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10,000 Words: news site screenshots from 9/11, ten years on

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:20:42 +0000

The 10,000 Words blog has created a slideshow of screenshots showing the homepages of 45 newspaper, broadcaster, blog and other online news outlet websites on Sunday, the ten year anniversary of 9/11, showing their coverage between 10am and 11am Pacific Standard Time.

There is also an original gallery of shots which were captured between 12.30am and 1.30am PST (8.30am to 9.30am GMT) here.

Read more on 10,000 Words.Similar Posts:

News sites beware: Google News readers can block all blogs

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:35:16 +0000

Google News has made updates to allow users to further personalise the type of news they read.

Readers can now omit sites, choose to read more news from a selected site, increase or decrease the amount of blogs that appear or batch exclude all blogs from their Google News home page at one fell swoop.

Both blogs and news sites need to check how they are categorised by Google News. Just because you do not describe your site as a blog, doesn’t mean that Google News hasn’t listed you as one.

It is not clear how news sites can have their blog status removed but this form will allow your to flag it up with Google News

Hat tip: Search Engine LandSimilar Posts:

Slideshare: research tips for journalists from @colinmeek

John Thompson — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:52:33 +0000

Journalism.co.uk consulting editor Colin Meek (@colinmeek) found himself stranded recently in Oslo, Norway but was rescued thanks to some nifty footwork by Kristine Lowe and an online project from Norwegian news site VG.no entitled Hitchhikers Central.

Colin was in Oslo to give, among other things, an evening presentation to the Norwegian Online News Association (NONA). Colin, when he’s not advising on Journalism.co.uk’s editorial board, is an investigative journalist and trainer in advanced online research skills (his next one-day, open course is in London Tuesday 15 June 2010). Here are some of the tips he shared with our Norwegian colleagues:

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PCUK/Harris Poll: Print copies may help build online subscriptions

Judith Townend — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:35:37 +0000

The final day of paidContent:UK’s paid-for content survey conducted by Harris Interactive, shows a little more consumer willingness to pay, if a newspaper is chucked in too:

“While only five percent of people who read a news site at least once a month told us they would pay for online access, when you throw in a free or discounted subscription to the printed paper, that rises to a combined 48 percent…”

Full survey at this link…Similar Posts:

Readers prefer subscriptions to micropayments – according to paidContent:UK/Harris survey

Judith Townend — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:32:08 +0000

PaidContent:UK has this week launched a series about online payment models, using the results of a poll conducted by Harris Interactive. Its first story reported that if newspaper groups were to begin charging for their websites, three quarters of users would abandon them in favour of a free alternative.

Only five per cent would pay for their favourite free news website

The research, which polled 1,188 British adults, found that among users who read a free site at least once a month as their top source of news, only five per cent would pay for that website, if such a payment model was introduced. Seventy-four per cent would find a free alternative news source; a further eight percent would continue reading the website’s free headlines only; and 12 per cent were not sure what they would do.

Long term subscriptions more attractive

Today’s update indicates that long-term subscriptions rather than micropayments, is ‘by far the most attractive option’ to consumers:

PaidContent:UK reported:

[Harris Interactive] asked users who read a news site at least once a month what their favoured option would be if they either chose to pay for their favourite site or were forced to pay by all news sites going pay-for:

Per-article fees (ie. micropayments) are the favourite option for 21 percent.

A day pass giving unlimited articles within a 24-hour period is favoured by 26 per cent.

But a subscription of up to a year is the most desired model, supported by 54 per cent.

Full results and graphs (broken down by gender, age and region) at this link

So what does this mean for micropayment models?

“There’s been a lot of buzz about micro-payment recently, and some prominent players, like Google have moved into this field,” said Andrew Freeman, the senior consultant with Harris Interactive’s technology, media and telecoms team.

“But there are massive challenges: and not just technical ones. From a simple business point of view, micropayments are disproportionately expensive to administer. Until you have an enormous volume and value, it just won’t be worthwhile.

“If consumers are going to give up their preference for single-subscription payments they can more easily check and monitor, they will need to have real confidence and trust in the brands they use. Micropayments will probably benefit only the very largest of companies.”

The survey

“The likelihood of newspapers instituting online charging models has become a hot topic. But the debate has mostly been led by what the publishers, and not the readers, want. We felt it was important to ask them and put some data in the public domain to inform publishers currently faced with this decision,” paidContent:UK editor, Robert Andrews, told Journalism.co.uk.

“Everything we’ve learned over the last few months tells us that there’s likely a bigger pay-for market for mission-critical, business and niche information than for general consumer news like sport, celebrity or perhaps even politics.”

Although they didn’t ask about specific news categories for this survey, paidContent:UK hopes to take these questions to consumers in a follow-up survey, he added.

Forthcoming stories will look at what price consumers would be happy to pay; and whether including a newspaper subscription would affect users’ willingness to pay online.

Surprising findings

“The top-line results are in line with my expectations. Conventional wisdom that has grown up around this debate in recent months has told us that, whilst there may be a pay-for market for mission-critical, business or niche news content, there’s enough plurality in the global consumer news market that readers can find an alternative source with just a few mouse clicks,” said Andrews.

“But some specific findings surprised me. For example, those in their teens and early 20s are many times more likely to say they’ll pay than those aged 35 to 54, whom I would have thought would have more disposable income.

“The working class and those on subsistence are nearly as likely to say they will pay as the upper middle class and middle class. And some of the regional variations, for example Wales are right up with Londoners on propensity to pay, and those in the north east of England far more likely to say they would continue reading their favourite site but only via its free headlines.”

Advice for the industry

“Publishers will need to carefully consider the effects of implementing a pay wall before mixing their cement – our survey suggests most of their readers would flee to a rival paper,” Andrews said.

“Sites must consider whether they have a value proposition unique enough to retain readers despite our findings. And they need to do the maths: raising a pay wall would reduce the number of eyeballs achieved for publishers’ advertisers, so are payments from five per cent of readers enough to offset the decline in ad income?”Similar Posts:

Editors Weblog: Election candidates must pay for campaign coverage, says US editor

Laura Oliver — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:35:52 +0000

A round-up of reports that a local Florida newspaper is planning to charge candidates in a local mayoral election for coverage.

An email from the publication’s editor Tom Oosterhoudt to two of the candidates explained that others had had their campaigns covered, because they had already purchased advertising with the title, Conch Color.

“As far as candidate forums and debates, we’ll cover those when we can, but if candidates want their campaign covered, they have to pay to play,” Oosterhoudt told fellow Florida news site, Keynews.com.

Full post at this link…

In July the Washington Post was heavily criticised for offering paid-for access to exclusive ‘salons’ with officials from Barack Obama’s administration. The paper later dropped the plans.Similar Posts:

Journalism Daily: Rue89′s Canadian expansion, WaPo’s WebCom and KNC 2010

Judith Townend — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:12:52 +0000

A daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site. You can also sign up to our e-newsletter and subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

News and features:

Editor’s picks:

#FollowJourn:

#FollowJourn: @VicThompson

On the Editors’ Blog:

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ReadWriteWeb: Google may hand over Caribbean journalists’ IP addresses

Judith Townend — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:54:59 +0000

ReadWriteWeb follows up Wikileaks’ report that Google could comply with an order to supply the IP addresses used to access a news site’s GMail account, as part of a libel claim in the Santa Clara, California Superior Court, regarding government corruption in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

The TCI Journal is a news and commentary site based in the Islands, run by ‘journalists, lawyers, professionals, students and patriots.’ RWW reports:

“A property developer discussed at length in the Journal’s documentation of corruption and in the official UK government inquiry report is now suing the journal for libel.”

According to Wikileaks and RWW, Google intends to hand over the requested records in just over two weeks, unless the Journal files a counter-motion with the court itself.

Google has supplied RWW with a statement that said the company was ‘still evaluating all [its] legal options regarding this particular request’.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

paidContent.org: ‘The fallacy of the link economy’ for news sites

Laura Oliver — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:14:36 +0000

Media consultant Arnon Mishkin argues that the value of linking between sites is getting captured by aggregators rather than by the news sites that they scrape and link to.

“Even in an absolute best-case scenario for producers of original content, the aggregators get at least as much traffic on linked stories as the creators of those stories because anyone who clicks on the link does so from the aggregator’s site (so each site gets a page view),” he writes.

“[E]ach aggregator gets to build a ‘front page’ to target and win over their chosen segment, or enable each user to tailor a front page perfectly suited to his or her needs. And they can do that by leveraging all the resources of the global journalistic community without paying any part of its cost.”

Looking at the link economy from the perspective of making money and getting the most out of initial traffic bursts generated by aggregators linking to a news site, Mishkin suggests three tactics:

News sites should seek ‘an equitable economic relationship’ with aggregators and drop links if they don’t get a fair deal;
Partner with other content providers to create their own aggregation sites;
Look at ‘wadgets’ – a combination of content and advertising – rather than ‘widgets’ purely offering a site’s material. This would allow them to monetise some of the traffic on the aggregators site.

The AP’s recent suggestion that it will creating landing pages for members’ news content and introduce a advertising revenue share arrangement seems to go some way to meeting Mishkin’s recommendations.

Interesting thoughts in a week where user-powered aggregator Digg introduced its new ad system. The question of how much revenue aggregation sites are generating should also be considered.

Full paidContent.org post at this link…

Student showcase: The London File (City University International Journalism MA)

Judith Townend — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:45:50 +0000

A little while ago Journalism.co.uk asked for examples of journalism students’ projects. Feel free to send more, whether you’re midway through, or at the end, of a course.

As mentioned in the last post, City University MA International Journalism students (2008-2009) produced the London File, at this link. Now their course is over, the news stories are out-of-date but the sites is still live for a visit.

It’s a news site divided into eight sections (home / EU elections special / social affairs / world affairs / insider life / science & health / arts / sport / money), plus a campaign, which ‘aimed to explore the various forms of public surveillance and investigate issues relating to ways in which the government monitors the private lives of ordinary citizens.’

The team’s overall goal was to ‘to capture and report the realities and issues on the ground in London, as they happen’.

Here’s what their editor-in-chief, Annabel Symington, had to say at the end of the project:

“The London File was the last assessment for our MA, and it was really nice to all be working together on a project. We began planning the
site five weeks before we went live, and planned to keep up loading new content to the site on a rolling deadline for two weeks.

“The two weeks were a really intense time. We were responsible for every aspect of the site, from getting the content to designing the pages, and it was a lot of work balancing all of the different jobs necessary – getting a website to work as well as going out and being journalists.

“Throughout the process we have been supported by our tutors who have been putting in as much time as we have. It’s certainly been a steep
learning curve. I don’t think that anyone had appreciated how much work needs to be put into a site before it actually goes live, and in
many ways we were trying to get a fully formed website running before we could even walk. But we got there in the end. The site looks great, despite the few hiccups we had along the way.”

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Essential journalism links for students

Judith Townend — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:56:59 +0000

This list is doing the rounds ‘100 Best Blogs for Journalism Students – Learn-gasm‘… and we’re not on it. Nope, not even a smidgeon of link-love for poor old Journalism.co.uk there.

The BachelorsDegreeOnline site appears to be part of e-Learners.com, but it’s not clear who put the list together. Despite their omission of our content and their rather odd descriptions (e.g: Adrian Monck: ‘Adrian Monck writes this blog about how we inform ourselves and why we do it’), we admit it is a pretty comprehensive list; excellent people and organisations we feature on the site, our blog roll and Best of Blogs mix – including many UK-based ones. There were also ones we hadn’t come across before.

In true web 2.0 self-promotional style, here are our own links which any future list-compilers might like to consider as helpful links for journalism students:

Journalism.co.uk for industry news, events and developments

Journalism.co.uk Editor’s Blog for the titbits, tips, trade tools, recommendations and daily editors’ picks.

TNTJ blog: Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists

Insite: an advanced internet research skills.news blog by Journalism.co.uk’s consulting editor and trainer, Colin Meek.

Journalism.co.uk training section and forums.

And here are some blogs/sites also left off the list which immediately spring to mind as important reading for any (particularly UK-based) journalism students:

Organisations

Global Voices Online – essential for anyone interested in press freedom issues (Co-founder, Ethan Zuckerman’s blog, is here)

The Frontline Club blog, as above.

European Centre for Journalism (EJC)

WEF Editors’ Weblog and SFN blog.

Crikey.com: news from down under that’s not Murdoch, or Fairfax produced.

Press Review Blog (a Media Standards Trust project) – it’s a newbie, but already in the favourites.

Centre for Journalism from the University of Kent

The UK National Union of Journalists news site and its president, Jeremy Dear’s, blog

AllMediaScotland.com

The Independent’s Media section

NY Times’ media section

FT.com media section

Press Gazette’s Peter Kirwan/The Wire

BBC Editors’ Blog

BroadcastNow.co.uk

StinkyJournalism: it’s passionate and has produced many high-profile stories

Wired Journalists

Index on Censorship

Demotix blog

Reporters Without Borders

Committee to Protect Journalists

International Federation of Journalists (though we’ve had problems accessing their site or feeds lately)

British Journalism Review (now in its 20th year)

Individuals

Craig Silverman’s Regret the Error

MST director, Martin Moore’s blog

Clay Shirky

CurryBet – Martin Belam’s links are canny, and provocative and break down the division between tech and journalism.

Malcolm Coles – for SEO tips and off-the-beaten track spottings.

Dave Lee – facilitating conversations journalists could never have had in the days before blogs.

Joanna Geary – as above

Marc Vallee – photography freedom issues from the protest frontline.

FleetStreetBlues: an anonymous industry insider with jobs, witty titbits and a healthy dose of online cynicism.

Alison Gow for a view from the regionals

Sarah Hartley previously as above, now with more online strategy thrown in.

The e-Grommet for links.

Charles Arthur – for lively debate on PR strategy, among other things

Shane Richmond’s blog at the Telegraph.

MarkMedia (view from Scandinavia)

Kristine Lowe (as above)

Media Culpa (as above)

Richard Sambrook, BBC big cheese and excellent blogger

Justin Williams, Telegraph assistant editor

Matthew Buckland, media views from South Africa

Steve Buttry

Craig McGill – bridging journalism and PR.

Writing this has only brought home further the realisation that omissions are par for the course with list-compilation, but it does inspire us to do our own 101 essential links for global online journalists – trainees or otherwise. We’d also like to make our list inclusive of material that is useful for, but not necessarily about, journalists: MySociety for example.

Add suggestions below, via @journalismnews or drop judith at journalism.co.uk an email.Similar Posts:

How Demotix’s contributors have covered Iran election protests

Judith Townend — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:41:23 +0000

A quick update on the work of pro-am photo agency and news site, Demotix, during this week’s election protests in Iran.

Around two dozen contributors have been participating in Demotix’s Iran ‘newshub:’ follow the link to see images.

On Wednesday Demotix reported that one of its contributors had been arrested. Andy Heath, the site’s commissioning editor, told Journalism.co.uk it is believed the contributor will appear in front of a judge tomorrow [Saturday] and that Demotix is currently seeking more information.

Turi Munthe, its CEO and founder, has made numerous media appearances in which he talked about the use of citizen media during these protests, including the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, BBC News, and the World Service. Reuters are also featuring Demotix content.

Munthe said: “In terms of sales, we have also hit a milestone. Reuters is syndicating our content all over the world. Yesterday [Wednesday] we were the lead image on the front page of the Wall Street Journal’s website (see below).”

“Iran is experiencing events not seen since the 1979 Revolution. Demotix was set up precisely to cover and report this kind of event, and we have been at the very centre of the storm.”

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Let the expenses data war commence: Telegraph begins its document drip feed

Judith Townend — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:49:17 +0000

Andy Dickinson from the Department of Journalism at UCLAN sums up today’s announcement in this tweet: ‘Telegraph to drip-publish MP expenses online’.

[Update #1: Editor of Telegraph.co.uk, Marcus Warren, responded like this: 'Drip-publish? The whole cabinet at once....that's a minor flood, I think']

Yes, let the data war commence. The Guardian yesterday released its ‘major crowdsourcing tool’ as reported by Journalism.co.uk at this link. As described by one of its developers, Simon Willison, on his own blog, the Guardian is ‘crowdsourcing the analysis of the 700,000+ scanned [official] MP expenses documents’. It’s the Guardian’s ‘first live Django-powered application’. It’s also the first time the news site has hosted something on Amazon EC2, he says. Within 90 minutes of launch, 1700 users had ‘audited’ its data, reported the editor of Guardian.co.uk, Janine Gibson.

The Telegraph was keeping mum, save a few teasing tweets from Telegraph.co.uk editor Marcus Warren. A version of its ‘uncensored’ data was coming, but they would not say what and how much.

Now we know a bit more. As well as printing its data in a print supplement with Saturday’s newspaper they will gradually release the information online. As yet, copies of claim forms have been published using Issuu software, underneath each cabinet member’s name. See David Miliband’s 2005-6 expenses here, for example. From the Telegraph’s announcement:

“Complete records of expense claims made by every Cabinet minister have been published by The Telegraph for the first time.”
“In the coming weeks the expense claims of every MP, searchable by name and constituency, will be published on this website.”
“There will be weekly releases region by region and a full schedule will be published on Tuesday.”
“Tomorrow [Saturday], the Daily Telegraph will publish a comprehensive 68-page supplement setting out a summary of the claims of every sitting MP.”

Details of what’s included but not included in the official data at this link. “Sensitive information, such as precise home addresses, phone numbers and bank account details, has been removed from the files by the Telegraph’s expenses investigation team,” the Telegraph reports.

So who is winning in the data wars? Here’s what Paul Bradshaw had to say earlier this morning:

“We may see more stories, we may see interesting mashups, and this will give The Guardian an edge over the newspaper that bought the unredacted data – The Telegraph. When – or if – they release their data online, you can only hope the two sets of data will be easy to merge.”

Update #2: Finally, Martin Belam’s post on open and closed journalism (published Thursday 18th) ended like this:

“I think the Telegraph’s bunkered attitude to their scoop, and their insistence that they alone determined what was ‘in the public interest’ from the documents is a marked contrast to the approach taken by The Guardian. The Telegraph are physically publishing a selection of their data on Saturday, but there is, as yet, no sign of it being made online in machine readable format.

“Both are news organisations passionately committed to what they do, and both have a strategy that they believe will deliver their digital future. As I say, I have a massive admiration for the scoop that The Telegraph pulled off, and I’m a strong believer in media plurality. As we endlessly debate ‘the future of news™’ I think both approaches have a role to play in our media landscape. I don’t expect this to be the last time we end up debating the pros and cons of the ‘closed’ and ‘open’ approaches to data driven journalism.”

It has provoked an interesting comment from Ian Douglas, the Telegraph’s head of digital production.

“I think you’re missing the fundamental difference in source material. No publisher would have released the completely unredacted scans for crowdsourced investigation, there was far too much on there that could never be considered as being in the public interest and could be damaging to private individuals (contact details of people who work for the MPs, for example, or suppliers). The Guardian, good as their project is, is working solely with government-approved information.”

“Perhaps you’ll change your mind when you see the cabinet expenses in full on the Telegraph website today [Friday], and other resources to come.”

Related Journalism.co.uk links:

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Beatblogging.org: Not-for-profit MinnPost news site raises $13,190 in micro-donations

Laura Oliver — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:14:36 +0000

MinnPost, a non-profit journalism organisations that publishes MinnPost.com, has raised $13,190 after calling on users and supporters to make micro-donations.

While a significant chunk was donated by the Harnisch Foundation, MinnPost users gave $6,595, with more opting to pay $25 than $10 from the two suggested amounts.

This isn’t a long-term business model (and the MinnPost isn’t setting it up as such), but is this a sign that readers will pay for hyperlocal news?

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Reportr.net: Orato.com ‘turns its back’ on citizen journalism

Judith Townend — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:03:32 +0000

Alfred Hermida reports that Orato.com has ‘turned its back’ on citizen journalism with a move to more professionalised content.

“Vancouver-based Orato.com used to describe itself as the ‘only news site in the world dedicated to First Person, citizen-authored journalism.’”

Now, however, changes have been made to ‘further professionalise the site, focus its newsworthy content, create and enforce a viable business model and keep pace with Web 2.0 standards,’ says Orato’s founder, Sam Yehia.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts: