#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – comprehensive Twitter guide for journalists

The Knight Digital Media Center has produced an incredibly in depth tutorial which offers both a basic introduction to Twitter and its many uses for journalists and a series of detailed guides on specific techniques to make the most of the platform. This includes how to increase engagement, carry out advanced searches, and even draw up newsroom guidelines on how it should be used professionally.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 18-24 June

The top 10 most-read news stories and blog posts this week on Journalism.co.uk were:

1. How to: record phone interviews on iPhone, Android or landline

2. Web apps v native apps v mobile sites: a guide

3. BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg to leave for ITV

4. MailOnline reaches new record for monthly browser figures

5. Rusbridger: Guardian digital-first strategy will involve ‘significant’ job cuts

6. Paywall rises on FT’s ‘flexible’ iPad and iPhone web app

7. Foreign Office in massive U-turn on World Service headline

8. US newspaper publisher Gannett to lay off 700 staff

9. ITV breaches Ofcom product rules with coverage of river service

10. Sunday Times website scoops six Online Media Awards

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#jpod in depth: A look at threats to press freedom around the world

In this week’s feature podcast Journalism.co.uk’s news editor Rachel McAthy looks at the different issues facing local and foreign journalists in countries across the world, reflecting on the impact of the Arab Spring and other ongoing conflicts.

The podcast includes interviews with the Guardian’s Egypt correspondent Jack Shenker, Committee to Protect Journalists consultant Elisabeth Witchel and Al Jazeera English’s head of news gathering Heather Allan.

With thanks to the Guardian for providing Shenker’s audio.

Podcast: Download

Sign up here to our iTunes podcast feed for future audio. You can also let us know by email what you think of the new style jpod and what you’d like to see us cover in future weeks.

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#followjourn @alisonbattisby – Alison Battisby/journalist

Who? Alison Battisby

Where? Alison is a freelance journalist and community publisher of Dalston People. She also works as a social media community manager at Wunderman.

Twitter? @alisonbattisby @Dalstonpeople

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.

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paidContent: Which news sites post the most stories and do they get more hits?

It’s well worth following this link to click to paidContent’s interactive chart which shows the number of stories posted by major UK news sites by day of the week.

Interestingly the Telegraph posts the greatest number of stories – exceeding 1,000 per day in the middle of the week – whereas the Mail Online holds the record for clocking up the most views, today reporting 77 million unique users in May.

paidContent concludes:

Story volume does correlate with audience size, but not universally. Although Telegraph.co.uk publishes more stories than anyone (not including its blogs), it ranks third for audience size.

Mail Online and Guardian otherwise rank amongst highest on both counts, while the Times is the fourth most prolific story publisher but, behind its paywall, has far fewer readers.

The full paidContent post, plus charts, is at this link.

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BBC CoJo: New opposition newspaper launched in Libya

A post on the BBC College of Journalism site reports on a new opposition newspaper in Libya.

Middle East media analyst at BBC Monitoring Muhammad Shukri says Mayadin, a pro-opposition newspaper distributed in Benghazi but printed in Cairo is just one of dozens of new media outlets that have appeared inside and outside Libya since February.

Mayadin is temporarily published on a weekly basis in a tabloid format, with plans to publish daily in the future. “This is the first newspaper, in the full sense of the word, to be published in the wake of the 17 February revolution,” the London-based title, Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted Ahmad al-Fayturi, the editor-in-chief, of the new newspaper as saying.

Al-Fayturi said the newspaper’s primary concern is to “document the 17 February revolution in Libya at all political, economic, social, cultural and legal levels”.

He explained that the name Mayadin, which means ‘squares’ in English, “sums up the spring of Arab revolutions”, as all of the revolutions broke out from public squares in Arab cities and capitals.

The post goes on to explain the challenges of printing in one country and distributing in another.

Al-Fayturi said: “We knew in advance that we are running a risk surrounded with problems and hardships. But perhaps what mitigates this situation is the fact that we have enthusiastic Egyptian friends who help us with the work.”

The full BBC CoJo post is at this link.

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J-Lab: Four US women-led news ideas each win $12K funding

Four diverse news ideas in the US – a mobile platform for hyperlocal news sites, a tech news site, a news magazine covering women’s basketball, and a rollout of a site for visualising economic data – have each won a $12,000 award to launch the projects in the coming year.

According to a media release from J-Lab, the award winners were selected from 378 proposals as part of the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs, an initiative to address opportunity and innovation, recruitment and retention for women in journalism by highlighting their entrepreneurial abilities.

The winners are:

Mobile news platform for hyperlocal news – A proposal by Bo Hee Kim, a UC Berkeley graduate student to build a more user and geo-friendly mobile news site for the journalism school’s three hyperlocal sites that may ultimately be used by other local sites.

SiliconHillsNews.com – A nonprofit startup for technology and biotechnology news in the Austin-San Antonio region, focusing on entrepreneurs, companies and creative people to be launched by TechChi blogger and journalist Laura Lorek.

Visualizing Economics – To expand on VisualizingEconomics.com and create illustrated guides that contain infographic explainers using economic data that helps journalists, teachers, students, financial bloggers and citizens understand economic numbers and policy.

Inside Women’s Basketball – A proposal by Atlanta documentarian and photographer Kelly Kline to build out InsideWomensBasketball.com as the centralised news, entertainment and social networking site for some 12 million fans and participants of women’s basketball.

Runners-up included:

Carolina Public Press, an in-depth news site for western North Carolina.

Speak and listen mobile news reader, a spoken dialogue interface on mobile devices for listening to online news.

Rockies Rising, a site to connect and inform investors and entrepreneurs in the Rocky Mountain corridor.

I Am Young Nation, an online publication to attract and retain young urban doers.

The New Media Diversity Wire, an initiative to place women’s voices and ideas in high-profile online outlets, amplified by social media.

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Five nifty ideas for journalists using SoundCloud

The number of users of SoundCloud has jumped by four million in the past year and the audio recording and sharing platform is increasingly being used by journalists and news organisations, one of its founders, Alexander Ljung, told Journalism.co.uk.

Here are five ideas to help journalists expand their use of SoundCloud.

1. Produce a daily or weekly podcast-like audio round-up

Take a leaf out of the Next Web‘s book. The hugely popular blog produces daily round-up of the previous day’s top tech stories and delivers them to followers’ dashboards in an under five minutes morning update, or Daily Dose, as it is called.

You can also create an RSS feed to automatically send SoundCloud recordings to iTunes as podcasts. This SoundCloud option is currently in beta but if it is not available in your account as present, it may be worth contacting SoundCloud to request it.

2. Add existing audio to SoundCloud

If you have audio on webpages, a third-party app called SoundCloud Importer makes it possible to upload this audio to SoundCloud simply by entering the URL.

3. Record, edit and upload a recording from your iPhone

If you’re out in the field you can edit a complicated audio packages using multitrack recording using VC Audio Pro, which allows you to record, edit and then post directly to SoundCloud. Other apps with edit features include FiRe 2 – Field Recorder and iRig Recorder.

The SoundCloud apps gallery has an ever increasing number of interesting options to explore, from desktop audio editing packages to ways to share and distribute audio.

4. Change the colour of your embed widget to suit your website

This is a really simple option of changing SoundCloud orange to a colour to suit your site. Simply follow the prompts from the share and embed option.

5. Add the SoundCloud plugin to WordPress

WordPress users can install a plugin called SoundCloud Shortcode. It allows you to easily integrate a player widget for a track, set or group from SoundCloud by using the code generated from the share option within SoundCloud.

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South Yorkshire Times front page reports on journalist job cuts

The editor of Johnston Press title the South Yorkshire Times has reported editorial job cuts on its front page, receiving praise from the National Union of Journalists.

The NUJ congratulates the editor – whose own job is under threat – for “standing up for quality journalism”.

The article, headlined “Strike looms over Times job cuts”, states: “Journalists at South Yorkshire Newspapers are to ballot on strike action over a proposal by the company to axe half of the Mexborough editorial jobs at the South Yorkshire Times.”

Speaking to the NUJ, Jim Oldfield, South Yorkshire Times editor said: “This is real journalism in action. The Times is currently fighting a brave and protracted battle to keep its core towns from decimation during this recession, I make no apology for acquainting our readers with the changes being proposed for their champion title.

“I am pleased that the company appear to have had an adult reaction to the story.”

NUJ general secretary-elect Michelle Stanistreet said “This is a great example of our members standing up for quality journalism and we hope other editors will follow the example set by the South Yorkshire Times.”

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Malcolm Coles: Four sites already implementing cookie law

Malcolm Coles has posted four examples of UK websites already implementing the new EU cookie law that came into force on 26 May.

Websites were given a year to “get their house in order” by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and work towards getting web users to agree to accepting the dropping of cookies – small text files placed onto a users computer.

The ICO has warned companies, however, that they should not leave it until 25 May next year to start complying and has already written to some websites following complaints received since 26 May.

The independent body has received criticism for not telling websites exactly how to get users to agree to accepting cookies, but said sites do not necessarily have to opt for a tick box agreement and can instead find another way of getting users to take “positive action” in order to agree to cookies being dropped.

The four sites that Coles highlights as already implementing cookie law are: the ICO (they had to, didn’t they?), All Things D, the Radio Times and the Island Web Works website on the Isle of Man.

Here is the example from All Things D and Coles’ comment:

It reads: “Some of the advertisers and web analytics firms used on this site may place ‘tracking cookies’ on your computer. We are telling you about them right upfront, and we want you to know how to get rid of these tracking cookies if you like. Read more.

“This notice is intended to appear only the first time you visit the site on any computer.”

It only appears on your first visit to the site (I presume they use a cookie to do that!).

Malcolm Coles’ full post is at this link

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