BBC News has compiled a table of views as shared by newspaper editors at the Leveson inquiry, giving readers the opportunity to closely compare the standpoints of each editor on key points.
The table sets out “how the editors’ evidence compares” and includes key points on given by the editors “on researching stories”, “media regulation” and a “key quote”.
See Journalism.co.uk’s coverage of the Leveson inquiry here.
Last week, 29 news outlets announced their backing of a new independent rights clearance organisation in the US called NewsRight.
News companies which have invested in the new platform include the Associated Press, Washington Post and New York Times.
In the video below, from Beet.TV, NewsRight’s CEO David Westin (former president of ABC News) discusses the immediate plans for the organisation as well as future goals, such as working with images and video, as well as text-based news.
Copyright: Zselosz in Flickr. Some rights reserved
Sándor Orbán, the director of the South East European Network for Professionalisation of Media, reports for Index on Censorship on the raft of new laws passed by the ruling Fidesz party and the threat to democracy and media freedom.
The new constitution put an end to liberal democracy in Hungary. It was pushed through the parliament without any public discussion by a populist prime minister, who used his party’s super-majority to rush the legislation, passed in only few weeks last spring.
Hundreds of controversial new laws — including the ones on media — have been passed since the Hungarian Civic Union, Fidesz, came to power in 2010. Their election has led to the elimination of many of the checks and balances in the democratic system.
See the full post on Index at this link.
See Journalism.co.uk’s full coverage of Hungary’s controversial media law reform at this link.
American Vogue is making its archive of every image in its 119 year history available online, according to the Guardian.
The library – searchable by image, designer, date, model and brand – will come with a hefty pricetag of $1,575 (£1,015)-a-year.
The Guardian says it could be a valuable resource, despite the cost, explaining it promises to reduce search time “that might have taken weeks of painstaking research using paper archives”.
The archive is being marketed as a business-to-business resource, aimed at design professionals. A limited version, the extent of which is not yet clear, will be made available to Vogue’s subcribers in 2012.
The strategic importance of the move goes beyond the revenue the paywall will deliver. “This is Condé Nast waving a flag about what the Vogue brand could be,” says Douglas McCabe, media analyst at Enders Analysis. “What they are saying is: Vogue is absolutely the authoritative player in this field. There aren’t many magazine brands that could line up behind this and copy what they’ve done. That’s one of the points Vogue is making.”
The article goes on to say that some feel the £1,000-a-year fee is too high, whereas “some are in full support of the subscription fee”.
“The moral outrage people feel about being asked to pay for content is misguided. Actually, I’m surprised the price is so low,” comments Chris Sanderson, co-founder of trend forecasting consultancy the Future Laboratory. “The archive is clearly being marketed to creative professionals. The searchability gives it real value, because you have the ability to drill down into content and locate exactly what you need.
The Guardian’s full article is here: Vogue launches online archive of every American issue in its 119-year history.
The website for the BBC College of Journalism published an interesting post on Friday by BBC world affairs producer Stuart Hughes, which looked at how news organisations could use drones as “newsgathering tools”.
According to Hughes, “in theory” the aircraft could be a useful tool for news outlets keen to get a bird’s-eye view of certain news events, such as protests.
Photographers covering election demos in Moscow also deployed a UAV – prompting some onlookers to suspect they had spotted a UFO over the Russian capital.
The resulting images were widely used by international news organisations – including the BBC.
However, Hughes said that in reality regulations would make it difficult to operate the aircraft “in built up and congested areas – exactly the sort of places where most news stories take place”.
Understandably so – no news organisation would want to deal with the legal consequences if its unmanned camera crash-landed onto the head of a peaceful protestor.
But nevertheless he is “excited by the prospect of using Big Boys’ Toys as part of our newsgathering”.
It may be some time yet before drone journalism becomes commonplace but, potentially, the sky’s the limit.
The Economist created a short video following a discussion earlier this year and online debate on “the future of news”.
It was first posted on YouTube in October but makes some good end-of-year viewing. It is also worth watching as a nice example of storytelling in online video.
The news industry debate put forward the motion that “this house believes that the internet is making journalism better, not worse”, with author, blogger and journalism professor at New York University Jay Rosen defending the motion and author, blogger and writer-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley Nicholas Carr speaking against the motion.
Image by Mike_fleming on Flickr. Some rights reserved
The Guardian Developer Blog has posted December’s “Carnival of journalism” round-up, after asking “what journalists and programmers might exchange as presents during the festive season”.
It’s well worth a read to find out the wish lists of some key people interested in the space where journalism and technology meet.
Journalism lecturer Paul Bradshaw’s “fantasy” Christmas list includes wishing for the ability to cross link in ways to make journalism more transparent.
One item on his list is the ability to:
Add contextual information on any individual mentioned in a story, for example a politician who receives payment from a particular industry.
Another is for journalists to be able to:
Give users critical information about the source of particular information – beyond “Pictures from YouTube”
This idea got the thumbs up from the post’s author Martin Belam:
Jonathan Frost at Wannabehacks also warmed my heart by concluding that “User experience should be the next big thing in journalism and development. Don’t leave the designer out in the snow.”
Belam’s article with links to all related posts is here: December’s “Carnival of journalism” round-up
The SplinterNet blog provides an interesting insight on how news organisations can increase their Google News ranking.
Writing on the blog, Oliver Conner explains that “Google doesn’t divulge the secrets of its trade – so it is up to the SEO specialists to try and work it out” and links to a September study which asked the top SEO practitioners of major news organisations what they thought were the most important factors.
He highlights some of the “most important/interesting considerations” – and the terrifying suggestion that one spelling mistake can “blacklist your site”.
1. Category authority – if you keep writing optimised stories about a topic then you will gain authority in that area;
2. Keywords in headline and page titles;
3. Domain authority – the news organisation domain has lots of quality inbound links’;
4. Social sharing – lots of tweets, Facebook shares and Google+ mentions. This is set to become more important, as it has recently been announced that articles that your friends have G+’d will be highlighted;
5. First to publish the story – this will increase the amount of inbound links;
6. Citation rank – the number of high quality sites that link to (cite) a news story;
7. Unique articles;
8. High CTR (click through rates) – the more clicks a site gets from either Google News or other Google SERPs (search engine results page);
9. Quality content – Google evaluates the quality of the content and looks for things like typos and copied content. Apparently, one spelling mistake can blacklist your site!
10. Use of Google News XML sitemap – a way of structuring your news site in a way that Google can easily understand.
The post “Getting to the top of Google News” is worth reading as it also includes other important factors to consider when thinking about optimising your news site for Google News.
Journalism.co.uk has a couple of handy guides on search engine optimisation:
Journalism.co.uk’s news:rewired – media in motion conference for journalists will have a workshop on SEO for journalists. The agenda is at this link.
Beet.tv has an interview with Ann Derry, editorial director for video and television for the New York Times and Shawn Bender, editorial director for video for the Wall Street Journal online. They explain “why readers click the play button” to watch videos on the two news sites.
Bender feels readers click play in order to feel a connection.
I think that there is a feeling of excitement about the news that you don’t get in the static environment of print that you can get in video.
Derry says that both news sites have had to educate their readers in order to consume news in video form online.
We’ve had to train our users, both at the Journal and at the Times, that if you click on something you get a good experience.
Bender goes on to say that concise videos where the reader/viewer can learn two or three points are the most successful. Derry adds that news video should offer the reader/viewer a quicker, more “efficient” way of accessing the story than if they had chosen to read it as text.
The Beet.tv video is at this link and below.
Poynter has an interesting post highlighting the overhaul of the New York Times’ commenting system.
The news outlet has introduced “trusted commenters“, which the Times describes as an “invitation-only programme designed for our most valued commenters”.
Those who have proved to be trusted by consistently having comments approved will be allowed to leave comments that will be made live immediately without the need for moderation.
Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman explains the overhaul of the NY Times’ commenting system:
The trusted commenter programme is the most significant new feature, in my opinion. Those who join will have to submit and verify real names, a profile photo and hometown by connecting a Facebook account. (Some people object to using Facebook, so other identity verification methods may be supported later, [Sasha Koren, deputy editor of interactive news] said.)
In exchange they get instant commenting, as well as a higher profile on the site. With a special “trusted” logo attached to their color photo and full name, they stand out visually from the other commenters who usually have an anonymous username and no profile photo.
Sonderman’s full post on how New York Times’ overhaul of its comment system and how it grants privileges to trusted readers is at this link.