App of the week for journalists – 1st Video, to record and edit video on your iPhone or iPad

App of the week: 1st Video

Operating systems: Apple (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)

Cost: £6.99

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Shell out for this app and you will have a video editing suite in your pocket.

1st Video allows you to record or import video and edit in multitrack and upload the video to YouTube or transfer it to another device on the same wireless network.

It is used by the BBC 5 Live reporter Nick Garnett, according to a post by him on the BBC College of Journalism site, for broadcasting audio and editing packages. Another app, VC Audio Pro which is made by the same developer, Vericorder, and has also featured as a Journalism.co.uk app of the week will suffice if you want to create an audio only edited report.

Journalism.co.uk has a guide on how to shoot and edit video on an iPhone using 1st Video.

Reviews: It gets 3.5 stars in iTunes App Store

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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Press Gazette: Neville Thurlbeck tells his part in ‘Jacobean revenge drama’ of hacking

Neville Thurlbeck, the former chief reporter at the News of the World, has penned a first person account of his part in the phone-hacking saga.

The eloquent Thurlbeck certainly doesn’t hold back in the dramatic stakes:

After years of sitting silently in the wings while a bloody Jacobean revenge tragedy played out on the stage, you probably wonder why I have finally decided to cast myself in a speaking role and stroll briefly onto the stage that bears the corpse of my former newspaper.

As he did in his short statement to the cameras last week, Thurlbeck backs the assertion by News International executives that the evidence was kept from them, claiming there was a “pattern of withholding information”.

Well worth a read, do so on Press Gazette here.

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Journalisted Weekly: Armistice, Berlusconi and James Murdoch

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

Armistice, Berlusconi and James Murdoch

• Coverage of the Armistice commemorations led the week’s news agenda
• Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation and James Murdoch’s Select Committee appearance covered lots
• EDL arrests, Tendulkar run record, second Northampton nightclub death and Welsh Assembly deadlock covered little

Covered lots

• The 93rd anniversary of the November 11 Armistice takes place, 567 articles (including FIFA row over allowing the England football team to wear poppies, 133 articles versus allowing the Welsh football team to wear poppies, 19 articles)
• Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigns after a week in which he lost his parliamentary majority in a budget vote, 521 articles (including coverage of his successor, Mario Monti, 188 articles)
• James Murdoch appears for a second time before the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, 136 articles (including references to ‘Mafia’, 64 articles)
• Theresa May is engulfed in a row over lax UK borders, as Border Agency boss Brodie Clarke denies wrongdoing and resigns, 122 articles
• Dr Conrad Murray is found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of singer Michael Jackson, 101 articles

Covered little

• 179 members of the English Defence League are arrested after threats to attack St Paul’s protesters, 17 articles
• Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar becomes the first player to reach 15,000 test runs, 10 articles
• A second student dies as a result of the crush in a Northampton nightclub, 9 articles
• Welsh Assembly in deadlock as opposition parties unite to block budget, 5 articles

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

• David Cameron: 644 articles (+22% on last week)
• Theresa May: 229 articles (+146% on last week)
• George Osborne: 205 articles (-12% on last week)
• Ed Miliband: 143 articles (+66% on last week)
• Tony Blair: 122 articles (+40% on last week)
• Nick Clegg: 121 articles (+19% on last week)
• Tom Watson: 114 articles (+660% on last week)
• Gordon Brown: 100 articles (+82% on last week)
• Boris Johnson: 78 articles (+44% on last week)
• Yvette Cooper: 69 articles (+165% on last week)

Celebrity vs. serious

• I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! returns, 90 articles versus Muslims Against Crusades banned by Home Secretary, 35 articles
• Frankie Cocozza axed from the X Factor, 70 articles versus students take part in tuition fees protest in London, 31 articles
• Modern Warfare 3 breaks sales records, 66 articles versus Hinchingbrooke NHS Hospital becomes first of its kind to be run by private provider, 32 articles

Arab spring (countries & current leaders)

• Syria and President Assad: 64 articles (+5% on previous week)
• Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu: 59 articles (+37% on previous week)
• Iran and President Ahmadinejad: 38 articles (+73% on previous week)
• Libya’s National Transitional Council: 15 articles (-57% on previous week)
• Yemen and President Saleh: 9 articles (+50% on previous week)
• Gaza and Hamas: 7 articles (-61% on previous week)
• West Bank and President Abbas: 4 articles (-50% on previous week)
• Egypt’s Military Council: 4 articles (-43% on previous week)
• Turkey and Prime Minister Erdogan: 3 articles (-57% on previous week)
• Bahrain and King Al Khalifa: 3 articles (unchanged on previous week)
• Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah: 1 article (-83% on previous week)
• Jordan and King Abdullah: 1 article (unchanged on previous week)

Who wrote a lot about… the IAEA’s report exposing Iran’s nuclear ambitions

• Julian Borger – 7 articles (The Guardian)
• Alex Spillius – 5 articles (Daily Telegraph)
• James Blitz – 3 articles (Financial Times)
• Martin Fletcher – 3 articles (The Times)

Long form journalism

• 3,350 words: ‘The thankful villages’ – Jon Kelly, BBC News, 11 November 2011
• 3,098 words: ‘Best frenemies: politicians and the press’ – David Runciman, The Guardian, 11 November 2011
• 2,869 words: ‘The world’s first billion-dollar game’ – William Leith, The Times, 12 November 2011

Journalists who have updated their profile

• David Newbury is music editor at Londonist and also works as music critic for The Line Of Best Fit, and as a freelance music, arts and fashion writer at Quietus. He has experience at The Scotsman, Northern Echo, Leicester Mercury, The Guardian and Scotland On Sunday. He has an NCTJ Preliminary Certificate in Newspaper Journalism from Lambeth College and a BA in Geography from the University of Leicester. You can follow David on Twitter @HiDavidNewbury
• Rob Langston is associate editor at Fundweb.co.uk. He has previously worked as deputy editor at What Investment, senior reporter at Investment Adviser and FTAdviser.com and reporter for Investment Adviser, Insurance Insider and Niche Personal Loans. He has a BA in English with Italian from the University of Sussex at Brighton and won the Headlinemoney Trade Journalist of the Year award in 2010. Follow Rob on Twitter @rob_langston

The Media Standards Trust, which runs journalisted, won the ‘One to Watch’ category at this year’s Prospect Think Tank Awards

Read about our campaign for the full exposure of phone hacking and other illegal forms of intrusion at the Hacked Off website

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Read the MST’s submission to parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions and the House of Lords Communications Select Committee on investigative journalism

The Orwell Prize 2012 is now open for entries following a launch debate on ‘Writing the Riots’

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

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Tool of the week for journalists – WhenToTweet

Tool of the week: WhenToTweet

What is it? A tool that allows you to work out the best time to tweet

How is it of use to journalists? 

Automated tweets or those reporting breaking news cannot be timed. But when is the best time to engage with your followers and get noticed on Twitter?

In a recent interview for a podcast on how to best time your tweets, Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, a platform that allows you to queue up tweets and post them at optimal times, explained that it is best to tweet when there is a lot of chatter.

When the most traffic happens and when the most tweets go out its the best time to tweet, which is sometimes counter-intuitive.

This tool works by both by monitoring the performance of your past tweets and tells you when most of your followers will be online. The best time for @journalismnews to tweet is 11am, according to this tool.

For more Twitter advice see 10 technical Twitter tips for journalists.

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CNN launches new iReport site

CNN this week unveiled its new iReport site which, according to a blog post about the changes, will offer greater personalisation, an enhanced community through “groups” and a “favourite button”.

iReport is CNN’s platform for user-generated content, where non-journalists submit video stories, the best of which are broadcast on the news channel.

The update comes five years after iReport was launched and, according to CNN’s post, now has a community of “nearly a million people”.

Last month at news:rewired – connected journalism, CNN digital producer Dominique van Heerden shared some interesting statistics on iReport, such as that CNN had published 912,000 iReports since its launch, with 15,000 iReports published on average every month and 2.4 million unique users in June 2011.

In an article on the new version iReport, lostremote’s Natan Edelsburg said the aim was “to create the largest ‘social network for news,’ according to Lila King, participation director at CNN”.

Read lostremote’s report here.

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Wired offers creative commons images in exchange for link

Director Tim Burton surrounded by dictaphones at Comic Con 2009, one of 50 images made available by Wired as part of its new creative commons plan. Image: Wired.com

Wired.com has made what looks like a canny move in deciding to license its own images under creative commons in return for a mention and a link.

The technology site doesn’t currently sell the images, so the commons licence will cost it nothing but will probably generate some useful publicity today, like this, plus traffic and SEO in the long run.

See 50 images made available immediately here.

Wired hasn’t stipulated where the link and mention have to go, so presumably it’s fine to put it either right next to the image or bury it at the bottom of your blog post.

The licence also allows users to edit images, as I have with the one above. Just a simple crop here, but mashups and other edits are also fine.

The move also raises a long-standing lack of clarity over the CC “non-commercial” licence. When we use CC images on Journalism.co.uk, we usually steer clear of images marked “not for commercial use” because we carry ads on the site and the site is a profitable entity.

But the distinction isn’t as clear cut as that according to some. Nieman Journalism Lab’s Joshua Benton has an in-depth post about the CC issue, read it here.

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Hyperlocals can now create noticeboards using the Guardian’s n0tice

Online noticeboard n0tice has today opened to all community groups and hyperlocal sites after testing the technology with a limited number of users.

Groups can now create their own customised page, choosing a domain and can start to moderate activity. The platform is still being developed but there are plans to later introduce revenue-sharing between n0tice, owned by the Guardian Media Group, and page owners, such as hyperlocal news sites and bloggers.

notice is like a cross between a village noticeboard, Gumtree and Foursquare in that it is a space for users to post small ads, local news and announcements and that information can be pushed to location-enabled mobile phones and devices. There is more on how and why n0tice was created at this link and how it will make money by charging users for promoted, location-based small ads.

Following a recent invitation roll-out, hyperlocals, bloggers and community groups can now create their n0tice page, measure performance and activity with social analytics tools, and “moderate community activity in order to encourage the kind of behaviour they want to see on their noticeboard”, Sarah Hartley, one of the team behind n0tice told Journalism.co.uk.

She added:

This service is designed to serve community groups of all shapes and sizes, active local champions and community leaders, local publishers and bloggers, interest groups and hobbyists, and anyone who wants to manage a community noticeboard. We are focused on serving UK-based community groups, but it works anywhere in the world.

The service is still in development, and we have a lot we plan to add in the near future.

For example, we will develop revenue sharing opportunities via the classified advertising platform so that noticeboard owners can earn money. We will also develop a private, restricted access community noticeboard service which will be offered for a fee.

We don’t have a date when these services will be launched, but we release new capabilities on a regular basis.  You can follow @n0tice to stay in touch with the team.

Access to n0tice.com is open, but community participation is currently by invitation only. There are details on the technologies used to create n0tice here.

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#soe11: Winners of NCTJ awards for excellence

The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) today announced the winners of its awards for excellence in journalism, before an audience of editors at the Society of Editors conference.

The 11 winners are listed below:

Student news journalism of the year: Scarlett Wrench, junior sub- editor at Men’s Health

Trainee news journalism of the year: Rachel Butler, trainee journalist at the Derby Telegraph

Student sports journalism of the year: Tim Groves, Planet Rugby/freelance

Trainee sports journalism of the year: Rob Setchell, the Cambridgeshire Times/Wisbech Standard

Student features of the year: Jessica Baldwin, freelance features writer

Trainee features of the year: Kate Proctor, chief writer for Limited Edition, Westmorland Gazette

Student top scoop of the year: Larisa Brown, Daily Mail graduate trainee

Trainee top scoop of the year: Andrew Dickens, Cambridge News trainee

Photographer of the year: Matthew Harrison, freelance

Reporter of the year: Robert Alderson, online editor for It’s Nice That

Student journalist of the year: Rosie Taylor, Daily Mail trainee reporter

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#soe11: Editors of the Mirror and Times on phone-hacking coverage

Editors of the Mirror and the Times were today questioned at the Society of Editors conference about their coverage of the phone-hacking scandal.

Editor of the Times James Harding said earlier on in the scandal that the newspaper’s decisions were informed by “a combination of the company denying it, police saying there was nothing to see and an issue of rivalry”.

I look back and think why didn’t we jump on it? There’s often the sense that there’s an agenda there so I think when that story broke in the Guardian there was a tendency to see that and when news broke the police came out and said there’s nothing to see here. That did inform the thinking.

It was only as a few more pieces fell into place … I remember thinking there is something that is seriously wrong here.

He said following more allegations of wrongdoing the “engines fired up a bit” at the Times and there was “a real attempt to ensure we were reporting on it as any other story.”

Editor of the Mirror Richard Wallace added that when it first started “it was very much a meeja story”.

We didn’t think our readers were interested in it and frankly they weren’t.

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#followjourn – @mexicoreporter Deborah Bonello/video journalist

Who? Deborah Bonello

Where? Deborah is founder of MexicoReporter.com and a video journalist for outlets including AFP and FT.

Twitter? @mexicoreporter

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to rachel at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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• #followjourn – @ruudelmendorp Ruud Elmendorp/freelance video journalist
• #followjourn – @Maid_Marianne Marianne Bouchart/editor
• #followjourn – @NateLanxon Nate Lanxon/Editor
• #followjourn – @AlanFisher Alan Fisher/journalist
• #followjourn – @david_rae David Rae/editorial director