Editors Weblog: Search Results

How clean is your data?

Posted by Hannah Vinter on February 2, 2012 at 5:37 PM

Working with numbers is becoming more important than ever for journalists.

Vast amounts of data are being collected online, investigative journalism outfits like ProPublica are doing more and more work with large sets of publicly available data, and data visualisations are increasingly becoming a standard part of reporting. At the end of last year, Amy Webb, CEO of Webbmedia, named 'Big Data' as her first prediction of a major tech trend for 2011.

Tools already exist for journalists to exploit this growth in data. Nieman Lab reported earlier this week on Weave, an open-source internet platform for creating visualizations of "any available data by anyone for any purpose". Another example is Tableau Public, a data visualization tool that was billed by Journalism.co.uk as requiring "no technical ability" and being "easier to use than the wizard options that allow you to create graphs in Excel".

China and India gaining prominence in international newspapers

Posted by Federica Cherubini on January 27, 2012 at 4:24 PM

Starting from the current issue The Economist will have a weekly section devoted to China, the paper's leader announced.

This is the first time since 1942, when the a US section was introduced, that the news magazine is dedicating an entire section to a single country, the article explained. Thematic sections and blogs as well as specific columns are usually focused on a geographical area, as Banyan, the blog dedicated to Asia, which takes its name from the Banyan tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment and Gujarati merchants used to conduct business.

The name for China blog has not yet been decided and the paper invited readers to send suggestions. It will ideally need to agree with the style and 19th-century origins of the other sections and columns names, from Bagehot, the column dedicated to Britain, which takes its name from Walter Bagehot, British constitutional expert and early editor of The Economist, to Baobab, the section focused on Africa and Middle East which owes its name to the African tree.

Media links of the day

Posted by Federica Cherubini on January 20, 2012 at 5:47 PM

British-based Pearson, whose holdings include the Penguin Group and the Financial Times Group made $3 billion (£2 billion) in digital revenues last year, reports Paid Content.

As newspaper circulation continues to decline in Britain, Press Gazette reports a survey by The National Federation of Retail Newsagents, which suggests that 59% of newspaper readers have been put off by the price.

Digiday interviews the global managing director and publisher of The Economist Online, Nick Blunden, to gain insight into the magazine's successful digital strategy.

Allfacebook.com has announced that USA Today is launching 'USA Today + Me', an open graph application for Facebook that personalizes news content based on users' previous activity and on stories their friends have shared.

Californian paper The Sacremento Bee is considering consolidating parts of its production with related local newspapers.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.

Election year: newspapers prepare for the big stories

Posted by Federica Cherubini on January 11, 2012 at 5:32 PM

2012 is presidential election year in the US and election fever has already started.
Starting with the caucases, continuing with the primaries and with their eyes already on the presidential race ending in November 2012, newspapers are getting ready.

"Election coverage is bigger than any one newsroom" so the right approach should be teaming up to be able to assure the coverage is as wide and accurate as possible, some believe. Or at least this is what NBC News and Newsweek/Daily Beast have decided to do in view of the upcoming presidential battle. Shared content will appear on the Newsweek pages and online on The Daily Beast.

The decision isn't surprising in itself, Justin Ellis wrote on NiemanLab. Double the resources, double the coverage, double the audience. Also, he explains, looking back to past electoral experience, this is not even new, quoting as examples the Times and CBS News or ABC News and The Washington Post partnering on polls.

NewsRight: US companies come together to monitorize their online content

Posted by Federica Cherubini on January 6, 2012 at 5:58 PM

Twenty-nine US news organizations launched yesterday, January 5, NewsRight, a digital content licensing organization. Amongst the affiliates are the Associated Press, the New York Times Co, Hearst Newspapers and the Washington Post Co.

The aim is to keep track of newspapers' content as it moves around the web in order to license and profit from it. It "will measure the unpaid online use of their original reporting and seek to convert unauthorized websites, blogs and other newsgathering services into paying customers", AP (via the Washington Post) reported.

NewsRight is an evolution of the News Registry, a project started in October 2010 by AP and some partners.

Media links of the day

Posted by Federica Cherubini on January 4, 2012 at 5:24 PM

After having gained predominance in the Anglo-Saxon world, data journalism is gaining ground in France too and Liberation looks at what to expect for 2012. Mainstream newspapers are still a bit overcautious as the most active in a regular use of data journalism is the news site Owni, the article noted.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which mantains the online free and open-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia, raised $20 million in donations, Reuters reported, establishing a record after the $16 million raised last year.

News Corp launched online an archive website which offers paying access to the Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, paidContent reported. Will this be a first step toward the creation of a paywall for the Sun?

For more industry news please see WAN - IFRA's Executive News Service.

A defence of British tabloids

Posted by Federica Cherubini on January 4, 2012 at 1:16 PM

At a time when the conduct and the ethics of the red-top press (and others) is under the lens of the Leveson inquiry, the British press is defending tabloids in the wake of the conviction of two of Stephen Lawrence's killers.

The Guardian published an editorial - taken up by PressGazette's blog - which praised the Daily Mail for its coverage (entirerly summerized by the Mail itself here), starting from the famous page one accusation back in 1997. "It did not simply keep the case in the public eye. It also became a national reprimand to the criminal justice and political system in a wider sense", the editorial said.

"The Daily Mail deserves credit for its courageous campaign", the Financial Times underlighted.

Timu: a hallmark for online credibility and quality stardands of information

Posted by Federica Cherubini on December 15, 2011 at 3:23 PM

Timu is a Swahili word which means "team:" team being the core principle of the new platform the Italian <ahref Foundation recently launched.

Timu is a publishing platform for crowdsourced information and its main feature is to apply a common research method which is then recognised by a specific icon that websites and blogs can display in their homepage, to declare they are following that method.

The Timu hallmark is an assessment of a shared working methodology based on the core standards for high quality information: accuracy, impartiality, independence, legality.

Hard times for the LA Times as editor stands down

Posted by Hannah Vinter on December 14, 2011 at 1:48 PM

Times are tough for the LA Times as Russ Stanton, who has been editor of the paper for the past four years, is standing down amidst the expectation of more job cuts.

Stanton leaves the news organisation on December 23rd and will be replaced by managing editor Davan Maharaj.

The LA Times published a positive review of Stanton's achievements with the paper, noting that under his leadership the paper extended its digital reach to over 17 million readers and won three Pulitzer Prizes.

Media links of the day

Posted by Katherine Travers on December 13, 2011 at 6:46 PM

Want to learn how to program? An online book has just been released aimed at teaching absolute beginners how to use Ruby, a coding language used by many open source applications, such as Ruby on Rails.

The Guardian has put together an interactive map to show the amount and location of civilian deaths in Syria after the uprising earlier this year.

Detained Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi has been charged with "establishing an organization that aims to change the social and economical entity of the state" and "weakening the national sentiment, and trying to ignite sectarian strife", offenses that can lead to 15 years in prison.

Google+ has made it easier for bloggers to share their material on their site.

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the arrest of a journalist during an Occupy protest after a video published on YouTube shows footage that contradicts the police account of the arrest.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service

Sources: DataDrivenJournalism.net, Globalvoicesonline.org, The Guardian, LAWeekly.com Mashable.com,

How did Il Fatto Quotidiano achieve popularity and profitability in just two years?

Posted by Federica Cherubini on December 7, 2011 at 11:47 AM

The newspaper industry is in a time of upheaval, with mainstream newspapers looking for innovative strategies to survive and thrive, to re-affirm their importance and their role in the news landscape.

Cost cutting is increasingly prevalent throughout news organisations in Europe and the US, with many publications putting more and more emphasis on digital products as they lose print readers.

Launching a new print publication in 2009 might have seemed therefore like a risky step, but it's exactly what Italian journalists Marco Travaglio, Antonio Padellaro and Peter Gomez decided to do. Il Fatto Quotidiano was launched in September 2009 and in the past two years it has managed to both establish itself as a respected newspaper brand and actually make some money, with a profit of €5.8 million in 2010.

How has it achieved this?

A new look for StumbleUpon

Posted by Hannah Vinter on December 6, 2011 at 1:38 PM

StumbleUpon has redesigned its website and the changes are of more than passing interest.

The 'social discovery engine', which asks users to register things they like and then guides them at random through to related sites, unrolled the changes yesterday.

The alterations follow a rise in visibility for StumbleUpon. In July GigaOm reported that StumbleUpon was sending more traffic to American websites than Facebook. Its number of regular users doubled in 16 months, now totaling more than 20 million. It boasts 33 million monthly unique visitors.

So what exactly is different?

Media links of the day

Posted by Katherine Travers on December 1, 2011 at 6:09 PM

Tabloids - are they really so bad? Can it be argued that circulation is the only judge of what is in the 'public interest'?

The Guardian launches a new interactive feature to keep you up to speed on the Leveson Inquiry.

Is the new Reynolds Institute and Naional Newspaper Association study too optimistic, Maybe life is not so sweet for the community newspaper right now?

The BBC launches a new online homepage, altering its award winning website.

CRAPP awards: an interactive voting system for the Communcative Relations Award from PR Professionals is online now. A novel way to encourage good journalism.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service

Sources: BBC.co.uk, Commonsensej.blogspot.com, The Guardian (1), (2), Reuters,

Wikileaks: Cablegate, one year on

Posted by Katherine Travers on November 29, 2011 at 1:33 PM

"One year ago today we put our beliefs before our lives, released Cablegate and changed the world." WikiLeaks tweeted today.

The organisation has just won a major Australian prize for journalistic excellence, the Walkley Award for 'Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism'. The Walkley Foundation stated that Wikileaks has earned this recognition of its "courageous and controversial commitment to the finest traditions of journalism: justice through transparency".

The release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks is often viewed as one of the most radical events in journalism, with many supporters claiming that the information revealed by the cables contributed to the end of the war in Iraq and helped spark the Tunisian uprisings which then spread to become the phenomenon widely referred to as the 'Arab Spring'.

The success of Wikileaks has led to many people seeing this kind of online-based leaking system as a new model for journalism; but one that is not without its flaws.

Digital Mastery: the rise and rise of The Economist

Posted by Hannah Vinter on November 29, 2011 at 11:09 AM

Once upon a time, people may have stereotyped of The Economist as a dry, formal publication, which aged company executives would leaf through in their dusty studies. But if those days ever existed, they are certainly confined to the past now.

The international magazine currently has over 100,000 digital-only subscribers and more than a million monthly mobile readers. Economist readers have downloaded more than 3 million apps since their launch and online traffic has grown by 45% since September of last year. The publication now has 7 million online users.

These figures were reported in the interim financial report released by The Economist Group today, which shows a run of spectacular success for the publication. The report announces a 6% year-on-year rise in operating profits, totaling £26.2 million, and a revenue increase of 4%, to £164.3 million.

Old news is good news: how Facebook is breathing new life into old stories

Posted by Katherine Travers on November 28, 2011 at 3:45 PM

News today is all about being first; 'real time' is king; users want the latest information in the quickest possible time delivered straight to their mobile device so they are constantly kept abreast of unfolding world events. Right?

Well, yes... and no.

It seems that Facebook is producing something of a Lazarus effect for old news content. Stories that were written more than a decade ago are increasingly becoming viral phenomena thanks to the new 'frictionless sharing' system introduced by the social network in September.

Play on player: blending games and media

Posted by Hannah Vinter on November 23, 2011 at 5:04 PM

Would you rather watch a music video or play a game? The new, online, interactive video from We The Kings, says you shouldn't have to choose.

The video, released yesterday, lets you listen to the We The Kings' new single "Say you like me" while battling a gang of evil cartoon characters who have kidnapped the band's love interest. The video takes players through different styles of game, influenced by Guitar Hero, Mariokart, wii Tennis and Streetfighter, to name a few. The jokey blend of live action and references to old school arcade games is a lot like Edgar Wright's 2010 movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the difference being that here, the viewer actually gets to play the game (also, on a sadder note, there is no Michael Cera).

The video is truly interactive: the minute the player loses, the music stops, so you have to participate to hear the band. This was a prospect that didn't particularly excite Robin Wauters, who wrote up the video in TechCrunch and was less than impressed by the "god-awful music". But Wauter's found the gaming aspect "inexplicably captivating, and a nice change to all those boring, linear music videos".

US court rules that Twitter users have no "reasonable expectation of privacy"

Posted by Katherine Travers on November 23, 2011 at 2:57 PM

Does the US government have the right to read you Twitter messages? Of course not, would be most people's reaction. Unfortunately, thanks to a US district court ruling made on November 10, the US government can now compel Twitter to release information that most people would deem private, such as your IP address, the content of your direct messages and your session times and activities, according to OWNI.

Why is this acceptable? The reason, the judge explained, was because in agreeing with the terms of service, Twitter users "voluntarily relinquished any reasonable expectation of privacy".

Twitter attempted to fight the ruling over a protracted year-long appeal process. However, losing the case has created a potentially dangerous precedent: the ruling could mean that any website with servers in the US could be asked to hand the data held on those servers to the government, without the need to obtain a warrant.

Foxy: Mozilla Festival London and the Golden Age of Digital Journalism?

Posted by Hannah Vinter on November 7, 2011 at 6:11 PM

"'I'm learning to code' is the new 'I'm working on a novel.'"

So tweeted, Roy Bahat, head of IGN last Wednesday. If it's true, then the Mozilla Festival 2011, which ended yesterday is the new literary event of the year. It's writers are prolific: in just 48 hours they've churned out a data journalism handbook, to be published next week.

The event set participants design challenges to do in real time with relevance to the three core themes: media, freedom and the web. As the website puts it "this is one of the largest hackjams you'll ever see".

So what came out?

Blurring the boundaries between social media and news organisations: what's in it for us?

Posted by Hannah Vinter on November 4, 2011 at 5:05 PM

Two internet giants have made announcements this week that suggest the increasingly thin boundary between social media and the news is about to be stretched to its limit.

The first is Twitter, which has just released a new "top news" feature. The function means that when a user searches for a news-related term, they are not only shown relevant tweets, but are also given a link to one related news story. The release was first reported by Coleen Taylor at GigaOm who responded positively, calling the new function a "nice move". "Twitter has established itself as a great platform for crowdsourced information and citizen journalism, but these new features should help to make the site equally useful for finding stuff from traditional content producers such as news organizations," she wrote.

Still, Jeff Sonderman at Poynter spots a potential pitfall. He notes that Twitter only seems to show one story for any search term "so the publisher who wins that spot for a given story will win big, while others will be shut out." He also points out that it is not clear exactly how Twitter will select its top article. But whatever system it uses, the result is that Twitter is moving "from being a passive conduit for messages toward actively curating Web content based on tweets". Does Twitter want to be less of a publisher and more of an editor?

Sharing not stealing: issues of plagiarism in the new media landscape

Posted by Hannah Vinter on November 2, 2011 at 6:22 PM

"Thou shalt not plagarise". This phrase surely must be somewhere near the top of the ten commandments of journalism.

Hence in 2005, when David Simpson, then-cartoonist for The Tulsa World, was found to have redrawn somebody else's work, the paper's publisher Robert E. Lorton III dismissed him, saying he had committed "the cardinal sin of a newsroom". The story was reported at the time by the AP and picked up by Sign On San Diego.

Still, there's no peace for the wicked; history has repeated itself. After his dismissal from The Tulsa World, Simpson was hired by the Urban Tulsa Weekly but, as Poynter reports, he was fired yesterday for further instances of copying other people's work.

Media links of the day

Posted by Katherine Travers on November 2, 2011 at 5:46 PM

Reporters Without Borders says that the intention of the US to protect online freedom of expression has not been matched by its actions.

Social media experiences a surge in use during flooding in Thailand.

See how the use of mobile phones has grown in countries all over the world.

Wired experiments with blending blogging and advertising: a great money-maker, or a blow to editorial integrity?

HuffPo and the Live Blog: how the online only publication marries the traditional article with instant updates.

Lawyers insist that James Murdoch lied to MPs on the basis of email evidence.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service

Sources: AdWeek, EJC.net, Google Public Data Explorer, The Independent, Nieman Lab, Reporters without Borders,

Objectivity v Transparency - does journalism need a new ideology?

Posted by Katherine Travers on November 2, 2011 at 5:06 PM

What is the hallmark of good journalism? Objectivity would be one of the standard replies: neutral journalism that is not partisan and that steers clear of disseminating personal opinions.

Actually, the answer is just not quite as simple as that. Hang on to your hats, people, it's time for an ethics class...

Wait a second, I hear you cry, before you take me back to journalism school - what's wrong with objectivity? Here's the thing: now it's obligatory for every journalist to have their hand hermetically sealed to a smartphone so they can dutifully maintain a Twitter account. It is becoming increasingly essential and easy to maintain an online presence; you need a Facebook page, a Linkedin profile and a FourSquare account. These are all useful tools in their own way. However, all this social media activity means that it is becoming ever harder to deny the fact that journalists are people. Shocking, I know, but it's true. Journalists are people - and people are not objective.

UK editors give evidence at superinjunction committee

Posted by Katherine Travers on October 31, 2011 at 5:26 PM

Editors from British publications are giving evidence to the joint committee on privacy and injunctions in an effort to revise British privacy law.

In Britain, there are two types of injunction that can prevent the media from reporting the details of a person's private life. Obviously, there is the standard injunction, which bars the media from mentioning the names of individuals in connection to certain events in any article or broadcast. The superinjunction, however, was a concept that many British people were not aware of until recently when said super injunctions began creating controversy in 2010.

Media links of the day

Posted by Katherine Travers on October 27, 2011 at 5:53 PM

Public outcry in Washington as The Washington Post covers the use of teargas on protestors in Washington by leading with an image of a police officer stroking a kitten.

@GuardianTagBot: Now you can search The Guardian via Twitter, simply tweet your search at TagBot and he will deliver the latest news result to you!

Traffic to UK press websites dropped across the board in September.

The Online curation service Storify has launched new features and redesigned its logo with the aim of making storytelling easier.

Reporters Without Borders has launched a new advertising campaign, called Censorship Paradise, designed to draw attention to human rights abuses in popular tourist destinations.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service

Sources: Censorship-paradise.com, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Journalism.co.uk, The Press Gazette,

Results matching “to blogs for online”

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Tags :

Editors Weblog Twitter Feed

Twitter Updates

Latest News

Analysis

Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Blog