Results matching “launches journalism of a”

After months of much hype and speculation, Steve Jobs finally took to the stage to unveil Apple's new highly anticipated tablet computer - the iPad.

With its official introduction at an event in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs has finally laid many rumors about what the electronic device can do to rest, while igniting hopes about the iPad's ability to bring new life to 'old media' and to revamp the e-reader market.
 

 

A new web-only daily newspaper has launched in Scotland, The Guardian reports, after being expected for some weeks.

Called the Caledonian Mercury, the paper takes its name from one of Scotland's first news journals. It is edited and largely written by former staff from The Scotsman who departed after deep budget cuts at the paper. They will work as freelancers, and will be paid partly according to the "value" of their copy to readers and advertisers. How this will work is not yet clear.

Amid all the buzz about the potential to make money from mobile news, news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) has become the latest news organisation to launch an iPhone app.

The application also works on the iPod Touch and costs $1.99 from the Apple store.

"It gives access to the global news agency's multimedia content in English, Spanish, Portuguese and German, including breaking world news from wars and conflicts to politics, sport and entertainment, as well as the latest major developments in health, science and technology," AFP said in a statement.

A new initiative from the BBC will grant the general public access to online material used to train the industry's elite, with masterclasses delivered by the likes of John Simpson and John Humphrys, the Guardian reported.

The move comes as the international broadcasting agency launches the BBC Academy today, a centre dedicated to turning out the journalists of tomorrow.

It has been a rough couple of years for the newspaper industry with the recession taking its toll on the financial stability of many organisations. In the past year alone at least ten publications have filed for bankruptcy and many have been forced to close their doors. With newspapers treading fast to try to keep their heads above water many have cut back funding for more costly types of news. One of the first things to go has been investigative journalism, considered by many publications to be a luxury. The time and investment of multiple resources in a single issue is something that many publications simply can no longer afford.

These cuts have raised alarm bells. The potential loss of 'the fourth estate' and 'government watchdog' have united many in the cause to protect the practice of journalism, even if the business and profitability of it is doomed to fail.

One method suggested to preserve this type of journalism is to run as a non-profit organisation. Seeking the status under the claim that journalism is a 'public good' publications are free from commerical pressures and the disappointment of dwindling circulation figures, relying only on donations from those who feel the cause worthy enough.

It is at this point that the Texas Tribune enters the scene. The online-only news site launched early last week as a non-profit venture in an attempt to fill a gap in quality local journalism in Texas. The Editors Weblog spoke with editor-in-chief, Evan Smith to look at Tribune's website and non-profit ambitions in closer detail.


The inspiration:
The big name in non-profit news is ProPublica. Led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, the organisation began publishing in June 2008 and has consistently drawn in large sums of donations, with key sponsor the Sandler Foundation contributing annually. ProPublica, which will write an article then offer it to a newspaper to publish, has carried out some impressive investigative feats to date, most notably its collaboration with the New York Times, published in August. The 13,000 word article which cost an estimated $400,000 to produce examined the events that took place at the Memorial Medical Centre following Hurricane Katrina. The piece highlighted the importance of such investigative journalism and made the need to save it even more apparent.
 
The Texas Tribune aims to achieve something similar on a smaller and more political scale, offering Texans a news source designed to compliment local newspapers that already exist: "We've made a point of not presenting this as a binary choice: A or B. We believe it's additive: A and B. Read your local paper and read us. In fact read as much stuff as there is out there" says Smith.

"We're simply presenting ourselves as one in a series of things that you need to read and listen to and view and access if you want to be a thoughtful and engaged Texan." 

In his first posting on the website Smith talked about what the Tribune was attempting to achieve: "What we mean to do on an ongoing basis is right there in our stated mission: to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern."

In ProPublica fashion, the Tribune has said that all the information published on its website is up for grabs for other media organisations as part of a content-sharing plan designed to aide other reporters who might not have the time to look into an issue in depth.  Matt Stiles, one of the Tribune's staff reporters writers told Poynter Online in an interview: "Ultimately, we'd like to tell every paper in the state, 'If you like this data set, just take it'."

"I hope reporters will come see the information, download it, remix it and be creative with it."

The build up:
In July this year Smith announced he was leaving his position as editor-in-chief of established Texas Monthly magazine to take up the post as CEO and editor of the Tribune. A few months later, the Tribune added Elise Hu, Emily Ramshaw and Matt Stiles to its list of experienced journalists.

In an interview with Poynter in September, Ramshaw talked of her decision to join the project: "I feel, and still feel, that the newspaper business is in serious crisis. I'm not content to cling to a deck chair and go down with a sinking ship."

Ramshaw worked for The Dallas Morning News for six years, the last three of which she was state investigative reporter.  "We're trying to prepare for the next incarnation of journalism. If this venture is going to work, it's going to work because serious, talented journalists were brave enough to take the risk," she said.

The Tribune has built up a selection of notable reporters willing to do this and Chairman and co-founder John Thorton had been quoted as saying: "We didn't hire journalists out of work. We hired reporters who their editors were pissed off that they lost them."

Smith and Thornton worked hard on securing donations, with Thornton himself donating $1 million to the Tribune. In early October the founders confirmed they had received a further $750, 000 in grants from the Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Tribune is now only slighty short of the $4 million target it needs to continue running for two years, with a current total of $3.7 million.

The sum is considerable for a start up website, as paidContent's Staci Kramer has noted: "Unlike some of the new crop of local and regional news startups, the Tribune is launching with enough money for a well-paid staff of 16, including 11 reporters," referring to salaries of $315K for the editor in chief, and up to $90K for seasoned reporters.

As for promotion of the site itself, Smith told the Editors Weblog just how useful social networking sites have been. Regular updates for the public on the status of the site via Facebook, Twitter and the site's own newsletter built up a sense of curiosity over what exactly they had in store for last Tuesday's launch.
 
"We've been very aggressive on Facebook and Twitter both to promote the content and also to connect with our community of followers" said Smith. "We've also used both to aggressively push for funding. We've generated quite a lot of memberships in the Tribune which are much like memberships in public radio by pushing over Facebook and over Twitter messages that relate to our fundraising campaign, and they've been very successful," he says, citing the 1400 founding members who have given between $50 and $5000 to the Tribune out of their own pockets.

What does the site look like?
The website debuted with top stories on the mistreatment of disabled children in public schools, the Democratic lean of El Paso in an otherwise Republican state, and the results of a poll carried out by the Tribune and the University of Texas.

The site itself is divided into ten pages, the organisation of which differ from your average news website. Offering 11 databases under a section titled 'Library' for further reading, the databases contain information ranging from federal campaign donations, gubernatorial appointees and lawmaker spending. In addition to this there is a complete electoral directory of every Texan senator and governor- the site essentially offers a single space for complete personal and political data on the '242 occupants of the state's highest offices'.

It is clear that a lot of time has gone into collaborating this research, and according to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the Waco Tribune-Herald has already taken advantage of the new resource and published some Tribune content. 

Aside from the databases, the site boasts eight of its own blogs and links to some 25 others; has a 'topics' section where stories can be found based on theme; a calender, where information about local events can be found or submitted; and a 'Tweetwire', a Twitter feed from all Texan politicians on the website's front page.

Compared to the recent launch of another local non-profit news website, Oakland Local, the Tribune's website is much more sophisticated. The Texan team have embraced the capacities of the internet and technology to their full, utilizing social media, widgets, videos, blogs and mobile applications- something Smith believes to be key to the way in which the use of media is changing.

"In consumption of media people are paying more attention to online media today then ever before," say Smith. "I look at my almost 13 year old daughter and how she consumes media and it's not at all in print it's almost entirely online and I think that's the trend line."

Smith suggests that publishers need to adapt to measure up to this changed method of consuming news: "You cannot simply go out and record the news, present that to people and believe that that's going to be enough. You need to give them the tools to better understand their world, to better know their state, to better know the people they elected, to better hold them accountable and that often is all not simply conventional reporting but the amassing and presenting of data that allows people to access the world in which they live from a more detailed level."

Why will the Tribune succeed where others have failed?
Whilst successful local non-profit news publications do exists, the Voice of San Diego and the MinnPost to name a few- there are also notable failures such as the Rocky Mountain Independent and InDenver Times, two online start-ups founded by Steve Foster earlier this year. How will the Tribune ensure that it doesn't suffer the same fate?

Smith says that the Tribune essentially has a better business plan, arguing that the RMI and InDenver Times failed because they were run by journalists, not business people and "didn't really have a plan for how to make the model sustainable."

Part of the reason the Tribune is choosing to remain online-only is because "the cost of printing a print publication for postage and paper and print facilities is so expensive that you reduce your overhead dramatically and therefore make it much more likely that your business model will sustain."

Of course the Tribune's has also managed to raise a healthy budget, further insulating itself against some of the problems faced by other publications. "Money is, as in all things, the mother's milk of your operation," Smith says, continuing on to mention that the having the financial capacity to buy the latest technology and hire top journalists will "go a very long way to allowing us to do our best work."

Smith's views bear resemblance to industry commentator Alan Mutter, who recently critized many online non-profit publications for not being business-minded enough. Mutter accuses these publications of "a suicidally stubborn determination on the part of the organizers to be in the business they want to be in, instead of attending to the business they need to attend to," and he argued early last month that, "A business, especially a start-up, requires far more than passion for the work. It requires close attention to the nuts and bolts of raising money, making sales and controlling expenses."

How will the Tribune navigate ethical issues?
A nagging question over the non-profit model is how publications will be able to resist influence from major donors. Smith argues that the seperation between donors and the editorial team is no different to the situation between advertisers and editorial: "I edited a magazine for nine years in which we had big advertisers who also happened to often be the subject of stories and the transactional economy that supports the operations of a for profit publication has no relationship what-so-ever to the journalism inside, or it shouldn't anyway, not at a good magazine and not at a good newspaper."

"Just because someone advertises doesn't mean you go easy on them or you go hard on their competitors."

Nevetherless, the non-profit news model is still in early stages and very dependent on the income from donors. Even for-profit news publications have not been immune to advertsing clients flexing their muscles in tough financial times, with a Detroit paper recently being accused of reporting on private health care following a request from client Humana (who subsequently purchased an ad next to the story).

What would Smith do if he was approached by a donor to cover a particular story? 

"Donors don't expect that were going to write about their issues or about their enemy's issues in a negative way, they're not looking for us to take sides- they're supporting the principle that hovers above all this activity: that journalism in the public interest has value."

"Any donor who is unhappy with the coverage we provide because of such an expectation is welcome to his or her money back," he says, adding: "I'd rather lose my funding then lose my integrity."

So are non-profits the next incarnation of journalism?
The wider debate on whether or not non-profits are the future of journalism has been raging for a while. Online magazine, Slate's Jack Shafer has weighed in for the negative: "In the current arrangement, we're substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately."

Thornton, the Tribune's chairman, hit back at the remarks: "I call it the Stockholm Syndrome. They are sympathizing with their advertiser-captors."

So who is right? Is the non-profit model the future of journalism?

Yes and no. It is unlikely to become a general solution for newspapers simply because of the huge sums of money involved, but for nieche reporting and more time/fund consuming journalism such as investigative reporting, it could definiatley be a viable option.

The idea compares favourably at least to the suggestion of government bailouts. As Thorton wrote of the "obvious fox-in-the-henhouse issues that arise--to mix animal metaphors--from government watchdogs funded out of government coffers."

As the first serious, state-focused news site with a decent enough amount of money behind it and what seems to be the right attitude toward embracing the capacities of the digital age and the changing face of journalism- whether or not the Texas Tribune succeeds will be key to the way in which the non-profit model is viewed.

As Tribune reporter Christe Hu suggests: "Journalism is at a crossroads right now. We're seeing not just survival of the fittest but a 'mutation of the species.' "

"I think the non-profit model has just as good a shot as anything else."

Oakland Local is one of many non-profit community news websites currently springing up across the globe as the need for quality local news coverage becomes more obvious. The recession has seen the local news industry suffer staggering financial blows and several news organisations, small and large, have had to heavily cut back on resources or close altogether.

The situation has caused many to express concerns about the dangers of not having a local media watchdog to keep those in power in check: "It makes me worry about all of those public authorities and courts which will in future operate without any kind of systematic public scrutiny. I don't think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news in the press and broadcasting," Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger has said.

Citizenside, a Paris-based citizen photojournalism agency, has launched an Android application that allows its members to upload images to its site directly from the scene of the action.

Citizenside invites its amateur photographer members to send in any images they think are newsworthy and the pictures and videos are made available for sale to mainstream media outlets once they have passed a reliability check. The company is part-owned by Agence France-Presse, and Citizenside's amateur photos are included in AFP's image forum. 

The Associated Press is to create a news registry that will tag and track all AP content online to ensure that it is not misappropriated. It is intended that the news registry will serve as the foundation of an industry initiative to protect news content from unauthorised use online, according to a press release.

The registry will use a microformat for news that was developed by the AP and recently endorsed by the London-based Media Standards Trust, a nonprofit research and development organisation. Essentially, the microformat will encapsulate AP and member content in an informational "wrapper" that includes a digital permissions framework that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used online and which also supplies the critical information needed to track and monitor its usage, the press release specified.

Late last week, Mediaite hosted its first 'Mediaite Office Hours' session in order to answer to the hostility it was met with during the first week of the site's launch. Senior Editor Glynnis MacNicol and TV Editor Steve Krakauer hosted the one-hour segment. Having only been meant to appear sporadically and unannounced, editor-at-large Rachel Sklar ended up spending most of the hour with the hosts. The motivation of Office Hours is to make Mediaite staffers available to converse with those critics who disapprove of the celebrity journalism obsessed website and tackle criticism head-on.

During the first Office Hours sitting, MacNicol explained that despite all the negative publicity that ensued in the week of the website's launch, not a single critic had emailed to complain to the site. She reported with some satisfaction that the critics have fallen silent since they have complained about everything there is to complain about.

The Financial Times recently announced the arrival of its first iPhone application. The app is compatible with any iPhone or iPod Touch using Apple's latest operating system, OS 3.0. In addition to providing FT readers with current news, analysis and unique market data, the app offers a currency converter and access to a world map.

Previously, FT readers could access "an executive briefing" by visiting said newspaper's mobile website, m.ft.com from most any mobile phone. The mobile website generated 60% of its traffic from iPhones and Blackberries combined. FT's graduation from mobile site to mobile app is "part of our overall goal of making sure our users get the best possible FT experience on any device," said FT.com's lead product manager, Stephen Pinches.

The FrontLine Club has launched its own quarterly title to sponsor independent journalism.  FrontLine: A Broadsheet, will comprise of foreign coverage, as well as articles investigating British culture and politics.  In fact, its creators hope to resurrect "some traditions lost from the British market".

The identity of these traditions is as of yet vague, however the publication's ethos has been made clear.   This, according to Vaughan Smith, founder and managing director of the Club, is "political, but party-politically-allergic, irreverent and iconoclastic".  The subject choice in the selection of articles for the first edition suggests that these values are indeed underwriting the content.  Up for discussion is Tony Blair's Catholic faith, the return of British sleaze and peacekeeping in Kosovo.

Amidst the doom and gloom of newspaper closures and declining advertising revenue, it makes a welcome change to report on the launch - albeit online - of a news site.

Headed by Basque firm Hispa Vista, Globedia is entirely and exclusively written by the online community. According to El País, the website's aim is to "offer people information published by anyone with a desire to express and spread an idea or thought on current affairs and general interest issues."

In what the Financial Times describes as "a first step towards charging for its content on smartphones", Thomson Reuters has launched overhauled its mobile applications. The new apps contain video and market data, as well as headlines. Whilst remaining free for the moment, Alisa Bowen, head of consumer publishing at the company added "It would be a logical conclusion that there would be a paid element in time... The ability to launch premium services is our ultimate goal."

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal's iPhone and Blackberry applications remain free - despite content being charged for on the publication's website. However, Rupert Murdoch recently revealed that users of the paper's iPhone application would soon be required to "pay handsomely". Journal editor Robert Thomson also revealed that it will launch "a sophisticated micropayments service" for the main website this autumn.

The Huffington Post has announced that it is to launch an Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million, in collaboration with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors. Founder Arianna Huffington told the AP that she believes that "All of us increasingly have to look at different ways to save investigative journalism."

The funding should be enough to support 10 staff investigative reporters, and Huffington hopes to use laid-off journalists, who will work with freelancers to look at stories about the US economy. Although the site generally has a liberal leaning, Huffington was adamant that the investigative journalists' work will be non-partisan, and the fund's executive director Nick Penniman pointed out that the group would be quickly discredited if it puts out faulty information.

French citizen journalism portal Citizenside has announced the launch of its iPhone application in English. Version 1.1, in French, was launched at the end of January. Citizenside co-founder Matthieu Stefani explains that the English version of the application should help the company to extend its already global reach, as the "international application market is over 20 times larger than the French one".

The platform, which was launched in 2006, acts as an agent between amateur photographers and publications, as well as helping other publications to set up their own citizen photo sites. Citizenside has also developed technology which allows detailed authentication of the origin of the images it receives, and helps avoid the pitfalls of photos which aren't what their owners say they are.

The Financial Times group yesterday unveiled the launch of a new search engine called Newssift aimed at business professionals. Rather than scouring the entire web, the tool will give users access to relevant databases, as well as filtering articles from a wide array of international business news outlets, including professional sites, opinion pages and blogs.

This week saw the launch of Media Cloud, a website created by the Berkman Centre for Internet and Research. The aim of the project is to track the flow of media on the web, and observe how news stories unfold. The Harvard based project has also teamed up with Thomson Reuters to use their Calais technology, which is providing data-analysis for one of the site's tracking strategies.

The Journal of New England Technology reports that Media Cloud is "intended to determine what types of stories are covered by certain media sources, where news stories originate, what parts of the world attract attention and which do not, what role reader comments play in setting the news agenda and how the blogosphere's coverage compares to traditional media coverage". Users can create graphs and maps displaying topics and areas of coverage, and can select up to three news sources to compare. Whilst the list of sources lacks some names, there are enough options to make interesting comparisons - looking at the global coverage of NYT, Al Jazeera English, and China's Xinhua for example, provides interesting contrast.

Friday 27th February saw the last ever edition of the Rocky Mountain News, after it became "a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges" according to Ricky Boehne, CEO of Rocky owner E.W. Scripps. However, now that the presses have stopped, many former staffers have migrated to the employee created I want my Rocky online-only news site.

I want my Rocky was created by Rocky Mountain News employees in December, initially to fight for the newspaper and as a "way for readers to send in their comments" explains Mel Pomponio, former Rocky Union chair and presentation editor, in a video entitled 'The Final Edition' on the new site. But it seems that the project has gone further now that the RMN is no more; many of its former journalists have begun publishing regularly on the site.

The debate about making online content paid-for has been raging in the media world for a while now. Though this move may not be completely evident to people, several media pundits have advocated the view, stressing that newspapers can be saved from extinction by making this crucial, but improbable, change in the news-providing process.

T.J. Sullivan, freelance writer and former staffer at four dailies, talked to journalism.co.uk, about his online petition, suggesting that Associated Press (AP) and other US newspapers to shut their websites for a week in July 2009. In an effort to put the spotlight on the importance of news-gathering organisations, Sullivan hopes to educate people "of the colossal domino effect that the loss of newspapers is having on both democracy and every other type of newsgathering organisation"

Media houses and industry experts have explored this idea, considering the pros and cons of having people pay for something that has always been free. Some argue that the amount of revenue generated from news websites cannot considerably change the fate of print newspapers and thus a move like this could be more self-destructing. What was clear was that if online content has to become a paid-for model, only a consolidated effort from the media industry can change the situation. Thus making petitions like Sullivan's a heroic effort, but one that could be doomed from the start.

Sullivan remains hopeful. "I hope the goal of the petition is realised - that newspapers and The Associated Press actually unplug their websites for one week starting July 4 2009."


Sources : journalism.co.uk

Citizenside, a French citizen journalism portal, has launched a free iPhone application so that its members can now send in photos and videos directly from the field. 

Citizenside was launched in 2006 and provides a platform for amateurs and professionals to shares their and sell them to media organisations around the world.  AFP is a shareholder.

Adding an iPhone application is all the rage in the news industry right now: papers such as the New York Times, USA Today, L'Equipe and Le Figaro have all recently jumped on board.

Source: CB News

Boston University yesterday launched the New England Centre for Investigative Reporting.  The Centre is a university based, not for profit multimedia collaborative that aims to breathe life back into investigative journalism, which 'has become a luxury rather than a necessity in too many newsrooms' explains college Dean Tom Fiedler.

In association with the Boston Globe, Boston.com, New England Cable News, WBUR-FM and New England Ethnic News, the NECIR will provide assistance to all afore mentioned partners in getting investigative journalism back into their newsrooms, produce in-depth multi-platform investigative news reports and experiment with effective ways to produce investigative community reports online.