How journalists can use Google+ circles

The 10,000 Words blog has an interesting suggestion for local reporters – but this post is probably worth a read by all journalists.

Meranda Watling suggests setting up circles in Google+ for each reporting area to allow you to share news stories, information, and interact with contacts.

The thing to point out is that your contacts don’t need to have a Google+ account – their email address can be added to a circle and they will then receive updates in their inbox.

A UK local reporter could create a circle for education, one for county council contacts and another for borough or district councillors, for example.

Watling has a suggestion to allow contacts to opt in to receiving your posts:

Create a general public “everything” circle that gets all the items you post — and place everyone you add (or who adds you) here by default. Tell people that these other specific circles exist, and give them the option to be included there and also to exclude themselves from other circles (including your everything list). Yes, this is absolutely going to take time, especially at first and especially if you’re a large news organisation. But think of the usefulness.

With this general set-up, you’ll be able to target relevant news directly to the stream of people most interested in it. Rather than have multiple Facebook pages to keep track of, you can simply select which circle each post is shared with each time you post.

Think of the comment threads that can be developed among only people specifically interested in that area of news. Also, if you’re looking for news tips or sources, post a message to that circle. It only goes to relevant folks and other people don’t feel bombarded with pleas.

Watling notes caveats such as dealing with non-tech-savvy contacts. There is also the problem that contacts are likely to view updates arriving by email as spammy.

The full 10,000 Words post is at this link.

For 10 other ways journalists can use Google+ click here.

If you are a journalist and not yet on Google+ and would like an invite, fill in this form and I will attempt to invite you.

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#followjourn: @KathViner – Kath Viner/journalist

Who? Katharine Viner

Where? Katharine is deputy editor of the Guardian.

Twitter? @kathviner

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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Citizen journalism platform Blottr launches iPhone app

User generated news service Blottr has launched an iPhone app called Paparappzi. It is to follow with the release of an app for Android devices next week.

The app is designed to encourage people to submit news stories covering their local communities. Its challenge now is to encourage people to upload and share news.

Blottr, which launched in August, focuses on seven cities – Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, London and Manchester.

Paparappzi has an intuitive design, allowing users to write a short news item, add a photo and a geolocation and submit it to Blottr.

Similar to recently-launched app Meporter, Blottr’s offering differs in that it comes out of the UK rather than the US. The UK company raised £1m investment in May.

Founder Adam Baker said in a release:

The Blottr app has the potential to fundamentally change the way news is gathered and reported. The UK has the highest number of smartphone users in Europe at 11m, and growing.

Over time, we hope a high preponderance of smartphone users will be using the Blottr app to report news they are witnessing from the scene.

Baker added: “We hope this will be the catalyst for millions of ordinary people to become citizen journalists and through our app, we expect to create a powerful network of people and content that will transform the ability to break news as it happens.”

Jon Anthony, leading the build, said: “One of the biggest challenges we faced when architecting the app was enabling real-time integration with our CMS. The app integrates fully with the user layer of our CMS, allowing stories to be posted directly to the site and viewed straight away on both mobile and web.”

Live video streaming will be introduced in the coming months.

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Media Week: Mail on Sunday targets News of the World readers

The Mail on Sunday is preparing a direct mail campaign, targeting 1.5 million News of the World readers in a bid to capitalise on the newspaper’s closure, according to Media Week.

Marketing bosses for the Mail started planning the marketing campaign the day after the closure of New of the World was announced, the article states.

The campaign kicks off on Monday and the DMGT-owned paper will target homes across the country.

The campaign marks one of the biggest in the Sunday title’s history.

It is thought the publisher is also considering other marketing activities, including above-the-line activity, as it looks to lure the 2.6 million former NotW readers.

The short article goes on to say other Sunday papers the Daily Star Sunday and the Sunday Mirror are preparing “similar promotional blitzes”.

Media Week’s full article is at this link.

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BBC: Ken Livingstone calls for ‘arms-length relationship’ between media and police

There has been “far too close a relationship” between the media and police involved in investigating the phone hacking scandal, former mayor of London Ken Livingstone said today.

Speaking on Radio 4′s Today programme Livingstone, who was mayor of London at the time of the previous Metropolitan Police investigation into phone hacking, called for an “arms length relationship” between the press and politicians.

He also insisted that meetings between senior figures on both sides should never be held in private.

How on earth can the prime minister of Britain or mayor of London have a private meal with someone at the centre of a criminal investigation? … It’s just not credible.

Reflecting on the circumstances of the previous inquiry Livingstone said the argument that police had other more serious issues to focus resources on was a “completely spurious defence”.

The police had more police than at any time in their history. The idea they had much more pressing things to do is nonsense. This is a scandal that goes right to the heart of the establishment.

Five senior past and present Metropolitan police officers are to appear before a parliamentary select committee beginning today to be questioned about the force’s investigation into phone hacking.

Assistant commissioner John Yates will appear first before the home affairs select committee. He reviewed the initial investigation into phone hacking in 2009 and ruled there was not sufficient new evidence to reopen a police inquiry.

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#followjourn: @ryanbassil – Ryan Bassil/journalist

Who? Ryan Bassil

Where? Ryan writes about new music for the Independent and the Huffington Post, as well as freelancing for publications ranging from NME to Dazed & Confused. He is also new music editor at Decibel Soup.

Twitter? @ryanbassil

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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Peston: News of the World emails allegedly show police payment requests

The BBC’s business editor Robert Peston claims to have learned from a source that News of the World emails uncovered by News International in 2007 appeared to show money requests from a reporter for payments to be made to royal protection officers for information.

According to a source, the e-mails include requests by a reporter for sums of about £1,000 to pay police officers in the royal protection branch for the information. The phone details could have been used to hack phones of the royal family.

Read more on Peston’s blog here…

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Independent: Plan hatched by media figures to rescue News of the World

According to a report in the Independent today a group of media and business figures are putting together a plan to rescue the News of the World which published its last edition on Sunday.

This followed a week of shocking revelations and allegations made against the Sunday tabloid relating to both phone hacking and payments to police. According to the Independent’s report the group of figures is attempting to “revive the title as a responsible investigative newspaper”.

At the centre of the group is Susan Douglas, a former editor of the Sunday Express, a former deputy editor of the Sunday Times, and a former executive in numerous media organisations.

… Ms Douglas has been holding talks with leading media owners and venture capitalists, but said that a rescue attempt would need to be made quickly before the opportunity to save the 168-year-old title was lost.

You can read up on all the latest in the phone hacking scandal at this link.

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App of the week for journalists – Bambuser

App of the week: Bambuser

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone and iPad), Android, Nokia

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? An app for live streaming video to your Facebook page, Twitter account or to an embedded player on your news site or blog.

It is similar to Qik, another app for live streaming video.

Reviews: It gets three stars in Apple’s iTunes store

What else should I know?

Bambuser has been around for a couple of years. It attracted media attention at the start of the year due to its wide spread use by protestors during the Arab spring demonstrations.

Over the last six months Bambuser has introduced a new hardware video encoding system. In short, it means Bambuser now has a higher frame rate, sharper video and better audio – while at the same time needing less bandwidth. The improvements are more apparent when using the most up to date smartphones (iPhones as well as numerous Android models) as well as the iPod Touch 4th Gen. The full list of 260 suitable phones is here.

Another advancement is Bambuser now automatically assesses the quality of your connection and then varies the quality of the broadcast accordingly so viewers don’t suffer increased latency.

Ultimately, users are held victim to the quality of the 3G / WiFi signal they receive. If they’re competing with 100,000 others at somewhere like Glastonbury, the end result isn’t ideal. However this is set to change in the near future with the 4G trials in Cornwall that will ultimately give smartphones the same download speed as fixed-line broadband connections.

Examples:

Given that Bambuser comes out of Sweden, many of these examples are from Scandanavia.

• One of Sweden’s best know sports journalists doing a live broadcast on board a yacht;
• NRK doing a Eurovision contest doorstop;
• Nokia and Microsoft announcing their partnership – with live coverage of Steve Ballmer’s speech via a laptop;
• This example from Tahrir square, Egypt and this example from inured protestors in Egypt

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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Poynter: How journalists can get to grips with API

Poynter has a very helpful beginner’s guide for journalists who want to understand API documentation.

It helps journalists understand the terms used by sites with an open API (application programming interface) and follows an earlier article on four reasons your news org should use APIs.

One really useful part of this post is that it allows you to hand-build an API request by taking you step-by-step through an example using the New York Times API (you will have to register with the NY Times to request an API key).

For example, let’s try getting New York Times reviews for the “Harry Potter” movies as an XML-formatted response. Use your favourite search engine to find the New York Times movie reviews API. This API is not perfect (it’s in beta, after all). The steps below can be compressed with shortcuts once you become more experienced, but since we’re assuming this is your first time, we’re going to take the slow road.

Click here for the rest of Poynter’s guide to follow the example.

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