Journoz: Updates for Australian Journalists

Fix it

Many Web sites are still annoying a lot of people. If you're using tiny fonts, not differentiating between links and non-links, using pointless Flash animations, opening endless new windows, forcing people to fill in too-long forms, users will desert your site in droves. Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen polled users on the most annoying features of sites and came up with the Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html. We've heard these before, but some Web designers still don't get it!

Digital junkyards?

A new project that might be of use to journalists and journalism students is the Open Source Media Project (www.open-media.org/). This aims to turn into an open source repository of digital media and should include all kinds of multimedia content, generally produced by ordinary people who have moblogged or photographed or videoed things that happened. The site will store the content for free (courtesy of space donated by the Internet Archive) and make it available under Creative Commons licenses. Closer to home, the Australian Creative Sources Online (www.uq.edu.au/acro/) site aims to store Australian digital media content. Neither site has much of anything on board at the moment but it might be wise to bookmark them for later on.

Everyone loves a freebie

Blogger and writer Dan Gillmor has released a freely accessible version of his book We The Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People which you can find at www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/. The aim of the book is to examine where journalism is going, in a world where email, mobile phones, camera phones and blogs enable all kinds of people to be reporters.

Gillmor talks about the changes that September 11 has wrought:
"... news was being produced by regular people who had something to say and show, and not solely by the “official” news organizations that had traditionally decided how the first draft of history would look. This time, the first draft of history was being written, in part, by the former audience. It was possible—it was inevitable—because of new publishing tools available on the Internet.
Another kind of reporting emerged during those appalling hours and days. Via emails, mailing lists, chat groups, personal web journals—all nonstandard news sources—we received valuable context that the major American media couldn’t, or wouldn’t, provide.
We were witnessing—and in many cases were part of—the future of news." Gillmor's talk to the UK Guardian about his book is here.

Compelling viewing

Millions of Americans go online looking for news that the mainstream media can't give them. A disturbing number specifically want to see graphic images, such as those emerging from the war in Iraq. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has a new report out called The Internet as a Unique News Source. The report claims that 30 million people have seen war images. Of those, a third wish they hadn't looked, with women especially thinking that some images should not be available online. But the appetite for these images is there -- is it because people want to find the truth? Or is it something darker? Find the full report at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_News_Images_July04.pdf.

Teach yourself multimedia journalism

The Online News Association (http://www.journalists.org/) has built a training module based on four projects that were finalists for 2003 Online Journalism Awards. The module takes users through the processes that the four organisations, one of which was the Los Angeles Times, used to produce their award-winning work. To use the module, you need to go to News University (http://newsu.org/) and 'enrol' - this means registering, after which you can use the module for nothing. The direct link for the module is at http://newsu.org/courses/course_detail.aspx?id=ona1.

Advice for aspiring journalists

How can young journalists just starting out prepare themselves? Steve Outing, senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies (www.poynter.org/) and Stop the Presses! columnist for Editor & Publisher, had some suggestions in an interview with UK's dotJournalism (www.journalism.co.uk/). Outing says: "Learn the technology. It's not necessarily about picking up specific skills ... but about understanding what's possible with the technology, and being able to work with the technologists. You are likely to be working in multiple platforms. Even if you think that you're likely to be mostly a text journalist, pick up some broadcast skills for when that's necessary to tell a story best. Learn how to take decent photographs - because even if that's not 'your job' you still may find yourself with a photo phone or digital pocket camera in hand when something important has happened and there's no staff photographer around. Learn to be versatile. Recognise that there are new jobs out there. ... Recognise that journalism is changing - away from the we-tell-you model and toward being more of a conversation between journalist and readers." The full interview is at www.journalism.co.uk/profiles/profile10.shtml

Looking good

Involve your readers by seeking eyewitness feedback to inprove news stories. Make reader comments part of the story. Use the Weblog format to cover a breaking news event. How else can you improve your online news service? These ideas from Jonathan Dube's 101 ways to improve your news site could be a start, but Dube has many more at http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001290.php. He also invites readers to supply their own. Also on the topic is Dan Froomkin's piece for OJR, entitled "Ideas for Online Publications: Lessons From Blogs, Other Signposts". Froomkin, the author of washingtonpost.com's White House Briefing column, suggests that journalists should "add relevant URLs to their stories. And reporters should routinely be churning out FAQs and primers on their beats, because on the Web this contextual information has enormous value -- and longevity." Journalists should also learn from blogs and try to "facilitate exchanges with readers." He also sees community building as key. The complete article can be found at http://ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1085603014.php.

More online journalism webcasts

The University of Texas held a two-day symposium on online journalism (the 5th International Symposium on Online Journalism) on 16-17 April this year. Webcasts from the event will be available soon at http://journalism.utexas.edu//onlinejournalism/. However, the site includes many reports from sessions of the symposium, which covered blogging, the role of the editor, progress and innovation, definitions of multimedia journalism and more. Snapshots of previous years' symposia are also available. These include trancripts of selected sessions. So take a look now, and then go back for any Webcast of interest when they are archived.

Not an April fool's thing

Webcasts are available from several sessions from the 3rd Symposium on Converged Journalism held at the University of Florida on 1 April, 2004. The home page (in Flash) is at http://www.jou.ufl.edu/converge/. It includes information on the panels and guests. Selected Webcasts include: How Broadcast, Online and Print Journalists Work Together (1 hr 15 mins), Photojournalism in a War Zone (1 hr 49 mins), Blogging and Journalism (58 mins) and Entertainment Journalism (59 mins).

Need to know?

A new article in Online Journalism Review discusses how to create an online journalism course - what should go into such a course - software skills, writing skills? And exactly what is online journalism, anway? The piece was written by Mindy McAdams of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. Read it at http://ojr.org/ojr/education/1081490316.php. The site links to resources that could be used in teaching the subject and also to existing syllabi used for teaching the subject in different educational institutions.

US opinion

Anyone who wants a taste of US editorials and opinion page pieces will find a new weblog called - wait for it - editorial and opinion useful. Subtitled A daily index of opinion from mainstream American newspapers, it's at http://johnpeterzenger.easycgi.com/ and it aggregates a whole range of links to today's op/ed stuff in the US. The site is organised by topic, (e.g. Election 2004, Gun control, Iraq), by source publication (e.g. Boston Globe, Washington Post) and by columnist name (William F. Buckley Jr, Maureen Dowd), e.g. so you can skim it pretty quickly.

Making a dollar

The first part of a piece on 'What Newspapers and Their Web Sites Must Do to Survive' has just been published on Online Journalism Review (http://www.ojr.org/). Written by online publishing consultant Vin Crosbie, the piece alleges that : "Printed editions are becoming ever less relevant and less popular in most people's lives. Worse, the decline in newspaper readership is accelerating." In response, he claims that "the newspaper industry has spent billions of dollars during the past 10 years creating and publishing online editions", many of which may be making money, but have yet to recoup their start up costs. He offers a three-part solution to newspapers on how to survive. Read the whole piece at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/business/1078349998.php. It's all part of a wider look at OJR at the future of online news http://ojr.org/ojr/business/future.php.

Publish and be spammed?

While Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen believes email newsletters still have plenty of mileage in them, he warns that people who don't want to get them any more often block them as spam rather than go through the bother of unsubscribing. As Nielsen warns: "The fact that many users will declare a newsletter to be spam when they tire of it has terrifying implications: legitimate newsletters might get blacklisted and thus ISPs might block their delivery to other subscribers. This is a compelling reason to increase the usability of the unsubscribe process: better to lose a subscriber than to be listed as spam." Certainly anything that makes it easy for people to get off mailing lists they are sick of would be good. All too often unsubscribing doesn't work, or results in even more unwanted mail. Newsletter publishers need to address this. The full piece, "Targeted Email Newsletters Show Continued Strength" is at www.useit.com/alertbox/20040217.html.

More than just apples

Launched online this month is new Tassie offering, Leatherwood Online, a full colour mag which bills itself as a Journey of Discovery for Tasmania. It covers the arts, food, travel, and heritage as well as stories about ordinary Tasmanians. It features some terrific photographs including wilderness areas and surfing shots from Shipstern Bluff. Get some tips for your next southern holiday. Find it at http://www.leatherwoodonline.com/.

So what is news now?

What was newsworthy pre-Internet may no longer fit in the online news era, according to a new book by MIT Professor Pablo J. Boczkowski. A sociologist who studies how print news organisations deal with new digital media technologies, he's now written a book to describe the changes news has undergone online espcially with reader participation helping to define what news should be. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers will be published in April 2004 by MIT Press. It costs US $30 and has an ISBN 0-262-02559-0. Details can be found at MIT Press. Online Journalism Review has an article on the book and the ideas behind it at http://ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1075928349.php.

ONA Conference report

Dr Stephen Quinn, author of Newsgathering on the Net, is currently based in the US. He attended the annual Online News Association conference held in Chicago on Nov 14-15 (http://www.journalists.org/2003conference/) and had the following report to make.

What's next? someone in the audience asked Jack Fuller, who gave the keynote address on the first day.

"I don't know," he said. "You probably don't either. Things are changing very rapidly." He spoke about lessons in humility he had learned from the online world: what we need to do is to experiment and assess the results, and adapt, and do it over and over again - not get wedded to ideology about what people want. Newspapers are notoriously difficult to change because readers get upset at change. Newspapers must experiment and adapt. Humility means recognizing oour own lack of knowledge - ignorance in the true sense. Recent research had shown that newspapers are conservative, perfectionist and reluctant to change, similar in culture to the military and hospitals. Fuller said he understood why there were some reasons to preserve some aspects of this culture - you want people to be perfectionists when they are doing delicate operations. Fuller said he hoped that newspapers had the potential to change. Read more about Fuller at http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/ReadMe/article.php?id=243.

Ideas for generating convergence kept being asked from the floor in several of the sessions. Here are the consolidated thoughts:

• create competition (some newsrooms have whiteboards where people track successes)
• leadership from top
• awards (one paper has a golden Mr Potatohead award which is given weekly
• encourage recalcitrants through carefully worded performance reviews
• provide tools via training
• ask reporters: "What do you need? What do you want?"
• establish a convergence mission statement: defining urgent news. "An event of community news or significance," one reporter said of his newsroom.
• reporters care more about profession than their employer. They will respond to ways to improve their journalism.
• Give them people they respect as their leaders.
• know how to talk reporters' language.
• Support from top down.

How to attract a young audience was a common theme. Here are the thoughts of Don Estes, editor of chicagotribune.com

Estes spoke about the tao of FLOID. Fresh, local, often updated, images and interactive, aimed at the young demographic. Here are details about each:

• Fresh: Day starts with shovelware at 6am but updates from then. Signals with timestamps, update tags. Morning: hard news; noon more utilitarian (mortgages, better deal on cell phone); evening more entertainment.
• Local: breaking news with local angles "Our franchise is not Iraq or Washington, it's local news. "Concentrate on utilities - schools, weather, crime stats, traffic - what you can't get from our competitors."
• Often update, never stale: aimed at work week 6am-6pm, Mon to Fri. "The story people see at 9am is very different from the story at 3pm that day."
• Images and interactive: readers love photos (the most viewed feature). Polls and message boards. "For things that people care about these things take off like a rocket."
• Demographics: young are targeted: "Advertisers love that. We have those demographics in mind when we design the site each day."

Blogging was another popular subject. The other keynote speaker was Andrew Sullivan, who runs a popular blog at www.andrewsullivan.com

Read the blog from conference attendees. See http://www.journalists.org/2003conference/blog/

Publishing unedited blogs on news sites is "a suicide pact," says a lawyer with Dow Jones & Company. See http://onlinejournalism.com/topics/brief.php?briefID=64468.

Convergence defined

Media convergence is much talked about and probably little understood. A new book, 'Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism' has a chapter entitled 'Convergence defined 'by Rich Gordon. Online Journalism Review (http://www.ojr.org/) has posted the chapter in full at its site. It covers convergence in media technology, in media organisations and in media ownership and covers structure, tactics, information gathering, storytelling, and the implications of convergence. The chapter is online at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/business/1068686368.php.

Essential reading?

A new book called Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism, edited by Kevin Kawamoto, is about to be published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. According to the blurb, it covers the history and evolution of digital journalism, provides a primer on the economic, technological, and sociological issues surrounding convergence, includes a case study and student exercise analysing a multimedia news web site, and serves as a basic text for courses in online, digital, new media, or multimedia journalism. See for yourself here.
$24.95 Paper 0-7425-2681-X
$69.00 Cloth 0-7425-2680-1

2003 finalists

Finalists in the 2003 Online Journalism Awards have been announced. The awards are sponsored annually by the Online News Association (http://www.journalists.org/) and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (http://ascweb.usc.edu/home.php). Categories for awards include General Excellence, Breaking News, Feature Journalism, Enterprise Journalism, Service Journalism, Creative Use of the Medium and Commentary. To get a good idea of where online journalism is going, have a look. The list is at http://www.journalists.org/awards/finalists/finalists%202003/index.html.

Diplomacy Monitor

Keep on top of new official statements, policy documents, press briefings and speeches worldwide via the St. Thomas University School of Law's Diplomacy Monitor (http://www.diplomacymonitor.com/). It is updated all through the day with new material. Full-text searching of every document archived within the database is available. The site also holds working papers and reports on the Net's influence on global diplomacy, such as The Rise of Netpolitik - how the Internet is changing international politics and diplomacy.

Net or nothing

UQ postgrad student An Nguyen has published an article on First Monday (http://firstmonday.org/). The piece, The current status and potential development of online news consumption: A structural approach, says the Net will become a major news medium in the years ahead and compares online news consumption across the globe. Read it at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_9/nguyen/.

Paid content

Online Journalism Review has a piece called "Newspapers Want to Charge for Content, but Will Readers Pay?" at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/business/1062025099.php. It summarises a speech that media analyst Peter Krasilovsky gave at the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism's Multimedia Reporting and Convergence Workshop in the US. According to Krasilovsky: "Paid content is a great way to make more money, but the real money is in advertising and marketing, don't ever forget it." So, better to give away your news as building subscription roadblocks to keep people out might just keep them away for good.

Get over it

Forget charging for online news, says Ashley Highfield, director of new media and technology at the BBC. Mr Highfield told The Independent that 'news was a "commodity" on the web, where it was traditionally free. He said those organisations seeking to charge for news should "give up and move on". He said only niche content, such as specialist research, could work under a paymodel, and the BBC did not operate in these areas.' Full details at http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=436838

Drowning, not waving

It's out there - a wave of news headlines, commentary, specials, story archives, breaking news and opinions - and it threatens to become a tsunami. Enter the news aggregators - sites such as Google News (http://news.google.com/) and the Columbia Newsblaster (http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/newsblaster/) - that help you stay focused on your news. Reuters has a story on these services that do not produce their own news themselves but help you keep track of news from all over. The piece, "News Sites Make Sense of Web's Flood of Info", is at http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=3327300.

Telling stories online

A new web log called Interactive Narratives (http://www.interactivenarratives.org/) can help you learn to tell stories online, using all the bells and whistles the medium offers you. If you learn by looking at what others have already done (and who doesn't?), then this could be the site for you.

Do you syndicate?

If you're a blogger, you may well allow your entries to be syndicated for news aggregator services. (If you use blogging software such as MoveableType, syndication is easy.) News sites need to be syndicatable too, so that headline aggregators can come along and suck up their content. The technology is Rich Site Summary (aka Really Simple Syndication or RSS for short). If you don't know about it yet, it's about time you did. Read a few tips at the excellent Lockergnome's RSS page (http://rss.lockergnome.com/). If you are interested in what's available via RSS, look at NewsIsFree. You will need an RSS reader, such as AmphetaDesk (available from http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/) to translate the feeds into headlines.

Are online advertisements killing journalism?

Is the Fairfax empire doomed as job ads move increasingly online? The Murdoch Press have rolled their advertising into CareerOne, and Kerry Packer is supposedly buying into major Aussie job site seek.com.au. Fairfax has used income from classifieds to subsidise its journalism. Now Eric Beecher is questioning what will happen in the changing market. See more of this issue at Crikey's forum at http://www.crikey.com.au/business/2003/08/07/20030807seekfairfax.html.

Beyond the New York Times

There is quite a robust alternative newspaper sector in the US, if the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Directory is any guide. It's at http://aan.org/gbase/Aan/publicationDirectory and offers links to online newspapers, a searchable archive, as well as a "This week in Alternative Weeklies" section.

Laughing all the way to the bank

Profitability is the Holy Grail of online journalism. Journalism.co.uk has a six-point plan by Jemima Kiss to push your site into the black. Read all about it at http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story677.html.

A hundred million readers can't be wrong - or can they?

Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun has surpassed The Guardian as the most popular newspaper on the web, according to the latest figures from ABC Electronic (http:// www.abce.org.uk/). The audit puts page impressions for The Sun Online (http://www.thesun.com/) for April at over 107 million, more than 2 million ahead of the latest figures for The Guardian's network of websites (http://www.guardianunlimited.com/).

New media

Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital, gives his views on old and new media to journalism.co.uk. In response to the question, "Will new media overtake traditional media?" he says, "New media couldn't totally replace traditional media, but electronic delivery will become more and more important both for commerce and for the consumer. Smart phones will, I predict, particularly change news delivery." He also covers the question of what the Net can do that print can't - namely, that the Net "goes everywhere and it's very difficult to stop", it's "much better than print at reader input", it "carries digital data regardless of its form", is "not constrained by newsprint, either in form or in the cost structure of the business" and "you can slice and dice content in almost unlimited ways." The full interview is at http://www.journalism.co.uk/profile2.html.

European Online Journalism awards

NetMedia, which sponsors an annual conference on digital journalism and multimedia, has just announced the nominees for its European Online Journalism awards. BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/) gets a nod as does the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (http://www.ipwr.net/). Read more at http://www.net-media.co.uk/awards/shortlist.asp.

Dayparting?

People want different things from news sites at different times of the day. In the morning, they want breaking news and sports updates; in the afternoon and evenings, they are more interested in what time the local movie starts, job listings or the classifieds. This trend is called Dayparting (why?), and online news sites can satisfy customers by tailoring their offerings according to the time of day. Read the full story at Online Journalism Review at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/aboutojr/1055792590.php.

Growing your own job

Mark Glaser, a columnist at Online Journalism Review, has written a piece called One-Man Blogs Prove There Is Money to Be Made by Online Journals, which should give aid and encouragement to those who want to make themselves heard online and earn a buck in the process. Successful blogs sum up news, provide links, throw in some commentary and often do some useful original reporting. Read the full piece at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1055879147.php. If you want to see how it's done, Glaser's column this week rates the most influential blogs at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1056050270.php.

PDF papers - a threat to online news?

J.D. Lasica has a piece, Are Digital Newspaper Editions More Than Smoke and Mirrors?, on this issue. According to Lasica, "About 90 newspapers worldwide now publish digital editions -- exact replicas of printed newspapers or magazines that users can read on their computer screens." If you have never seen a PDF paper, believe me that the quality is terrific (better than print) and some digital newspaper platforms, such as NewsStand (http://www.newsstand.com/), which produces a PDF version of the Australian, offer functionality such as keyword search, that makes the paper easy to scan or search, especially as backfile builds up and you can search across several days' issues. But does it mean the end of free online news? It well might. Read more at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/technology/1054780462.php.

Making online news pay

American Journalism Review has a piece, "Searching for Online Gold", on revenue models for online newspapers. According to the article, the paid subscription model is losing favour. So what else is there to try? Find out at http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3027.

Everyone's a journo

Becoming a journalist in South Korea is easier than blogging. Just sign up at OhmyNews, (http://www.ohmynews.com/) and you can contribute to a collaborative online news service. Wired News has the full story at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58856,00.html/wn_ascii. The story includes this quote from Oh Yeon-ho, OhmyNews's editor: "With OhmyNews, we wanted to say goodbye to 20th-century journalism where people only saw things through the eyes of the mainstream, conservative media. Our main concept is every citizen can be a reporter. We put everything out there and people judge the truth for themselves."

Google's Aussie news?

Google News has launched an Australian news section. This should provide a portal to Australian news publishing from a range of sources so it's a bit of a hoot that today's top story is from the UK Guardian and not from an Australian source at all. Lots of other foreign news sources appear too - the NYT, the FT and so on. Maybe it's the Aussie news providers' fault? After all, some Australian newspapers try to lock down so much of their online news that this kind of service can't even see it, much less list it. Can that be wise for the future of online news? After all, a service such as this might drive more traffic their way, and if people don't see an organisation's news up on Google News Australia, they might bypass those sources altogether and go where they can get a freely available story. This is one of a number of country-specific news portals released by Google recently. See it at http://news.google.com.au/ and thanks to Bill D. for the tip.

The G-G and Freudian slips

Australian Policy Online has posted an opinion by the Gilbert+Tobin Centre of Public Law, University of New South Wales, that the only safe course for Peter Hollingworth is to resign the Governor-Generalship. In a delightful typo, the introduction states: "Dr Hollingworth should resign, but reforms to the officer [my italics] are needed before he is replaced, according to George Williams". Reforms to the officer, indeed - presumably Hollingworth's detractors believe such reforms are long overdue. The piece is at http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/items/00295.shtml.

Customising the news

With many media organisations uncertain of the future of news online (all free? some free with premium content by subscription?), it is interesting to see the Miami Herald's take on the topic. Their new MyHerald.com service offers subscribers two options - a PDF of the paper so you can get an exact facsimile of the print version or a totally customisable 'Quickbrowse' version where you choose to load up the screen with stories that interest you. (You choose these from a list of every story in that day's paper.) Anyone who wants to check it out can sign up for a free, two-week trial at http://www.myherald.com/.

The online business model for media

Steve Outing's latest Stop the Presses column is about successful business models for online news. He states: " For those news organizations that take the Internet seriously (and that's definitely not everyone, yet), news sites are a real business, bringing in substantial revenues ... U.S. newspaper Web sites generated $655 million in revenues in 2002 - or 40% of the $1.65 billion spent on local Internet advertising." That's a lot of dollars. Read the whole column at http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/
features_columns/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1877517.

Internet radio

There is a very comprehensive article (with links) on Radio on the Internet by Ian Winship in the always excellent FreePint (http://www.freepint.co.uk/). Read the piece at http://www.freepint.com/issues/170403.htm#tips.

News feeds - reshaping the Web for news?

Caroline White has a story, News feeds to reshape the web, at journalism.co.uk (http://www.journalism.co.uk/). She writes: "Journalists and web experts in the US are predicting that news feeds will re-shape the way online news is published, despite several European court rulings outlawing the practice of deep-linking. There are now hundreds of news feed, or RSS (Rich Site Summary) software packages available to download free. Using XML, they search for stories under a list of topics and publications chosen by the user, then feed a selection of headlines and story summaries back to them." Read the full story at http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story579.html

Hotline to the afterlife?

You'd probably need a LOT of faith to cough up money at Afterlife Telegrams. At this site, you can pay a terminally ill patient to memorise a message on your behalf which will then be delivered (when that patient dies) to someone you want to communicate with who's already died. No mention here of delivery problems in case that someone has been sent to the 'wrong place', and there's not much chance of getting your money back if you feel the delivery didn't take place. At $US5 a word, you wouldn't want to have a lot to say or it could get expensive. Check it out at http://www.afterlifetelegrams.com/AFTERLIFE/.

Online university for journalists from 2004

Online university for journalists from 2004
The Poynter Institute (http://www.poynter.org/), in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (http://www.knightfdn.org/), will launch NewsU (http://www.newsu.org/) in 2004, a Web-based journalism university providing reporting, editing and online journalism courses as well as handy links for journalists. More details can be found via Poynter at http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=28991&sid=41.

Survey of American journalists
The Knight Foundation also sponsored The American Journalist Today survey, carried out by researchers at the School of Journalism at Indiana University, which found that the Internet is now vital to journalists at work. Journalists are using the Net to talk to readers, download data, do background checks, get news releases and research story facts. Find the survey at http://www.knightfdn.org/default.asp?story=news_at_knight/special_reports/americanjournalist/2003_04_10_aj.html. Poynter has information and links at http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=28844#series too.

Register to get it

The New York Times has put its Iraq Navigator online for anyone, journalist or otherwise, who wants to use it. It is not just a good list of links to information on different aspects of Iraq and the war, but also a bird's eye view of how a major national newspaper newsroom organises online information for major stories. See for yourself (you'll need to register for free first) at http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/IRAQ_NAVIGATOR.html.

Still in the game

They may be feeling sidelined by George W. Bush's Iraqi adventure but the UN is still churning out news and information big time. The United Nations News Centre posts daily news updates that include a calendar of events, UN statements, briefings, press releases, and news conferences. You can subscribe to news alerts or search an archive back to April 2001. In French, English and Arabic, with some audio and video.

War: A Defining Moment for Net News

The Internet is doing well as a news medium in this war, according to Steve Outing. Read his Stop the Presses colmn on the issue at http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/features_columns/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1848575

Streaming news

Find news organisations and broadcasters who provide either live or streaming news segments on the web at http://www.freepint.com/gary/audio.htm.

Big picture treatment - for both froth and serious news

If you are interested in interactive news, look at two contrasting Big Picture specials from MSNBC - one on Iraq at http://www.msnbc.com/modules/bigpicture/iraq/and one on the Oscars http://www.msnbc.com/modules/bigpicture/oscars/. You'll need a fast connection to download big video clips. You can vote for your choice (for the Oscars) or answer tough questions on Iraq - the aim is to get people to interact with the news - the specials are based on deep research of how viewers want to do that.

Shock, horror - a news web site makes money

The Financial Times in the UK sank 200 million pounds into their web site FT.com before it finally turned a profit. It has now gone into the black, while the newspaper, ironically, has gone into the red. The Guardian's Media section has the full story at http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,906630,00.html.

Fitting out a digital newsroom?

If you have to create a multimedia newsroom and aren't sure what to do, have a look at the Online Journalism Review article Gear for the Multimedia Newsroom at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/lasica/1039552387.php. It describes phones, cameras, notebook computers, scanners, software and more.

Learn to tell a story

A new site, The Elements of Digital Storymaking, at http://www.inms.umn.edu/elements/ will be useful for anyone who wants to get news across in the online medium.

Who's convergent now?

Steve Outing has a new column, Walking the convergence talk at http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/features_columns/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1776320. Outing interviewed journalists who, on a daily basis, report and produce content for print, the Internet, radio, and/or television.

J-Lab is live

From the site description: "J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism helps news organizations use innovative computer technologies to develop new ways for people to engage in critical public policy issues.
It funds interactive news ideas and team newsrooms with computer scientists to build software and dynamic news experiences." Find it at http://www.j-lab.org/. For those interested in the design of a digital newsroom, Newsplex is also worth a look at http://www.newsplex.org/.

Building a usable Web

Jakob Nielsen is a recognised expert on Web usability. The FreePint newsletter has an interview with him at http://www.freepint.com/issues/141102.htm#feature. If you are truly interested in making your site accessible to anyone, including people with disabilities, read the piece.

UK media industry news ...

... and gossip... Hold the Front Page at http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/index.shtml has UK media industry news, job vacancies, 'behind the headlines' info, funnies, links to regional newspapers and story ideas. Thanks to Bernard Slattery for the tip.

Converged newsroom

November 13 will be the launch date of the newsplex, a "micro-newsroom equipped with all the technological and organizational sophistication envisioned for a full-sized, cross-media, information-focused, Third Millennium newsgathering and news management environment". The prototype is meant to be a prototype for publishers everywhere. More info on the prototype is at http://www.newsplex.org/prototype/index.shtml, or visit the main site at http://www.newsplex.org/.

The government we need

Phil Dickie of the Brisbane Institute's Brisbane Line has an article on leadership and government at http://www.brisinst.org.au/resources/dickie_phil_lead.html. There are links to other articles on leadership, and contributions are welcome.

Journos and the Net

The Virtual Trail: Political Journalism on the Internet is a 78-page report from the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, based at George Washington University in the US. It claims journos spend more than two hours a day online. Find it at http://www.ipdi.org/virtual_trail.pdf.