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Channel 4′s Tower Block of Commons gets interactive with 4ip-backed Yoosk

February 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by in Online Journalism

As part of its Tower Block of Commons series, where British MPs move into council estates to experience life there, Channel 4 is using crowdsourced interview website Yoosk to add an interactive element.

Yoosk, which has received backing from Channel 4′s public service media fund, 4ip, has been used by regional newspapers to set up regular Q&As with local authority figures and has always had a strong focus on connecting members of the public with politicians and representatives to get their questions answered.

Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten and Conservative MP Tim Loughton are the first members of the series to agree to answer questions and will do so on Monday.

“We are aiming to get some of the tenants that Mark and Tim met to go to Parliament to put the questions directly to them, so this will be no ordinary interview,” says the site, which is separate from the Channel 4 site for the programme, but is cross-linked.

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What next for the UK Investigations Fund?

February 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by in Journalism, Newspapers

Last year, a group of journalists formed the UK Investigations Fund, a launch that was closely followed by a separate project, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ).

The BIJ is gearing up to officially launch soon (more on that in the next few months), but the IF had gone a little quiet and I was starting to wonder what had happened to it. Now, the radio silence is broken and the group held an open meeting in London this week.

On the IF blog, one of the founders, Stephen Grey, reports:

The Investigations Fund will remain, for now at least, a separate initiative [to the BiJ] – existing primarily as a forum both to highlight and encourage all sorts of investigative work (the kind that sometimes, but not always, struggles to surface in the mainstream media).

We have in mind a series of alternative projects to fund good investigative work – and hope to encourage donations for these. First we’re going to consult – and seek ideas on the most promising avenue – from all those who’ve offered us support, and most of this discussion will be in the open.

So we intend this website to be an open access forum to discuss investigative reporting and its future. Please do join the debate.

[Disclaimer: I signed up as a supporter of the project].

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US student news service CoPress closes down

February 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by in Business, Editors' pick, Training

CoPress, the US student news service Journalism.co.uk has reported on in the past is closing down. It aimed to provide online hosting at affordable rates for students across the US, with development support. Its executive director Daniel Bachhuber explains why the team is halting the service:

“We’ve struggled with making our business financially viable while at the same time offering prices that reflect an understanding of the financial situation many student news organisations are in. This is even more apparent in that we’ve had to change our pricing structure twice in the past months.”

Full post at this link…

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SocialMedia.biz: Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales on nurturing online communities

SocialMedia.biz has a radio show featuring Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia, talking about growing and nurturing online communities.  Despite the recent £2 million donation from Google, most money comes from small donations, he says.

It was a wide-ranging con­ver­sa­tion about the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of media, the birth of Our­me­dia and YouTube, the thriv­ing global open source devel­op­ment com­mu­nity of Word­Press, Cre­ative Com­mons licenses, Ning, entre­pre­neur­ial jour­nal­ism, Sil­i­con Valley’s mantra of embrac­ing fail­ure, and the state of Wikipedia.

Full post at this link…

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TimesOnline: CMS select committee report to call for ‘radical shake-up’ of PCC

The Times has an early preview of the Culture Media and Sport select committe report, due for release next Wednesday morning. According to the Times:

Tougher powers for the Press Complaints Commission and an end to the right of companies to sue for libel will be proposed (…) But the much criticised press watchdog will escape calls for its abolition or for any form of state regulation of the press.

Full story at this link…

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paidContent 2010 conference livestream

February 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by in Editors' pick, Events, Online Journalism

Today paidContent is holding its first namesake conference in New York. Speakers include FT.com’s Rob Grimshaw, Journalism Online’s Steven Brill, New York Times publisher Arthur Salzberger Jnr and Google News’ Josh Cohen.

Areas of focus will include: Business strategy and models that are working across news, information and entertainment » The people and companies driving innovation » The cross-platform approach to developing these diverse revenue streams » Music, TV and movie downloads, subscription streaming, a la carte payments, micropayments, subscriptions, donation models, subsidy models, mobile payments.

It kicks off at 8.15 EST (13.15 GMT)  and you can find a live stream at this link.

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Wired.com: Crowdfunding a story you can’t sell

February 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by in Editors' pick, Online Journalism

What do you do when you’ve got a story no-one wants to buy? When US-based journalist Paige Williams couldn’t sell her magazine story about Dolly Freed, a woman briefly famous for writing a book about frugal-living in 1978, she decided to do what she calls ‘radiohead journalism’ – getting people to contribute whatever amount they chose, as Thom Yorke’s band did with their album, In Rainbows.  The ‘Finding Dolly Freed’ story cost over $2,000 to produce, and in February she reported that 160 people had donated just over $1,500.

[T]he Dolly Freed project became not only an exercise in self-publishing but also an experiment in “Radiohead journalism.” Would readers pay for a story that they could read for free on an independent website by a writer they’d never heard of?

Williams’ account for Wired.com at this link…

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – catching up with Twitter updates

February 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by in Editors' pick, Top tips for journalists

Twitter: If you’ve been away and want to catch up with what your network has been saying on Twitter, try using Twitter Tim.es, which will put updates into a newspaper-style for easier browsing. 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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Who will be the first bloggers to get lobby passes?

So, as Matt Wardman noted on this blog today, bloggers are soon to be allowed into parliament. But who will be the first?

Mark Pack says he hears that passes are “on their way” to the Guy News TV team: “It’s an off-shoot of the Guido Fawkes blog though, unlike the blog, the online TV show becoming legally based in the UK. Even so, given its very irreverent attitude to politics, this is a move that isn’t being met with universal adulation from the existing lobby members.”

Journalism.co.uk dropped a line to Guido himself: “I have not applied for a pass,” is the quick response.

Who’s your money on? Widdecombe show side-kick Iain Dale, or as PR Week’s David Singleton speculates, ConservativeHome’s Jonathan Isaby? Who else?

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BBC’s plan for mobile news apps heavily criticised

The BBC’s plans to launch mobile phone applications for its news and sports content have come under intense criticism from The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA).

Erik Huggers, BBC’s head of future media and technology, announced the planned launch at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, telling delegates:

License fee payers are increasingly using sophisticated devices to access information. They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them.

The NPA have urged the BBC Trust to block the release of the applications, believing that the move would damage the upcoming market for paid-for news applications on mobile devices.

Today, David Newell, director of the NPA said that “the market for iPhone news apps is a unique and narrow commercial space,  which means that the potential for market distortion by the BBC is much greater”.

“It is extremely disappointing that the Corporation plans to launch services that would throw into serious doubt the commercial sector’s ability to make a return on its investment and therefore its ability to support quality journalism,” he said.

The NPA said it would also raise this issue with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Media Select Committee.

The initial plan is to launch the apps on the iPhone, but the BBC has said it eventually wants to operate across rival platforms such as Google’s Android and RIM’s BlackBerry.

A news app is expected to be launched in April, followed by a sports app released in time for the upcoming World Cup, allowing users to watch games live on their phone.

There is also a plan to launch an app for the catch-up service iPlayer later this year.

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