UK citizen journalism site Blottr.com is to expand into five new cities this month, as the company behind the site celebrates securing funding of £1 million.
The platform, founded by Adam Baker, enables users to create and break news stories, as well as contribute towards other peoples’ posts. The company this week closed a round of funding by Mark Pearson, as TechCrunch reported yesterday
Pearson has so far invested £250,000 into the site, with the remaining £750,000 to follow providing the business meets certain “milestones”, such as increasing traffic and engagement with the audience.
Today Baker told Journalism.co.uk the site will be expanding into five new cities in the next couple of weeks: Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Edinburgh and Manchester. The plan to expand was already in motion before the funding came through, but he added that the financial boost “definitely helped it”.
As part of the expansion, the site is undergoing a redesign to include the added functionality to enable users to add content to their own pages for areas not currently catered for. Blottr is also planning on launching a free iPhone app next week, which will enable users to report on events from the ground using the platform.
Baker said the next step would be to monetise the platform, such as by licensing it out to publishers and media organisations interested in integrating user generated content.
We’ve got a product that does a number of things that publishers and media companies want. In internal conversations they say ‘we know we need to get in user generated content’ but there are a whole bunch of legal issues, and then the other ongoing conversation is how do we make more money and how do we get more unique content?
With the platform they can start to deeply build their audience, get really good content that’s unique to them and then they get pages that they can start to monetise.
Baker added that the US market “is definitely on the radar” but that for now the focus is on the UK and Europe.
Explanations here and here on the openpaths.cc website state:
This data represents a unique opportunity to help solve some of the world’s toughest problems. We believe you should have the option of donating your data in an open, secure fashion, while maintaining control of your information and where it goes.
Research requests are received from any and all projects – public, private, commercial, academic, artistic, or governmental. Requests typically look at specific geographical areas or demographic information about their subjects, so research requests include these criteria. Based on this information, users receive monthly updates that list the projects where their data is a good fit, and are offered the opportunity to donate their data.
In return, we ask researchers to provide a small benefit to their data donors. This might be a custom visualization of a donor’s location information, access to the results of the research, or other related benefits.
When researchers revealed that iPhones had been recording location data, concerns were raised about privacy.
Security researchers discovered that Apple‘s iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner’s computer when the two are synchronised.
The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone’s recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner’s movements using a simple program.
For some phones, there could be almost a year’s worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple’s iOS 4 update to the phone’s operating system, released in June 2010.
Apple has now released a software update 4.3.3 to fix this. Anyone who wants to make their data available should hold off installing it.
Poynter’s Joe Grimm chats to Doug Mitchell and Alli Joseph, co-directors of NewU: News Entrepreneurs Working Through UNITY, about the key skills and traits that journalists need to become more entrepreneurial and why it is becoming increasingly important to do so.
Where? Andy Halls is editor of BlogPreston and writes about journalism at andyhalls.net. He is the University of Central Lancashire’s representative and national board member for the NCTJ and a winner of many student journalism awards including BBC Developing Talent Innovation award for multimedia coverage of the spending review.
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 sarah.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.
An MP urged the government to set aside time for a Commons debate on gagging orders today, suggesting there are rumours circulating that another member of Parliament has taken out a super-injunction to prevent discussion of their activities, Jon Slattery reports in this blog post.
The allegation was made in the Commons as MPs discussed future Parliamentary business – including whether to debate judge-made privacy laws and gagging orders.
Conservative MP for Hendon, Matthew Offord reportedly said:
“Is the Leader of the House aware of the anomaly this creates if, as has been rumoured, a member of this place seeks a super-injunction to prevent discussion of their activities?”
Leader of the House Sir George Young was said to reply that it was “a very important issue about how we balance on the one hand an individual’s right to privacy and, on the other hand, the freedom of expression and transparency”.
He said the government would wait for the report from Lord Neuberger’s special committee on the issue, before deciding the next step.
“It may then be appropriate for the House to have a debate on this important issue,” he added.
Max Mosley, the former Formula One chief who won £60,000 in damages in a privacy action against the News of the World, is “bankrolling phone-hacking victims’ fight against the tabloid”, the Independent reported today.
Based on an interview with Vanity Fair, Mosley, who is currently battling for a legal “right to notification” for individuals before a newspaper publishes allegations about them, is said to have agreed to underwrite the legal costs of “an unknown number of people”.
Last month News International announced it was to admit liability “in a number of cases” brought against the News of the World for phone hacking between 2004 and 2006. The owner of the tabloid also said it will make an “unreserved apology” to some of the claimants taking civil action against the title, in cases meeting “specific criteria”.
The Rory Peck Awards, which recognises the work of freelance cameramen and women in news and current affairs, are now open for entries.
The awards consist of three categories:
The Rory Peck Award for News
Honours the work of freelance cameramen and women in the coverage of a news event where the focus is on the immediacy of the story. Rushes / un-voiced pieces are accepted in this category. Maximum duration: 10 minutes.
The Rory Peck Award for Features
Honours the work of freelance cameramen and women in news and current affairs features: in-depth pieces which look beyond the immediacy of a news story.
Maximum duration: 60 minutes.
The Sony Professional Impact Award
Honours the work of freelance cameramen and women in news or current affairs that examine humanitarian or social issues. Judges will be looking for entries that have had a tangible impact in one or more of the following areas: audience, press, policy or public awareness. Maximum duration: 60 minutes.
According to a release from the Rory Peck Trust, “the awards recognise quality of camerawork, but also take into account individual endeavour, initiative and journalistic ability”.
“We welcome self-funded work and entries from local freelancers, especially those working in regions where it is difficult to operate.”
The award is named after freelance cameraman Rory Peck (pictured), who was killed in 1993 while filming in Moscow. In 1995 the Rory Peck Trust, which organises the award, was established in his memory to help provide support for freelancers and their families.
All entries must have been first broadcast between 1 August 2010 and 31 May 2011. Closing date for Entries is Monday 6 June.
If you are reporting on the referendum on the voting system, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies or from one of the 305 town halls across England and Northern Ireland with local elections, how are you going to present the results?
As a text only story which reports how many seats have been lost or gained by each party? Or are you going to try visualising the results? Here are five free and easy to use tools to liven up the results.
Many Eyes is a free data visualisation tool. If you have not tried your hand at any data journalism yet, today could be the day to start.
A. Create a Many Eyes account;
B. Create your spreadsheet using Excel, Open Office (free to download) or Google Docs (free and web based);
You could follow my example by putting ward names across the top, parties down the side and the number of each ward seats won by each party. You will need to include the total in the end column.
C. Paste the data into Many Eyes, which will automatically read your pasted information;
D. Click ‘visualise’. In this example I selected the ‘bubble chart’ visualisation. Have a play with other visualisations too;
E. Copy the embed code and paste it into your story;
OpenHeatMap is a way to visualise your results in a map. It is free and very easy to use. You start by creating a spreadsheet, uploading the data and you can then embed the map in your web page.
A. Go to OpenHeatMap (you don’t need a login);
B. Create a spreadsheet. The easiest was to do this is in Google Docs. You must name your columns so OpenHeatMap can understand it. Use ‘UK_council’ for the local council, ‘tab’ for the party and ‘value’ for the number of seats. In this example, the tab column indicates the party with the most seats; the value is the number of seats;
C. Click ‘share’ (to the right hand side of your Google Doc), ‘publish as a web page’ and copy the code;
D. Paste the code into OpenHeatMap and click to view the map. In this example you will see the parties as tabs along the top which you can toggle between. You can change the colour, zoom in to your county or region and alter the transparency so you can see place names;
E. Click ‘share’ and you can copy the embed code into your story.
Anyone can now join Storify (it used to be by invitation only). It allows you to tell a story using a combination of text, pictures, tweets, audio and video.
A. Sign up to Storify;
B. Create a story and start adding content. If you click on the Twitter icon and search (say for ‘local election Kent’) you can select appropriate tweets; if you click on the Flickr icon you can find photos (you could ask a photographer to upload some); you can also add YouTube videos and content from Facebook. When you find an item you want to include, you simply drag and drop it into your story;
C. The art of a good Storify story is to use your skills as a storyteller. The tweets and photos need to be part of a narrative. There are some fantastic examples of story ideas on Storify;
D. Click to publish;
E. Copy and paste the embed code into the story on your site.
C. The video will be automatically posted live to your Qik profile but you’ll need to add the code to your website before you record (you can also live stream to your Facebook page, Twitter account and YouTube channel).
D. To do this go to ‘My Live Channel’ (under your name). Click on it to get your embed code for your live channel.
E. Paste your embed code in your website or blog, where you want the live player to be.
How did you get on with the five tools? Let us know so that we can see your election stories.
The Telegraph today announced the launch of its new iPad app, which offers content from the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph.
The app can be purchased through the App Store, either individual, daily editions or an auto-renewable monthly subscription, both through In-App Purchase.
Print subscribers have free access using their existing customer credentials, the release adds.
This appears to follow Apple’s new rules regarding publisher apps, which state that while publishers are allowed to make a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer must also be made available inside the app, through which Apple will take a 30 per cent cut.
The new Telegraph app is free to download with individual, daily editions priced at £1.19 or a monthly subscription of £9.99.
Press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports that a journalist, Valério Nascimento, was shot and killed in Brazil on Tuesday. The day of the shooting was also the day the world shone a light on the dangers and issues facing journalists across the world, for World Press Freedom day.
“Nascimento’s murder, which took place on World Press Freedom Day, is a reminder that Brazil is still a dangerous country for journalists despite recent legislative progress and efforts to combat impunity,” Reporters Without Borders said. “He is the second journalist to have been gunned down this year while a third journalist, a blogger, only just survived a murder attempt.”
A motive of the shooting is not yet known, RSF added, urging investigators of the case to “carefully examine the possibility that he was killed in connection with his work as a journalist”.
