#Tip: Key skills, tools and pointers ‘for wannabe hacks’

Image by Jenn Durfey on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

The WannabeHacks site, itself a useful resource for those interested in, and just starting out in, journalism as a career, has collected together a run through of some “essential skills”, which new reporters may find most valuable as they enter the industry. The post also highlights places to go to gather some of those skills, such as basic coding, if you do not already possess them.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip: Three handy Twitter tools

An article by the Guardian last week sparked a discussion on Twitter about the difference between the numbers shown on a ‘tweet’ share count button and the number of retweets.

Retweets

Official Twitter RTs have been around since 2009. When a tweet is retweeted in this way Twitter does not treat it as a separate tweet so the RT does not have a separate URL. Twitter measures RTs by the number of times the original tweet was RTed.

Share count buttons

The share count buttons on a news story show the number of times the story URL has been tweeted out. It includes RTs as the they carry the URL. This number will therefore be greater than the number of RTs.

Example:

For example, this Journalism.co.uk story on 100 Twitter accounts every journalism student should follow received 131 RTs, according to My Top Tweets (see below).

The URL of the story was shared 1,735 times on Twitter, according to LinkTally (see below).

Three handy Twitter tools

Online tools for analysing your top tweets, the number of times and article has been shared and how many people your tweet has reached.

My Top Tweets

This shows the most RTed tweets from a particular Twitter account.

LinkTally

This measures how many times a URL has been shared. It shows share numbers for Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

TweetReach

This measures how many people each tweet reaches.

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#Tip: Remember these 4 lessons from ‘the digital edge’

By KamrenB Photography on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Brian Moritz spent ten years as a news reporter before beginning a PhD focussing on the evolution of journalists’ routines at Syracuse University. As this article from the Knight Foundation-affiliated MediaShift Idea Lab explains, he spent the last semester flying drones, building virtual reality environments and using 3D printers.

“The future is here,” he says, and details four key lessons for journalism students to take from living life at the cutting edge of technology.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip: Become a better smartphone photographer

By derekGavey on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Here are 12 tips on becoming a better smartphone photographer, as shared by CNN iReport.

The tips are from an interview with multimedia journalist and iPhone street photographer Richard Koci Hernandez.

Advice includes never to use the zoom on a phone camera, and to lock the exposure and focus.

The full list of tips is here.

(The post was published in September but the advice is obviously all still relevant.)

Update: And here are a further 10 tips on mobile phone photography, these from the Best Buy Mobile site. And five tips from Yanik’s Photo School site.

Hat tip: Marc Settle, who tweeted about all three posts.

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#Tip: Become a Google Analytics Real-Time addict

If you use Google Analytics to track traffic to your news site, make sure you use Google Analytics Real-Time, which tells you the number of people on your site right now.

It shows referrals (such as those coming via Twitter) and you can also see how many people are reading on a desktop, tablet or smartphone device.

You can access ‘real-time’ via the main dashboard in Google Analytics.

The content breakdown, which shows the percentage of visitors reading on desktop, tablet and mobile, is accessed by clicking on the ‘content’ tab (below ‘real-time’). It is a relatively new feature which was announced at the end of March.

Have a go – but be aware that it is rather addictive…

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#Tip: Watch video of social video panel from Social Media Summit

Image by petesimon on Flickr. Some rights reserved

The BBC College of Journalism has posted video on YouTube of a panel on creating social video, which was held at the Social Media Summit in New York last month.

The panel featured Roy Sekoff, president and co-creator of HuffPost Live, Katherine Zaleski, managing editor of NowThis News and Olivia Ma, head of news and media partnerships at Google+. Watch the video below to hear more about some of the different approaches being taken in making video a more social experience for news consumers, across platforms.

And here’s more on HuffPost Live as well as NowThisNews, on their approaches to social video,

Hat tip: Paul Bradshaw, who also posted the video on his Tumblr

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#Tip: Video of data visualisation tools tutorial at #ijf13

By Jorge Franganillo on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia late last month, a tutorial was delivered by freelance information visualiser Gregor Aisch, on three key tools for building data visualisations “on a shoestring”.

Video of the workshop has been uploaded to YouTube by the festival and is also embedded below. The tutorial covered three platforms: Datawrapper, QGis and Tableau.

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#Tip: Sign up to Journalism.co.uk’s weekly podcasts

Image by M. Keefe on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

A bit of self promotion here, but each week at Journalism.co.uk we produce a podcast looking at topical issues in journalism, often focused on digital innovations, tools and techniques.

Recent podcasts have included:

• Snow Fall and beyond: A look at long-form online storytelling
• How journalists can gather news from diverse communities
• Managing user-generated content in breaking news
• Getting started in data journalism
• How magazine publishers are innovating in online video
• Then and now: Two years of the New York Times paywall

The podcasts are published every Friday on the Journalism.co.uk homepage and our blog. All Journalism.co.uk podcasts are also published on our SoundCloud account, and you can sign up to Journalism.co.uk podcasts on iTunes.

The subjects covered in the podcasts should provide journalists with inspiration and practical tips, as well as give the opportunity to listen to what colleagues at news outlets across the world have to say on a range of subjects.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip: Follow this series on advice for editors

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Steve Buttry has started a series and hashtag on advice for editors (or #advice4editors) as a personal addition to his work as digital transformation editor at Digital First Media and Journal Register Co.

Although it is aimed at new editors in DFM newsrooms it is equally applicable to editors elsewhere or pretty much anyone in the field of journalism: breaking habits, the importance of listening and leading by example may be obvious characteristics but having them illustrated in a newsroom context makes them more applicable – and somehow more real.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip: 10 online tools for reporting, storytelling and engagement

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Poynter have drawn up a list of 10 need-to-know tools for journalists, handily compiled into categories as research, social media and data tools.

The first tool, FOIA Machine, is an American project that is still sourcing contacts so UK users may wish to use What Do They Know as an alternative.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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