Why “Bloggers vs. Journalists” is Still With Us. Mar.4 A pre-conference post. Ideas in motion. These are notes in preparation for my talk at South by Southwest in Austin next week. And you can help me make it better. I am going to be doing a solo presentation at South by Southwest in Austin this year. I wrote my essay, Bloggers vs. Now there’s a clear risk in trying to do this at South by Southwest: to many people who have been paying attention, especially the digerati, bloggers v. journalists is almost the definition of a played-out theme. But I’ve noticed something else over the years. By the psychology of a profession I mean something distinct from the individuals who work in journalism, about whom I claim no special insight. Here, then, is some of the material I have collected. My plan is to develop my points using carefully curated slides presenting quotes that match up with key concepts, sort of like this… (But this is just a demo, not the actual preso 1. 2.
Jeremy Peters, media reporter for The New York Times: # 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Intl Info Programs: Pavel Gusev (MK): Prestig... New Times: The Future of Journalism. Free online news resources. Future of journalism. How Journalists Are Using Social Media to Report on the Egyptian Demonstrations. With the Internet still inaccessible for the majority of people in Egypt, much of the international community is relying on journalists with satellite phones for real-time updates on the violent protests calling for Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in power. The demonstrations are continuing despite the government's attempts to block communications channels, including the Internet, SMS, TV broadcast by journalists, and mobile networks. Pundits have been weighing in on the role of social media in sparking the uprising, and whether it is a necessary ingredient in accelerating modern revolutions or simply an over-hyped notion.
In some respects, the attempt to block communication has done little to stifle reports coming out of the country. Though much of the citizenry isn't able to broadcast themselves, their stories are being told and amplified by reporters. Real Time Tweets Journalists on location have been updating their Twitter accounts with 140-character stories. Live Blogs. Liveblogging versus second stage shovelware. Liveblogging is one of my favourite journalistic forms to have emerged in the last few years.
I'm a huge practitioner of it myself, and take every opportunity to indulge myself in it that I can. So, this post by Martin Belam caught my eye this morning. He was responding to a post by John of The Louse and The Flea, who was criticising The Guardian's liveblogging of the Christchurch earthquake. Martin's response was to point out that The Guardian did other, more traditional, reporting of the story. But I'd just like to take a moment to defend the practice of liveblogging itself, something many of the commenters on the original post are clearly not sold on.
Most journalists think in a goal-driven way. The internet does not possess this quality. Liveblogging is one of those. In essence, some people are still locked in what I might call second-stage shovelware. The basic flaw in the original post, as I see it, is that the author misunderstood the context of a liveblog: Michael Skoler on newsroom culture. Endemic - Telecommuting can replace newsrooms. BeatBlogging.Org doesn’t have any offices. There is no newsroom.
Jay Rosen and I don’t even live in the same state. Oh, we do collaborate like mad. We just don’t need to be face-to-face to do it. We use Google Docs, wikis and an internal blog. We use Mevio for our audio files and WordPress for our site. These Web tools have made us incredibly efficient and allow us to run extremely lean. In fact, I’d say working collaboratively and remotely makes us more efficient. Sometimes inspiration strikes at 2:00 a.m. This all brings me to my real point: What’s the point of a newsroom in today’s era of limited resources? Workers > buildings Michael Rosenblum and a client got rid of the newsroom. We had an office for the first station, but realized after a year, no one went there. Why do content producers need to be in a physical building? If I’m an editor, I don’t want to see my reporters. They certainly don’t need to be in the same building together. Telecommuting is all about mindset. The Future of Journalism. Eleven Things I’d Do If I Ran a News Organization.
You may have noticed — you could hardly miss it — the current blizzard of one-year anniversary stories about the fall of Lehman Brothers, an event that helped spark last fall’s financial meltdown. The coverage mainly reminds me that journalists failed to do their jobs before last fall’s crisis emerged, and have continued to fail since then. It also reminds me of a few pet peeves about the way traditional journalists operate. So here’s a list of 11 things I’d insist on, just for starters, if I ran a news organization.
Why 11? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. If we were a local newspaper, the editorial and op-ed pages would publish the best of, and be a guide to, the conversation the community was having with itself online and in other public forums, whether hosted by the news organization or someone else. 6. 7. So and so is not worth some amount of money. 8. 9. 10. 11. Welcome to BoingBoing readers. Databases drive traffic. When The Texas Tribune launched, Matt Stiles said the site was the .10 version of what it would be six months out. Sixteen months later, the site’s traffic and audience have grown tremendously, in large part because of its work with data. The Tribune has created more than 50 data-driven projects that readers are using to locate their lawmakers in the Capitol, access information about prison inmates, and see how minorities have driven population growth in Texas.
Stiles said by phone that in addition to driving about two-thirds of The Texas Tribune’s traffic, the databases have attracted new audiences and provided readers with an interactive way to access information that’s public but not always easy to find. “We’re sort of like an OpenSecrets slash online news organization,” said Stiles, reporter and data applications editor. The Texas Tribune’s database of annual salaries for more than 550,000 public employees has generated a lot of attention among taxpayers. What is Google One Pass?: What future for media and journalism? Explainer.net.
The Studio 20 Building a Better Explainer Project was launched in November 2010 by Professor Jay Rosen’s graduate journalism class, in partnership with the non-profit investigative newsroom, ProPublica. The project will experiment with the form of “the explainer,” a genre in journalism that provides the essential background knowledge necessary to follow events in the news. Explainer.Net is the public face of this project, where we will share findings and promote quality work in the rapidly evolving industry of explanation, both inside and out of journalism.
Here is the rationale for the explainer project, as articulated by Jay Rosen in a short video (5:22): Learn more ProPublica senior editor Eric Umansky and Jay Rosen discuss the Building a Better Explainer Project [Podcast] Social media should be part of your political news strategy, Pew research indicates. January 27, 2011 {*style:<b> Digital communication is changing how Americans learn about and engage in politics—and social media is definitely a fast-growing part of that picture, according to new research from Pew… </b>*} A new Pew report claims that 22% of online Americans used social networking or Twitter for politics in 2010 campaign .
In addition to Twitter, this included social networking services such as Facebook or MySpace. Pew did not specify whether locative social media (such as Foursquare) or photo-sharing services (such as Flickr, Instagram, or PicPlz) also played a role in this trend. In some ways this study indicates a leveling of the digital politics playing field. Americans are increasingly using social media to find out about, respond to, and share news, especially political news and analysis. This is an opportunity to plan ahead and think strategically. It’s a good idea to do that now, rather than just before an election. By Amy Gahran, 01/27/11 at 10:14 am Yes, i think so. ABC Feral Month. Koppel Criticizes Rise of Infotainment, Commentary that Disregards Facts. The tensions between fact and opinion, news and infotainment and the role of journalism in democracy were at the crux of Ted Koppel’s talk, “Journalism in Crisis: Who’s to Blame?
,” at The Poynter Institute on Monday night. During his talk, Koppel spoke about these tensions as they relate to the state of media, what got us here and how we can preserve the integrity of news. I’ve selected some highlights from Koppel’s talk below. You can replay the chat and the video to find out which news source he would choose if he could have only one, to hear a song he wrote about President Richard Nixon at the Great Wall of China, and more. Technology vs. journalism Koppel spoke at length about how social networking has changed the way people contribute to, and consume, news coverage.
“It is desperately important that everyone have the right to be a reporter, but I think we need to adapt to the new reality of the technology,” he said. Quality journalism involves a lot more, he said. Fact vs. opinion. The Future of Journalism. The future of context and the future of journalism. Matt Thompson has been doing deep thinking about the future of journalism, since he and Robin Sloan created the EPIC flash animations while at Poynter at the urging of Howard Finberg. Matt has been thinking about context and ways that journalism can transcend shortcomings that were a product of linear platforms.
He explored it during a Reynolds Fellowship at the University of Missouri and at the blog Newsless. Yesterday, he explored the topic at a panel with Jay Rosen and Tristan Harris of Apture. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting all three panelists in the past. This discussion did something I don’t see often in terms of future of journalism conversations, it actually moved things forward and has jump-started a very good discussion on specific action to take next. I see a divide. Matt thinks the volume of “episodic” news, hundreds of headlines washing over us each day might be the problem. Being inundated with information isn’t making us more informed. Like this: Like Loading...