Results matching “big thing in a”

There have been a few stories, following the earthquake in China, about how Twitter broke the news before mainstream media.

The AFP's story, particularly, is titled  "'Twitters' beat media in reporting China earthquake."

But this success can be misleading: this does not mean Twitter reports were of higher quality than traditional media, and Twitter shouldn't be seen as competing with traditional media.

Twitter reported the news first and live, "in what was being touted Tuesday as micro-blogging outshining mainstream news," wrote the AFP.

According to ReadWriteWeb, this was also the case earlier this year for the earthquake in the UK and the earthquake in China in March.

Twitter has now solidly established itself as a must-use tool for online journalists. Simply look at how the Evening Leader in the UK used Twitter to cover local elections and soccer games live, and its potential for continuous online coverage is obvious.

However, as pointed out by ReadWriteWeb, the AFP's story is problematic because it can be understood to imply that Twitter did a better job of reporting than did traditional media.

"Twitter reporting looks like this: "I felt an earthquake" -- "WOW: was that an earthquake??" -- "earthquake!!!!!!" -- "earthquake in Beijing so crazy!" etc," reported ReadWriteWeb.

But "The only thing Twitter does better than the traditional news is speed. It doesn't do depth, it doesn't do fact-checking, it doesn't do real reporting."

It doesn't give death tolls, information on the size of the earthquake and landscape, in-depth reporting...

As ReadWriteWeb smartly concludes, "Twitter will never outshine the mainstream press as long as reporters continue to do what they do best -- get on the ground, talk to the right people, find out what's really going on.

"Twitter will never be able to do that, but it can certainly play a major role in helping reporters get it done."

(Coincidentally, Twitter was initially designed by Biz Stone as a communication tool, after the programmer received a warning about a California earthquake as he was about to board a train.)

Source : Yahoo News (AFP) - ReadWriteWeb

Jim Roberts, digital news editor at The New York Times, will speak of the newsroom integration process undergone by the paper of record at the upcoming World Editors Forum, to be held June 1-4 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

He'll describe the last 3 years at the Times, as "it has attempted to make what I consider to be a historic shift in its mission," towards a much more rounded and "almost platform-agnostic" approach.

Roberts isn't one of those online editors who have an instinctive aversion for print, to the contrary - he worked as a print journalist and editor, as well as a National news editor at the Times. Although he resists calling the Times 'print-centric', it's a fact that print still accounts for over 80% of the company's revenues, and that "our main mission still is putting out a print publication," he said.

One key factor in the NYT's integration process was the gradual approach adopted by the newspaper, instead of "a radical shakeup" - similar to the Guardian's approach in that respect.

"There was a change in newsroom culture and it had its rocky moments, I certainly can't minimize that," said Roberts.

But "We haven't ordered anyone to focus on digital journalism to the exclusion of everything else." Instead, "We've encouraged people to think of Web as one of an array of tools and outlets to report the news."

Here are some of the other factors that made the Times' integration approach successful, in Roberts' view:

- The creation of a Continuous News Desk, in 1999, first appealed to foreign correspondents. With the help of staff based in New York, the reporters could publish stories online that could instantly be read by their sources. This established the foundations for print reporters seeking the advantages of online.

- Not having evolved through edicts, but by engaging staff's brains: give the print reporters the necessary tools.

- Teaching journalists that the Web can mean more and better ways to tell stories.

- Two years ago, the Times 'planted' multimedia editors at each news desk. This led to increased print-online collaboration on stories and to successful enterprise-type projects, where the Web content complemented the print articles, and vice versa (see this multimedia project about prisoners that were exonerated by DNA evidence, which complemented ex-prisoner profiles in the print edition).

- Roberts' own print background, thus trusting relationship with the paper's reporters. "One of my chores has been to eliminate the fear aspect of it (writing for the Web)."

- Last but not least, tell reporters that if they don't report online, their competitors will: "If I could point to one thing that has really worked, it is appealing to reporters' competitive instincts."


Roberts will speak in the second session of the World Editors Forum, entitled "Are integrated newsrooms really working?" View other interviews in this preview series by clicking here.

Source: Jim Roberts, Digital News Editor, The New York Times

Social networks? Mobile? As both phenomena continue to boom, their intertwining seems inevitable. The Guardian reports that more than 10% of UK mobile phone users have accessed social networking sites, such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace via mobile devices.

According to Nielsen Mobile, of the UK's 48 million mobile phone subscribers, 21 million are also on a social networking site.

Out of this 21 million, about 25% used their mobile phone, each month in the first quarter of 2008, to visit a social networking site.

"Social networking is already a global phenomenon and mobile could be the next big thing in the space," said Kent Ferguson, the client services manager at Nielsen Mobile.

"There could be increased demand for mobile social networking driven by the flat fee price plans offered by the leading operators that give subscribers unlimited mobile internet access."

Nielsen's survey was based on interviews with about 10,000 mobile phone users in the UK.

Source: Guardian

Lessons on the brave new world of citizen journalism via cell phones are coming from the unlikeliest of places: Disney World. Using a new website called Twisney.com, anyone strolling around a Disney park can upload live updates and images from their phone.

Believe it or not, Twisney is not a Disney project nor the work of a venture-capital incubator. Rather, it was created by a 34-year old software developer with two kids who was taking his son to Disney World on a guys-only trip, and wanted to be able to update his wife and daughter back at home.

Twisney users can send short messages to an email address provided on the website, where the messages appear overlaid on an aerial view of the theme park provided by Microsoft's Virtual Earth map. Twisney is also tied in with Twitter; all you have to do is send a Tweet to the Twisney feed. 

The posts on Twisney are a mish-mash. While some users post trivial information such as their locations or their photos, others are sharing information valuable to navigating the Disney World parks.

And therein lies the potential of these types of sites, which offer instantaneous information sharing. Writes Wall Street Journal blogger Tom Weber, "The next logical step for Twisney is to have users consistently share real-time intelligence throughout the parks."

As these services evolve and become more popular, there's an opportunity for companies like Disney "to encourage passionate customers and even participate directly in the electronic conversation." There is also a risk for logistical headaches. Imagine one person sending a message to Twisney saying that a ride has a small line; pretty soon all the park will have descended on one place.

The Twisney experiment does, however, illustrate a key truth about today's citizen journalism: it's getting easier to participate. That will inevitably increase the numbers of people who do, changing the landscape of journalism along the way.

How do newspapers cope? The most effective model, like so much in journalism at the moment, remains elusive. Some news organizations like CBS and CNN have launched their own citizen journalism websites. But offering a chance at participation alone is not enough; a good business model is equally key, as Dutch cit-J site Skoeps recently discovered. The only thing newspapers can't do is bury their head in the sand and ignore the increasing levels of amateur participation.   

Source: Wall Street Journal  through I Want Media
  

Guardian News and Media (GNM) officially announced today that it will integrate its print and online platforms for News, Business and Sport journalism once it moves into its new premises at Kings Place, London, at the end of the year.

Journalists from those sections will work for the company's three platforms (The Observer, daily Guardian and guardian.co.uk) and will produce text, audio and video.

As gathered during the World Editors Forum study tour in the UK and during our talks with head of editorial development Neil McIntosh, the Guardian's integration was planned collaboratively in the newsroom, as opposed to a top-down model.

Said Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian and Editor-in-Chief of GNM:

"Our model for integrated working has been designed through a long period of collaboration and consultation. More than two dozen editors from across the three platforms have worked together to design the ways in which they want to collaborate in the future.  It's very important that desk editors themselves have taken the lead: the last thing we wanted to do was impose a model from above.

As has often been the case for other cases of newsroom integration (Fairfax in Australia, the Daily Telegraph in the UK, The New York Times in the US and many more), the Guardian's move to a new building - and thus to rethink its newsroom design - coincides with the formal integration process.

"The move to a new building is the obvious moment to re-arrange the way we work in a way which more closely reflects the patterns of how people read and react to news," said Rusbridger.

Also discussed with McIntosh, the newsroom will redesign will include 'pods', which will group specialists around specific topics. For example, on the International News desk, pods will group reporters by time zones and regions.

The good news is that the Guardian's integration isn't synonymous with layoffs (the company had previously said this could happen) - at least for the time being.

"We've done this without any reduction in headcount.  It is important that news organisations retain quality and trust while being at the forefront of the digital revolution," he added.

Source: Guardian press release

News Corp. has announced plans to further integrate its redesigned Wall Street Journal website and its News International holdings in the UK, such as the Times Online.

"It will be partly about tools, partly about deep linking to each other's content," said Anne Spackman, editor in chief of the Times Online. Spackman also suggested that similarities between The Sun and The New York Post may lead to integration between the two.

The Times had first announced plans for cross-selling advertising opportunities with WSJ. It now seems, however, that the integration will touch editorial as well as advertising content.
 
Speaking at the PPA conference, Spackman said: "We are increasingly linking to them around subjects of common interest. Our friends down under at news.com.au - we link to sport with them on cricket and rugby; with the Wall Street Journal, it will be the same on business. It will be an extremely useful thing in a way that it would never have been when we were only selling to our home audiences and when there was no power of the link."

In other news from the PPA conference, The Times, published since 1785, announced the beta launch of 200 years-worth of archive content on the web. The archives, which are supported by search technology from FAST, will be free to users initially, although subscription plans may be introduced down the line.

The Telegraph also unveiled plans to introduce user-generated content across its website.

Sources: PaidContentUK, Journalism.co.uk

Telegraph Media Group journalists are set to work with technical and commercial staff on short-term technology projects in Telegraph Labs, a new innovation unit opening at the Telegraph's Victoria offices this weekend.

The lab will house eight to 10 staff selected from across the company, who will work towards rapidly developing new, commercially-viable online products. Telegraph Lab's computer network will be separate from the main Telegraph system in order to sidestep the security restrictions on the main network, reports Press Gazette.

"It's meant as a space where we take people on four to six-week cycles, take them out of their day jobs and get them to focus on a specific thing, and get them to rapidly create something that we can put out there very quickly," said Paul Cheesbrough, Telegraph chief information officer.

A mobile version of Telegraph.co.uk will likely be in the works when the lab opens. According to Cheesbrough, the ultimate goal is to produce one new feature per month although he acknowledges failures are inevitable.
.  
"It is a safe place for people to work on things that might be high-risk and might be subject to failure, but that's alright as along as we learn things out of it," he said.

This type of approach reflects a growing trend towards a model of quick innovation, in which the potential gains from speed are seen to outweigh the risks of failure. The birth of the Publish2 Election News Network in February provides another example.
 
One of the main goals of the Telegraph project is to break down the traditional wall between editorial and IT. With this is mind, Cheesbrough has been hiring technology staff who have experience working as journalists.
 
"The holy grail is someone who's good at technology, who is good at journalism and who knows how to make the money."

Source: Press Gazette

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with Dan Bogler, Managing Editor of the Financial Times in the UK.

Click here to view all interviews in this series. Other titles include The New York Times, the Guardian, Fairfax Media, the Hindustan Times, etc. (full list at the bottom of the interview).


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"


- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We see ourselves as a news organization and we're becoming much more agnostic about our distribution channels. We're becoming much more interested in creating relevant information for our readers and much less interested in how it gets to the readers. Pearson, the parent company, clearly is an education company with a print publishing arm and an information division, which includes the FT. At the FT level, we consider ourselves to be a financial news business more than a newspaper. Our mission is to be the gold standard for global business news in print and online - and in any other formats.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Largely but not completely. 10 years from now - 2014 may be slightly too short a time frame - we will still have printed newspapers, because people like reading  things in print. Newspapers, just like the book, are convenient to read in places you can't do with a computer; but my belief is that a lot of what will be printed will be analysis, comment, analysis and opinion. The actual news will be more or less online or in other more timely formats. In a way the FT will split in two, with FT.com for all the news that's breaking and some immediate reactions and  opinion. The more considered analysis will be almost an Economist-type publication. Maybe it wouldn't have to be broadsheet anymore, it could be tabloid or even magazine format. To put it very crudely, you'd have all the news online, and you'd have 12 pages of Martin Wolf the next day in print, and all the editorials, columnists, features and more.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

There's one thing that's old and one thing that's new. What's old and part of the continuum is that traditional companies are going online. Our journalists are now fully integrated and write online and in print. I'm sure that in 2 years time they'll all be carrying video cameras. We've gone from zero videos website to over 100 per month in the last 18 months. That's part of the continuum: it's us doing the same thing in different distribution channels.

What's new is the blogosphere, citizen journalists and the idea that anyone - people who are not qualified journalists, either experts in a narrow field or just interested citizens - can start a blog or website and distribute it. For the FT, you would think it's negative in the sense that there's more news and opinion and more competitors. In fact, that's not really true, it almost enhances the position of leading media brands for several reasons. One is we are trusted, people believe the news they read with us. Secondly, we select and edit, which becomes an increasingly crucial function as there is more information out there. The more 'over-informed' people are, the more likely people who want to know what's actually going on will turn to a few sources that tell them what s actually important. That's what professional newspapers do really well.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

I do believe in their increasingly active role of users: very often readers are more informed than us. If you look at an old format like the letters page in the newspaper, the amount of expertise that our readers have, who are often professionals in the City, is just incredible. They know more about it in certain aspects than our journalists. That's why we get CEOs, academics, lawyers, heads of accountancy firms and more writing in to us to say what's actually happening. They can do this online with comments or take part in Q&As, or print their views in the pages of the FT and FT.com. That sort of content is very helpful. We also have a function for any user to comment on the website's stories.

Is it a threat? Sure, to some extent. But as long as it's happening on our site or in the pages of our newspaper, it's been bundled, monitored, checked for quality and therefore is important. We're not going to turn into a place where we just repeat hundreds of readers' letters and have no journalists of our own. It's more of an opportunity for our journalists to become more informed and build contacts among readers. And it's amazing that all these readers are willing to give this information for free.

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I don't know. That's a really hard one. I might say it's already past.

There's so much more information out there and it's so much harder for companies to hide information. Take the Northern Rock story, which was broken by BBC journalists, and there was a bank run as a result. It's harder to hide information. The idea that journalists have to do long-term, deep, undercover investigations where they reveal something months later - I don't think it works like that anymore. Journalists still have scoops and still break important stories, but it tends to be in a much shorter time frame. It tends to be a single development that they're breaking rather than a long series of connections.

But frankly, newspapers and media organizations are under pressure. It's hard for us to send a journalist or a group of journalists off three months investigating something - and if nothing works that's a shame but nevermind. We don't have resources to let people go off and do that for such a long time. I think The Golden Age of journalists working undercover, developing sources and breaking big scandals is less likely; but revealing news that people don't want out there, on a short term basis, uncovering a scandal and having it come to light, that's more likely. As soon as a tiny thing breaks now, it gets distributed so quickly that it's hard to see a journalist working undercover for a long time and gradually piecing something together without having it go public much earlier in the process.


Stay tuned for more interviews in our series. Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times - Dan Bogler (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)

Now German speakers don't need a computer to look up something on Wikipedia. Major German publisher Bertelsmann, whose divisions include Random House Inc. and Sony BMG, is publishing "The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia," a collection of the most popular German language Wikipedia entries.

The project is not meant to be a re-creation of the site in book form, but rather "as an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of Wikipedia's users," according to Bertelsmann.

"We think of it as an encyclopedic yearbook," Dr. Beate Varnhorn, the editor in charge of Bertelsmann's reference works said. "A yearbook really can be a documentation of the zeitgeist."

There are more restrictions in a printed version: Wikipedia online features hyperlinks that takes a user from topic to topic, but a reader of the printed version will have to manually get to different entries. Whereas the German version of the website has more than 750,000 different articles, the 992 paged printed version will have 25,000 articles with about 1,000 photographs.

On the other hand, a staff of 10 condensed and verified the online material, so that the printed version will be an accurate, credible source.

Varnhorn is optimistic because of Germany's "strong encyclopedic culture." She hopes to especially target a younger audience.

There will be entries on French first lady Carla Bruni, Nintendo Wii, and German writers and musicians.

"The approach of 'Wikipedia in One Volume' is to give the people the information they are looking for," Arne Klempert, the group's executive director said, contrasting that approach to "the process of publishing a traditional encyclopedia put together by a select group of people behind closed doors."

"This is the most important difference from traditional encyclopedias," he said. "It's also an important thing in that the sense of the Wikipedia spirit will go into this printed volume."

If the 2008 version is successful, there is a possibility of other editions. The printed Wikipedia will go on sale in September for €19.95, or $31.80. Bertelsmann will pay €1 per copy sold for use of the Wikipedia name, which will support the site's operations, according to Klempert.

Source: New York Times, Yahoo News

Publisher and managing editor of FT.com Ien Cheng believes that publishers need to model themselves on technology companies, by working quickly and being more responsive.  

"Change is hard for anyone, and I think it's a historic challenge for traditional publishers now," says Cheng. "The challenge for us is to become not just a publisher but a technology company in order to support that publisher."

Cheng's strategy involves, according to Guardian.co.uk blogger Jemima Kiss: "
- improving the development of new editorial products
- refining the subscription model
- changing the way the business works internally."

FT.com had 7.1 million unique users last month and a 72% increase in page views, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

"We need to learn from the web start-up and pure play web company approach that has technology much closer with the business. Publishers can't just think it's the it department over the wall that they throw stuff to. You've got to have the right platform, approach, mindset and processes to keep up," says Cheng.

Cheng remarks that there are technical changes, such as making the site run faster and appointing a new chief technology officer, but there are also editorial changes, such as expanding video coverage to about 150 reports a month. Last month, the site had over 1 million video views.

Though video and mobile are a priority, the most important thing is "remodeling the company to become more agile and to launch products in a more iterative, webby way," reports Kiss.

Cheng notes that advertising grew 40% this year and subscriptions 11-12%, with 10-15,000 people subscribing registering each week. The Financial Times newspaper also boasts an increase in circulation.

"Frankly, [every traditional news brand] shouldn't all survive," says Cheng. "But the ones that provide a sustainable value to users will not only survive but will be stronger. That will be good for consumers and good for journalism."

Source: Guardian.co.uk