Results matching “journalists working in a”

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.

There is a crisis in trust and communication between the British public and the mainstream media, a new report has concluded. The gulf between public expectations of news provision and the actual nature of articles, which oscillate between esoteric or irresponsible, leaves readers feeling confused and excluded.

The report, entitled 'Public Trust In The News' was conducted by researchers from Manchester and Leeds Universities and was published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. It investigated the dynamics of news production and consumption, to ascertain if there is a difference in what "the public expects from news media and what journalists mean by serving the public".  The paper highlights the underlying causes of an apparent widespread disenchantment with the media and the detrimental effects this is having on the standards of reporting and civil participation in democracy. Thankfully, the report offers several propositions for a new journalistic direction, which could refresh the reader-writer compact.

San Diego is set to be home to the new Watchdog Institute, which will provide "data-driven investigative journalism" to media outlets.  The venture is being led by Lorie Hearn, a senior editor of the town's only printed daily, the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Institute and the paper will collaborate closely.  The details of the project were illustrated by in an email sent by U-T editor Karin Winner to newspaper staff last Friday.  The Institute team is comprised of the director, Hearn, two reporters and a data specialist, who will work closely with the newspaper staff on 'long and short projects'.  

Following the Iranian election on 12 June, which both sides claim to have won, Iranians and the rest of the world wants to know the truth about the results, as well as wanting to follow protests and other developments. But this has proved more difficult than anticipated given the restrictions on reporting, both by Iranians and foreigners, and the occasion proved to be an opportunity for citizen journalism to show its value.

Reporting restrictions

Mainstream media has been suffering from severe restrictions in Iran, even tougher than during last year's Zimbabwean elections, foreign editor for Channel 4 News Ben de Pear told the Guardian. Foreign journalists first had to get special press cards and were closely monitored, then on the Tuesday following the election, foreign journalists were banned from reporting on the streets. The BBC's correspondent has been asked to leave the country after the broadcaster was accused of supporting rioters. And it is not just foreign reporters who are suffering: now even reporters of Iranian nationality are being confined to their offices. According to Reporters without Borders (RSF), 26 Iranian journalists, editors and bloggers have been imprisoned since June 14.

Citizen video becomes a symbol

In the absence of an abundance of professional reporters, amateurs have stepped up. One of the most watched and discussed videos to come out of the tragedy, and one which is emblamatic of the role of citizen journalism in reporting from Iran, is that of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young Iranian woman who was walking near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators when she was shot. The video has prompted international outcry and the girl's death has since come to represent the tragedy of the conflict, a "symbol of the anti-government movement," according to the New York Times. It was taken, not by a reporter with a camera, but by a bystander on a mobile phone, and posted on Facebook and YouTube after the man sent the 40-second clip to a friend who then forwarded to friends and news sites in Europe and the US.

A Twitter revolution?

Talk of a Twitter revolution swiftly spread as Iranians and others in the country used the social network Twitter to get their news out to the world, and it has been used extensively by the media. Twitter is particularly effective as a method of spreading news as it is harder to censor, given that it can be accessed via various different applications on computers or mobile phones, as well as via the website. #IranElection has been the top trending topic on Twitter for days, with thousands of updates an hour using the hash tag to get included in the feed and direct interested observers to text, image or video content. Following a request from US President Obama, Twitter decided to delay maintenance to the site in light of the important role it was playing in keeping people informed, carrying it out during Tehran's night rather than daylight hours.

Twitter is clearly not immune to censorship, however. The following message has been passed around Facebook over the last few days amongst Anglo-Saxon users:

"FREEDOM OF SPEECH: If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on."

Amateur issues

Clearly, there are problems with relying on information generated by amateurs. Benoit Hervieu of RSF told Editor & Publisher that one of the main problems is that because many people want to remain anonymous, it is harder to verify information. And indeed, it seems that much false information has been circulating. After Twitter was hailed as the voice of the revolution, a backlash quickly emerged asserting its unreliability. There is always the possibility, after all, that interested parties might deliberately try to misinform, or might be so personally involved in the debate that they cannot maintain impartiality. And one of the disadvantages of a campaign such as that mentioned above, encouraging international Twitter users to set their locations to Iran, could end up misleading journalists searching for information on the network.

So how are citizen journalism agencies dealing with these risks and challenges?

Checking for reliability is a top priority for those trying to sell their content to traditional media companies. Citizen journalism agency Demotix has obtained many images from freelancers and amateurs portraying events in Iran, including two pictures which have appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Demotix COO Jonathan Tepper emphasised that Demotix understands the importance of reliability of sources and "believes that serious citizen journalism needs to take all the ethics of traditional reporting and build on them, such as verifiability and protection of sources." All submissions go through a vetting procedure which includes looking at the metadata in photos.

Citizenside, which specializes in citizen photo journalism, has managed to get hold of some good images which have been published by mainstream media outlets, but co-founder Matthieu Stefani said that it has been "really hard" both to establish contacts in Iran and to receive images from these contacts. "The big issue is that most of the contributions we've received were sent through proxies, with most of the time no way to contact our contributors as cellphone networks don't work really well," he explained, and therefore his team is extremely cautious about what they accept. He said that the photos that the agency has been pushing most to its clients were received from known and trusted members in the UK who were sent them by close relatives in Iran.

The Observers, a project run by TV news station France 24 combining citizen journalism with professional editing, has been active in its coverage of Iran. Founder of the initiative Julien Pain told the EW that what makes their coverage particularly useful is the fact that they already had trusted contacts in Iran before the election, and hence they have fewer problems with establishing the reliability of sources of information, particularly when using proxy servers. "We worked with these people before the situation was tense," he explained, "so we know them." He gave the example of a girl who has recorded a video describing how the censorship works, with whom he and his team had already worked. Prior to any major election, Pain added, the Observers tries to enlarge its network of contacts, which in this case proved particularly useful. Even using trusted contacts, Pain said that the Observers still cross-checks information as far as possible.

Amra Tareen, CEO of AllVoices, a project that aggregates professional and amateur news on one site, has a different approach: publish everything and let the reader decide. She said that the site has received more than 1,000 submissions, in English and Farsi, since the election, gathered via proxy servers as the AllVoices site is blocked. She stressed that submissions have tackled both sides of the issue and that this is one of the most crucial aspects of citizen journalism and of her site in particular: that anyone can be heard. "we're neutral and anyone can have their voices heard on our platform--that's key for the credibility of citizen journalism; bias will undermine the concept and keep citizen journalism and citizen journalists from ever being taken as seriously as they ought to be."

Generally it seems that such a situation where media access is severely reduced has provided citizen journalism with a significant opportunity to prove its importance. Tareen commented that "we really want to use this opportunity to show that Cit-J is not only about massive amount of non-qualified content, but also good "pro-am" work that we have been promoting for years now," said Stefani.

Getting pictures on the front page of a major daily is likely to be a huge boost to Demotix in terms of fame and credibility. Tepper was clear that Demotix is trying to supplement mainstream media rather than replace it, but said that "we think our reporting can sometimes be more accurate than the mainstream media" because "most of our users record what is known to them, in their city or country" and therefore "Demotix images provide a more accurate representation of the subject from a local perspective."

For the Observers, the situation has provided an opportunity for collaboration with the TV station on an unprecedented level. Usually, Pain said, he would publish a video on the Observers website and offer it to TV, now he has been working more with programming at France 24 to supply them with videos first before putting them online, to offer a period of exclusivity. "We've really moved a step forward here," he said. "We have learnt how to work together, and it's not going to be the same any more."

Although amateur 'citizen journalists' do not have the knowledge or expertise to analyse developments the way a professional journalist could, they can certainly witness and record events, and when traditional media coverage is limited, this is a valuable service. In terms of providing a true news service, amateur contributions must be verified so that readers can trust them, which is a priority for citizen journalism agencies. As opportunities continue to arise for citizen journalism to prove its value, the mainstream media is likely to incorporate it with increasing frequency and develop new ways of working closer with citizen journalism agencies.

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.

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.

On 19 June, Paris' Sciences Po École de journalisme played host to a selection of the world's leading journalism educators (Chile, China, Denmark, Jordan, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, UK and the USA) who were invited to discuss the "Challenges and Evolution of Journalism Education."

Opening the conference, Bruno Patino, dean of the Sciences PO School of Journalism, said: "The only thing certain is uncertainty," in reference to the news industry, which has seen advertising revenue across developed countries plummet in the wake of the economic crisis and the growing influence of the Internet.

As online news becomes more and more prevalent, with an unimaginable amount of information available at users' fingertips and Internet now ranked as US consumers' top way to access their news, how can media organisations make sure that readers find their articles?  Part of the answer is search engine optimisation, which is becoming an essential part of the daily life of a newsroom. For the printed product, newspapers must try to sell the paper as a whole; online, articles can attract traffic individually as readers come across them while searching for specific topics. It is therefore important that each story, rather than simply the site as a whole, is 'optimised' to appear higher in search results. Aside from highly technical aspects like HTML meta tagging, URL structure or site navigation, what can a newspaper do to optimise its content for search engines?

How to introduce SEO to the newsroom

One major potential stumbling block is that journalists might view SEO as a way to manipulate their stories and take away their true value. So the way it is presented to staff is extremely important. And indeed, it is crucial that newspapers do not get carried away with prioritising SEO above all else. Even Google advises creating content "primarily for your users, not search engines:" it is important to make your site easily accessible to search engines but still remain focused on your visitors' needs.

Clearly, it is important for all reporters to be aware of the ways that they can make each individual article more search-friendly. After all, journalists have always wanted their stories to be as widely read as possible, in print as well as online, and are likely to be willing to help make that happen. And often, the principles of SEO echo the principles of writing a good story: such as the idea that the first sentence should be a summary of the rest of the article, containing relevant concepts or keywords. One difference is that less generic, more specific works for SEO in terms of names or concepts. Google recommends shorter rather than longer titles.

Esa Peltonen, who has been working as a web analyst at the largest Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat for three years, said that he has worked extensively with editorial staff, for example on how to use Google, to get an idea of how users will be searching and what kind of search words people are using. Head of audience development at the Telegraph, Julian Sambles, said in March that the paper was trying to give journalists "the knowledge and understanding that they need so they can apply it to their daily production process and make informed decisions about content when they're writing or publishing it." Thinking about SEO should be second nature, he added.

Papers must also consider their goals in optimising content for search engines. As Drew Broomhall, head of search at the Times explained, if you rank success by sheer volume of traffic, then you should "write the same as everyone else but more of it and more frequently updated." However, if you are looking to increase engagement on a specific subject you need more detailed keyword analysis and niche research.

One straightforward course is the need to stay ahead of the trends: predict what people are going to be talking about in upcoming months and provide appropriate content. "Fix SEO requirements into the editorial calendar," Broomhall suggests. Obviously much news is unpredictable, but there are some events that are year-in-year-out, or which are easy to prepare for in advance, such as an election or a festival. It is necessary to consider both specific, distinct events, such as religious holidays, and longer, less defined periods such as winter travel. Articles that contain links and that have been linked to by others appear higher in search results. Therefore, with annual events, it is beneficial to link to last year's coverage and make use of old content that already has inbound links to help promote the new content.

Hiring a SEO specialist?

As well as training all reporters to be aware of the principles of search engine optimisation, many newspapers have taken the step of hiring an in-house specialist. Ideally such a person would have deep technical knowledge combined with considerable journalistic experience, but such candidates might be hard to find. Peltonen comes from a business background, Broomhall from journalism and technology.

There are also many third party services available to news outlets, supplementary to the guidance of an in-house expert, such as Thomson Reuters' OpenCalais which recently announced deals made with the Huffington Post, DailyMe and the Mail Online. OpenCalais offers an 'Archive Express' feature which can tag an archive of up to 20 million documents in 24 hours. The service 'reads' and breaks down articles into their essential elements - who, what, when, where, how - and tags and sorts them so that it is easier to bring archived articles into 'related stories' sections and improve their search relevance.

Analysing traffic

A SEO specialist would be responsible for analysing traffic to a news outlet's site, looking at how readers find content, readership patterns and what methods of optimisation work best. Peltonen explained how he started off looking at basic data such as what are the top news stories, how many people are going where on the site, and started to work out how to increase traffic. His paper partnered with Microsoft to further analyse traffic data. Such traffic data analysis can be used to spot and develop potential niche verticals to focus on, for example, by looking at repeat visitor figures.  

Google keywords

Purchasing Google keywords to guarantee that news articles appear higher on search results is one of the more costly ways for news outlets to promote their content. Peltonen said that his paper frequently buys specific words, for instance for sports events, but stressed that it would be cheaper to improve the paper's SEO. Buying keywords could also raise ethical issues, depending on the words and their context. The Sun, for example, reportedly purchased the key words 'Natasha Richardson' immediately after the British actress's sudden death in March, in what appears to be a blatant attempt to profit from the tragedy. The Guardian came under considerable criticism last August when, apparently accidentally, it purchased the Google keywords "Madeleine McCann," giving any searchers the link to its coverage of the child's disappearance. The Guardian promptly relinquished the rights, and said it would review its list of keywords. Purchasing Google keywords in order to promote a product is common practice, but is it ethical for newspapers?

Evidently, SEO strategies are necessary in today's media landscape, not only to make more money but also to spread awareness of stories and help readers find what they are looking for and therefore should be embraced by journalists and editors as well as publishers. Search engine 'friendliness' should not be prioritised over good, accurate stories but it should be used to promote such content. Journalistic training is vital in order to optimise each individual article, and larger strategic steps should be taken by editors in conjunction with SEO specialists.

On Tuesday 23 June at 14.00 London time, Drew Broomhall, Head of Search at the Times of London will be speaking at a WEF webinar on "How to teach your journalists to write for the web." More details here.

The Daily Telegraph will publish uncensored details of each of the 646 MP's expenses in a free supplement along with its print edition on Sat., June 20.

The much-anticipated, 68-page magazine supplement, The Complete Expenses Files, arrives just two days after the House of Commons published its own heavily censored list of MPs' expenses on June 18. The list of the members of Parliament and their respective budget, allowances and expense can be seen at the UK Parliament website.

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."

True/Slant is a recent arrival on the online-only news scene, aiming to offer a voice not only to its 100 or so contributors, but to the reader and the advertiser also. It is not a typical news site offering breaking news, but rather features commentary, opinion and some original reporting. Based in New York, the start-up has just six full-time staff, led by founder and CEO Lewis Dvorkin who has a total of 35 years of media experience, the last 12 of which has been in online news. The other employees have a similar mix of traditional and new media backgrounds, he said. T/S is a privately held company funded by Forbes Media and Velocity Interactive Group. The Editors Weblog spoke to Dvorkin to find out more.

The five differences

Dvorkin stressed the five ways in which T/S is "very different from any other news site." Firstly, because of the tools that it gives its journalists to create their own original content in real time. Second, because of its approach to copyright: contributors are encouraged to offer their perspective "around a piece of content that might have been produced elsewhere." Third, the relationship between the contributor and the audience is different because the contributors are contractually obliged to interact with their community. The last two differences are that the journalists have a variety of salary options and that the site has adopted an unusual approach to advertising.

For entrepreneurial journalists

True/slant offers "entrepreneurial" journalists their own homepage on the web, or as Dvorkin put it, "we enable them to create their own brand of one." They must be "experienced" in a specific field such as finance, politics or health but do not have to be a journalist from a traditional background: bloggers, authors or academics are also welcome. True/Slant is not a typical news publication with an editorial line, rather the work of a collection of individuals. "We don't have any ideology here, we have 100 different contributors, 100 different voices and 100 different perspectives," Dvorkin said.

Interaction with the audience is compulsory. Apart from that, it is up to each contributor to decide what they write and when. Much of what they write is opinion and commentary, but some also do original reporting. It is easy for them to comment on other news, by simply highlighting a section of an article they find on the web and clicking a button, the highlighted text will be placed on their post with a link to the contributing site. They are able to publish photos, audio and video as well as text and can self publish in real time. Their content can be automatically posted to Twitter and Facebook at the time of publishing. There is no traditional editing process in place, Dvorkin explained. Contributors are welcome to discuss their article ideas with a member of the T/S team, but they are not edited before publishing.

Different payment options are available, depending on the amount of risk that an individual contributor wants to take: journalists can choose to receive a monthly stipend, to participate in revenue sharing or they can actually have stock in T/S. Contributing to T/S is more likely to be one of several projects that a writer is working on, rather than their main source of revenue.

Promoting journalist-reader dialogue

Readers who want to interact with journalists must register and then they can 'follow' their chosen contributors and comment on articles, being drawn into a dialogue. Contributors highlight the user comments that they feel "further the conversation." A selection of these highlighted comments are then be integrated on the home page, amongst contributors' content. Dvorkin believes that this is very important to today's news reader, who enjoys "engaging with and being part of the news life of a professional media person." He believes that the True/Slant environment can be a "powerful experience" in the way that it encourages dialogue between contributors and users, as well as between fellow users.

A voice for advertisers

True/Slant is currently relying on advertising as its sole source of revenue. As well as display advertising, the company is incorporating "a very unique feature" called T/S Ad Slant for corporate marketers. They too can have a voice on True/Slant: they can pay for their own page and have access to the same tools that a contributor has to interact with a community. "It's a more direct and engaging approach," Dvorkin commented. He explained that such pages are integrated into the larger network in a "contextually relevant way," but stressed that the pages are clearly labelled as from marketers. Will this prove more lucrative than traditional advertising?

What's next?

Dvorkin said that the site has plans to grow, hoping to add more contributors and enhance its features. He believes that True/Slant is offering consumers a different way to experience news, one that is "more in line with how they want to access and interpret information today." Breaking news can be found in abundance throughout the web. What readers do need, is experienced, knowledgeable journalists to analyse and explain the news that they find, and this is where True/Slant steps in. It is indeed likely that many readers will appreciate the chance to be part of a conversation and form a relationship with their favourite writers. And from a writer's perspective, considering the growing number of out of work journalists today as traditional media outlets are forced to make cutbacks, a site that provides them with the tools for successful freelancing could be very welcome.

The CEO of Bloomberg's Multimedia Group has outlined his vision for a 'global spanning news network', which prioritises the development of mobile news diffusion, placing a particular emphasis on the use of original video content.   Andrew Lack, eight months into his position at Bloomberg, confirmed that his reputation for being 'an early digital adaptor' still applies as he spoke at last week's Advertising 2.0 event.  

Lack expressed his belief that the mobile screen would become as significant as that of the PC and the television in the future of news diffusion.  The venture is based on the conviction that readers will pay for and advertisers will be eager to  associate with the news as presented on the mobile screen, more than they have been willing to do so with television and Internet forms.   

Interested journalists have until 30 June to apply for the 2009 Lorenzo Natali Prize. On World Press Freedom Day the European Commission officially opened applications for the prize, which is awarded in partnership with Reporters Without Borders and the World Association of Newspapers to journalists who have demonstrated a commitment to human rights, democracy and development.

The European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, said: "Democracy cannot exist without freedom of information. Lack of information makes for an unhealthy society. The ideals of development, human rights and democracy cannot be achieved without free and independent media to raise questions and stimulate debate. The European Commission's aim in organising the Lorenzo Natali Prize is to support committed journalists who contribute to the cause of development, democracy and human rights through the quality of their work."

The Natali Prize is an international press award dating back to 1992. In 2008 over 1500 journalists from 151 countries took part. It is open to journalists working in TV, radio, the press and online. The winners will receive their prizes at a special award ceremony in Stockholm in October, in the presence of the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid. Prizes worth a total of €60 000 will be awarded to the winners in the different sections: Africa, Europe, Maghreb/Middle East, Asia and Latin America/Caribbean.

Contacts:
John Clancy, spokesperson +32 2 29 53773
Marie-Pierre Jouglain, press officer +32 2 29 84449

The Cabinet Office Minister, Angela Smith has urged for action to be taken to encourage people from diverse backgrounds to become involved in journalism.  The call was made during the Commons debate yesterday on social mobility and free access to professions.  

Smith, who was appointed to her position only last week in a ministerial reshuffle, said:  "We believe that everyone, if they have ability, from across the whole of society, should have the opportunity to get the most senior jobs in society.  What has happened is that some professions have perversely become less not more socially representative over time, especially in accountancy and journalism."

The Apple iPhone 3GS, premiered yesterday at Apple Inc's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, boasts an array of important new features for the newspaper industry and journalism at large. Perhaps most pertinent is the development that content can now be purchased from within iPhone applications. This new functionality presents newspapers with the opportunity to employ subscription and micro-payment structures to monetize the delivery of their content to their mobile phone readership.

Given the recent developments in the newspaper industry, such as the 'secret' meeting held in Chicago organised by the Newspaper Association of America to discuss how to monetise online content, it seems the question is no longer whether papers will begin charging online, but when, and how. And with regards to the iPhone 3GS, will they allow readers to continue to access their content for free, maybe making it harder to shift them to a pay structure in the future, or will newspapers seize this opportunity and begin charging readers as soon as the new OS is released?

"Twenty years later, it is still impossible for the Chinese media to refer freely to the ruthless suppression of China's pro-democracy movement in June 1989" said Reporters Sans Frontières.  The report was initiated as concerns mounted towards the reactions of the Propaganda department and the political police to the internal and external media coverage of the Twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The inexorable rise of the Internet in China has provided freedom activists, working both within and outside of the country with alternative platforms for expression and access to information, presenting serious challenges for the Chinese censor. China has an estimated 300 million Internet users.
                                                                                                                          

The I Want Media's The Future of Media: 2009 discussion held at NYU yesterday gathered the most renowned names in the new media world to present their visions of the future of information media.  Present were Gawker chief Nick Denton, Jack Dorsey, cofounder and chairman of Twitter; Bonnie Fuller, creator of Us Weekly and founder of Bonnie Fuller Media; Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor online at The Wall Street Journal; and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.

Perhaps of most interest to have come from the exchange were Denton's statements about journalists' attitudes, their inaptitude for internet blogging and the pay wall debate which is currently dominating news provision dialogue.

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.

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. 

An article in Le Monde has examined the role of so-called 'information convicts', the new breed of journalists who are "lined up in front of their computers like chickens in a battery farm". These journalists are described as a new race, 'geeks' aged about 30 and passionate about computers, who have followed the conventional route to having a full-time contract, beginning with an internship.

One such journalist, Sylvain Lapoix, describes the role as having no rights, on a social level. He envisions creating an association to defend the rights of his colleagues. Another such journalist, who previously worked at Nouvelobs.com, describes how speed was key, and how she often found herself re-working press releases without any attempt to check or verify the information she was publishing.

"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.

According to a recent poll just out, media employees count amongst England's heaviest drinkers.A survey carried out by the Department of Health found that media professionals drank about twice as much as the recommended allowance - an average of 44 units per week, instead of the suggested 21-28 units for men (depending on build), and 14-21 units for women. This is the equivalent of more than 4 bottles of wine or more than 19 pints of beer.

A panel discussion held earlier this month by the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association concerning the pay versus free online subscription models has served to fuel the debate raging over this current predicament for the newspaper industry.  This time, the benefits of the online version of the Arkansas Democratic-Gazette have come under scrutiny from media consultants and journalists wary of its pay wall model.  

The Democratic-Gazette, alongside its higher-profile counterpart the Wall Street Journal, is often hailed as a future model for newspapers looking to charge for their content.  The paper operates a pay wall system, in operation since 2001, whereby viewers must pay in order to be able to read a full article.  The supporters of this system use the example of the low-key paper as a fine example of a publication profiting from its on-going transformation into a digital product.  

An investigative citizen journalism initiative was launched last week by the American non-profit news project, ProPublica.  The ProPublica Reporting Network aims to comprehensively track the progress of the US government's Stimulus plan through collaborative acts of information collection, performed by the public and the site's resident journalists.  

Editor and organiser of the project, Amanda Michel described how the project would work:

"By collaborating directly with the public, we aim to deliver a greater range of information. E-mail, cell phones, instant messenger, ProPublica.org and social networking sites such as Facebook are our tools. Questions that hold public figures and those in power accountable are our guides."