@DNA2008: Who is getting it in the digital age?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 3 March 2008 at 11:06
Tags: DNA2008, De Persgroep, Drudge Report, Facebook, Financial Times, Japan, Mobile Phones, Online, Reuters, South Korea, schibsted

At the Digital News Affairs Conference in Brussels, Richard Gizbert of Al-Jazeera’s media programme The Listening Post asks a “on surviving the digital news age” to name some organisations that are “getting it right” in the digital age.

Here are the suggestions they came up with:

Drudge Report
A tiny three-man operation that aggregates news now makes a fortune for its creator and drives a huge proportion of the major news media’s online traffic. “He is essentially an online DJ creating online sense of consensus about what the important story is,” says Stephen Marshall, founder and creative director of the Guerilla News Network. Drudge, he suggests understands how audiences want obtain news online.

Schibsted
But Christian Van Thillo chief executive of Belgium’s De Persgroep disagrees, because Drudge is not an example of a big media company succeeding online. The best example of big media getting it, he says is the Schibsted. With its enormous online reach and profits, the publisher of Norway’s leading tabloid VG is a clear leader online. Schibsted, he says was first to market, has great sites, a big team, focussed management, full support of the company. But he warns against extrapolating Schibsted’s success to ambitions for other markets, because, he says, commercial broadcasting is not as developed in Norway as an alternative for advertisers.

Financial Times
Maria Molland, senior vice president and global head of strategy and business development at Reuters, says there are small pieces of larger companies that are doing interesting things. She names the launch of the Financial Times’s exclusive executive social networking site as an example. More specialiast social networks are the future, she suggests. “I think that Facebook is going down,” she says, “Who wants to be on a social network that your parents are on too?”

South Korea
Tyler Brûlé of Monocle nominates a country rather than a company: South Korea (and also Japan). What impact has this highly advanced digital society’s mobile phone culture had on the newstand? “Look at what it’s done for print in thouse countries - it’s made all of those publishers fight back ever harder”.

Media critics look at online Virginia Tech coverage

Posted by Martin Stabe on 18 April 2007 at 08:49
Tags: ABC, Blogs, CNN, Citizen journalism, Ethics, Journalism, Livejournal, Mobile Phones, NBC, New Media, Photography, blogging, onlinejournalism, usa, video

For a second day, there is much analysis from bloggers and media commentators about the online coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre.

Canadian journalism educator Mark Hamilton says it would be wrong to describe the Virginia Tech story as just another “victory” for the development of citizen journalism. We’re well beyond that stage, he suggests.

“What yesterday showed me was the new mediascape in action, a potent mix of journalists, witnesses and aggregators telling the story better than any of them could alone,” writes Hamilton in an excellent roundup an analysis.

Despite isolated examples of terrible journalism and terrible blogging, Hamilton concludes that both the professionals and the blogosphere’s irregulars did sterling journalism.

One particular item from the new mediascape that has attracted a lot of attention is student Jamal Albaughouti’s mobile phone video of the shootings, which was uploaded to CNN’s citizen journalism portal and has been viewed more than 2 million times. Jeff Jarvis criticises CNN’s apparent exclusivity deal with Albaughouti. Jarvis notes that the video is already available on YouTube.

“The value of an exclusive today lasts about 30 seconds,” Jarvis concludes.

NewAssignment.net’s Steve Fox, meanwhile, argues that the video “had no inherent news value and told no story.”

The London bombing showed us how anyone with a cell phone can capture images. But, that was after a news event had occurred. Our heralded citizen journalist captured sounds of people being killed, injured and maimed yesterday as it occurred.

Is this really the type of behavior to applaud, to train citizen journalists to take part in? More importantly, what’s the news here?

Finally, step back for a second. Play the video. And, imagine you have a son or daughter attending Virginia Tech, you can’t get ahold of them and you turn on CNN to find out some information and instead you come across that video.

Much attention is also focused on journalists’ use of students’ MySpace and Facebook pages to to make contact with and request interviews with victims and witnesses.

National Journal blogger Emily Goodin, for example, spots journalists from ABC and NBC television requesting interviews in this way.

Her commenters are very unimpressed. “maggots. feasting off the misery and horror of the families and friends of the victims,” writes Linda.

Journalist and Livejournal user Adam Tinworth, meanwhile, describes it the practice as “digital doorstopping“, and just a new form of journalism’s “long and dishonourable tradition” of treating victims of tragedies in this way.

Livejournal’s community architecture, Tinworth argues, makes it likely to seem like a semi-private place to its regular users, making outsiders’ overtures seem particularly intrusive.

“Barging into that community and asking for comment feels not unlike barging into a pub and asking somebody for comments,” Tinworth writes.

But in Slate magazine, media critic Jack Shafer praises journalists who have coldly pursued the story among the victims. It would be even worse if they didn’t pursue the story, he argues. In fact, he suggests, “viewers would riot”.

Update: Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media has an essay on his blog which will be published today as an op-ed piece in the Washington Examiner. His eloquent conclusion is worth noting:

We used to say that journalists write the first draft of history. Not so, not any longer. The people on the ground at these events write the first draft. This is not a worrisome change, not if we are appropriately skeptical and to find sources we trust. We will need to retool media literacy for the new age, too.

7 comments

More news uses of Twitter

Posted by Martin Stabe on 29 March 2007 at 15:11
Tags: Blogs, Flickr, Journalism, Mobile Phones, YouTube

I have been keeping an eye out for interesting journalistic applications of Twitter. So far it has mainly been RSS mashups that send headlines and a web link to the service, which sends 140-character messages to mobile phones or instant messager applications.

Now that Mario Menti — the developer behind the BBC-to-Twitter mashup — has created a tool that creates RSS-to-Twitter services on the fly, we can expect many more news sites to have Twitter feeds created for them.

There just isn’t very much more you can do in 140 characters.

Unless, of course, you’re trying to present live coverage of a long, drawn-out sporting event in a sport where the action can be neatly summarised in a statistical shorthand understood by the sport’s fans.

As it happens, one such a sport is currently having a rather important competition, and Manoj Kumar is trying to run just such a service. You can subscribe to his over-by-over Cricket World Cup news service by adding the Twitter user CricTimes as a friend.

Even someone like me, who fails to understand cricket, can see that this is a wonderful journalistic application of the service. Those who want live over-by-over coverage over the course of a match, but don’t have time to log onto a web sit will love this service. Just don’t ask about the short-term business case.

It’s worth remembering at this point that editors originally scoffed at over-by-over blogging of cricket matches when the Guardian first tried it a few years ago. It proved hugely popular, of course, because of the community discussion aspect of blogging — and has become a staple of test match coverage. So much so, in fact, that the ICC have been trying to prevent it.

(more…)

1 comment

PA will report 2007 Budget in Second Life and on Twitter

Posted by Martin Stabe on 15 March 2007 at 11:57
Tags: Mobile Phones, Press Association, secondlife, twitter

The Press Association has become the latest media organisation to set up shop in the virtual world Second Life with a “Budget Info-Station” that will provide coverage of the 2007 Budget.

A new PA service will give residents of the virtual world live updates from the House of Commons as Gordon Brown announces details of what is likely to be his final Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The news agency will also be using the SMS social network platform Twitter to deliver news of the Budget.

A number of media organsiations have already set up virtual newsrooms in Second Life. The most ambitious effort to date is from Reuters, which has a full-time correspondent in the virtual world. Headlines from the BBC, CNN, Google News, and several other news organisation are distributed on Twitter via user-produced mashups.

3 comments

Local video news comes to mobiles

Posted by Martin Stabe on 25 August 2006 at 10:06
Tags: Journalism, Mobile Phones

Video news services for mobile phones are developing largely around big national news providers in Britain. But as Caroline McCartney at CNETNews.com reports, several local television stations in the United States are bringing to bring their news to mobile phones, including some video content.

CBS 3 in Philadelphia this week launched a mobile news service featuring local news, weather and traffic information. In all, 16 local CBS-affiliate stations are offering the services, which is part of the network’s “Always On” initiative to make local new content available on new platforms.

Inside this week’s Press Gazette

Posted by Martin Stabe on 30 March 2006 at 13:23
Tags: ABC, BBC, Citizen journalism, Daily Telegraph, Economist, Guardian, Journalism, Mirror, Mobile Phones, NUJ, New Media, News of the World, Online, Regionals, Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Times, War reporting

Some highlights from tomorrow’s Press Gazette:

The owners of the Daily Telegraph, the Barclay Brothers, have discovered that their ploy bringing libel cases under French criminal law — a tactic most recently deployed against the Times — cuts both ways. The Sunday Telegraph has paid out to the estranged father of comedian Jimmy Carr after his lawyers threatened drag the paper before a French tribunbal.

George Galloway has threatened to publish pictures of Mazher Mahmood after the News of the World’s “fake sheikh” attempted one of his famous sting operations on the controvertial Respect MP. (The Guardian’s Duncan Campbell today has more on the foiled “sheikh-down”.)

A former Times fashion journalist, Emily Davies, is at the heart of a plagiarism row after an American publisher gave her a £515,000 advance on a book. In a statement to us, Davies admits “genuinely accidental misattribution” of parts of the book proposal — but says there is “a dirty tricks campaign” to discredit her. Lawyers have stopped us from publishing Davies’s publicity photograph.

Regular Dog readers already know this, but the Guardian’s web site will make £1 million profit this year. This emerged at the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit, where Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow enthused about citizen journalism.

Roy Greenslade told a Newspaper Society conference that regional newspapers need to challenge to the online competition from the BBC. His most recent Daily Telegraph column is adapted from the speech. We hear that Greenslade, who recently resigned from the Telegraph, has some super-secret online project for the Guardian up his sleeve.

Multichannel television on mobile phones set to be launched by mobile network O2 within a fortnight, and if the results of a recent pilot of the service in Oxford is anything to go by, news is set to be one of the most popular offerings.

New Economist editor John Micklethwait says he wants to double the magazine’s circulation to 2 million readers worldwide over the next 10 years. Speaking of new magazine editors, we also have an interview with Matthew D’Ancona of the Spectator — he’s into punk rock, apparently.

The National Union of Journalists is backing Richard Gizbert, a London-based correspondent for ABC News, who was sacked after he refused to go to Iraq. The American television network is appealing against an Employment Tribunal ruling that Gizbert was unfairly dismissed.

Texts to the editor

Posted by Caitlin Pike on 23 March 2006 at 16:47
Tags: Independent on Sunday, Journalism, Mobile Phones

From this Sunday readers of the Independent on Sunday will be able to send letters to the editor by text. That makes the IOS the first quality newspaper to take letters by text.

Deputy editor Michael Williams, said: “Texting is the medium of the future. It’s not just about voting on Big Brother. It will allow our readers to enjoy more fully the debate of the moment.”

Citizen journalism guide in Press Gazette

Posted by Martin Stabe on 23 March 2006 at 10:17
Tags: BBC, CNN, Citizen journalism, ITN, Journalism, Mobile Phones, Photography, Sky

If you are interested in “citizen journalism” (or whatever you prefer to call
the many-faceted phenomenon) will enjoy the issue of Press Gazette that is out today.

Our Reporter’s Guide to Citizen Journalism is introduced by Mike Ward of the University of Central Lancashire, who argues that professional news organisations cannot afford to ignore citizen journalism. Julie Tomlin interviewed citizen journalism doyen Dan Gillmor. Graham Holliday explained how journalists can make the best use of the blogosphere. I paid a visit to the dedicated BBC unit that sifts through the deluge of “user-generated content”. Jonathan Munro of ITV, John Ryley of Sky News related their experiences of using content supplied by the cameraphone-wielding public, while Nic Robertson of CNN wrote about using a cameraphone to report from Iraq. Kyle McRae recounts the early days of his citizen journalism picture agency Scoopt, and how it has made few friends on tabloid feature desks.

For the uninitiated, we also have some links to notable citizen journalism projects
and social news aggregators and bookmarking tools.

Stories increasingly breaking online

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 21 March 2006 at 12:40
Tags: Journalism, Mobile Phones, Newspapers, Online, Radio, Television, United States

Where are the big scoops first seen these days? According to USA Today media columnist Peter Johnson, it’s the Internet. As the new technology allows news-buffs to get the latest news on their home or office computersor cell phones, news organizations no longer want to hold their big stories for the next morning’s paper or even the evening television news program.

Charlotte Evans, editor of the Rome News-Tribune in Georgia, speaking for lots of other editors these days when she told Johnson: “When we have breaking news we break it online. We save the pictures and in-depth material for the paper itself.�?

Papers that wait 24 hours to tell their readers what’s happening are doing a disservice, Evans says.

These days even TV and radio executives have to grapple with the problem of whether to hold a story for their evening programs or to put it out on the web immediately – in the hope that it will ultimately attract viewers or listeners.

The only people not too happy about the trend are old-time newsmen who still prefer to see their stories in print. “Not all reporters find that breaking news on the website gives them the same satisfaction as breaking it on the front page�? says Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times.

Sportsman speculation roundup

Posted by Martin Stabe on 2 March 2006 at 11:56
Tags: Journalism, Mobile Phones, Online, Sportsman, Trinity Mirror

The hotly-anticipated official announcement of the launch date for the Sportsman is expected soon — “perhaps as early as today” — the Guardian says in its sports section.

The new national sports betting daily, headed by former Telegraph diarist Charlie Methven, will be a 80- to 128-page tabloid. The Guardian report includes some more detail about the Sportsman’s web operation which, as we reported last week, will be spearheaded by former News International digital director Mark Maydon:

In a model that other media owners might hope to replicate all journalists will work on both the newspaper and the added-value website, which launches in May. [Manging director Max] Aitken says: “We will not just be dumping the paper online. The reader will bounce between the two, while emails and text updates can provide information on changed overnight conditions or news from the paddock. We are a media company, with great betting content.” There will also be links to an on-line betting site.

According to Roy Greenslade in the Telegraph, the Sportsman may be receive a percentage from bets placed via its web site and also has some interesting ideas for delivering news to mobile phones:

Methven … says: “Look, we have journalists at race meetings who report on the condition of horses in the paddock. It’s a good service. But think what we could do by offering punters reports in real time, giving them information at the same moment as they are witnessing it themselves.”

Meanwhile, the Times City Diary yesterday reported that the Methven has already sought legal advice about an alleged advertising deal offered to a major bookmaker by the Sportsman’s established rival, Trinity Mirror’s Racing Post.

Update: The Sportsman will launch on 22 March.