Turns out he doesn’t use the word media or news either – “I don’t think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century.”
Anderson goes on to discuss how he gets his information and the move by the public towards ‘social filters’ rather than professional filters for news:
“We’re tuning out television news, we’re tuning out newspapers. And we still hear about the important stuff, it’s just that it’s not like this drumbeat of bad news,” he says.
Which leads him to the role of journalists:
“In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part time job. Maybe media won’t be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby. There is no law that says that industries have to remain at any given size (…) The question is not should journalists have jobs. The question is can people get the information they want, the way they want it? The marketplace will sort this out. “
On top of this and following the launch of the data-rich MSN Local, MSN executive producer Peter Bale told the Telegraph that the site was hoping to take feeds from local newspapers and map the content.
“Hyperlocal news online has never been more important and we think this is a really interesting growth area,” he said.
Payment for the feeds is a possibility or a linking/traffic driving arrangement could be made, he added.
Surveying more than 500 journalists and bloggers from IT and business titles, US firm PRSourceCode has announced its annual list of ‘Top Tech Communicators’.
Of the large agencies – A&R Edelman came out top, followed by Weber Shandwick Worldwide.
Agree or disagree? And your nominations outside of the US?
Journalism.co.uk is trialling a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.
We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.
The responses were later used by presenter Alex Thomson (@alextomo) in an evening broadcast on More4.
Four government departments don’t tweet it turns out (including the department for culture, media and sport), but there were replies from the treasury, ministry of justice and ministry of defence amongst others.
“We were pleasantly surprised at the way government departments rose to the More4 News twitter challenge. It’s clear that several of them have recently appointed Digital Media Advisors from among the twitterati,” Michael Hodgkin, assistant programme editor, More4 News, told us in an email.
“Some of the summaries may sound a bit like promoting motherhood and apple pie, but what can you expect in 140 characters? It’s probably a very good exercise to have to sum up one’s aims so concisely.
Remembering a little comparative exercise that Tony Hirst undertook on the OUseful.info blog during the MPs’ expenses revelations, Journalism.co.uk thought it might be illuminating to re-visit Isle of Wight news production on the day of the Vestas case. How did hyperlocal site, the VentnorBlog – not just about the town of Ventnor – treat the Vestas story in comparison to the Isle of Wight County Press Online (in print, it’s weekly) and the national press?
Today’s court adjournment that saw the Danish owners of wind turbine company, Vestas, unable to force workers out of Isle of Wight factory. For the past nine days, about 20 workers have occupied the Vestas Wind Systems plant near Newport, which is due to close on Friday (around 625 workers are set to lose their jobs) but a possession order made at Newport county court today has been delayed until next week, as the company had not properly served papers on the individuals in the building, and the hearing took place prematurely [sources: the Guardian / VentnorBlog].
Rolling news, updated throughout the day. Eleven updates, lending themselves well to re-tweets (like Journalism.co.uk, the blog uses the TweetMeme button on its posts), posted since this morning including:
Video news content. Eg. this segment, with the announcement outside court:
A comment left by ‘Eco T’ on the VentnorBlog is just one of the positive reactions to VB’s coverage:
“I would like to say that Ventnor Blogs coverage has been second to none. The most detailed and accurate report of any news service. I would like to thank ever one at Ventnor blog and hope you keep up the great work.”
The coverage is bitty (as you might expect as a story unfolds) and not necessarily completely balanced (most updates focus on the workers’ perspective), but the VentnorBlog has done an excellent job of providing the islanders (and outsiders) with raw and useful material, showing us how high-quality hyperlocal reporting is done.
It’s had widespread coverage elsewhere, but Journalism.co.uk thought it worth contacting Horsham’s Candy Box owner, John O’Sullivan, for some images of those now nationally notorious fake news billboards, that the local council took such issue with (see Journalism.co.uk main site for an update.) Perhaps even better, is O’Sullivan’s lament on YouTube, inspired by the Anthony Hopkins Sky HD adverts. See end of this post for videos.
Here are some examples of the billboards (taken on O’Sullivan’s mobile phone):
The US-based Chronicle of Higher Education reports that three undergraduate journalism students and a professor from the University of Alaska are to spend just under a month embedded with US toops in the Diyala province in Iraq.
“They plan to eat, sleep, and travel alongside members of an Alaska-based Army Stryker Brigade Combat Team, while filing daily articles for news organizations and for their student newspaper, The Sun Star.”
