalists and editors, apparently fearful of the professional and legal implications of fact-finding missions, are increasingly shying away from performing this duty.  Whether this is due to a lack of journalistic confidence, the constant threat of legal procedures or a response to a lack in public demand, this avoidance has deprived not only the journalistic practice of the satisfaction of fulfilling one of its great original purposes, but social justice of what was once a highly effective tool.  

O'Neil's call to arms forms part of the Guardian's recently launched 'Justice on Trial' campaign, which "aims to highlight cases where there are major concerns of a miscarriage of justice."  The project is a result of the realisation that journalism is at risk of forsaking an arguable raison d'etre; its opening statement recalls the profession's past successes in contributing to the correction of infamous miscarriage of justice cases, such as those of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four.   O'Neil, moreover reflects upon his own involvement in rough and ready evidence digging investigations, such as that of the Christmas Island nuclear test victims, while working at Scottish TV in the late eighties.

A special report by Editor & Publisher has examined the situation which a growing number of American newspaper publishers are finding themselves in: bankruptcy. Amongst those that have filed for Chapter 11 in the US are the Tribune Co., the Sun-Times Media Group and the Journal Register Co.

During this difficult economic period, bankruptcies are increasingly common - in the US, they are up 38% when compared year on year. However, the troubles of the American newspaper industry in general add to the uncertainty surrounding newspaper applications for Chapter 11.