Tag Archives: Amy Gahran

Poynter Online: Limitations of automated news tweets

Amy Gahran shows us why automated services can sometimes make for funny news descriptions:

This was a tweet from the Wall Street Journal on June 27:

“BREAKING NEWS: Prosecutors get a $170 billion judgment against Bernard Madoff. Ruth Madoff agrees to give up nearly all ass..”

Gahran says:

“The Journal, like some other news organizations, uses a popular service called Twitterfeed to automatically generate tweets based on an RSS feed. Normally, I’m all in favor of automation that saves time and effort, but Twitter is one place where automation usually doesn’t work, especially for news.”

Full post at this link…

PoynterOnline: LA Times alert police about geocode error

Amy Gahran writes about the LA Times and how it spotted a problem with Los Angeles Police Department geocode data.

“Distorted or erroneous geodata, especially from official sources like police departments, can have ripple effects,” she comments.

Full story at this link…

Poynter Online: Introducing MixedInk to connect communities through online collaboration

Amy Gahran flags up MixedInk, a new ‘collaboration application’, which ‘might help journalists, news organisations, activists and citizen journalists work with each other and with their communities.’

Users share texts (licensed through Creative Commons) using the MixedInk application, which is something between a wiki, an online forum, a text editor – with a crowd rating element.

“As you write in MixedInk, it searches all other entries and displays text that is similar to yours. While writing, users can view, copy, edit and remix any text that’s been added to the site,” Gahran explains. Full story...

Mumbai online: the attacks reported live (updating)

A look at where the news has unfolded. Please post additional links below. Journalism.co.uk will add in more links as they are spotted.

Washington-based blogger and social media expert, Gaurav Mishra talks to Journalism.co.uk in an interview published on the main page.

One of the few on-the-ground user-generated content examples, Vinu’s Flickr stream (screen grab above). Slide show below:

How it has been reported:

Photography:

  • Flickr users such as Vinu, have uploaded pictures from the scene (images: all rights reserved).
  • A Flickr search such as this one, brings up images from Mumbai, although many are reproduced from a few sources. People have also taken pictures of the television news coverage.
  • But before you re-publish your finds beware: an advanced search which filters pictures by copyright and only shows up images opened up under Creative Commons, limits the results.

Blogs:

Breaking news:

Social Media:

Microblogging:

Mapping:

Video:

  • The Google video seach is here. YouTube videos are mainly limited to broadcast footage, with one user even filming the TV reports, for those without access to live television coverage. YouTube videos seem to be all second-hand broadcasts from mainstream media.

Timelines:

  • Dipity timeline here:

Campaigns / Aid:

https://bmmagazine.co.uk/business/us-government-asks-max-polyakov-to-sell-firefly-shares-for-safety-concerns/

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I’ve Said Too Much: Mumbai government tries to crack down on Twitter updates?

(J.co.uk update)Read Amy Gahran’s skepticism about this particular rumour on her blog. It seems unlikely, but as blogged and recorded by @Lloydshep (follow link at end): “The awful stuff coming out of Mumbai is one thing, but here’s another: the Indian government asking for live Twitter updates to cease to protect their operations. For all sorts of reasons, this seems to be significant.”

contentious.com: Why the New York Times should show its sources

Citing a recent article that was built on public documents, Amy Gahran explains why the Times should have linked to or supplied the background info to the piece.

“Is this more detail than most people would want? Probably. But providing that information and making those links inobtrusively demonstrates a willingness not just to inform, but to empower,” she says.

Poynter: Making online news more relevant with Silobreaker

News aggregation site Silobreaker uses semantic web technology to help consumers find news that is more relevant to them and offers connections and context with related articles or topics.

“[S]ince relevance has inherent value, it can be the basis of business models,” writes Poynter’s Amy Gahran.