What has the web ever done for journalism, except skewer its business model and return freelance rates to levels not seen since the early 90s?

Well, not much, apart from reinvent the form.

Amidst the doom of gloom in our industry it is easy to lose sight of how the web has transformed the way we tell stories, provide context and analysis, and cover live events.

This is arguably the most creative period in news journalism since movable type – new forms, new applications and new execution. Newspapers are embracing video and audio, radio stations do pictures, and TV has gone blogging.

You’re likely to have your own suggestions, and favourites. But here are five of the best:

1. Interactive infographics

Broadcast news was quick to adopt the graphic as a means of explaining complex issues or, more prosaically, make the most of a picture-challenged story. The web has taken the best examples from newspapers, magazines and TV and given them a twist – interactivity. Now you can interrogate the data, slice and dice it at will. Two of the best practitioners of the art can be found in the US – the New York Times and South Florida’s Sun Sentinel.

2. Crowdsourcing

From crime mapping to a pictorial memorial to the victims of post-election Iran to joint investigations, the crowd is proving a potent force in journalism. It took the web to provide the environment for a real-time collaboration and ad hoc groups are brought together by dint of interest, expertise, geography or some combination of all three. Not all crowdsourcing projects run smooth but the power of the crowd will continue to surprise.

3. The podcast

Just as cheap video cameras and YouTube democratised the moving image, so the podcast has made audio publishers of us all. Some podcasts mirror radio almost exactly in format, down to the commercial breaks at the top, middle and end of the show. Others break the rules. As Erik Qualman notes in his new book Socialnomics, today’s podcasters are taking liberties with advertising models (building in sponsorship) and with length of transmission (”If a podcast only has 16 minutes of news-worthy items, then why waste … time trying to fill the slot with sub-par content?”).

4. Over-by-over

A completely original approach to sports reporting, only possible on a real-time platform. Like Sky’s Soccer Saturday – where a bunch of ex-pros watch matches you can’t see and offer semi-coherent banter – over-by-over and ball-by-ball cricket and football commentaries shouldn’t work, but they do. And it’s not just the application, it’s the execution. The commentaries are knowing, not fawning, conversational and participatory. Over-by-over is CoveritLive and Twitter’s (child-like) elder sibling.

5. The blog

The blog and the conventional news article are entirely separate forms, as any publisher who has tried to fob the user off by sticking the word ‘blog’ at the top of a standard story template will tell you. The blog allows you to tell stories in a different way, deconstructing the inverted pyramid and addressing the who, what, why, when, where and how as appropriate. Breaking news has become a narrative – early lines followed by more detail, reaction, photos, analysis, video, comment and fact checking in no defined order. It’s a collaborative work in progress. News is becoming atomised on the web and the blog is the platform on which it is happening.

I’ve named five but there are bound to be others. What have I missed?

Jon Bernstein is former multimedia editor of Channel 4 News. This is part of a series of regular columns for Journalism.co.uk. You can read his personal blog at jonbernstein.wordpress.com.

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Following on from plans to map and identify ultralocal UK blogs and websites, Matt Wardman has started a new directory for local blogs, Nutshell.

It will feature:

• Sites focused on a defined and identified area or community.
• Sites edited and controlled from within that area or community.
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Shiny Media, the UK blog network that went into administration last month, has sold its fashion sites to Bright Station, an original backer of the company.

Catwalk Queen, Kiss and Make Up, Bag Lady, Shoewawa, Crafty Crafty, Dollymix, Trashionista, Shiny Gloss, Star Trip and Nollie have been bought up by Bright Station’s new vehicle Aigua Media Limited, reports TC UK.

The remaining Shiny titles remain with Shiny Digital Ltd, which bought Shiny Media straight after it was announced that it was going into administration.

Former Shiny Media title Who Ate All The Pies was bought by Anorak, but has experienced problems with the site, as it remained on Shiny Media’s server. (According to a tweet from editor Ollie Irish the site should be moved as of Monday)

Full post at this link…

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Journalism.co.uk is trialling a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

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A new paper by Alfred Hermida, who leads the integrated graduate journalism programme at the University of British Columbia: ‘The Blogging BBC: Journalism blogs at ‘the world’s most trusted news organisation’” – and he has put up a pre-publication version on his blog.

“In the paper, I outline how blogging went from being an activity by a handful of journalists to being adopted by some of the BBC’s biggest names, such as Business Editor Robert Peston, despite at times vehement opposition from within the corporation.”

Full post (and paper) at this link…

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It was, then it wasn’t – now it is again.

Who Ate All the Pies the football news site, formerly part of the blog network Shiny Media and recently bought by publisher Anorak Media, is live again.

Editor Ollie Irish had been locked out from the site following ‘a dispute between Shiny Media, Pies’ former owners, and one of their more difficult shareholders’, he writes.

Former owner Shiny Media went into administration earlier this month, with questions raised about the level (and receipt) of venture capital funding for the company announced in 2007.

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A comprehensive review of internet-only journalism. While the view of the internet as a ‘parasite’ on ‘established institutions’, ‘has some foundation,’ Michael Massing finds that ‘over the past few months alone, a remarkable amount of original, exciting, and creative (if also chaotic and maddening) material has appeared on the internet.’

“The practice of journalism, far from being leeched by the web, is being reinvented there, with a variety of fascinating experiments in the gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. And unless the editors and executives at our top papers begin to take note, they will hasten their own demise.”

Full article at this link…

Hat-tip: @pickledpolitics.

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Arthur picks up on a trend made apparent by anecdotal evidence and research, and Technorati data on the Guardian’s own blogs, that the long tail of blogging is dying as bloggers turn to different, easier platforms.

So are blogs being replaced – and by what?

“Facebook’s success is built on the ease of doing everything in one place. (Search tools can’t index it to see who’s talking about what, which may be a benefit or a failing.) Twitter offers instant content and reaction. Writing a blog post is a lot harder than posting a status update, putting a funny link on someone’s wall, or tweeting. People are still reading blogs, and other content. But for the creation of amateur content, their heyday for the wider population has, I think, already passed. The short head of blogging thrives. Its long tail, though, has lapsed into desuetude,” writes Arthur.

Full post at this link…

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