New focus for relauched TBD.com and WJLA.com

Local news and community website for Washington DC TBD.com and its sister site WJLA.com are planning to relaunch next week, following the downsizing of TBD.com in February.

In a post on TBD.com outlining the changes, it is said the new WJLA.com will offer stories from regional crime, weather and transportation reports and in-depth looks at health and medicine to features on big national and international stories.

TBD.com on the other hand will look through information from news sources across the area and offer them up alongside original reporting “on the area’s arts and entertainment scene, news, crime, sex and gender, groceries and transportation”.

Earlier this year Journalism.co.uk reported that TBD.com was shedding most of its staff after just six months and would stop most of its general news and sports coverage.

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Headlines and Deadlines: Why TBD is an inspiration for hyperlocal news

UK digital journalist Alison Gow takes a look at the news site for Washington TBD.com, launched earlier this week, and says the site provides much inspiration for hyperlocal news ventures elsewhere.

Says Gow:

I like it as a journalist because:

• It’s seriously packed with news, features and information
• It’s packed with news (truly  - the homepage splash changed every time I reloaded the page)
• It updates constantly
• It has loads of sources of information – both from TBD staffers, mainstream media, social networks, bloggers and users
• It’s an active site – doesn’t rely on feeds/UGC
• It “gets” hyperlocal
• It does live fact-checking

Full post on Headlines and Deadlines at this link…

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Journalism Daily: 3am.co.uk launch, MSNBC and EveryBlock, Bauer Radio’s new deal

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

News and features:

• 3am.co.uk goes live with ‘breaking news bleats’
• Demand Media buys minority stake in liveblogging firm CoveritLive
• MSNBC buys neighbourhood news aggregator EveryBlock

Ed’s picks:

• Media Release: Bauer Radio signs syndication deal with Independent.co.uk
• Public Agenda: Private newspapers in Africa hit by advertising slump
• CJR: The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief on US/UK news models
• CJR: A ‘new threat’ to Middle East journalism – created in the US
• Portfolio.com: The Reader’s Digest Index
• AP: Amish newspaper is a non-electric internet, says publisher

Tip of the Day:

• Freelance job listings

#FollowJourn:

• @mathewi/communities editor

On the Editors’ Blog:

• Former Total Politics editor to start up PR company

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CJR: The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief on US/UK news models

Our second pick from the Columbia Journalism Review today: a lengthy Q&A with the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, Ewen MacAskill.

There is lots of ground covered; MacAskill’s explanation of the Guardian’s approach in the States and his thoughts on differences between US and UK journalistic technique make particularly interesting reading.  An extract:

“[I]n some ways, the American system is more transparent, but because of the more adversarial system in Britain, sometimes more stories come out there. It’s a contradiction: the American system is more transparent, but in spite of that, an awful lot goes on behind the scenes that we never get to hear about.”

Full Q&A at this link…

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Loudoun Independent: Washington Post pulling plug on hyperlocal site in Loudoun

The Washington Post is pulling the plug on its hyperlocal site, the Loudoun Extra, two years after launch, reports the Loudoun Independent.

“While the Washington Post remains dedicated to maintaining a high level of coverage of the counties surrounding Washington, D.C., we found that our experiment with LoudounExtra.com as a separate site was not a sustainable model,” said Kris Coratti, the Post’s director of communications.

Full post at this link…

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Politico: Bill Clinton will try to secure release of US journalists held in North Korea

The former president Bill Clinton has gone to to North Korea to try and win the release of two women journalists who have been detained since March 17, Politico learned from a Washington source.

“North Korean officials told one family that they would release the women to Clinton, the source said. The family then approached the former president.”

Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36 are reporters for Current TV, and were  arrested in March near the China-North Korea border while reporting on the trafficking of women. They were sentenced to 12 years hard labour in June.

Full Politico story at this link…

A campaign to release the journalists can be found at http://www.lauraandeuna.com/ and on Twitter: @LiberateLauraSF.

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What did Walter Cronkite think about online journalism?

On Monday, The Washington Post hosted a live Q&A with Marlene Adler, former chief of staff to Walter Cronkite, the much-respected news anchorman who died last week, aged 92. WashingtonPost.com users put questions about his career to her. What would Cronkite have thought of the internet and its impact on journalism, they wondered. Adler said that Cronkite would have adapted easily to online journalism, but that he was worried about internet source attribution.

Full Q&A at this link…

Here are a couple of excerpts from the interview (Hat-tip: StinkyJournalism):

Chevy Chase, Md (…) “How did Mr. Cronkite feel about technology in general, and specifically as it relates to news and the demise of newspapers”

Marlene Adler: (…) “He loved the new technology, (the Internet) but also saw the problems with reliability of news delivery. He was concerned that news sources on the Internet were not attributable and worried that it would further diminish trust in the news media.

“About newspapers disappearing, he was sad indeed. He was a newspaper man first and loved that part of his life and that business. He was incredulous that entire cities could be without a newspaper.”

Washington, D.C.: “A friend was supposing that she thought Cronkite would have more easily adapted to online journalism because of his work for UPI. What were his thoughts about balancing speed and accuracy, and did he really think it was much different from what countless wire reporters have done for years?”

Marlene Adler: “As a newspaper man and a TV reporter, speed and accuracy were what it was all about. Getting the facts, getting them right and getting the story out first, whenever possible. He didn’t like to be scooped by another network or print reporter. However, he would not release a story, even if it meant being second, if he could not authenticate his sources. I, too, think he would easily have adapted to online journalism.”

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The Washington Post and the cancelled lobbyist event

The original Politico story:

“Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive ‘salon’ at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to ‘those powerful few’ – Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.”

Full story at this link…

And also read about it here:

• The Atlantic: ‘Should journalists be entertainers?’

• Washington Post: ‘Post Co. Cancels Corporate Dinners: Journalistic Boundaries Brought Into Question’

• WashingtonMonthly.com: ‘Wash. Post selling access?’

A video from Politico showing the Whitehouse press secretary Robert Gibbs answering a question about the ‘salon’:

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Steve Buttry: Yet another Twitter rant by a journalist who doesn’t understand it

“It’s ok to be sick and tired of Twitter rants by journalists who don’t understand it,” writes Steve Buttry.

“The same day I posted about Edward Wasserman writing about Twitter without really learning about it, I read another piece from another journalist I respect, Paul Farhi of the Washington Post, writing The Twitter Explosion in the American Journalism Review.

“Farhi, to his credit, did a fairly thorough job of researching Twitter by reading about it online and by interviewing journalists who use it. He just didn’t bother, from what I can tell, to learn anything firsthand by actually using it. And his writing revealed his ignorance.”

Full post at this link…

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RSF: Two journalists charged in Bahrain; information ministry steps up internet filtering

“Reporters Without Borders is concerned about freedom of expression in Bahrain. In the past couple of months, two journalists have been charged because of what they wrote and the information ministry has stepped up Internet filtering,” the organisation reports.

“Around 600 websites are currently blocked in Bahrain and online censorship has become more extensive since 21 April, when the authorities ordered that access to the Washington-based news website Aafaq.org, Ghada Jamsheer’s women’s rights blog Bahrain-eve and the blog aggregator Bahrainblogs.org should also be blocked.”

Full story at this link…

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