Category Archives: Multimedia

YouTube videos now available in Google Maps

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youtube videos on google maps

The team of developers responsible for Google Earth and Maps have launched a new feature to show Embedded YouTube videos in Google Maps.

Geotagged YouTube videos have been available in Google Earth since last year – the service has now been extended to Maps.

Newspapers in the UK have been increasingly drawn to the use of interactive maps on their websites as a new way of displaying news to their users.

In the US, where the availability of public data has made mapping a common part of online news reporting, several new innovative news-mapping experiments have recently launched.

In particular, new service Everyblock has been charting a vast range of public information across city maps for Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

The Google Maps developers have pointed out examples of how this new function might work for business – but the application being used for news videos looks like it could be just a step away.

Reflections on the life of a videojournalist

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Having spent April 1 shadowing the two-person web video team at the Express and Star, I came away with:

  • 3 minutes 41 seconds of video footage
  • 14 minutes of audio
  • 54 photos

After a day spent gathering the material I then spent approximately two days editing it for the piece on the site, entailing two slideshows with audio (40s and 48s), one audio clip (6mins 49s) and one video clip (2 mins 20s).

Okay – so I’ve not been specifically trained as a multimedia reporter, which might not make me the fastest when it comes to editing. But essentially two days work resulted in one feature.

Similarly, on the Express and Star‘s team, videojournalist Victoria Hoe spent two hours boiling down 16 minutes of footage into a 1min 50s final package.

The Express and Star’s set up with a dedicated video team trained on a Press Association videojournalism course means that it’s time well spent: they put up around 20 videos a week – many shot, edited and published in the same day – and are using the medium in a variety of ways to add value to other areas or stories on the site, as well as for standalone pieces.

But not all publishers have such well-established roles and departments and, having now experienced it first hand, trying to be an all-in-one multimedia reporter/editor/publisher is extremely time consuming.

This is why I voted for ‘Not on its own – video has to be part of a mixed media package from papers in the digital age’ in Journalism.co.uk’s poll on whether video can save newspapers.

While creating such a role may enable publishers to stretch their resources and staff to increase their multimedia content, the benefits of doing this for staff and the resulting content must be slim. As it is so time-consuming, surely it’s better to get it right?

From my day out last week ‘right’ to me means seeing video as a new way of storytelling. It can work with text, but should add something new to text articles and not just as a scripted piece to camera rehashing the article.

The VJs I spoke to said it was crucial to think visually and in sequences to ensure you get all the shots needed while on location. Think visually and video can become a great medium for explaining and representing stories in an alternative way to print.

What’s more it’s another way to reach out to your audience and new members of that readership, so if set up and executed well it will add value – and hopefully traffic – to your site.

Social Media Journalist: ‘Services like ustream or qik that live stream video from DV cams and phones have huge potential’ Damon Kiesow

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Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Damon Kiesow, Nashua Telegraph.

image of Damon Kiesow

1. Who are you and what do you do?
I am the Managing Editor/Online at The Telegraph in Nashua, NH. I am responsible for the overall news presentation and strategy for our digital publications including NashuaTelegraph.com, NHPrimary.com, FeastNH.com and EncoreBuzz.com.

We have a staff of about 50 in the newsroom and nashuatelegraph.com was a finalist in two categories in this year’s Newspaper Association of America Digital Edge Awards.

2. Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
On a typical day:

I use each for a variety of reasons. Delicious is my reigning favourite due to the huge filtering and early warning effect it provides. I follow about 78 people, mostly digital media professionals.

A few times per day I review their most recent bookmarks to keep up to date on what they are thinking about and what new tools and toys they have discovered.

I know many of them do the same and some of my ‘best’ ideas we have implemented at the paper have come from those bookmarks.

Twitter serves a similar purpose – and I am following many of the same people as on Delicious. But I like Twitter for the flexibility (IM, phone, PC, Web) and both the immediacy and asynchronous nature of the service.

It is just a great way to stay in touch with people without the burden of reading or responding to email or phone calls.

I use Ning mostly every day to visit sites like wiredjournalists.com, and we have created several Ning sites for the newspaper including Encorebuzz.ning.com.

I have been on LinkedIn for 5 – 6 years and it is still the best place to accumulate business contacts. I probably do not use it every day, but a few times a week I get requests to connect.

Facebook is one I use just due to the critical mass of people they have online. I check it every day and we do have a few small applications running on the service that feed out breaking news from the newspaper. Most of my time there is spent ignoring Zombie and Pirate invitations.

3. Of the thousands of social media tools available, could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or a news gathering tool?
If I had to choose from just the tools I use regularly – I would pick Twitter. They have really focused on a core concept and seem very open to letting people expand on it.

It is too early to say if Twitter will be a huge hit for us as a newspaper but we pick up a few followers a week and the trend seems to be increasing.

I like the fact that we can use it both simply to push content (using twitterfeed.com) and as a two-way conversation with readers. We follow anyone who follows us and try to be responsive to questions or comments that come in via our Twitter friends.

In terms of other products – I think the most likely winners this year will be services like ustream.tv or qik.com that allow live streaming video from DV cameras and cell phones respectively.

This has huge potential both as a newsgathering tool and as a social media/self publishing phenomena. We are just starting to experiment with both of these services.

4. And the most overrated in your opinion?
At the moment I consider Facebook to be the most overrated. Things are beginning to change but it is still a walled garden for the most part.

I would not be comfortable investing a lot time or effort in using Facebook as a social media platform for the newspaper without some continued opening up of their API and clarification of their terms of service.

Google to plot New York Times stories on Google Earth

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image of ny times stories plotted on google earth

Some New York Times stories will be plotted geographically, in real time, on Google Earth.

“The New York Times offers geo-coded news, and Google Earth offers the platform for reading that news in a 3D browser. This is the first time we’ve endeavoured to show news updated in real time, and we’re very excited to work with this first-class publication to bring you the latest and greatest news,” claims the Lat Long Blog – written by the Google Earth and mapping teams.

The map allows users overlay a NYT news layer so that when they to fly around the earth, relevant news for the place they are hovering over appears.

This is just the latest iteration in a growing obsession by large news businesses to get their news mapped. It isn’t a million miles away from Metacarta’s Geosearch News – a site mapping over 14000 daily news stories across the globe.

That map lets users specify a place-of-interest and returns mapped search results presented in order of relevance – as determined by a combination of keywords and the specified location.

Mirror’s video partnership with Roo ‘a bloody mess’ claims former site editor

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UPDATE: take our poll on whether or not video journalism can save the newspaper

The Mirror‘s partnership with Roo Media to deliver more video content on its site has been described as ‘a bloody mess’ by former site editor Steve Purcell.

His comments, which form part of Neil Thurman and Ben Lupton’s academic report into multimedia storytelling by British news websites, were made last year – shortly after a video player supported by Roo’s technology was introduced to the site.

“The promises that were made by [our content partner, Roo Media] didn’t materialize…. It was a bloody mess, relying on American led stuff,” Purcell told the report, which questioned leading editors on newsroom convergence, video and audio content, multimedia training and the potential for advertising within digital content.

An additional interview with Anne Spackman, editor of TimesOnline, highlighted similar concerns over the launch of video with Roo on the site.

“We didn’t have a sense of ownership of the player… When those early deals were done nobody knew what people would want to watch on a site like ours…”

Part of the problem, said Spackman, was that providers did not understand what video content would work well alongside a text story on the site.

Innovations in Journalism – CoveritLive ‘Humbly, we are forging a new form of journalism’

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today it’s live blogging with difference, with an interactive community, through CoveritLive.

image of cover it live website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m Keith McSpurren, president of CoveritLive, which is what we call ‘live blogging 2.0’.  It evolves live blogging from an interesting recap into an engaging event.

We have added interactivity features to live blogging, like polling questions and reader Q&A to involve the audience more.

We also made it simple for journalists to pull in rich multimedia (video, pictures, audio and even advertising) to create an event worth sticking around for.

Humbly, we think we are forging a new form of journalism.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
People look to journalists for information and perspective. We believe there are many instances where getting that as events unfold is better than after the event is over.

Instead of reading an article about The Oscars or a Q&A session in Parliament for a few minutes the next day, why not get running commentary in real time from your favourite writers?

Why not have the chance for readers to ask questions or add to the conversation or answer polling questions as well as draw upon the multimedia readily available on the web during the event?

These are all good ideas but the real benefit of CoveritLive to the journalist is that we believe we have made it possible to do all of this without the need for the IT department or any technical training.

The ease of implementation and use is really what gets writers excited when they first try it out.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
CoveritLive is the first piece of software in the world to focus on live blogging. This is an evolving form of journalism and we listen very carefully to our users to develop better features all the time.

For example, next week we will launch a feature we call ‘Panel Discussion’ which will allow writers to have up to ten other writers all in the same live blog. Great for Q&A sessions, particularly with people who are spread out around the world.

Imagine the foreign correspondent in Baghdad online with the political reporter and two guests…without needing anyone to ‘set it up’ for them.

Cobbling together other expensive technology can do this kind of thing but by making it easy to do, we expect these kinds of features to grow the field of live blog reporting.

In the same way cheap, easy to use blogging software created a new form of reporting, we hope to do this where ‘live and in-depth’ is important.

4) Why are you doing this?
CiL is a commercial venture so we most definitely have a profit motive. That said the idea came around because I felt (after watching far too much television and yelling at it) that “there is more to be said”.

We think, with the right software, journalists can make their coverage better or add to what I’m watching on television. Politics, sports, financial news, conferences and even education are all areas where easy to use, low cost software can help the people who cover it.

5) What does it cost to use it?
The software is free to use.  This sometimes has an unintended impact where larger news organisations think, “It’s free.  It must not be very good or be able to handle someone big like us.”

That could not be farther from the truth.  It’s free because we are trying to lead the way with our users towards a new form of reporting. Putting price as a barrier to trial is not a good idea.

6) How will you make it pay?
We think our software creates significant opportunities for our users in terms of engaging their readers for long periods of time during a live blog.

Some recent data from an NFL football blog using CoveritLive demonstrates my point:

  • Unique viewers: 2750
  • Average duration on the live blog:  62 minutes
  • Percentage of readers 30 minutes or more: 51% (or over 1300 readers)
  • Number of Instant Replays clicked to view after the live blog:  4700

These kind of numbers create huge advertising opportunities for users interested in that type of thing.

We expect that value is worth paying for at some point once we have proven to be the software of choice in this new category.

Additionally, advertising supported software is a proven business model that will be more appropriate for micro-niche bloggers/writers who get the benefit of enterprise class software at no cost.

All this said, we are focused solely on being responsive to our users and growing usage.  Revenue will follow good ideas.

Washington Post Facebook app attracts 350,000 downloads

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Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, discusses widgets, podcasts, vodcasts and live streaming in the interview with Beet.tv below.

Brady says the Post’s political application on Facebook, which has been downloaded around 350,000 times, was a simple and relatively inexpensive way of promoting the WaPo brand.

However, he says that when experimenting with any new distribution methods – whether widgets, audio or video – it’s crucial to get the editorial content right first, regardless of what technology is in place.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpWWrFA7Nfw]

Innovations in Journalism – Reporterist, the ‘next generation wire service’

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today it’s ‘next generation wire services’ for independent journalists from Reporterist.

image of reporterist website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi, I’m Hemant Bhanoo. Reporterist is about bringing together journalists on a common platform where reporters can sell their pieces and editors can source reliable, quality work.

There is enough demand for original news content around the world that we believe this will grow into a next generation wire service for independent reporters.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
As a starting point, journalists can put up their work on our public portfolio. Right now we enable you to set up rules like “send my story (or story idea) to Editor A. If they don’t bite within 3 days, send it on to Editor B”.

You can specify different prices for each editor, and see if/when they have looked at your work.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
This is definitely not it. There’s a lot more to come, and it’ll hopefully evolve a lot faster as we bring on engineers to help us accelerate development.

A preview of some our features:

  • Full multimedia support (right now we’ve rolled out photo support to a few test users)
  • Directory to help journalists find publications that they may want to pitch to
  • A way for editors to put up specific events or story angles that they need to be covered (and for reporters to go cover them).

4) Why are you doing this?
I’m a big fan of public radio, and have been really moved by investigative/enterprise stories that I’ve heard. It scares me that there are fewer ways to earn a living actually doing investigative or enterprise reporting. Given today’s political climate, we need more people going out of their way to hunt down stories and bring them to the world.

When I found out how many good stories don’t actually see the light of day because journalists can’t find the right outlet or because they go stale while waiting for editors to take a look at them, I was taken aback.

I hope Reporterist will enable some of those important, untold stories to reach people.

5) What does it cost to use it?
We will take a percentage (10 per cent) of the transaction, though it’s free right now. There’s currently no listing fee – but we’ll charge one for large media (audio, video, pictures) once we fully roll out multimedia support.

6) How will you make it pay?
We can build a sustainable business from the transaction and listing fees. However, we plan to expand our offerings in various directions. We will also be building premium portfolios for journalists, and tools for news publishers that we will charge for.

Our core focus has been, and will be, on helping reward quality journalism.

Reuters marks five years of reporting the war in Iraq with multimedia documentary

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image of reuters bear witness Iraq website

Reuters has marked five years of reporting on the Iraq war by launching a multimedia package and online documentary combining images, video, audio and interviews with journalists who covered the conflict.

Bearing Witness talks to reporters and photographers about their experiences and perspectives from the frontline of conflict that has so far taken the lives of 127 journalists amongst thousands of Iraqi civilians.

The package includes a timeline charting the major events of the war, interactive maps and graphs on trends including security, casualties, troop levels, resources and economics
, and links to online resources.

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Should public broadcaster seek competitive advantage online by offering users content for free?

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Image of Kristine LoweKristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. Today Online Journalism Scandinavia asks if public broadcasters should be more restrained in the content they offer for free online.

The head of the online division of Norway’s public broadcaster (NRK) has admitted that it intends to use its public mandate of supplying content for free as a competitive advantage on the web through increasing activity with file-sharing and social networks.

“I believe all public broadcasters more and more think along the lines that it is a competitive advantage that they can deliver content without charging it for it,” said Bjarne Andre Myklebust, head of the online division of NRK.

He added that the organisation is actively working to use its public mandate as a competitive advantage to strengthen its position online.

Not only are they working to make NRK’s content more easily available to download and share on social sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, but are also experimenting with file-sharing services such as BitTorrent and Joost.

NRK recently made its first programme series available to download in Bit Torrent, they liked it so much, they are thinking of doing more. (You can read about their experiences so far here.)

The broadcaster has also been working to get its own channel up and running on Joost, a project that has been delayed somewhat by the challenge of obtaining permissions from all the copyright holders involved.

In addition, it has recently made some of its footage available to use under a creative commons license on Flickr. Something Germany’s public broadcaster has also dabbled with.

So is this the way forward? A good way to give value back to all its license fee payers, or just a way of completely skewing the competition in the broadcasting market?

What if the BBC, in a time of intensified competition, started extending its own free delivery of content across Facebook and bit-torrent sites? It’s probably only a matter of time, but is it an unfair advantage over commercial broadcasters, news and otherwise?

Is it a way of better fulfilling its public mandate, or just an outright example of the rampant commercialism of public broadcasters using public funding as an advantage against others that find it more difficult to distribute content for free?