Tag Archives: Dave Lee

links for 2008-07-16

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Breaking news of the UK Earthquake online and off

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News of an earthquake that struck the UK in the early hours of Wednesday morning caused a surge in traffic to Sky.com/news with more page impressions recorded on the site at 1am than 9am, the site’s executive producer Julian March writes on the Editors’ Blog.

A similar effect was experienced by the Nottingham Evening Post’s site, HoldtheFrontPage reports, after it posted news of the quake within 30 minutes.

The site saw 1,821 readers visit between 1am and 2am – increasing this to 6,000 by 9am, 20,000 page views and 60 comments on the story – though it’s a shame they appear to have only opened this feature from 6am.

Both great examples of why it’s crucial to break news online – whether a local or national title – and get ‘ownership’ of the story to keep drawing those viewers back.

The BBC’s online and radio coverage was hot on the heels of the incident, though the video below – courtesy of student journalism blogger Dave Lee – suggests their TV news had to play catch up.

(I like the idea of competitive news watching between channels)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foD0YXHIknQ]

Case study blogs: back-to-front journalism or wider perspective?

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The launch of a new blog to help journalists find case studies has been questioned by student journalist and blogger Dave Lee, who says such projects provide case studies representing too narrow a field.

While not directly attacking the Getting Ink Requests blog, Lee is concerned that such groups are set-up and perpetuated by journalists, and as such will only provide case studies representing a narrow section of society.

Lee goes on to criticise what he describes as the ‘”think of story, find case study” process’ saying it leads to ‘[F]eatures to order… There will always be an element of “you’ll do” about it.’

But as Lee offers no practical alternatives for journalists (as one commenter puts it) who are told to find ‘three case studies in 24 hours’ his post has met with some critical reactions.

Lee adds that his gripe is not with the individual journo under pressure, but with the introspective nature of the process, e.g. using personal contacts, particularly those within the industry, to find case studies.

Fair enough, but this is what journalists have always done and that’s not going to change. Regardless of who sets them up, using social networks and blogs to make case study requests will inevitably give journalists access to new sources, increase participation and ultimately give a wider representation of society.

How to make a blog an e-paper…

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(…if that’s what you really want to do)

Using Feedjournal bloggers can essentially pdf their content by putting the feed for their posts into the site’s generator. The result is the blog laid out in a newspaper style, complete with headlines and bylines, you can even make a masthead if you so wish.

Dave Lee has tried it out on his blog and I have to agree with him that I’m not really sure what the point is. The idea of taking a functional online publishing platform and shoehorning it into a ‘traditional media’ format seems counterproductive.

Plus it doesn’t really make longer posts more user-friendly, as, having tried it out on our feed, a long enough post will take up a whole page and find its way to the front of the ‘paper’.

On the other hand the service could be a way for newsletter-style publishers to better link their print handouts with content online. Being able to repackage a blog’s content so quickly could encourage these kind of operations to devote more time to what they do online without neglecting their print operations.

For e-paper fans, however, the forthcoming release of a FeedJournal service for readers, allowing users to select the feeds that make up the pdf’s content, might be more appealing.