Category Archives: Multimedia

Online Journalism Scandinavia: More news sites using Twingly to link to blog reactions

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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 looks again at news sites linking to blogs.

Dagbladet.no, the online operation of Norway’s second biggest tabloid, has become the latest Scandinavian news site to use Twingly to show blog links to articles on the site.

Dagladet.no has been experimenting with Twingly since October last year, but last week announced that Twingly would now become the standard across the site.

However, the online newspaper said that articles dealing with very sensitive issues – those concerning murder, suicide and death – would not not have the technology applied to them.

“Our experiences with Twingly so far are very positive. There are so many interesting things happening in the blogosphere, and we think it is important that our readers can converse in their own rooms and extend the debate about our articles there,” Mina Hauge Naerland, a journalist involved with the implementation, told Journalism.co.uk.

“It’s also very interesting for us to be able to follow those conversations, it helps us improve our journalism.”

Politiken.dk, the news site of one of Denmark’s leading newspapers, started using Twingly a month ago, and the online operations of two of Sweden’s most influential newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, have used Twingly for about a year.

Goodbye pop-up player – BBC to embed all video

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image of bbc’s flash video player

The BBC is to phase out the pop-up player that it currently uses to host the majority of its audio and video content in favour of a newly developed embedded Flash player.

The new player has been developed jointly by the journalism and iPlayer teams, so says the BBC Internet blog, as a replacement for the pop-up which relies on using Real or Windows Media formatted video.

Use of the new payer has so far been limited, but over the coming weeks embedded video is expected to become the norm.

It’s hardly surprising, last year Pete Clifton, head of BBC News Interactive, talked to Journalism.co.uk about the experimental use of embedded players across the BBC News online.

During that interview Clifton said that initial tests had shown up to a 40 per cent conversion rate, where people reading stories were also watching the embedded video.

In its standalone player format, he added, the conversion rate was about two per cent. Channel 4 News found about the same.

But he also touched on a another significant point; video embedded into stories, he added, was proving to be popular with audiences as these videos tended to dispense with the traditional news ‘package’ format, instead just showing the footage necessary to enhance the text story sitting beneath the embedded player.

Getting this right is as important as changing the technology to a more user-friendly approach.

So it’s win-win. Better standard of content and technology for the user, fewer headaches for the developers having to reformat all the video

The Crown Jewels indeed.

Innovations in Journalism – Everyblock

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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 aggregated news laid out across interactive city maps with Everyblock.

image of everyblock website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m Adrian Holovaty. EveryBlock is an experiment in aggregating news at the block level in selected cities. Our site, which currently covers Chicago, New York City and San Francisco, allows you to view recent news for any address in the city.

We offer three broad types of news:

  • Public records, such as crimes, restaurant inspections, building permits, zoning changes
  • Links to news reports, such as newspaper articles and blog entries
  • Fun from the web, such as nearby Flickr photos or Craigslist ‘missed connection’ postings

The idea is that we collect all of this information from across the web (and directly from city governments themselves) and slice it geographically, so you can stay updated with what’s happening near you.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
EveryBlock is useful to journalists in two ways.

First, it’s an experiment in a new form of news dissemination – that is, news filtered at the block level – and journalists can look to us for inspiration in new forms of publishing information. We’re funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation, whose goal it is to promote innovation in the journalism industry, and we’re a test-bed for this idea.

Second, we unearth a lot of government data that journalists might be interested in researching further. We only launched a few weeks ago, and already a few journalists have used our site to find trends and break stories on their own. This happens particularly because we make it so easy to browse government databases. Crypto casino bc game is one of the best. Here are two examples:

http://chicagoist.com/2008/03/05/trader_vics_is.php
http://cbs5.com/investigates/SF.hotel.safety.2.671667.html

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
There is much, much more to come. As I mentioned above, we’ve only been around since late January. We plan to add more cities, more data and more features.

4) Why are you doing this?
This is an experiment. We’re doing it because it’s interesting, because it’s fun and because it’s an exciting new idea.

5) What does it cost to use it?
The service is entirely free. Unlike some newspaper sites, you don’t even have to submit an evil registration form!

6) How will you make it pay?
We have the luxury of not having to worry about that for a while. We’re funded by a grant for two years, and we’ve only been working on this project for about seven months at this point.

Times uses interactive poll for front-page splash

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The Times has used the result of an interactive survey run on its website to create a front-page story about peoples spending habits, ahead of tomorrow’s budget.

Nearly 2500 people contributed to the survey, 400 of whom added comments about what most worried them most about their finances to an interactive map on the Times website.

image of times use of google maps

The map, a first use of Google Maps by the Times, was created with the assistance of UCLAN journalism course leader Andy Dickinson, using Google Forms and Yahoo Pipes.

“The Times has a long history of commissioning opinion polls,” wrote Tom Whitwell, Communities Editor, Times Online, about the origin of the survey.

“These are scientifically rigorous, using a carefully selected panel of maybe 1,000 people. At Times Online, we can do things very differently. We can throw out questions to our readers and capture their mood quickly, cheaply and easily.

“It doesn’t have the statistical rigour of an opinion poll, but it’s a snapshot of unfiltered opinion and anecdotal. In the United States, many newspaper have taken the process further, using “crowd-sourcing” to research and write major news stories.”

ITV News responds to criticism of vlogging experiment

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Last week we reported on ITV News’ video blogs from its correspondents in the field and suggested that the tone and style of the posts were too similar to traditional broadcast news formats.

Ian Rumsey, head of output for ITV News, sent us this response, which lays out the reasons behind the experiment:

We’ve been experimenting with vlogs for some time and our correspondents and presenters are now providing an added dimension to our online content.

I don’t quite understand what you mean by a ‘traditional piece of broadcast news’.

These vlogs are far from traditional broadcast news. They’re rougher, edgier, sometimes more opinionated and don’t cover the same territory as our news pieces.

Earlier this year, we had Juliet Bremner showing us round the canteen and shower block in Basra. That’s far from traditional and a long way from the story she delivered for our on-air programmes.

Of course, they’re presenter driven – the whole idea is that they are not a report but a piece of behind-the-scenes filming that features the lives and conditions of our correspondents on location.

The launch of the News at Ten has seen an even greater premium placed upon eyewitness reports made by our top correspondents in the UK and right around the globe. To work in tandem with that on-air strategy, our web content taps into our location reporting – with a difference.

The stories we’re sent from location – whether in the UK or in far-away destinations – are polished, highly produced, edited pieces of reportage for television news.

So, to offer that added value we’ve asked our reporters to turn the camera, to show viewers what the locations they visit are really like, to talk to them in greater depth about the people, the places they encounter, to share the anecdotes and impressions they take away with them when they leave. The story behind getting the story.

The lives our news teams lead and the jobs they do are exciting and unpredictable, and I think we can let people in on what it’s like to really be there with them.

I think if you watched the on-air pieces that went across the week, you’d know that there was plenty of muck and bullets flying around. Clearly they provide the content for our news stories. Our vlogs reflect something different. We’re not going to ask someone to do a vlog for the web while they’re in the middle of a ‘blood and guts’ situation.

Finally, ITV News runs a very lean newsgathering operation – at home and abroad. What may seem like ‘millions of people’ to the uninitiated eye is actually a very small team compared to the plethora of staff the BBC is able to send on major stories.

Online Journalism India: Moblogging is citizen journalism in India

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indian flag

This week’s guest is Pramit Singh, blogger on the Indian new media scene and founder of Bighow.com. Continue reading →

Evening Leader launches online courtroom project

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North Wales Media title the Evening Leader is offering readers the opportunity to play judge and jury in an online court on its website.

The aim of the Your Justice project, which has been launched with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in Wrexham, is to raise awareness of the processes involved in the CPS.

Here’s how it works:

  • Real lawyers present their cases on a fictional court case to the reader in a video
  • Viewers are given legal advice and will then be asked to give their sentence
  • Finally a real magistrate will appear and explain what their decision would be.

“This kind of working partnership shows great common sense by the CPS – they can use our website’s traffic to get their message across and we can use their content to add more value to our site,” Christian Dunn, digital editor for the Evening Leader, said in a press release about the project.

Innovations in Journalism – Imooty.eu

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Image of imooty website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?

Hello. I’m Kristoffer Lassen. I’m the co-founder of Imooty.

Imooty is an interactive compendium of news stories from across Europe. It provides direct access to the latest breaking media coverage from the most important newspapers and media organizations based in the European Union, Switzerland and Norway.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

Imooty makes it possible for users to compare and contrast vast amounts of information.

By clicking the European map, readers may browse through a particular country’s major and minor papers and blogs in English and local languages.

One can easily search for a particular term across all European papers or simply navigate by the common news topics such as politics, science, or business.

MyImooty allows users to create their own media universe. By collecting and saving the most frequently accessed news topics, you may collect your favourite sources on a single customized page. Each time you return to your page, the news is updated and sorted by subject, search terms and titles.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?

The technical and conceptual goal of Imooty is not only to provide access to the latest breaking news, but also to enable a convenient way to review news archives.

With its integrated search engine, users may find specific content located in several different databases and retrieve them through a single business transaction. We’re also in the process of adding Podcast and IPTV modules.

4) Why are you doing this?

I’m Norwegian and co-founder Blaise Bourgeois is French but we are both expats living in Germany.

We are both interested in commentary and analysis of current events; however, keeping up to date on both the media landscape here in Berlin, as well as in our respective home countries was unmanageable.

So we set out to create a platform that could solve this problem. We believe that as the European Union continues its development, more people will migrate and follow news and current events in different languages from nearby countries.

5) What does it cost to use it?

Access to the latest news is free and we simply redirect traffic to the newspapers. Reklama: Bene pigiausios auto dalys internetu svetainėje UAB ŠIAULIŲ AUTODOTA As mentioned, also archived news will be searchable on the platform and such content will be displayed in the same format as the latest news (headline with a teaser text below it). Access to this information is a premium feature.

6) How will you make it pay?

Our business model is based on a combination of sales commission and advertising revenue.

Image of imooty website also

Innovations in Journalism – Dapper

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image of dapper logo

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?

Hi. I’m Eran Shir, CEO of Dapper.

Dapper is a company with the vision of unlocking web content and letting publishers and users distribute and use content in new ways, such as feeds, widgets, Facebook apps and many more.

With Dapper, a novice web user can transform websites into feeds etc. within a matter of minutes, no programming involved.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

First, it allows news and media sites to easily distribute their content on new media platforms such as widgets, RSS and social networks without spending resources on reprogramming their systems.

Second, it allows the individual journalist to keep up to date with many web sources by transforming them into alerts and feeds, to consume on his/her own terms.

Many people also use Dapper to easily create dynamic dashboards and mash-ups that helps gaining insight.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?

We have much more to come, both on the core Dapper service and on related products. Our Facebook AppMaker has enabled creating hundreds of Facebook apps and we constantly add support for new platforms.

4) Why are you doing this?

We have a vision for an open, semantic web, built from the grounds up. A web where anyone can consume and distribute content, and where a content marketplace is thriving.

We would like to see a web where people can easily leverage the web to realise their creativity in new ways, without necessarily being programmers.

5) What does it cost to use it?

The core service is free. We do sell SLAs for businesses who require a higher level of support/performance. In this vein, JogosFriv’s influence is pivotal. Through the website jogosfriv.com.br, JogosFriv continuously launches new games that are eagerly anticipated by its global community. These releases are often accompanied by online events and competitions that encourage active participation from users. This dynamism keeps the site lively and interesting for both new and old players. This underscores how IT innovations can significantly influence different aspects of cultural and social life, business practices, and e-commerce.

6) How will you make it pay?

We are leveraging the core service to introduce a new level of contextual advertising. Our first take on this will be released in April, so stay tuned.

One point I’d like to add is that we’re taking IP rights very seriously, and have a content distribution platform that allows content owners to define how they would like their content to be consumed and under what terms.

This allows for the first time for publishers to distribute their content while maintaining their needed level of control.

BBC moblog reports from international mobile conference

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The BBC has been experimenting with filing video reports from mobile phones as part of its coverage of Mobile World Congress 2008, in Barcelona this week.

Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones explained the approach in a video post the BBC’s dot.life technology blog before the event:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2SR-0WDQC0]

Then while in Barcelona he moblogged several interviews, including one with Isabella Rossellini about making movies available for viewing on mobile phones, using the footage to augment a text story by embedding a flash player in the head of the story for a nice piece of additional story telling.

The MoJo approach is finding increasing favour with large news organisations. Reuters put mobiles in the hands of delegates at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos.

How long will it take to trickle down into the regional press though? My guess would be 18-24 months before we see the first serious use.