edwalker.net: How we used cached Google pages to track down norovirus victims

Newspaper reporter ranks 188/200 in ‘best and worst jobs’ list

January 6th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Rachel McAthy in Editors' pick, Jobs

Think being a newspaper reporter is the best job in the world? Statistically it would seem, in the US at least, that is not the case. This annual list by CareerCast rating 200 jobs based on income, working environment, stress, physical demands and job outlook, places the newspaper reporter at 188.

The list, which used data from the Labor Department, US Census and its researchers own knowledge, can also be found on the Wall Street Journal website.

Tags: career, CareerCast, Jobs, Wall Street Journal

#followjourn: @lucymanning – ITV News Political Correspondent

January 6th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Alice Vincent in Recommended journalists

Who? Lucy Manning, ITV News political correspondent

Where? Manning reports from the House of Commons and covered the 2010 election, following Gordon Brown and the Labour Campaign. She blogs on current affairs for ITV here.

Twitter? @lucymanning

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 laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Tags: #followjourn, ITV News, Lucy Manning, Political Correspondent

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – data collection guides

January 6th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Rachel McAthy in Data, Top tips for journalists

ProPublica has compiled a series of guides on collecting and scraping data based on experiences from its own investigations, which could be useful for data journalists. The guides cover topics from using Google Refine, reading data from Flash sites and scraping HTML. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

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

Tags: Data journalism, journalism tips, propublica, tip

Adam Vincenzini’s year without newspapers is over, but what did he learn?

January 5th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Alice Vincent in Newspapers

Last January, Journalism.co.uk blogged about Adam Vincenzini and his bid to survive a year without newspapers. Vincenzini was just 19 days into his experiment at that point. The PR consultant has come to the end of his experiment now and told Journalism.co.uk today that he sees printed news in a new light.

After a year of relying on Twitter, RSS feeds and mobile phone apps, Vincenzini says newspapers “still have such an important role to play”.

There’s the enjoyment part of print journalism, the personality, the humour and the opinion; I stopped enjoying reading news when I only read it online. But also the newspaper is the one thing that can give you a snapshot that you can take away for the day … Newspapers are still the easiest way to get your news.

Which may be why Vincenzini’s main celebration on New Year’s Eve was to hold his first newspaper in over 9000 hours.

I went and bought the Sun and a bottle of Baileys just after the clocks struck 12! I had the biggest smile on my face and the best thing was is that nothing had changed – it was just like picking up a copy 12 months ago. I felt very warm and fuzzy inside.

Vincenzini’s blog tracks his experiment and now includes his conclusions.

iPad users ‘very likely’ to cancel print subscriptions, suggests new study

Tags: Adam Vincenzini, PR, print, The Sun

Martin Belam: The death of RSS? Not at the Guardian

January 5th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Rachel McAthy in Data, Editors' pick, Online Journalism

In this post on his Currybet.net blog Martin Belam responds to discussions about the future of RSS feeds. While feeds may remain a niche tool, the latest CMS release at the Guardian, where Belam works as an information architect, sees links to RSS feeds made much more easy to find, he says.

Previously we didn’t automatically link to an RSS feed from an individual article page. This was because articles could ‘belong’ to various different areas of the site, and so it wasn’t always obvious which RSS feed should be chosen as the parent. This blog post of mine, for example, ‘appeared’ on the Open Platform blog, the Datablog, and in the Technology and Politics sections.

We’ve just changed that in release 103 of our CMS, in response to a request on our new Developer Blog. Now in the <HEAD> of our articles you’ll get an auto-discovery link to all of the related keyword feeds.

Tags: guardian, Martin Belam, RSS feeds

WSJ.com: Gannett community newspaper employees told to take unpaid week off

January 5th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Rachel McAthy in Business, Editors' pick

The Wall Street Journal reports that Gannett Company has told all its non-union employees within its US community newspaper unit that they will be required to take a week-long furlough in the first quarter “due to continuing revenue declines in that division”.

Gannett executives said the unpaid time off is in response to revenues that remain short of where they were a year ago.

The WSJ.com adds that president of the company’s community publishing Bob Dickey said in a memo that this was “an option I had hoped we could avoid”.

See full report at this link

Tags: Gannett Company, unpaid leave, Wall Street Journal

Joanna Geary: Microsharing – a future we’re ignoring?

January 5th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Alice Vincent in Business, Editors' pick, Social media and blogging

Joanna Geary raises a new angle on the paid content debate on her blog. The concept is Microsharing: where purchased online content or data is licensed to be shared with selected others. Is it a payment model which could change not only the way we view paying for content, but sharing it as well?

In real life humans are perfectly capable, and generous enough, to purchase something of value to them and then to loan or give it to someone they care about, trust, or share an interest with.

However, with the social web this doesn’t happen.

Why the difference, if paying for stuff doesn’t stop us sharing it in real life? Perhaps the social web hasn’t yet evolved to a point where we can share like this as easily as we do in real life?

Full post on joannageary.com at this link

Related content elsewhere

Measuring Measures: Why the iPad is Destroying the Future of Journalism

OJR: Journalism’s problem isn’t the internet or advertising, it’s attitude

January 5th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Rachel McAthy in Editors' pick, Journalism

What’s the biggest problem facing the journalism industry? The online explosion of content and competition, jobs cuts, the advertising crisis? According to the Online Journalism Review’s Robert Niles it’s none of these – but instead the attitude of some journalists.

There are too many journalists, he says in this post discussing the Knight Digital Media Center News Entrepreneur Boot Camp in May, who are “wallowing in a culture of failure” and he urges more to step off of the familiar pathway in journalism.

You won’t be the first journalist to do this. That means that others are available to help show you the way. But you’ll need to start listening to these new voices, and tune out the pessimism, frustration and even scolding you might hear from the colleagues you leave behind.

Tags: entrepreneurialism, Knight Digital Media Center, ojr, Robert Niles

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – setting up a media business

January 5th, 2011 | 1 Comment | Posted by Rachel McAthy in Business, Top tips for journalists

Media Helping Media has a useful post by David Brewer looking at what he considers to be the four key steps to setting up a media business, including questions to ask about a target audience and other considerations such as a social network strategy and company values. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

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

Tags: Business, journalism tips, tip