Poynter Online: Limitations of automated news tweets

Amy Gahran shows us why automated services can sometimes make for funny news descriptions:

This was a tweet from the Wall Street Journal on June 27:

“BREAKING NEWS: Prosecutors get a $170 billion judgment against Bernard Madoff. Ruth Madoff agrees to give up nearly all ass..”

Gahran says:

“The Journal, like some other news organizations, uses a popular service called Twitterfeed to automatically generate tweets based on an RSS feed. Normally, I’m all in favor of automation that saves time and effort, but Twitter is one place where automation usually doesn’t work, especially for news.”

Full post at this link…

Tags: Amy Gahran, automated services, Twitter, Wall Street Journal

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Poynter Online: Introducing MixedInk to connect communities through online collaboration

Amy Gahran flags up MixedInk, a new ‘collaboration application’, which ‘might help journalists, news organisations, activists and citizen journalists work with each other and with their communities.’

Users share texts (licensed through Creative Commons) using the MixedInk application, which is something between a wiki, an online forum, a text editor – with a crowd rating element.

“As you write in MixedInk, it searches all other entries and displays text that is similar to yours. While writing, users can view, copy, edit and remix any text that’s been added to the site,” Gahran explains. Full story...

Tags: Amy Gahran, mixedink, online collaboration, online forum, poyntor

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Poynter: why all journalists should use Skype

After racking up a longer-than-expected phone bill, Amy Gahran lists the financial pros of using a Skype account. Full story...

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Mumbai online: the attacks reported live (updating)

A look at where the news has unfolded. Please post additional links below. Journalism.co.uk will add in more links as they are spotted.

Washington-based blogger and social media expert, Gaurav Mishra talks to Journalism.co.uk in an interview published on the main page.

One of the few on-the-ground user-generated content examples, Vinu’s Flickr stream (screen grab above). Slide show below:

How it has been reported:

• NDTV looks at the way it unfolded on the net and promotes its own forums. “Citizens of the World Wide Web have connected to terror-stricken Mumbai in a way never seen before,” it reports. One eyewitness, Dinesh Kumar, used a forum on NDTV.com to share his experiences as he tried to make his way back home from work, the article says.
• The Wikipedia current event page is almost filling role of a blog or news service, with its extremely quick updates.
  

Photography:

• Flickr users such as Vinu, have uploaded pictures from the scene (images: all rights reserved).
• A Flickr search such as this one, brings up images from Mumbai, although many are reproduced from a few sources. People have also taken pictures of the television news coverage.
• But before you re-publish your finds beware: an advanced search which filters pictures by copyright and only shows up images opened up under Creative Commons, limits the results.

Blogs:

• Bloggers, such as Gaurav Mishra are tracking it live, and point out useful links. He has also collected together relevant Tweets.
• Other blogs to look out for: Rediff.com; Mumbai.metblogs.com. More to come.
• List of blogs, probably from outside, but outside Mumbai: Blogada roundup here.
• On the ground blogs: Amit Varma’s India Uncut; Sonia Faleiro; Arun Shanbhag

Breaking news:

• The BBC has a good stream of breaking news, with most recent at top; likewise, the Guardian’s is here.
• Away from mainstream media, NowPublic are charting it here and Ground Report here.

Social Media:

• Facebook doesn’t seem to have that much activity as yet and is not that helpful for finding news, although members of Mumbai related groups are posting comments on the walls.
• Update (27/11/08): New Facebook groups formed:‘In memory of all those who died in the 26th-27th november MUMBAI massacre’; ‘26 November 2008 – Terrorist Attacks on Mumbai’.

Microblogging:

• This Roomatic page brings together Twitter updates in chatroom format: makes it very easy to follow and updates quicked than you can read.
• Lloyd Shepherd blogged that Mumbai ‘tweets’ appear to have been restrained, seemingly by the Indian authorities. (update: however, seems quite unlikely… Anyone know if any truth in this?) Check out Amy Gahran’s post here, which raises some good points about the danger of Twitter rumours…
• The Twitter stream can be followed here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=mumbai
• Gaurav Mishra writes, “so far, micro-blogging service Twitter seems to be the best source for real time citizen news on the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and “Mumbai” & “#Mumbai” are both on Twitter trending topics now.”
• Summed up here, at Wired.com.

Mapping:

• NYTimes.com has linked photos to the attack sites on its interactive map.
• The Guardian does a nice job here. Click on the cameras to see what took place.

Video:

• The Google video seach is here. YouTube videos are mainly limited to broadcast footage, with one user even filming the TV reports, for those without access to live television coverage. YouTube videos seem to be all second-hand broadcasts from mainstream media.

Timelines:

• Mirror.co.uk (Mumbai November 26-7) and Guardian (for past terrorist attacks in India). BBC timeline here (complete with contentious Twitter quote).

• Dipity timeline here:

Campaigns / Aid:

• In the same vein as Tsunami Help started in 2004/5, MumbaiHelp has been launched, with lists of the dead/injured here: http://tr.im/1kg3 http://tr.im/1kg2 /  http://tr.im/1kg1 / http://tr.im/1kg0 / http://tr.im/1kfz

Tags: Amit Varma, Amy Gahran, Arun Shanbhag, attacks, BBC, bombay, British Broadcasting Corporation, D.C., Dinesh Kumar, Flickr stream, Gaurav Mirshra, Gaurav Mishra, google, India, Journalism.co.uk, Lloyd Shepherd, Maharashtra, mainstream media, media, Mirror.co.uk, Mumbai, social media, social media expert, Sonia Faleiro, The Guardian, Twitter stream, United States, Washington, YouTube

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contentious.com: Why the New York Times should show its sources

Citing a recent article that was built on public documents, Amy Gahran explains why the Times should have linked to or supplied the background info to the piece. "Is this more detail than most people would want? Probably. But providing that information and making those links inobtrusively demonstrates a willingness not just to inform, but to empower," she says. Full story...

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Poynter: Making online news more relevant with Silobreaker

News aggregation site Silobreaker uses semantic web technology to help consumers find news that is more relevant to them and offers connections and context with related articles or topics. "[S]ince relevance has inherent value, it can be the basis of business models," writes Poynter's Amy Gahran. Full story...

Tags: aggregation, Amy Gahran, news aggregation site, semantic web technology, Silobreaker, web 3.0

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk: want to run a news podcast, then let Amy Gahran tell you how

Podcasting: read Amy Gahran’s tips on creating a news podcast on Poynter. She advises to make them easy to find on your site and pack them with links to your top news content. Tipster: Laura Oliver

Got a tip? Submit it here – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

Tags: Amy Gahran, Journalism.co.uk, Laura Oliver, Podcast

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