San Diego station shows how to cover a major disaster online

Posted by Martin Stabe on 24 October 2007 at 13:00
Tags: Google Maps, Journalism, Television, YouTube, twitter

San Diego TV station News 8, whose reporter Larry Himmel who filed a report from outside his burning house yesterday, is doing some very impressive online reporting of the devastating wildfires on its patch

The station has responded to the crisis on its patch by taking down its entire regular web site and replacing it with a rolling news blog, linking to YouTube videos of its key reports (including Himmel’s), plus Google Maps showing the location of the fire.

There are links to practical information that their viewers will need at this time, inclduing how to contact insurance companies, how to volunteer or donate to the relief efforts, evacuation information and shelter locations.

It’s an exemplary case study in how a local news operation can respond to a major rolling disaster story by using all the reporting tools available on the Internet.

Update: Mark Potts has a great blog post looking at the online coverage of the fires. What’s missing from local media’s coverage, he says, is user-generated content. Not so at the San Diego NBC station, though.

Both the Los Angles Times and San Diego’s public broadcasting station KPBS are using Twitter to provide rapid, rolling updates of the fires. A piece on a Wired blog explains how to do it. Both are also among those tracking their fire coverage on Google Maps.

Tech blog GigaOm, though figures that thinks “traditional media have been hopelessly outdated in their coverage.” Eh?

The Wikipedia entry for the fires is also becoming an impressive resource. As is becoming common in major news events, Wikipedians are pulling together the news reports from many different primary sources to produce a continuously-updated account.

7 comments

BBC iPlayer launch date set

Posted by Martin Stabe on 27 June 2007 at 12:00
Tags: AOL, BBC, Bebo, Blinkx, MSN, Telegraph.co.uk, Tiscali, Yahoo, YouTube, iplayer

The BBC’s much-delayed on-demand broadband service is to launch on 27 July, the Corporation announced this morning.

The iPlayer software, which is currently being beta-tested by 15,000 people, will be available for download from the BBC site, and will allow UK-based viewers to download a programme. Once downloadeed, they will be available to watch for up to 30 days. The programme deletes itself once watched. The BBC has a video of the iPlayer’s interface, and Digital Spy has some screen grabs.

The iPlayer will also be linked to from YouTube, and potentially other “distribution partners” later this year. The Corporation said it is in talks with potential distribution partners including Telegraph.co.uk, MSN, AOL, Yahoo!, Tiscali, MySpace, Blinkx and Bebo.

Ashley Highfield, the Beeb’s director of new media and technology says developing Mac and Vista versions is “absolutely on our critical path”.

Hammersley on journalistic transparency

Posted by Martin Stabe on 27 June 2007 at 09:34
Tags: BBC, Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, twitter

Ben Hammersley, who is in Turkey as part of an experimental BBC reporting project using social media tools, explains why he is producing behind-the-scenes material about his work to sites like YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us and Twitter.

The modern journalist, Hammersley writes in a piece for BBC News Online’s Magazine, is “a multi-media creature, feeding the beasts of television, radio and the web”. But this, he says, means viewers have far less understanding of how the news is actually produced.

“Many do want to preserve the mystique, but frankly, I think it’s easier, and more productive in the end, to do what my maths teacher was always forlornly begging me to do, and show my working,” he says.

Expert Eye: The new vids on the block

Posted by Ian Reeves on 24 May 2007 at 09:45
Tags: Belfast Telegraph, Computing, Eastern Daily Press, FHM, Financial Times, Guardian, Haymarket, Hull Daily Mail, ITN, InStyle, Journalism, Lancashire Evening Post, Magazines, Media Week, Mirror, Nationals, New Scientist, Newspapers, Northern Echo, Nuts, Roo, Sun, Telegraph.co.uk, Times Online, VNU, YouTube, Zoo, icBirmingham, video

Ian Reeves looks at how he printed press is experimenting with video, from locals to the big players.

11 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

YouTube launching UGC video gongs

Posted by Martin Stabe on 19 March 2007 at 12:39
Tags: Awards, Citizen journalism, YouTube, citizenjournalism

YouTube is setting up awards for the best user created videos of 2006.

The Google-owned video sharing site will hand out trohies to the creators of videos in seven  catories: most creative, most inspirational, best series, best comedy, musician of the year, best commentary and “most adorable video ever”.

A channel of nominated videos picked by YouTube is set to launch today. It will allow usrs to vote on the nominees for all of this week, in time for the winner to be announced on 25 March.

Linking the awards to YouTube’s current legal troubles with Viacom, Reuters’  Eric Auchard quips: “One category missing from the YouTube awards is ‘Best Professionally Produced Copyrighted Video.’”

Google Video in copyright suit

Posted by Martin Stabe on 9 November 2006 at 18:41
Tags: Google, YouTube, copyright, video

Google Video is being sued over copyright infringement

Google did not identify the claimant or eleborate on the suit, which was revealed in documents filed by Google today with the SEC.

The suit may be a sign of things to come when Google completes its takeover of YouTube, the AP’s story suggests.

CNET recently published a nice summary of the numerous copyright lawsuits that Google is involved in. The New York Times recently wrote about the extensive legal team fighting these battles.

Update: Google is also lobbying against proposed changes in Australian copyright law, which could open the door for claimants to sue the search engine for indexing and caching web pages.