that Tom Russell, London Development Agency group director of Olympic Legacy, has left his job after just over a year.
Not the usual Journalism.co.uk territory you might think. But it seems Russell was heavily involved in the ‘legacy’ plans for the Olympic media centre.
“Russell it seems has been fighting the corner for idea that the media centre ought to be built to a high enough standard to attract media occupiers to Hackney Wick post Games,” writes Norman.
When Journalism.co.uk attended an event about new media, Beijing and the London Olympics last year, some pretty impressive plans for the media centre were brought out. Among the journalism/media union representatives in the audience, however, the size and temporary nature of some parts of the building were challenged.
Indeed, it seems some aspects of the design may have been scaled back since this event in October – as Norman writes:
“Potential tenants looking at the space from the media world and Hackney council are all understood to be concerned that in its haste to get the building completed the ODA has jettisoned important design features and by implication the legacy impact of what after all was intended as the main jobs driver post-Games.”
Barack Obama's election victory named top news story of 2008 in Associated Press' annual poll, voted for by US editors and news directors.
Oil prices, the Beijing Olympics and Mumbai terror attacks all feature in the list. Full story...
Well, we could have brought you ‘Flocking Around the Twitmas Tree’, ‘We Three Nings’ or just a straightforward end of the year list (if only to add to our list of lists), but instead we chose this: your sing-along treat to round-up 2008 is the ‘Twelve Days of Online Media Christmas’ (hyperlinked to relevant stories, but bear in mind it’s a selection of picks and not comprehensive…).
On the first day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … An editor in a law court
… Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the ninth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Nine strikers strikin’
… Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the tenth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Ten blogs a-blooming
… Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the eleventh day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Eleven papers packing
… Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the twelfth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Twelve sites a-starting
… Eleven papers packing, Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks and an editor in a law court!
A new forecast from eMarketer UK predicts internet ad spend growth will be cut by more than 50 per cent next year and that the digital media sector will not fully recover from the economic downturn, until the London Olympics in 2012, reports MediaGuardian. Full story...
We are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications in 102 countries, to welcome the extension of the relaxation in media regulations, but also to call on you to take further steps to uphold international standards of press freedom.
In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, your government introduced new rules that allowed foreign journalists greater freedom to travel in the country without prior government permission and to talk to anyone who was willing to be interviewed. Those regulations were set to expire on 17 October, however, shortly before they expired new regulations were introduced that recognise these rights.
While welcoming the extension of the more relaxed regulations for foreign journalists, we are concerned that they do not extend to domestic journalists and that many fundamental rights necessary for the proper functioning of a free press are not observed. For example, there is no protection of news sources, it is not possible to report freely on Tibet and hotels are obliged to report the arrival of a foreign journalist to police. Furthermore, with more than 30 journalists and at least 50 cyber reporters imprisoned, China jails more journalists than any other.
We respectfully call on you to extend the relaxed regulations to domestic journalists, to introduce further reforms so that your country might fully respect international standards of press freedom, and to ensure that all
those detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression are immediately released from prison.
We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Yours sincerely,
Gavin O’Reilly
President
World Association of Newspapers
Sky used Daylife’s products to create topic pages of related multimedia content called ‘in depth’ pages.
The new Daylife Enterprise API will similarly let publishers re-purpose blog posts, text, data and audio-visual content in new ways online.
How does it do this? The service will collect this content and then create feeds which the publisher can put to use a variety of ways – as per their request.
For example – the Enterprise API was trialled by the Washington Post to create picture galleries from the Beijing Olympics – searchable by sport and country – and to accompany its US presidential campaign coverage.
Daylife took all the incoming photos from Post photographers around these subjects and made them available to the paper as an API, ready for use to create new pages on its website.
Utilising existing content in this way can be a success in terms of web traffic – making sites a more attractive prospect for advertisers, says Daylife CEO Upendra Shardanand.
As part of the product, publishers can make these content feeds open to the public and third-party developers – a feature which Shardanand hopes will lead to more collaboration on news content between publishers and users.
“In terms of e-commerce and advertising there’s been so much innovation in the last 10 years online, in comparison there’s not been so much in news,” he told Journalism.co.uk.
“How do you innovate if you don’t do software? I don’t know what the next best concept is but a service like ours can be shared.”
Publishers should not dismiss outsourcing this work, says Shardanand, after all it’s not their job and with the amount of content they have available would be extremely time consuming – the company has over 200 machines running to process the content. It’s not for free, but licences are decided on a customer-by-customer basis.
Instead, he told us, the aim is to get the most value out of the content that publishers are already producing for both online and other editions – such as the photos taken by WaPo staff – by doing the backend work for them.
Crucial to the success of the project will be the say that publishers have over what is done with their content – something which Shardanand is keenly aware of.
“These have to be content portals that are still customised and match your brand and voice,” he says.
“It wouldn’t work if the editors couldn’t do exactly what they want. Advertisers wouldn’t value it either.”
So Boris might give out Blackberries (well, ‘blackberry-type gizmos’) to Olympics spectators in 2012, but over in the States Wall Street Journal journalists are finding that their technology allowance is being cut back.
Or so this ‘internal memo’ on Gawker.com would have us believe. Is it for real? Apparently, all WSJ news staff have been told that a new money-saving measure is in place: ‘at its core is the concept of “one person/one machine.’
“If you are an office-based editor, you’ll get a new desktop. If you are a reporter or editor who travels on assignment, you’ll get a new laptop with a docking station, keyboard and monitor for office use.”
That’s what the alleged internal memo reads. Comments below the Gawker article are sceptical: surely the typos in the memo are a bigger story than the computer cuts, writes ‘drunkexpatworker’.
Hmmm. Authentic or not? It seems an odd kind of prank if not: it wasn’t that funny.
China is to end its relaxation of reporting restrictions in the country for foreign journalists, which were introduced in 2007 ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
It is not yet known what rules will replace the current guidelines, which will cease on October 17. Full story...
The traffic surge from the site’s Olympics coverage also saw more than 1 million users view live video streams on Friday 15.
The BBC’s iPlayer received 700,000 requests for Olympic programmes in the first week of the Games, Mosey said.
The competition – combined with the beginning of the Premiership – has also created record figures for mobile with more than 400,000 users accessing the BBC’s mobile services on Saturday – breaking the previous record of 270,000.
To report the Beijing Olympics online and on mobile the corporation has introduced six live video streams to its BBC Olympics website, an interactive map of the city and its sporting venues, an Olympics blog and expanded its mobile site to carry more video.
The International Olympic Committee has withdrawn a takedown noticed issued to YouTube under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which ordered the removal of a video footage posted by a pro-Tibetan group. Full story...
Working in journalism and want to boost your digital skills? Questions about starting a news business online that you've been too afraid to ask?
Come to news:rewired on 14 January 2010 at City University, London, to ask the experts. Meet pioneers in multimedia and online journalism at our one-day event.
As more and more freelancers enter the marketplace, how can you set yourself apart and gain trust - and commissions - from editors? Book before December 23 for this one-day course led by in-demand freelance journalists Olivia Gordon and Johanna Payton, who will tell you how. January 30, 2010, London - To book, visit this link
For example – the Enterprise API was trialled by the Washington Post to create 
Working in journalism and want to boost your digital skills? Questions about starting a news business online that you've been too afraid to ask?
