Media release: PR Newswire launches tailored site for bloggers

United Business Media’s PR Newswire service has announced the launch of a new service tailored for bloggers and other “self-publishers, online journalists and hobbyists”.

The PR Newswires for Bloggers site offers customised news feeds, events listings and the opportunity for bloggers to attend press events and record video interviews with celebrities and industry experts.

PR Newswire manager for blogger relations, Thomas Hynes, said in a release:

PR Newswire recognises the growing influence of bloggers and our goal is to make it as easy as possible for them to access the content, tools and information they need to develop their blogs and increase visibility.

The site’s editors will also select five new blogs to feature on the PR Newswire service each week. Hynes added:

There are so many great blogs out there – and that list grows daily. Our goal is to highlight some of those blogs we find interesting or influential – which ultimately comes down to engaging content. Fortunately, there is no shortage of great blogs publishing just that so we shouldn’t run out of candidates any time soon.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – blogging tips for digital journalists

Over on Ideas Tap Stevie Martin has collected some key pointers from visiting professor at City University London Paul Bradsaw, TheMediaBriefing’s editor Patrick Smith and founder of fashion blog Frassy Audrey Rogers, on blogging. Tips range from choosing a subject you’re passionate about, keeping updates fairly regular and networking with other bloggers.

Read more here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – ‘major mistakes’ bloggers should avoid

Blogger Mark Schaefer has highlighted “five major mistakes” for his fellow bloggers to avoid, including becoming obsessed with traffic and “being a marketer instead of a blogger”.

See his full post on Ragan.com.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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App of the week for journalists: Blogsy, to blog from your iPad

App of the week: Blogsy

Device: iPad

Cost: £2.99

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Blogsy is a blogging solution for iPad users.

In this post, Adam Tinworth, a blogger for more than 10 years, points out the problems with writing and posting from his tablet.

iPad blogging landscape has been a horrible, barren mess, with barely any decent blogging apps to be seen. Most blog platforms’ editors didn’t function in mobile Safari in any useful way. Blogging using the iPad was, at best, a challenge and, at worst, an impossibility.

He has tried and tested Blogsy, using it to write and file this post, finding that it “works very well”.

These videos teach the various swipe, drag and drop techniques.

Reviews: Blogsy gets four stars in the iTunes App Store.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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Romenesko resigns from Poynter over attribution complaint

One of the most high-profile US media bloggers, Jim Romenesko, has resigned his post at media standards non-profit Poynter after questions were raised about his use of verbatim quotes.

Erika Fry, an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review, contacted Poynter’s Julie Moos to point out that Romenesko was consistently using passages of text verbatim from pieces he was writing about without using quotation marks.

It should be made clear that he was prominently linking to the source material, but Moos said that this posed the risk that the words “may appear to belong to Jim when they in fact belong to another”.

This style represents Jim’s deliberate choice to be transparent about the information’s origins while using the source’s own words to represent his or her work. If only for quotation marks, it would be exactly right. Without those quotation marks, it is incomplete and inconsistent with our publishing practices and standards on Poynter.org.

Romenesko has been writing for Poynter for 12 years and – according to Moos – the practice has been “extensive”, with spot checks going back to 2005 showing “multiple examples”.

Part of the problem was that Romenesko was allowed to publish his posts straight to the Poynter website without being subbed. He was the only staffer to be allowed to do so, and although other editors at Poynter read his work and the original pieces, Moos said, none noticed the duplication.

Romenesko’s initial offer of his resignation, after being contacted by Moos about the practice, was refused, but a subsequent offer has now clearly been accepted.

Moos noted in her post that some may find Romenesko’s practice “entirely acceptable and disagree that it is unclear or incomplete”, while some may find it “abhorrent and a journalistic sin”.

What do you think? Let us know on Twitter @journalismnews or in the comments below, or by email to joel at journalism.co.uk.

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Tool of the week for journalists – TimeKiwi, to create social media timelines

Tool of the week: TimeKiwi

What is it? A new tool to turn tweets, blog posts and Instagram photos into a timeline. Add a Twitter handle, a Tumblr, WordPress and Posterous blog and an Instagram account and TimeKiwi will mash them into a combined timeline.

How is it of use to journalists? For storytelling. The tool allows you to demonstrate how a story has progressed. The tool does not require you to authorise the app so you can add any Twitter handle to see how that person’s tweets have played out over time.

Take this example of a timeline of canon Dr Giles Fraser who resigned from his role as chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral last week over plans to forcibly evict Occupy protesters. Adding his @giles_fraser handle allows you to show his tweets as either a vertical or horizontal timeline.

The free version of TimeKiwi cannot be embedded so it is of limited use in telling a story on your site but you can still share links to created timelines. A “business” version is in the pipeline which promises an embed feature and custom views which could be of particular interest to journalists who can then show mapped out tweets and blog posts within a news story.

This TimeKiwi takes in the @journalismnews Twitter account and the Journalism.co.uk WordPress blog.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – phone and tablet tricks for blogging from the field

The 10,000 Words blog has posted five top tricks for filing blog posts from the field using WordPress.com. The tips include WordPress’ mobile apps, adding hyperlinks, call-in audio posts and adding geolocation to posts.

Read them all here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Facebook lessons: from Paul Bradshaw and PageLever

Yesterday Paul Bradshaw shared his experience of running a blog entirely through a Facebook Page for four weeks, offering his thoughts on the month-long project in a post back on his Online Journalism Blog.

In the early days of the experiment he had already started noticing the pros and cons of the platform, from the impact of the 400 character limit on what he could write, to the possibilities presented by being able to post from a mobile phone via email.

So a month later here are his main reflections:

• Facebook suits emotive material

The most popular posts during that month were simple links that dealt with controversy.

• It requires more effort than most blogs

With most blogging it’s quite easy to ‘just do it’ and then figure out the bells and whistles later. With a Facebook Page I think a bit of preparation goes a long way – especially to avoid problems later on.

• It isn’t suited to anything you might intend to find later

Although Vadim Lavrusik pointed out that you can find the Facebook Page through Google or Facebook’s own search, individual posts are rather more difficult to track down. The lack of tags and categories also makes it difficult to retrieve updates and notes – and highlights the problems for search engine optimisation.

• It should be part of a network strategy

So, in short, while it’s great for short-term traffic, it’s bad for traffic long term. It’s better for ongoing work and linking than for more finished articles.

And his overall conclusion: Facebook should be used as “one more step in a distributed strategy” not in isolation.

Usefully in his post he offers a list of apps he used to integrate his Facebook content with his other online presences, which might a good reference point for others looking to use Facebook in a similar way:

• RSS Graffiti (for auto-posting RSS feeds from elsewhere)
• SlideShare (adds a new tab for your presentations on that site)
• Cueler YouTube (pulls new updates from your YouTube account)
• Tweets to Pages (pulls from your Twitter account into a new tab)
• There’s also Smart Twitter for Pages which publishes page updates to Twitter; or you can use Facebook’s own Twitter page to link pages to Twitter.

There was also some interesting research published this month which looked at Facebook fan pages and engagement. According to the 10,000 Words blog a study was carried out by Facebook research company PageLever which suggested that as a fan page’s membership grows, engagement and page-views-per-member actually decreases.

From a purely aesthetic perspective, looking at the Fan Page and seeing that 10,000 people like your business on Facebook has its benefits. It makes you feel good.

But when it comes time to talk value, it can be a bit more difficult to find the silver lining. You might have 1,000 Likes on Facebook, but if you’re averaging around five Likes or comments per post, then only 0.005 per cent of your users saw the post and cared enough about it to respond.

Read more here…

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Reuters: Athletes can tweet at 2012 as long as not in manner of journalists

According to Reuters, athletes due to perform at the 2012 Olympics in London, have been told they can blog and tweet about their experiences of competing in the games, as long as it is “not done for commercial purposes”.

The decision comes from the International Olympic Committee, Reuters reports, which was said to actively encourage and supports athletes “to take part in ‘social media’ and to post, blog and tweet their experiences”.

Bloggers and tweeters must, however, restrict themselves to “first-person, diary-type formats”, must not report on events in the manner of journalists and must ensure their posts do not contain “vulgar or obscene words or images”.

According to the report, broadcasting of video and audio taken inside the venues remains banned but athletes may post videos taken outside the venues.

The IOC gets much of its revenue from the sale of television and online media rights and is therefore highly protective of their intellectual property in that regard.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – setting up a Tumblr blog

The Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog has this ‘how to’ from Sarah Marshall which outlines step-by-step how journalists and news organisations can set up a Tumblr blog. Following the guide users can apparently create an account, choose a URL, select a design theme and create the first post in under five minutes. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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