Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Myspace

MySpace launches cit-j project uReport

Laura Oliver — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:54:09 +0000

You’d be forgiven for confusing it with CNN’s iReport, similar name, similar project – US broadcaster Fox has expanded its citizen journalism initiative, uReport, onto MySpace [though can't seem to find a working link yet].

According to a press release announcing the launch:

“Members of the MySpace uReport community can become ‘uReporters’ by uploading video and photos tagged by specific news categories, including USA, World, Entertainment and Politics. This content could be featured in relevant programming on FOX News Channel and foxnews.com, with FOX News maintaining editorial control of the MySpace page.”

The social network has already dabbled in some user-generated news coverage, having teamed up with MSNBC for US election coverage.

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MySpace and NBC select citizen journalism competition winners

Laura Oliver — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:32:25 +0000

Decision08, a competition organised by MySpace, NBC News and msnbc.com, has selected two citizen journalists to cover the 2008 US Democratic and Republican conventions.

Matt Britten and Sara Pat Badgley were chosen by more than 50,000 users who voted in the Decision08 convention contest, a press release said.

Entrants were asked to post a video to the Decision08 MySpace site answering the question ‘How will you stand out in the crowd and get the scoop no one else can?’

Below are the winning vids:

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Reuters: Murdoch’s online operation to miss ambitious targets

Oliver Luft — Thu, 08 May 2008 10:50:03 +0000

The stressed state of the US economy is causing advertising budgets to shrink – causing News Corp to miss its ambitious online revenue target of one billion dollars by ten per cent, Rupert Murdoch said yesterday.

Reuters reported that the media tycoon claimed Fox Interactive Media – which runs the online part of his US empire, including MySpace – will however have “well over” $1 billion in revenue in the 2009 financial year.

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Social Media Journalist: “Our future isn’t traditional online but in mobile media platforms,” Steve Smith, Spokesman-Review

cathy_relf — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:20:48 +0000

Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Steve Smith from The Spokesman-Review, USA.

1. Who are you and what do you do?
I am the editor of The Spokesman-Review, a 90,000 circulation daily serving several counties in eastern Washington state and north Idaho.

As editor, I supervise all news and editorial operations, including our website, our other digital platforms and our radio operations.

I have a staff of 124 full-time employees in the newsroom and an annual budget of about $9 million. I have been here since July 2002.

Before coming here, I worked in a variety of roles at seven other newspapers in six different cities.

2. Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I use YouTube daily because we post all of our multimedia on the site and also are capable of embedding YouTube videos on our blogs, including my blog, “News is a Conversation”.

I use MySpace and Facebook when hiring. We check the profiles/pages of prospective employees and actually have rejected applicants because of questionable behavior observed on their pages.

I also go into MySpace frequently to check on the pages devoted to our entertainment magazine, “7″.

In addition, I check several industry blogs daily. Several times a day, I check Romenesko, the must-read industry blog on the Poynter Institute for Media Studies site.

I do very little of this on my mobile, though I do use it for blog work, reading and posting.

I’m still somewhat of a troglodyte (no MySpace page of my own) so I don’t use the mobile to access video or social networking sites.

The Spokesman-Review is the pioneer newspaper (in the United States at least) for transparency. Our transparent newsroom initiative is built around interaction with people in our communities. Blogging and the various blogging tools are critical to us.

We also webcast news meetings and provide as much two-way interaction as possible via chats and other real-time opportunities. Increasingly, we’re developing transparency systems that work on mobile devices.

3. Of the thousands of social media tools available, could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or a news gathering tool?
Blogging from the field has the most potential for us at the moment. We’re in the process of developing ideas for 7 that would have real non-media people posting live reports from concerts, nightclubs and other events.

We’re also involved in some beta proposals for training citizen journalists and giving them publishing platforms.

I have no idea where all of this will lead. We’re experimenting with some developing Google applications such as Google Maps and Google Street View to see how they might enhance our blogs.

4. And the most overrated in your opinion?
Tough question. I am willing to try anything with any tool. Until something proves to be useless, I won’t dismiss it.

I do believe our future isn’t in traditional online but in mobile media platforms, the potential of which is yet to be understood. That may drive us to networking tools that enhance the mobile experience.

To reference one single overrated tool, as it were, I’d have to mention Wikipedia. There is an enormous amount of information there. I go to the site often for informal searches. But journalists beware. It is a bottomless quicksand pool that will easily send reporters and editors off in the wrong direction, at best wasting time and, at worst, producing factually inaccurate, even humiliating journalism.

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Brand Republic: MySpace gives advertisers more control with new platform

Oliver Luft — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:06:41 +0000

MySpace has launched a trail advertising platform across its site aimed at giving advertisers great control over what they do across the social network.

The Community Builder platform allows advertisers them to build and customise campaigns.

The platform also providers analytics to help gauge performance.

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Hearst in content deal with social network firm

Laura Oliver — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:51:10 +0000

Hearst Magazines Digital Media division has entered into an agreement with instant messaging and social network firm Spleak, Media Week reports.

The deal will see content from titles including CosmoGirl and Teen distributed through the recently launched CelebSpleak application, which is now available on MySpace, Facebook, and AOL and MSN’s instant messaging services.

The app delivers ‘tattles’ – nuggets of celebrity news – and allows users to respond.

“There’s great value in both UGC [user-generated content] and professional, editorial content. Most of the time the two end up in conflict with one another, but Spleak has found the right way to combine the best of both worlds.” Morrie Eisenberg, CEO of Spleak Media Network, told Media Week.

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