#FollowJourn: @lizbolshaw/freelance journalist

#FollowJourn: Liz Bolshaw

Who? Writer and editor.

What? Focuses on business, entrepreneurs and innovation, writing for newspapers, magazines and online-only titles.

Where? Take a look at her personal website for more information: http://www.lizbolshaw.com/.

Contact? @lizbolshaw or email liz [at] lizbolshaw.com.

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Similar posts:

• #followjourn: @chriscondron/head of digital strategy
• #FollowJourn: @rebeccats/reporter
• #FollowJourn: @severincarrell/Scotland correspondent
• #FollowJourn: @andyoakes/publisher
• #FollowJourn: @rachcolling/freelancer

View From The Bridge: ‘Microcasting’ and journalism’s future

Bill Salvin discusses experiments with microcasting online – extremely specific content delivered to an extremely specific audience.

Taking the show This Week in Space as an example, Salvin says microcasts explore a niche subject matter with “top-flight independent journalists” who know their topic inside-out:

Here’s why I think this [microcasting] is going to be both successful and important to the future of journalism. Advertisers crave a reliable, predictable audience. The more precise your target audience is, the better able you are to rely on advertising to keep the program streaming across cyberspace.

Full post at this link…

(via Sarah Hartley’s blog)

Similar posts:

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – how to define your blog’s target audience
• NBC and Outside.in match EveryBlock and NYTimes partnership
• Media Release: Newspaper Society launches new audience measuring system
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Seven steps for building an online community
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – embed slideshows using Vuvox

BusinessWeek.com: Twitter will end 2009 in profit

Microblogging service Twitter has reached profitability after signing $25 million of deals to make its content searchable by Google and Microsoft’s Bing, Business Week reports.

For those media companies using the service as a promotional or newsgathering tool this news will be welcome. Could it prompt more partnerships in 2010 for the three-year-old company?

Full story at this link…

Similar posts:

• Politico: News Corp made second $1m donation to Republican group
• CNN’s iReport marks second birthday with 175,000 contributions
• Google looks to failed searches to find story ideas
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – autocue on the go
• Flipboard adds Telegraph and Guardian ahead of royal wedding

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – a guide for advertising on J.co.uk

Jobs: Want to advertise a job on Journalism.co.uk but not sure how? Check out our step-by-step video guide to using the site. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

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

Similar posts:

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – YouTube for audio interviews
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – How to distribute press releases
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Use Technorati to monitor incoming links
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – launching a non-profit news site
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – creating interactive timelines

BBC News: Gordon Brown agrees to TV election debates

The UK is ready for its first ever televised leader election debates following an agreement between the three main political parties and BBC, Sky and ITV, the BBC reports.

Labour’s Gordon Brown, Conservative leader David Cameron and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg have agreed to go head-to-head in a series of three debates.

Each clash will last about 90 minutes, with ITV’s Alastair Stewart hosting the first and Sky’s Adam Boulton the next.

Full story at this link…

Similar posts:

• Adam Boulton on why live debates will be an election game changer
• Sky News’ version of the Campbell-Boulton row
• What format for the political leaders’ TV debates?
• Will the leader’s election debates engage first time voters?
• @SOE: (Audio) Sky’s Adam Boulton and Shami Chakrabarti on the need for self-regulation of news on the internet

Condé Nast launches monthly GQ iPhone app

Following in the footsteps of the Guardian, GQ’s magazine has announced its first monthly application for the iPhone.

According to a report from paidContent.org, the US version of the app, which offers an exact replica of the magazine, has been approved by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), which means purchases of the app will count towards the magazine’s circulation figure.

Unlike the Guardian, where a one-off fee is paid for unlimited access to content, in the UK GQ is charging £1.79 for each edition.

Publisher of GQ, Conde Nast, is also reportedly planning more iPhone apps for its other magazine titles.

Similar posts:

• How Conde Nast is dealing with iPad advertisers
• New York Observer: Ruth Reichl on Gourmet’s closure – ‘Our circulation had never been better’
• Magazine publisher Imagine looks to iPads and iPhones with digital editions launch
• 70k downloads for £2.39 Guardian App in first month
• Daily Finance: Conde Nast brings in consultants to ‘rethink business’

#newsrw: Who’s attending our digital journalism event?

If you’ve been under a rock for the last month and haven’t heard us mention our digital journalism event news:rewired next month, then here’s an idea of who’s going, courtesy of Wordle:

news:rewired is a practical, one-day event at City University London with the aim of giving working journalists relevant and immediately useful advice on multimedia, social media and online business models.

There’s still tickets left, but they’re going fast. If you want to book before the VAT hike, tickets are £80 +VAT and available at this link.

Similar posts:

• #newsrw: 10 tickets left – get yours before the price goes up
• #newsrw: Countdown to Journalism.co.uk’s news:rewired event – are you coming?
• ‘A non-profit is a business as well,’ says mySociety’s senior developer
• #jpod – Paywalls: Helping readers over the fence
• #newsrw: Win a Flip Ultra HD camcorder

#newsrw: ‘The fact that multimedia is visual is a huge benefit to radio,’ says @newsleader

In the latest Q&A on our news:rewired site, media consultant and top radio tipster Justin Kings describes how radio can make the most of multimedia tools.

The fact that much of multimedia is visual is a huge benefit to radio. We’ve seen how images, videos and so on can help enhance the radio experience. In terms of social media, I would suggest radio is itself a social media. By that I mean it shares similar characteristics, it is personal, it’s interactive and reactive. So, again, tools like Twitter can complement content on the radio.

news:rewired » Q&A: Justin Kings, media consultant, Newsleader.

Similar posts:

• 12 hours worth of radio interview tips from @NewsLeader
• Tips on original journalism for radio from @newsleader
• @newsleader posting radio journalism tips of the day in February
• All-day interview tips from @NewsLeader – Wednesday 27th May
• Newsleader: Winners of the ‘Talkies’ 2009

Visualisations for investigations: How a Swedish local paper used Tagul

Some good examples of using free online tools to bring illustration and interactivity to a data-heavy report from a small local newspaper in Sweden, thanks to an email to Journalism.co.uk from its web editor Carl Johan Engvall.

Engvall’s paper Ystads Allehanda recently published a large series of articles on poor working conditions at a local school. Two reporters working for about three weeks on the investigation spoke with around 40 teachers about how bad working practices at the school, which has around 250 teachers and 3,000 pupils had become.

“The problem for us was that almost no one dared to step forward. We ended up with 31 anonymous stories. A lot of text and no pictures. The text for the web (extended version) was about 25,000 characters, 11 pages,” explains Engvall. [You can see the full text of the teachers' statements here.]

After experimenting with Wordle to visualise the key words from the teachers’ stories, an image of the tag cloud was used on the print edition’s front page. But Engvall wanted something more interactive. He tried to build something himself using Flash, but then came across Tagul – “basically a Wordle-cloud to the web”.

The result is the cloud of words below with each keyword linked to the individual teacher’s story:

Similar posts:

• BBC Research and Development blog: Could the Mythology Engine be applied to online news stories?
• Liverpool Daily Post: Madeleine McCann keywords in every main local news story was ‘oversight’
• Googleblog: Optical Character Recognition now allows searching in PDF documents
• STL Social Media Guy: Web comment on newspaper site loses man his job
• Google launches audio search feature

A lesson in integrity for photographers – from a bank!

In this promotional video, HSBC attempts to identify itself with the moral high ground by portraying an ethical dilemma for a professional photojournalist. One can’t help wonder, in the real world, what might have been the outcome had the photographer been facing foreclosure on his mortgage…

Similar posts:

• NOTW website wins right to show Mosley ‘Nazi-orgy’ video
• Photographers speak out on protest coverage rights
• RobertBenson.com: Professional photographers who are sticking to film
• End of the road for Charterhouse Communications
• NUJ Release: Suzanne Breen given ‘strong support’ by NUJ Exec Council