A correction from Monday’s edition of Australia’s Morning Bulletin. I’m pretty sure that it’s my favourite correction of all time.
Hatip: @substuff on Rantings of a sub-editor.
Tags: Funny, pigs, the morning bulletin
Media brands stand to benefit from some of the new features being rolled out by Facebook, according to Lost Remote.
One of the most important new features is the ability for page administrators to post comments as the corresponding page brand (in our case, “Lost Remote”), not just as themselves. This certainly comes in handy when moderating a comment string and sharing the admin duties across several people. You’re communicating as a brand, not as a bunch of unrelated people. To avoid dehumanizing pages entirely, admins are displayed in the upper right of the page, which is a nice touch.
Full post on Lost Remote at this link.
Tags: communities, community management, Facebook, social networking
More than 170 BBC sites due to be deleted have been anonymously archived and made available to download via bitTorrent.
The anonymous campaigner reported that the process cost him just $3.99 (£2.50).
While the torrent was created anonymously, some sources have suggested that the person behind it is Ben Metcalfe, also known as dotBen, who posted a link to the archive on Twitter with the message: “So here it is… if you want to download the torrent backup of all the sites the BBC are closing.”
Full story on Metro.co.uk at this link.
Tags: archive, BBC, bbc online, Metro
Over on PBS MediaShift Dorian Benkoil offers some tips on ways publishers can help to protect the privacy of users and create an environment of trust, while trying gaining information on its audience to help offer the most relevant content. 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: journalism tips, privacy, tip
Next month a team of journalists in Hertfordshire will come together to produce a one-off tabloid local newspaper called Newsday: The Vocal Local. The project aims to “revitalise” local news by adopting a typical ‘hyperlocal’ approach, focusing on getting out into the community and sourcing stories from the targeted audience.
The person at the heart of the project is Kate Dobinson, a freelance journalist and English literature graduate. After working on her local newspaper she said she recognised the value of being a ‘roving reporter’ but at the same time felt time and resource limitations in local newsrooms hinders the extent to which this can take place.
So she came up with a plan which she hoped would “revitalise local news”, rounding up a team of journalists to work as reporters, designers and editors to produce a one-off publication with a focus on community.
She told Journalism.co.uk a bit more about the project:
I was working on my local newspaper and my brief from the editor was: get out. Get out and talk to people, be nosy, ask questions, don’t come back until you have stories that we’re too bogged down with deadlines to find. My method wasn’t intelligent; all I did was pop into the florist/market/car boot (sale) ask people if they had any news and proffer slightly stale hob nobs in return. With a bit of prompting (most people had great newsworthy stuff but didn’t actually know it was newsworthy) I got a bunch of yarns and ended up being kicked out of the office permanently to keep it up.
Obviously it isn’t a realistic option for a small newsroom skint on time and manpower to traipse around all day for ideas that only might pay off. But it did get me thinking that the financial strait-jacket that many poor locals are laced in is slowly hacking at the idea of the ‘roving reporter’, making it difficult to truly capitalise on a connection with the community and to find imaginative content that readers will want to buy week in week out. It made me want to experiment with and revitalise local news in my area. Finding stories on my own made me realise that I didn’t need a newsroom and a coaster to get a paper out; maybe I could do it with a few more reporters, some raw skills and a bit more coffee.
After advertising for a team of writers and designers more than 25 people signed up to be involved in the project, while West Herts College volunteered some of their media students and facilities to help with production, she said.
Tags: Hyperlocal, local press, newsday, newspaper
The Committee to Protect Journalists claims to have documented at least 141 “direct attacks” on journalists and news facilities in Egypt since 30 January.
The CPJ, which says it is also investigating “numerous other reports” has compiled a link list of its daily coverage of the anti-government protests detailing the cases.
“The authorities say everything is being done to protect journalists, but reports of harassment and intimidation continue,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Shifting from a tactic of outright violence against journalists to one of erecting bureaucratic obstacles is not fooling anybody. Cairo must allow all journalists to report unhindered.”
Full post on the CPJ site at this link.
Tags: attacks, Committee to Protect Journalists, Egypt, journalists, protests
Some good photographs from Egypt here by 23-year-old photographer Andrew Burton, looking not so much at the moments of confrontation but the interim moments, the ordinary moments of life in the midst of a violent uprising.
Tags: andrew burton, egypt protests, Photography, tahrir square
The recent protests in Egypt have been recorded as the “biggest international story in a single week” in the past four years by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index.
According to the Pew report the stories accounted for 20 per cent of the ‘newshole’ – the space devoted to each subject in print and online and time on radio and TV – from 24 to 30 January and then 56 per cent from 31 January to 6 February . This went beyond any coverage of the Iraq war, the Haiti earthquake and the conflict in Afghanistan, the report adds.
One reason for the extraordinary level of coverage thus far has been journalists’ access to the scenes of protests and violence in Egypt that they have transmitted to US news audiences. That has been borne out by this finding from the News Coverage Index: In the past two weeks―from January 24-February 6―almost half (45 per cent) of all the stories about the unrest studied by PEJ have been reported directly from Egypt and neighboring countries.
Tags: egypt protests, news index, pew research center
Following the brouhaha over Guardian Moscow correspondent Luke Harding’s deportation from Russia (and subsequent overtures of friendship from the country and explanations that it was all a big mistake), the Moscow Times takes a sharp look at some of the likely reasons behind Russia’s actions. (Other than the explanation from a spokesman for Russia’s foreign ministry that “This is a technical matter and I do not think that it deserves so much commotion”).
The piece also looks at some of the other cases of foreign journalists being refused entry to the country, more than 40 between 2000 and 2007 according to the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
When Harding was denied entry after trying to pass through passport control with a valid visa, an airport security official told him, “For you, Russia is closed.”
Very well put. Russia truly is a closed society — and not only for Harding.
Full story on the Moscow Times at this link.
Tags: deportation, kremlin, Luke Harding, Moscow, Moscow Times, The Guardian
Google has launched a new language translation app for the iPhone, enabling it to compete with its Android version.
Both allow users to translate speech in 15 languages and words and phrases into more than 50 languages, as well as listening to translations spoken aloud in 23 languages.
According to Mashable, the iPhone app enables better text readability through a new zoom function, while the Android offers SMS translation and an enhanced conversation mode.
Tags: Android, google, Google Translate, iPhone applications
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