Online Journalism Blog: Help Me Investigate update

Following news that the Help Me Investigate (HMI) project will receive funding from 4iP and Screen West Midlands, Paul Bradshaw updates on the project.

The most important thing about the ‘platform for crowdsourcing investigative journalism’ is that it ‘enables users to mobilise support behind that question; and to pursue it,’ writes its founder.

“HMI attempts to address the biggest issue facing journalism: how do we save the good stuff? The persistent slow-brewed journalism that was previously subsidised (if you were lucky) by more commercially friendly instant journalism, but which stands to lose most as commercial content becomes disaggregated and reaggregated, and audiences and their activity measurable.”

Full post at this link…

Also see interview with Paul Bradshaw at this link.

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MediaShift: Journalists should customise social networks

Social networks ‘help to shake up the relationship between the individual journalist and the people formerly known as the audience,’ comments Roland Legrand, in charge of internet and new media at Mediafin, the publisher of leading Belgian business newspapers De Tijd and L’Echo. Here he feeds back from a newsroom workshop on social media with ideas for how journalists can best use networks.

Full post at this link…

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Reportr.net: Orato.com ‘turns its back’ on citizen journalism

Alfred Hermida reports that Orato.com has ‘turned its back’ on citizen journalism with a move to more professionalised content.

“Vancouver-based Orato.com used to describe itself as the ‘only news site in the world dedicated to First Person, citizen-authored journalism.’”

Now, however, changes have been made to ‘further professionalise the site, focus its newsworthy content, create and enforce a viable business model and keep pace with Web 2.0 standards,’ says Orato’s founder, Sam Yehia.

Full post at this link…

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Media Post: NAA reports shows online newspaper ad revenue down 13 per cent in first quarter

“In case it wasn’t obvious that newspapers are struggling, a new report by the Newspaper Association of America shows just how dire the situation has become,” Media Post reports.

“In the first quarter of this year, [newspaper] ad revenues plummeted to $6.62 billion, marking a 28 per cent drop from last year, according to the NAA. And it wasn’t only print ad revenue that fell. Web ad revenue also dropped 13 per cent, to $696 million.”

Full story at this link…

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NYTimes.com: CBS News using Ustream for newscasts and special reports

“Seeking a younger audience more accustomed to watching the news on the internet than on television, CBS News said Monday that it had joined with a live video web site [Ustream] to simulcast its newscasts and special reports,” reports the New York Times.

Ustream, will host ‘CBS Evening News With Katie Couric,’ breaking news coverage and ‘unfiltered news conferences and speeches’, it is reported. Full story at this link…

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Using ConvoTrack to track who’s talking about you

Social media: To track who’s talking about your story and on what social sites, submit the URL to ConvoTrack (or install it on your site). In a separate window it shows who has mentioned your link on Twitter, FriendFeed and more. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Joanna Geary: ‘How I started blogging and how it changed my journalism’

Joanna Geary, who led a range of online and social media initiatives at the Birmingham Post before joining The Times, posts on how she got into blogging herself and the impact it has had on her journalism.

“[S]uddenly I didn’t really know what I was supposed to write about. Coming from journalism training that teaches you that there is a form and structure to the way you write, a empty blog page was a bit of a nightmare. There was no convention to cling to. It was entirely up to me what I wrote,” writes Geary, as she explains the different writing styles, building an audience and personal/professional boundaries.

Well worth a read.

Full post at this link…

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Silicon Alley Insider: Subscriptions only work for porn, says Huffington

“Unless you’re selling porn – especially weird porn – I would not go the subscription route,” Ariana Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, told the All Things D conference last week.

In the video below with the Washington Post’s Katharine Weymouth, Huffington also talks about the development of HuffPo: half of the site’s traffic now comes from non-political stories; the last round of funding is going into the investigative journalism fund, local verticals and expansion; the site is breaking even.

Full story at this link…

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – finding an embed code

Embedding multimedia: If you want to embed multimedia content, for example a CoveritLive blog, but don’t have the code, try searching for it in the page source. On Firefox this is found on the menu bar under ‘View’. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Buzzmachine: Could Google’s Wave be new reporting tool?

Jeff Jarvis ponders the potential of Wave – Google’s next generation email product announced last week (see video below) – as a tool for journalists:

“In Wave, I see more than a new generation of email cum wikis cum Twitter cum groupware. Because it can feed blog and web pages and Twitter, I see a new way to create content, collaborative and live. I see a new way to make news,” he writes.

“Imagine a team of reporters – together with witnesses on the scene – able to contribute photos and news to the same Wave (formerly known as a story or a page). One can write up what is known; a witness can add facts from the scene and photos; an editor or reader can ask questions. And it is all contained under a single address – a permalink for the story – that is constantly updated from a collaborative team.”

Full post at this link…

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