Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » Mobile

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – advice on mobile reporting

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:30:33 +0000

Sky News correspondent Nick Martin has some advice for journalists using a mobile phone to record video.

He shared his tips at last week’s news:rewired journalism conference.

According to this post on three pieces of advice for journalists reporting using a mobile phone, Martin advises:

1. Practise

2. Don’t panic!

3. Use mobile reporting only when it was appropriate, explaining “that it is not worth setting up a tripod and XLR cables for an iPhone when the cameraman is just five minutes away”.

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.Similar Posts:

App of the week for journalists – Google Latitude, for adding locations to stories

Sarah Marshall — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:45:11 +0000

App of the week:Google Latitude

Phones: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Symbian

Cost: Free

What is it? An app, web app, website and mobile site that allows you to add your location to a Google Map.

How is it of use to journalists? This was tip picked up from Paul Gallagher, head of online content at the Manchester Evening News.

During a session on mobile reporting at news:rewired, a conference about the latest trends in digital journalism, Gallagher explained how the MEN online newsdesk has encouraged reporters to use Google Latitude to add locations two paricular stories.

When Manchester City and Manchester United faced each other at Wembley in the FA Cup final in 2011, MEN sent reporters on the fan buses and created atmosphere by reporters geotagging locations as they travelled, using Google Latitude on a mobile phone.

MEN also used Google Latitude when reporting on roadworks, liveblogging a slow journey.

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Media release: The Scotsman launches £7.99-a-month iPad app

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:00:14 +0000

The Scotsman is today launching a £7.99-a-month iPad app.

The app, which will be free for the first 30 days, is aimed “to appeal to regular readers, subscribers and scotsman.com users, and offers the opportunity to grow readership amongst iPad users, business travellers, sports fans, expat Scots and commuters”, according to a release.

The Johnston Press-owned title added in the release that this is “Scotland’s first dedicated multimedia news iPad app”.

John McLellan, Scotsman Publications’ editor-in-chief, said in a statement:

This is a major development which keeps the Scotsman up to speed with the latest media technology. Devices such as the iPad will play an increasingly dominant part in the way people access information and this is one of the most important steps forward in the Scotsman’s 200-year history.

It is a very different experience to reading online and having been at the forefront of that newspaper revolution over ten years ago it is fitting that we are in the midst of this one.

Scotsman Publications’ managing director Andrew Richardson, added:

The Scotsman app offers the best of both worlds, giving readers the choice of either leafing through the pages of The Scotsman newspaper or of reading the content in a digital format, with live news, video and enhanced use of photographs. Either choice provides a great new way to keep in touch and up-to-date

The app is sponsored by train company East Coast for the first four months.Similar Posts:

Economist launches US election web app

Sarah Marshall — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:43:48 +0000

The Economist has launched Electionism, an HTML5 web app for tablets, focusing on the US election.

Publishers will be interested to note the development of an app that works across a range of tablets, including the iPad, Galaxy Tab and Kindle Fire (yet to be released in the UK), and will also soon be available on the Blackberry PlayBook.

Rather than being downloaded from an app store, it is accessed by following a link in the tablet’s web browser.

Although designed for tablets, a simple version of the app works on mobile, presenting a Tumblr blog-style format (indeed, the app is “powered by Tumblr”).

This is the the Economist’s first foray into a web app that will work across several devices, unlike its range of apps native to Android and Apple’s iOS.

Electionism includes content from the Economist, CQ Roll Call and other noteworthy election reports from around the web.

Tom Standage, digital editor of the Economist, said in a release:

Electionism combines the Economist’s day-to-day opinion and commentary on the US elections, from our Webby-award-winning Democracy in America blog, with detailed on-the-ground coverage from CQ Roll Call and our picks of the best election coverage from elsewhere on the web, all wrapped up in a tablet-friendly format.

Nick Blunden, global managing director and publisher of the Economist online added:

It is extremely important to us that we provide our readers with not just commentary and analysis, but also the opportunity to discuss and debate the key issues. By building content sharing functionality through Facebook, Twitter and email into the Electionism app, we have provided readers with the ability to engage others in a conversation around the election.

Electionism was created by the Economist Group Media Lab, an internal product innovation group, and built in conjunction with its Toronto-based technology partner, Pressly.

Tom Standage, who is quoted in thus post, will be speaking at news:rewired, a conference for digital journalists organised by Journalism.co.uk. See the agenda, list of speakers and list of delegates. Tickets cost £130 +VAT and can be booked using the ticket page. More than 140 tickets have been sold. Book now to avoid disappointment.

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Media release: Guardian’s iPad app hits half a million downloads

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:19:26 +0000

The Guardian iPad edition has been downloaded more than half a million times since it launched in October 2011, with 23,000 downloads on Christmas day alone.

The Guardian has not released figures for the number of editions downloaded.

From Friday 13 January iPad readers will be asked to pay £9.99 for a monthly subscription. Content has been free of charge for users in the first three months since launch, due to a sponsorship deal with Channel 4.

From tomorrow (Saturday 7 January) the app will include the Guardian’s Weekend magazine for the first time. The new weekly section, accessible from the app’s top navigation bar, will feature content from the Guardian’s award-winning magazine supplement, including columnists and recipes.

In a release, Merope Mills, editor of the Guardian Weekend magazine, said: “Weekend magazine’s stunning photography perfectly suits the form and the clean, modern design of our app on iPad. From tomorrow, readers will be able to enjoy a leisurely read of our award-winning longform journalism, flick through the galleries of ‘Your Pictures’ or watch our brilliant fashion and beauty correspondents Jess Cartner-Morley and Sali Hughes, as they guide readers through the latest lifestyle trends.”

The release also states that Guardian six- and seven-day print subscribers will continue to receive free access to the app after the three month period via their current subscription. Users who download the app after 13 January will receive a week’s free trial before signing up for the monthly subscription.Similar Posts:

#jpod in depth: The past, present and future of mobile reporting

Rachel McAthy — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:50:03 +0000

The past year has been a big year for mobile reporting, bringing readers to the heart of stories both at home, such as the London riots, as well as abroad, such as the Arab Spring.

The year is also ending with handing down of new guidance of the use of text-based devices, including mobiles, when reporting from court, which has given greater powers to journalists when wishing to report live and tweet on proceedings.

In this week’s #jpod, news editor Rachel McAthy speaks to journalists about the key events in recent years which have demonstrated some of the best of mobile reporting and what the future holds in this area. Interviewees include special projects editor for the Guardian Paul Lewis, special correspondent for the Times Alexi Mostrous, music editor at the Guardian Caspar Llewellyn Smith and reporter for Washington DC’s news station WTOP Neal Augenstein.

We also find out more about the technology available from SoundCloud’s audio content manager Ben Fawkes.

Journalism.co.uk’s next news:rewired event will feature a session on mobile reporting.

You can hear all our podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.Similar Posts:

#jpod: How multiplatform strategies are evolving

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:43:06 +0000

This podcast takes a look at multiplatform strategies and how newsrooms – and journalists and editors – are adapting and creating content to be viewed on four or five screens: desktop, mobile, tablets, e-readers and IPTV.

It hears from Patrice Slupowski, vice president of digital innovation and communities at Orange, and Guido Baumhauer, director of strategy for marketing and distribution at Deutsche Welle, who spoke to Journalism.co.uk’s news editor Rachel McAthy at the inaugural Global Editor’s Network news summit this week.

The podcast, presented by Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall, also includes an interview with Adam Thomas, communications manager at Sourcefabric, a not-for-profit that last month announced the creation of Superdesk, a free multiplatform solution for newsrooms due to launch in summer 2012.

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Future reports 6m app downloads in six weeks

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:22:29 +0000

Six million apps of magazines published by Future Publishing have been downloaded since the launch of Apple’s Newsstand six weeks ago.

In the first month since launch, the magazine publishing company, which has apps of 65 UK titles, made $1 million in the increased business, Mike Goldsmith, editor-in-chief of iPad and tablet editions at Future Publishing, told Journalism.co.uk in a podcast on how Apple’s Newsstand is revolutionising the publishing industry.

Newsstand, which launched on 12 October when Apple released iOS 5, is an iPhone and iPad home screen app that acts as a direct portal into a new magazine and news publication section of the iTunes App Store.

Future, like other publishing companies, has appealed to customers by offering free downloads of particular back issues, with iPhone and iPad users responding by downloading five million free editions.

Goldsmith said initial statistics are encouraging with 40 per cent of sales being made up of subscriptions rather than individual editions.

Other publishers are also reporting an increased impact. Daryl Rayner, managing director of Exact Editions, which works with publishers to create digital editions, reported “very pleasing results” with 15-30 per cent of subscriptions taken out on an annual basis rather than as 30-day subscriptions and renewals at 85-88 per cent.

Chris Talintyre, head of direct and digital marketing at Factory Media, which publishes 27 websites and 19 magazines, reported more than 850,000 downloads and initial sales data for October showing a month-on-month increase of 150 per cent since Newsstand’s launch.

Goldsmith said Newsstand is “absolutely intrinsic to the future of Future Publishing,” which yesterday reported a £19 million loss, largely because of a slump in print in the US.

Future said that its UK operations had been “resilient” overall, with revenues falling just 2 per cent.

US losses were “partially offset” by growth in digital revenues, which saw a 25 per cent hike.

Goldsmith illustrated how the iPad and Newsstand is changing the magazine market with the example of Comic Heroes, a special edition, bi-monthly magazine. On the physical news stand “it does okay”, he said, but “it’s a special edition and no one expects it to do marvellously”

But on Newsstand things are different.

It’s our second biggest page turning, flat app. It has gone through the roof because it is a brand that means different things to a different device. And that means we will invest in the title in terms of IP, in terms of staffing, in terms of marketing, in a way that we previously probably wouldn’t have invested in to that extent.

Is it going to revolutionise our business? It could do, it could well do.

I think the next 12 months are gong to be very, very interesting indeed.

Click here to hear more statistics and how Newsstand is revolutionising magazine publishing.Similar Posts:

#jpod: How Apple’s Newsstand is revolutionising the publishing industry

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:14:01 +0000

In this podcast, Journalism.co.uk’s technology correspondent Sarah Marshall looks at the impact of Apple’s Newsstand on the magazine publishing industry since it launched six weeks ago on 12 October.

This jpod includes interviews with Mike Goldsmith, editor-in-chief of iPad and tablet editions, Future Publishing; Daryl Rayner, managing director of Exact Editions and Chris Talintyre, head of direct and digital marketing at Factory Media, and includes download statistics from the three companies.

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.Similar Posts:

Economist launches World in 2012 iPad app

Sarah Marshall — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:00:11 +0000

The Economist has today announced the release of an iPad version of “The World in 2012 from the Economist: Editor’s Highlights”, based on the annual magazine which features predictions, graphs and charts for the coming year.

In a release, the Economist said the app, which is sponsored by BMW, features “select articles from this year’s edition, videos from around the world and specially curated snapshots of people, events, landmarks and data are all included in the first-ever World in…highlights application.”

The featured articles focus on a variety of topics ranging from the areas of technology still up for grabs, the power of sharing and the change in China’s leadership. The videos include an extract of an interview with Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, as well as interviews with people from New York, Beijing and London on the coming year. The application also contains a feature on 12 people to watch in 2012, a month-by-month selection of events in 2012, a snapshot of 12 titbits to look out for in the year ahead and a collection of charts, graphs and data.

Daniel Franklin, editor of The World in 2012 said in the release:

This digital introduction makes it clear to new readers why the publication has become so popular over the past quarter century.

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App of the week for journalists – Showcase, for creating audio slideshows

Sarah Marshall — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:45:18 +0000

App of the week: Showcase

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

Cost: £5.49

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Showcase allows you to record audio or import audio and photos to create an audio slideshow.

The app is made by Vericorder, maker of mobile journalism products and the people behind 1st Video and VC Audio Pro, both previous apps of the week.

Showcase enables you to use audio or photographs already on your iOS device or take photos and record audio. You can then edit them together and export the video file in a variety of sizes over a wireless network, upload it directly to YouTube or email the file.

Reviews

There are not enough ratings to display an average star rating.Similar Posts:

Sourcefabric promises a free, multi-platform solution for news outlets

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:39:37 +0000

Sourcefabric, a non-profit, has announced it is working on a new platform: Superdesk, an open source newsroom tool designed by journalists that covers the entire journalistic process from source to signal.

When it is released in summer 2012 Superdesk promises to be a tool newsrooms can use to pull in news feeds from social media and APIs, and then output the signal to a range of different platforms, such as television, radio, mobile, tablets and online.

As free software it can be used by organisations of all sizes, from hyperlocal or global, and by print or online. As with Sourcefabric’s other two open source platforms, Superdesk will be accessible through any web browser after being installed on one Linux server.

Although not yet publicly available Superdesk is already being used by new Swiss online-print hybrid paper TagesWoche, launched last month in Basel, 14 months after the city’s liberal Basler Zeitung was sold to investors. By using the platform the news organisation is helping Sourcefabric shape its development.

An announcement from Sourcefabric states:

Superdesk is a newsroom tool made by journalists, for journalists, which will offer new ways to source, manage, verify, process and present the facts behind a story.

Whether you source your news from Reuters or random RSS, stringers or Storyful, citizens or Open Calais tags, Superdesk streamlines your workflow.

It centralises and standardises your content allowing you to move it around the newsroom to other journalists, editors or translators for further editing or sign off. Superdesk will then deliver the finished article to any platform or device – web, mobile, print, radio, television. All will be at your disposal.

Adam Thomas from Sourcefabric told Journalism.co.uk that the software has been developed by journalists who understand exactly how newsrooms work.

We have this ethos of creating once and publishing everywhere to really create efficiency within the newsroom.

Sourcefabric has two existing platforms: Newscoop, a CMS, and Airtime, for radio stations.

Newscoop

Newscoop is a content management system, a demo of which provides a taster. As with Superdesk and Airtime, Newscoop needs to be installed on a Linux server and can then be accessed using any web browser from a device running any OS.

Asked how it differs from WordPress Thomas said:

WordPress is great for blogs and Newscoop is great for newsrooms. It’s built by journalists for journalists and has lots of tools that journalists really like, like workflow hierarchies. It’s multilingual, you can upload to SoundCloud, it’s very friendly to audio and works very nicely with images.

Being multilingual is key for the software, Thomas explained.

We work in a lot of post-conflict areas, a lot of transitional democracies, where a multitude of languages are often spoken, so it is multilingual both in the back end, for the journalists, and also for the front end, so readers can get the news in different languages.

Airtime

Airtime is Sourcefabric’s open source radio automation package. Thomas explained how it works:

It allows radio stations, for free, to download software and set up a professional radio station and manage a media archive, build shows and then output via webstream, by FM or digital.

One of the radio stations using Airtime is West African Democracy Radio, a radio network operating out of Senegal but covering the whole of the West African region.

They use Airtime alongside Newscoop. They get the journalists to write the articles on Newscoop, they take these and prepare them as scripts, give them to the radio shows who then broadcast via Airtime.

Airtime records automatically to SoundCloud so then these shows are recorded to SoundCloud, uploaded to the web, and then shared by Facebook and Twitter.

Sourcefabric launched in its current form, as a non-profit organisation, in April 2010 but the seeds of the organisation and platforms date back as far as 1999, when a team first started creating digital newsrooms.

The current incarnation of the organisation has bases in Europe and North and South America: in Prague, Berlin, Toronto, Warsaw, Guatemala, Serbia and Minsk.

Thomas said:

The software is actually only seven months old. We’ve re-factored and made new versions, we’ve renamed them so these are new products. We have really tailored then for the web and for modern journalism.

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FT web app has been used 1m times

Sarah Marshall — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:48:00 +0000

The Financial Times is reporting that its web app has clocked up one million hits since it was launched in June.

Around 45 per cent of users have bookmarked the FT web app to a iPhone or iPad, replicating a native app experience by providing an app icon on the device’s home screen.

The app, which is free to download but through which content is limited due to a cross-platform part paywall, saw 150,000 uses in the first 10 days; five months on it has achieved one million clicks on the app.ft.com url.

The web app, built with HTML5 technology, has two advantages for the FT over its previous native iPhone and iPad apps: it avoids the FT paying Apple a 30 per cent cut, the charge for any music, app or book publisher selling through its store, and the FT gets to access and own its audience data.

In a post on its blog the FT said the web app has “significantly boosted mobile and tablet traffic”.

FT.com now sees 20 per cent of total page views and 15 per cent of new B2C subscriptions each week coming directly from mobile and tablet devices. These readers are also more engaged, with FT.com users who register on mobiles and tablets 2.5 times more likely to subscribe, as well as being more active in giving feedback.

The FT has also produced an infographic.

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

Sarah Marshall — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:17:02 +0000

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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#jpod: How journalists can use SMS to engage with the audience

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:19:46 +0000

Three quarters of the world’s population has a mobile phone and text messaging has become ubiquitous.

This podcast takes a look at how journalists can connect with sources, communicate with audiences, gather tips and crowdsource information using SMS, which is used by more than 80 per cent of Europeans who have a mobile phone.

A session on how to architect the SMS newsroom took place at the Mozilla Festival in London at the weekend.

Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall attended and caught up with the four speakers: Jim Colgan, who was digital editor and producer at WNYC radio in New York when the station created this award-winning crowdsourced SMS snow map and who is now working with Mobile Commons, a platform which allows you to send and receive text messages; Florence Scialom and Amy O’Donnell from FrontlineSMS, the provider of free software to enable you to text large groups of people; and Stevie Graham from Twilio, which allows developers to create voice, VoIP and SMS applications.

The podcast explains how to create a crowdsourced map, set up an anonymous tip line, and has advice from the four SMS experts.

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

*Statistics on mobile use are taken from the mobiThinking site.Similar Posts: