In a press release issued yesterday the BBC announced the latest traffic statistics for BBC.com, which was said to have recorded 15 million unique users across Europe in the first quarter of the year.

Figures relating to accessing BBC news on mobile devices were also reported, with visits of “around 8.5 million users” across the world visiting the BBC News websites and apps on mobiles or tablets “in an average month”.

See the full release.

• NOTW website sees record traffic after Stephen Gately report
• Eight lessons for publishers from comScore’s new report on mobile
• FT web app has been used 1m times
• Paywall results in for Newsday as US newspapers see dip in traffic
• Welt.de posts record traffic for February

Entries are now open for this year’s Online Journalism Awards, which have been organised by the US Online News Association since 2000.

The awards are for entrants from around the world and honour excellence in digital journalism and multimedia storytelling in all its forms – from major news organisations to independent publishers.

Twelve judges will go through the entries in August to select the winners. Eight awards come with prize money from the Knight Foundation and Gannett Foundation.

The deadline is 21 June and the winners will be announced in San Francisco on 22 September. Last year’s winners included Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the uprisings in Egypt and the BBC News website.

• Finalists of Online Journalism Awards announced
• 2011 Knight Batten journalism innovation awards open for entries
• Entries now open for 2012 Online Media Awards
• US student journalism awards open for entries
• Awards round-up: Index on Censorship winners; Mind Journalism Awards; Paul Foot nominations call

Image by art makes me smile on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

This week’s jpod looks at how different publishing platforms in the news industry are approaching curation and aggregation of news, from sources across the web including news outlets, bloggers and social media platforms.

Journalism.co.uk’s news editor Rachel McAthy speaks to:

• Burt Herman, co-founder of Storify
• Mark Johnson, chief executive of Zite
• Rory Brown, co-founder of BriefingMedia, publisher of TheMediaBriefing.com

In the spirit of curation, here is a list of some related reading and resources on this topic:

• Aggregation guidelines: Link, attribute, add value – Steve Buttry pulls together some standards journalists should bear in mind when aggregating news
• Five curation tools all journalists should know about – some recommended tools suggested by Journalism.co.uk
• New curation tool Bundlr sets sights on ‘untangling the web’ – Journalism.co.uk article on Bundlr
• Meet the curators – The Economist follows up on a tweet which caused much discussion during the SXSW conference
• Social media: what’s the difference between curation and journalism? – The BBC follows up on another Twitter debate
• 5 opportunities for dynamic curation tools – 10,000 Words suggests five ways to put curation into practice
• Are aggregation and curation journalism? Wrong question – GigaOm highlights the importance of putting the audience at the heart of the debate
• This Week in Review: A push for aggregation standards, and the end of an era for print – The Nieman Journalism Lab highlights recent efforts to set aggregation standards

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

• New curation tool Bundlr sets sights on ‘untangling the web’
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – social media filtering
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – social media kitbag
• Curation tool Bundlr goes public
• ReadWriteWeb: Wikipedia as a breaking news source

10,000 Words recently blogged about using infographics platform Easel.ly, which is currently in beta, to create visual stories via “drag-n-drop templates”, based around customisable themes.

According to 10,000 Words:

For newsrooms, this site poses huge opportunity in terms of shareability of information across social media

Read the 10,000 Words post here.

Here is a video from Easel.ly demonstrating how it works:

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.

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – kit checklist for mobile reporting
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – improving your video journalism skills
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – 10 tips for building community on social media
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – avoiding common video storytelling mistakes
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – building user responses into stories

This week’s local and mayoral elections have given journalists a great opportunity for producing data-driven journalism and experimenting with visualisations to present that data to the audience.

In this week’s Journalism.co.uk podcast Rachel McAthy looks at the current opportunities for journalists in the world of open data, with lots of tips from data journalism experts on where to find data resources and tools to help reporters find the stories within.

The podcast hears from:

• Tony Hirst, lecturer in telematics at the Open University
• Chris Taggart, co-founder of OpenCorporates
• Simon Rogers, editor of Guardian Datablog and Datastore

More recommended data journalism resources to get you started:

• The Data Journalism Handbook (online version)
• Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog
• Tony Hirst’s OUseful.info blog
• How to: get to grips with data journalism, by Simon Rogers on Journalism.co.uk
• Screencast: How to use data journalism tool Tableau, on Journalism.co.uk
• Five great examples of data journalism using Google Fusion Tables, on Journalism.co.uk

Journalism.co.uk runs training courses in data journalism. There are two levels: introduction to data journalism, being held on 9 or 28 May, and intermediate data journalism, which will run on 29 May. Both are being run by Kevin Anderson.

Those looking to expand their skills quickly can book on one of the introduction to data journalism courses and the intermediate course. If you book both options the cost is at the reduced rate. 

This is the last time we will be offering this course led by Kevin Anderson due to his commitments – so take advantage of the final opportunity to learn from this former BBC and Guardian journalist.

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

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – try this tutorial on using Google Fusion Tables
• Tool of the week for journalists: Data.gov.uk’s map-based search
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – dive into the data journalism handbook
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – try this Google Fusion Tables tutorial
• #followjourn – @smfrogers Simon Rogers/data journalist

Any journalists reporting on the local elections may like to try out this interactive Google map tutorial for visualising council ward boundaries, on the Online Journalism Blog. The guide to creating a ward map was created by journalist Daniel Bentley.

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.

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – create newsletter tabs in Facebook
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using digital tools to report elections
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – publishing data online
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using Google Refine
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – reporting on violence panel discussion

The Storify below outlines the story so far after journalist Brian Whelan, who it’s understood helped break the news over the weekend that the government was considering a missile site on the roof of his apartment building to protect the Olympics, tweeted that he was being “forced” to leave his apartment. His landlord has said she has served notice because of a disagreement relating to the renewal of the tenancy, and that the decision was not related to the missile situation in any way.

• Apartment Therapy: NYTimes calls off take down notice for blog network
• Spot the difference: AFP withdraws ‘digitally altered’ missile shot
• BBC and Sky News abstain from DEC Gaza appeal; Al Jazeera and Number 10 site show support
• John Yates resignation statement
• Reuters: Athletes can tweet at 2012 as long as not in manner of journalists

On the Independent Journalists blog, part of the Society of Professional Journalists blog network, sports content editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch David Sheets outlines some of his tips for better self-editing.

Tips include ensuring your work has “reason and focus”, consider “brevity when writing briefly” and to make use of active verbs which he says “can stand alone and bear their own weight”.

See the full post here.

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.

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – blog writing advice
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – simplifying investigations
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – publishing data online
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – how to write scripts for radio news
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – key elements to podcasting

Any journalist interested in data journalism and improving their skills in this area should take a look at the new data journalism handbook, published this weekend. The handbook started as a draft guide pulled together in just 48 hours at last year’s Mozilla Festival in London.

Contributors to the guide include data journalism experts from outlets including the Guardian, Wired.co.uk, the BBC, the Open Knowledge Foundation and the New York Times. The guide includes advice on finding and using data, with plenty of case studies along the way.

The handbook also states that it “can be freely copied, redistributed and reused under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license”.

Contributors to the Data Journalism Handbook retain copyright over their respective contributions, and have kindly agreed to release them under the terms of this license

Journalism.co.uk runs training courses in data journalism. There are two levels: introduction to data journalism, being held on 9 or 28 May, and intermediate data journalism, which will run on 29 May. Both are being run by Kevin Anderson.

Those looking to expand their skills quickly can book on one of the introduction to data journalism courses and the intermediate course. If you book both options the cost is at the reduced rate. 

This is the last time we will be offering this course led by Kevin Anderson due to his commitments – so take advantage of the final opportunity to learn from this former BBC and Guardian journalist.

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – try this tutorial on using Google Fusion Tables
• #jpod – Open data and journalism: How and why journalists should be digging for stories
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – try this Google Fusion Tables tutorial
• Tool of the week for journalists: Data.gov.uk’s map-based search
• #MozFest – First draft of new Data Journalism Handbook written in 48 hours

Looking to set up an online portfolio? Mashable has a post by Heather Huhman which details five different platforms you could use to upload an online portfolio: WorkSimple, Behance, Carbonmade, Pinterest and Dribble.

If you’re also after some inspiration for your portfolio then take a look at a collection we have previously pulled together here, offering five examples of portfolios other journalists have created, as well as their top tips for others.

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.

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – five free online portfolio sites
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – data journalism inspiration
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – toolkits for journalists
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – covering street protests
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – improving use of audio in multimedia reporting

Today marked the first Open Data Cities Conference which kicked off in Brighton, set up by former head of digital development at the Telegraph Greg Hadfield.

The conference said it would “focus on how publicly-funded organisations can engage with citizens to build more creative, prosperous and accountable communities”.

Among those citizens are of course the journalists working to encourage the opening up of data held by such organisations, wishing to use it to inform their audience about the local area and/or their interests.

“Connected localism” and adopting a “principle of openness”

An interesting phrase used at the conference was “connected localism”. The man behind it, Jonathan Carr-West of the Local Government Information Unit, spoke to the conference about the importance of creating a cultural mindset around openness, as opposed to just focusing on whether or not data is useful. And once this mindset has been established, “connected localism” can thrive.

We’re going to hear a lot today about data and what we use it for and how we make it useful. That’s really important and I don’t want to move away from that too far, but I would suggest … usefulness is not the whole story.

We don’t always know what’s useful … We need to adopt … a principle of openness. Whether you’re a small organisation, a council, a government.

He added the “assumption” needs to be that information is made open and data is shared.

Don’t over-think whether it’s going to be useful or not.

And this “principle of openness” is “what creates a field of exchange within which connected localism can occur”.

If we have openness as the way of doing things, if it is culturally embedded in our practice, that would begin to enable that connected localism.

We’ll talk a lot about open cities, but we should remember in this sense it’s not just making the city open, it’s that open data is effectively a new city.

It enables us to perform radical transformations to public services, to how we live … that we need if we’re to meet the profound challenges our society faces.

He cited Mumsnet as an example of “connected localism”, and one of the “new digital fields of exchange where people can connect”, and share/discuss/solve common interests.

Encouraging responses to information requests

Tom Steinberg of MySociety offered some tips for conference delegates on how to encourage more open data and the release of information, such as that asked for in freedom of information requests:

1. Don’t expect to win an economic argument about open data with people who do not have some other reason to think it’s a good idea. It is really hard with open data as it is a new issue so literature is new.

2. You should show them tools that will improve their lives based on open data. If you’re persuading a councillor use something like TheyWorkForYou and show them how they can get sent email alerts when an issue is mentioned in parliament. 10 per cent of everyone working in parliament uses it each week.

3. Don’t shout too loudly about how it [open data] will hold everyone to account and expose wrongdoing. If people are overworked, having their lives made harder is not a thing that will make them your friend.

4. Make mock-ups. For lots of kinds of open data there aren’t good examples as government hasn’t released the data. But use the amazing power of Photoshop to say ‘here’s a page where people could go to, for example, if they wanted to complain that their bin had not been collected’. This is a way of connecting the abstruse nature of data to a concrete thing.

He suggested that bodies such as councils should consider having a person specially dedicated to looking out for, and filtering, requests, and possibly add a button to their websites asking exactly what data people want.

How the BBC is opening up its archives

An interesting example of how one organisation is opening up its archived data is the BBC, as speaker Bill Thompson, who is head of partnership development in archive development at the broadcaster, explained.

The situation, as he posed it, is about turning the BBC “into a data repository with an API” and making this data “available for public service use, for people who can find a value in it”.

One project called BBC Redux provides a store of digital recordings which, when combined with the BBC’s Snippets project, enables users to search programmes, such as news bulletins, from the last five years, for the mention of a given keyword using subtitle data.

For more from the conference follow #ODCC on Twitter.

• #ijf11: The key term in open data? It’s ‘re-use’, says Jonathan Gray
• David Higgerson: Tweeting FOI requests? ICO got this wrong
• Petition for Hillsborough papers release exceeds 120,000 signatures
• New tool provides optional upload of iPhone location data
• #media140 – Carlos Alonso’s favourite tools to finds stories behind the data

United Business Media’s PR Newswire service has announced the launch of a new service tailored for bloggers and other “self-publishers, online journalists and hobbyists”.

The PR Newswires for Bloggers site offers customised news feeds, events listings and the opportunity for bloggers to attend press events and record video interviews with celebrities and industry experts.

PR Newswire manager for blogger relations, Thomas Hynes, said in a release:

PR Newswire recognises the growing influence of bloggers and our goal is to make it as easy as possible for them to access the content, tools and information they need to develop their blogs and increase visibility.

The site’s editors will also select five new blogs to feature on the PR Newswire service each week. Hynes added:

There are so many great blogs out there – and that list grows daily. Our goal is to highlight some of those blogs we find interesting or influential – which ultimately comes down to engaging content. Fortunately, there is no shortage of great blogs publishing just that so we shouldn’t run out of candidates any time soon.

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – 10 social media tips for bloggers
• Bloggers showing ‘plenty of interest’ in writing for HuffPo UK
• Poynter: Five ways to turn traffic spikes into return visits
• BBC explains semantic technologies and linked data behind World Cup site
• Social Media Journalist: “The problem with most news organisations is a lack of editorial understanding of social media” Kevin Anderson, Guardian blogs editor

The Financial Times has reported that the BBC has officially partnered with AudioBoo to post sound clips from programmes onto its website.

BBC journalists have been using AudioBoo since shortly after its launch in 2009 and the Radio 4 Today programme has providing catch-up audio for some time, getting around 20,000 listens to the 24 “boos” it posts each week, the FT states.

According to the article, the deal will “result in a series of branded BBC channels using AudioBoo, which the BBC hopes will broaden its audience reach worldwide”.

The FT states:

The decision to back such a small home-grown technology company is also a big step for the BBC, which has until now limited its official media partnerships to larger companies, such as Facebook and Twitter.

AudioBoo allows users to record and share up to three minutes of audio using the iPhone app or website. It also offers paid subscriptions for those who want to record and share longer interviews and sounds.

After launching in 2009, London-based AudioBoo gathered a loyal following of journalists and well-known personalities such as Stephen Fry who gave the platform an early boost.

AudioBoo founder and CEO Mark Rock told the FT that the BBC deal “took 18 months and 38 meetings to complete, because it was the first time a large media outlet had given official sanction to his business”.

• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – use iPhone Audioboo app to catch short audio clips
• How to record audio interviews using Facebook’s new video option
• Audio reporting tool Audioboo experiments with paid-for account for ITV
• App of the week for journalists – TinyVox, for recording and sharing audio notes
• App of the week for journalists: SkyRecorder, for recording Skype calls on iPhone/iPad

Dagbladet, Norway’s second-largest tabloid newspaper, is offering its readers a ‘Breivik-free’ version of their website during the trial of Anders Behring Breivik.

By pressing a button at the top of the homepage marked “Forside uten 22. juli-saken”, readers can remove all mention of the high-profile trial.

Torry Pedersen, editor-in-chief of Verdens Gang, a Norwegian tabloid, told Journalisten.no that his paper considered the idea of having a similar button.

We toyed with the idea. We did the same – inspired by the Guardian – for the Prince’s wedding last year.

The Guardian’s liveblog of the Royal wedding in April 2011 featured a button on the home page which removed all coverage, leaving the reader with just the “proper news”.

• Guardian: Royal Channel to cover wedding from all angles
• Graham Smith: BBC must report, not celebrate, the royal wedding
• Guardian to disclose funding arrangements for travel articles
• #Followjourn @BBCPeterHunt /journalist #rw2011
• Metro: World media gear up for the wedding

10,000 Words has compiled a list of “websites, applications and tools”, which arose out of the CIR/Google TechRaking conference earlier this month, which help in “facilitating the reporting process”. Tools range from those to help record audio to social media engagement intelligence and project management.

See the full list here.

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.

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – tools for beginner data journalists
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – simplifying investigations
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – toolkits for journalists
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using digital tools to report elections
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – links to lessons on using Pinterest