This week the live video streaming service, Ustream, introduced Watershed, a ‘white-label service for websites and businesses that want to broadcast their own live streams’ on a pay-as-you-go basis, TechCrunch reports.
“Watershed comes with a lot of extra management capabilities like the ability to customize the player, add a logo, turn on features like chat, polling, picture-in-picture video chat, Twitter integration, analytics and more,” TechCrunch outlines.
“Five major newspapers in New Jersey and New York announced on Wednesday that they would share articles and photographs, adding to a growing movement in an industry that is seeking new ways to cope with shrinking resources,” reports the New York Times.
The agreement is between The Daily News of New York, The Star-Ledger, The Buffalo News, The Record, and The Times Union of Albany.
A Twitter debate kicks off this morning at 10am London time, organised by Alexandre Gamela (@alexgamela), which looks at ‘new business models for media’
“We do not want to discuss just the transition from traditional to online media and their revenue sources, but how money can be made online by independent bloggers and journalists too,” Gamela writes on his blog.
You can follow via CoverItLive, or make use of the Tweet stream below.
If you missed it yesterday, this week’s Media Show presented by Ed Stourton is worth listening to. In light of the recent bush fires in Australia, Stourton asks his guests (Reuters’ Chris Cramer and Channel 4′s Lindsey Hilsum) about generational changes in journalism when reporting in emotional or distressing situations. Then, a look at the fate of Teletext. But then to a debate that’s been dominating newspaperland over the last week following Roy Greenslade’s declaration that subs – as we know them – are becoming redundant.
Brian Cathcart and Roy Greenslade (on the line from Brighton) talk to Stourton.
A quick summary:
BC:
“There is this army of people who are out there serving the industry of journalism, who police this and in quite a private and quiet way (…) [They] check the grammar and spelling, check some of the facts (…) check the sort of general thrust of the story, that it all makes sense (…) cut it to length and put a headline on top.”
“I don’t think they [subs] should be at the front of the queue for the chop.”
RG:
Makes it clear that his comments apply to regional/local and broadsheet or serious newspapers, rather than tabloids. Subs are ‘key workers when it comes to tabloid newspapers.’
Subbing outsourcing is already happening, with sub-editors working cross-titles at many papers.
“The change I’m expecting next is that subs will be eliminated or re-purposed (…) what we need are writers, reporters who can produce copy which is already accurate and obeys the law, and so on…”
Radio and TV presenters are expected to produce material speedily and accurately; “why is it that we don’t expect NP journalists to do the same thing?”
Then to the Midlands to meet the Birmingham Post editor, Marc Reeves (@marcreeves) and one of the media production journalists who works across several of the group’s titles.
MR:
The paper is ‘saying to people we need you to be used to this new way of working’.
The titles will ‘always need people to look after the finessing of the output (…) certainly the traditional role of the subeditor will be redefined.’
Social news: Lists are traditional newsprint fare but also translate well to using social media tools to distribute your news. See more tips on social news at the European Journalism Centre. Tipster: Laura Oliver.
Prior to his appearance to talk about Twitter on BBC West Midlands’ breakfast show this morning, Birmingham City journalism lecturer and Online Journalism Blog blogger Paul Bradshaw put out a call on the service to see if he and his followers couldn’t predict what questions he’d be asked.
And, of the five questions presenter Phil Upton got to ask, numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5. A bonus question – also predicted by Bradshaw’s followers – included ‘what’s the best tweet/tweeter you’ve seen?’. Aptly, Bradshaw used responses that had been sent by Tweeters to illustrate his answers.
Upton, who tweets at @flupton, had been following the responses to Bradshaw’s shoutout and may have used them as free research. Even if he didn’t base his questions on the #bbcwm replies there’s a strange ‘self-fulfilling interview’ prophecy going on here, with questions answered before the interview has even taken place…
Training: Create your own wiki-style training guide using an embedded page from WikiHow – a collaborative how-to manual. This way you can update procedures and rules, and solicit advice from the WikiHow community. Tipster: Laura Oliver.
The US paper will partner an as yet unestablished news service, being created by former Star-Ledger managing editor Rick Everett, for local news coverage.
The new organisation is expected to hire around 30 reporters, including college students. The collaboration will boost the paper’s coverage after it lost 151 newsroom staff last year.
