Nouse: Counselling service admits breach of trust after releasing over 300 emails

Posted by Dave Lee on 19 March 2008 at 11:49
Tags: Student Journalism

Raf Sanchez reports on a potentially catastrophic blunder from admin staff at York University:

Minutes after the mistake was made a second email was sent out reading: “URGENT PLEASE DELETE LAST EMAIL  (Access to Counselling Building)  Information was included that should not have been sent”. Two hours later the Counselling Service sent out a ‘recall’, designed to delete emails in the recipients’ inbox. However, the recall email also included the 344 addresses in the cc field, revealing all the emails for a second time.

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Liverpool paper top story: Buy some ad space, please

Posted by Dave Lee on 19 March 2008 at 10:00
Tags: Newspapers, Online, Student Journalism

Now I may be a little old fashioned when it comes to commercial influence in newspapers, but it disheartens me to see Liverpool’s LX News running with this lead story: Advertise to over 60,000 students.

At what point does the drive for funding hamper a student newspaper’s coverage? I’d argue this example of LX News is a push too far.

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BBC to embed video in news stories

Posted by Dave Lee on 14 March 2008 at 18:26
Tags: Online, Student Journalism

In the coming weeks, the BBC will be embedding its video in news articles [via Journalism.co.uk].

No biggy, you’d be forgiven for thinking, but it will increase the viewing of online video by buckets.

And what the BBC does, everyone else will soon follow. Some have already started. Although I’d argue having a separate section for video — TelegraphTV — serves to keep the divisions between print and multimedia intact. Online news video is a different kettle of fish to the normal television news packages. For starters, a TV news package will have a nice voice over, pieces to camera and context-building footage. Online video doesn’t need this. Video clips serve to extend the understanding of the written article.

An example: this extraordinary piece from the New York Times.

Read the piece and then watch the video. Could any degree of quality writing really convey how incredible that stunt was? The man’s a death-defying maniac — but an even bigger maniac when you watch the video.

From a technical standpoint, embedded video on the BBC will bring multimedia to people who were previously terrified of messages that demanded they download Realplayer. Now, instead, they just have to click play. Lovely stuff.

In a nutshell: Online video is something we all need to get used to. Online journalists will not need to morph into television reporters, but we will need to learn how to piece news stories together using text, images and video in equal measure.

From mobile to front page: Journo student makes a splash

Posted by Dave Lee on 12 March 2008 at 13:57
Tags: Courses, Lincoln University, Newspapers, Student Journalism

The key to making a name for yourself in local newspapers? Find some naked men!

It’s a tactic that has worked wonders for journalism student Robyn Brooke, whose quick-thinking has landed her a front page splash on the Lincolnshire Echo.

“I was in my room when I heard lots of people running and shouting outside, I looked out the window and saw a naked guy running with horse manure in his hands,” she said.

“I grabbed my phone, shouted for my friends and dashed outside – I was still in my slippers.”

The men in question formed part of the University of Lincoln Rugby Union team.

“I knew they had been dared to do it because their friends were watching with us and laughing at them. After about 10 -15 minutes a big police car came and they were taken away,” recalls Robyn.

After all the excitement had calmed down, Robyn started to plan what she could do with her snaps.

“I didn’t think the Echo would be interested at first, I was just taking pictures for the fun of it and to laugh about it with my friends. It was a pretty funny anecdote. But back in my house I suddenly thought: ‘Why not just see if the Echo would want them?’”

“I was so nervous, having to say to the Echo that I had naked photos!”

The pictures appeared on newsstands all over the county the very next day.

One of the pictures Robyn Brooke took with her mobile

BBC looking for trainees

Posted by Dave Lee on 11 March 2008 at 16:16
Tags: Courses, Television

This may be of interest for anyone who fancies a bit of telly work with the BBC.

South Africa Times launches homeless blog

Posted by Dave Lee on 10 March 2008 at 15:23
Tags: Online

Little to do with student journalism, this, but worth paying attention to. The Pigeon Post, set up by The Times in South Africa, is a blog written by Alfred Pigeon, a homeless man.

It’s unclear how much input The Times has on Pigeon’s entries, although they appear largely unedited.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this. At the very least, it’s an interesting look at how a well-run newspaper website can use it’s mainstream appeal to highlight the plight of a minority.

Monday Links: Sub zero?

Posted by Dave Lee on 10 March 2008 at 14:07
Tags: Student Journalism

A couple of good’uns for you this week!

[MEDIA GUARDIAN] The fine line between victory and defeat

Ah, Yvonne Ridley. Well-loved by Lincoln students for failing to show for guest lectures twice (had to get that in there, sorry), Yvonne has recently won her messy court case with al-Jazeera. In this piece for the Media Guardian, she tells us of her battle to win the dosh.

[ROY GREENSLADE] Subs? Do we really them any longer?

Cheeky typo-ed title from Roy, with a serious point. Do we need sub-editors? I’d argue yes: As a journalist I tend to miss out mistakes. Indeed, look hard enough and you’ll find a load on this very page. But in this online world, is there the time for subs? Archant doesn’t think so — it’s getting rid of 20 subs in favour of designers.

Free Financial Times subscription for students

Posted by Dave Lee on 7 March 2008 at 23:17
Tags: Student Journalism

Straight to the point: Get over to Facebook and make use of the Financial Times’ free student subscription offer.

In a bid to attract younger readers, the FT.com deal will grant students in the UK a package worth £98.99 a year.

And it’s well worth doing. Sure, the FT might not be the newspaper you pick up in the morning for a quick read – it’s a bit heavy for that – but its usefulness as a research tool can not be disputed.

Indeed, the very fact the FT manages to keep a subscription service going shows how valuable its content is. Most other online newspapers have been forced to abandon the subscription model for several reasons, one of which was that nobody in the universe was prepared to pay £1 to read Janet Street-Porter’s column in the Independent.

On another note, I wonder if this method of student-only offers will become commonplace. It seems using Facebook to verify a person is a student is a fairly watertight way to go about reaching the right audiences.

Step-by-step investigative journalism

Posted by Dave Lee on 7 March 2008 at 22:52
Tags: Newspapers, Student Journalism

I’ve just found this wonderful resource via the Student Newspaper Survival Blog.

It’s long been argued that investigative journalism is dying out fairly rapidly, but with the Center for Campus Investigations blog, Marcy Burstiner hopes to ignite some fresh new blood into the genre.

Marcy’s tips range from the inception of an investigative team right up to the glorious front page splash.

Well worth checking out if you want your student newspaper to go that extra mile in serving your campus.

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YouTube Live will revolutionise student journalism

Posted by Dave Lee on 5 March 2008 at 09:25
Tags: Courses, Online, Student Journalism, Television

We haven’t touched much on student television journalism on this blog yet, and for good reason.

There isn’t any. Or rather, there isn’t any we can watch and enjoy. Plenty of j-schools have TV modules – some even have dedicated TV courses – but the public enjoyment of this work is often restricted to the campus it is created on.

Which is all well and good, but it puts student broadcast journalists at a distinct disadvantage over their print counterparts. Aspiring TV journalists are not google-friendly. You’d never stumble across a brilliant piece-to-camera by accident. No, you would need to consciously go and download it.

And even if you got to that point, what university has the resources to be hosting all this multimedia? Not to mention the fact that many of the ‘men upstairs’ in British universities quiver in their leather chairs at the very thought of letting student journalists run riot under the university’s good name.

Is that all about to change? Yes! It certainly is! Woo hoo! Hip hip hooray! And so on. With this single announcement, student TV journalism has taken a whole new meaning.

Why? Because soon, this year, we’ll be able to broadcast LIVE using YouTube. To an audience of… millions?

Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To go from broadcasting to your classmates and your tutor to speaking to, for example, the local community, is pretty exciting.

Those of us who are lucky enough to have a radio station on-campus will know how much you raise your game when it’s likely to be heard by someone who isn’t just your mate. Knowing your content is up for both legal and critical scrutiny is always healthy as well, as your skills will subconsciously become stronger and the real stresses of journalism will emerge. As will the adrenaline rush, of course.

It’s time, then, for TV tutors out there to ask themselves: “How can we incorporate this?”

Exact details of YouTube’s plans are not clear, but it’s fairly likely that users will be able to embed the live video into their own site, much like the way we do with normal clips now.

If convergence is the way forward – which, let’s face it, it is – then how better to teach multimedia journalism than to create a website that is rammed full of text, images, audio, multimedia and now, gloriously, live television. Every j-school has the resources to do all of this, which means every j-school should do it, no excuses.

When it comes to inspiring great, high quality work, you really can’t get much better than this.

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