Tag Archives: j-list

Announcing the 50th member of the j-list…

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In response to recent media lists that took an executive-led view on the movers and shakers in the media and journalism industries, Journalism.co.uk decided to compile its own list of digital media innovators and pioneers – the j-list.

As with all lists, it’s incredibly subjective and open to debate. To provoke discussion further we asked for nominations for the 50th member of the j-list and opened the selection process up with a poll.

More than 600 votes later, the winner is…

Tomáš Bella

Tomáš Bella was longtime editor-in-chief and deputy director of Sme.sk, the most popular news site in Slovak republic. He was the author of projects such as the first European newspaper-owned blogportal  (blog.sme.sk, 2004) and the first digg-like service (vybrali.sme.sk, 2006) that put the links to the competitors’ articles directly on the frontpage of major newspaper web.

In April 2010 he co-founded Prague-based new media consulting company NextBig.cz and is working on a payment system that will allow the access to all the premium content of major newspapers and TV stations with one payment – it will be launched in Central Europe in January 2011.

Tomáš, who received 15.78 per cent of the vote, was surprised and delighted to make the list, he told Journalism.co.uk.

Here’s how the rest of the voting went:

Those who received nominations and votes in the “other” category were: TechChuff, FleetStreetBlues, Kelly Fiveash, not on the wires, Niall Nash, Chris Lake/Econsultancy, Malcolm Coles, Patrick Smith, Dan Chung, John Paton, Nick MacGowan-Lowe, Keely Stocker, Turi Munthe, Nicolas Voisin, Steve O’Hear, Paul Waugh, Christian Payne and Oben Ozaydin.

#jlist: Vote for your 50th member of the J-list

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UPDATE – VOTING ON THIS POLL HAS NOW CLOSED

Yesterday Journalism.co.uk published our final list of 49 people that we consider to be innovators in their area of journalism or digital media. As with all lists, it’s incredibly subjective and open to debate – which is exactly what we wanted people to do.

We’ve had lots of suggestions for who else should be included. We’re listing them all below – remember, these are NOT Journalism.co.uk’s selections, they are from our readers.

Vote for your choice below – voting will close at 5:00pm on Tuesday 10 August.

See below the poll for descriptions of the candidates.


Mike Butcher – long-time journalist and blogger, taking industry titles online long before anyone else was publishing websites. Joined TechCrunch in 2007 and is now editor of TechCrunch, Europe.

Adam Westbrook – freelance multimedia journalist, nominated by Mike Butcher.

Deborah Bonello – now working for the Financial Times, Deborah Bonello founded the multimedia reporting project Mexicoreporter.com. Nominated by Mike Butcher.

Mike Magee – founder of the Register and technology news website the Inquirer. Nominated by @wegotblankets.

SOCHI project – Ambitious, crowd-funded project from photographer Rob Hornstra and writer/filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen to document the changes in the area around Sochi, where the Winter Olympics will take place in 2014, over five years. Nominated by Ann Laenan.

Mike Rawlins/Pits ‘n’ Pots – part of the team behind hyperlocal news site for Stoke with an emphasis on local politics. Nominated by Sam Freeman.

Natasha Loseva – Curator of internet projects at Russian news agency Ria Novosti. Nominated by colleague Valery Levchenko, who says: “Her innovative multimedia ways made @rianru the best source on Russia with UGC.”

Brian Farnham – editor-in-chief of US hyperlocal website Patch. Nominated by colleague Benji Feldheim for Patch’s rapid growth in websites.

Richard Wilson (a.k.a. @dontgetfooled) – Nominated by Naomi McAuliffe for “for his sterling work on Trafigura and Carter-Ruck, dodgy MPs, the ignored problems in Burundi and freedom of expression and libel”.

Emily Bell – former digital director at Guardian News and Media, Emily Bell will now lead the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. Nominated by @balihar.

Ilicco Elia – head of consumer mobile at Thomson Reuters, nominated by Sarah Booker. Pushing innovation in social media and mobile media for news organisations.

Niall Hunt – Digital content strategy manager for CMP Medica with a history of innovation, including time at EMAP investigating new approaches to web journalism. Nominated by colleague Chris Chapman, who said: “leading a web revolution here, with amazing track record in online journalism”.

Guy Clapperton – freelance journalist, broadcaster and author (has also worked as a trainer for Journalism.co.uk in the past) – an expert in online branding and marketing for freelancers.

OWNI.fr – collaboration of journalists, developers and designers creating new forms of online storytelling and news applications – and making a profit from its work. Team features Nicolas Voisin, founder and CEO, Adriano Farano and Nicolas Kayser-Bril.

Tomas Bella – Nominated by Nicolas Kayser-Bril: “He’s the only person I know of to have bought and integrated a digg-like for a news website (sme.sk) and he now offers solutions to the local online media, such as a Kachingle-like paywall plan.”

Dejan Restak – Nominated by Nicolas Kayser-Bril: “He developed a last.fm-like for the news portal B92.net and now works with mobile news at WAN/IFRA.”

Chris Wheal – freelance journalist who is successfully making a living from online journalism working for a range of finance and insurance news titles. Leading online training and development for young journalists as part of the National Union of Journalists’ training arm.

Robert Andrews – editor of paidContent:UK, nominated by Patrick Smith: “He’s been doing analysis-driven live journalism with data/charts for years.”

Are you on the j-list? The leading innovators in journalism and media in 2010

Updated 05/08/2010

Recent industry lists ranking the great and good in journalism and the media fell a bit short of the mark for Journalism.co.uk. Where were the online innovators? Where were the journalists on the ground outside of the executives’ offices?

So we’ve compiled our own rundown listing those people we think are helping to build the future of journalism and the news media.

Some important points to note:

  • There are no rankings to this list – those included are from such varied areas of work it seemed pointless;
  • We will have missed some people out – let us know in the comments below or with the hashtag #jlist who you are working with that should be included;
  • We’ve listed groups as well as individuals – with individuals we hope you’ll see them as representing a wider team of people, who have worked together on something great;
  • And it’s not limited to 50 or 100 – we’ll see where it takes us…

So here’s the first batch. There’s a Twitter list of those included so far at this link and more will be added in the coming weeks.

Click on the ‘more’ link after these five to to see the full list.

Tomáš Bella

Tomáš Bella was editor-in-chief and deputy director of Sme.sk, the Slovak republic’s most popular news site. He was author of the first European newspaper-owned blogportal (blog.sme.sk, 2004) and the first digg-like service (vybrali.sme.sk, 2006). In April 2010 he co-founded Prague-based new media consultancy NextBig.cz and is working on a payment system to allow the access to all the premium content of major newspapers and TV stations with one payment.

Paul Steiger

While ProPublica’s not-for-profit, foundation-funded model may be something commercial news organisations can never share, its investment in and triumphing of investigative and data journalism cannot be overlooked. The way in which it involves a network of readers in its research and actively encourages other sites to “steal” its stories shows a new way of thinking about journalism’s watchdog role. Image courtesy of the Knight Foundation on Flickr.

Chris Taggart

Paul Bradshaw’s description of his fellow j-lister: “Chris has been working so hard on open data in 2010 I expect steam to pour from the soles of his shoes every time I see him. His ambition to free up local government data is laudable and, until recently, unfashionable. And he deserves all the support and recognition he gets.”

Ian Hislop/Private Eye

Not much to look at on the web perhaps, but the Eye’s successful mixture of satire, humour and heavyweight investigations has seen its circulation rise. It blaized a trail during the Carter-Ruck and Trafigura gagging ordeal and has even lent it’s support to j-list fellow the Hackney Citizen to protect press freedom from international to hyperlocal levels. Image courtesy of Nikki Montefiore on Flickr.

Brian Boyer

Amidst the talk of what journalists can learn from programmers and what coding skills, if any, journalists need, Brian Boyer was making the move the other way from programming to a programmer-journalist. His university and personal projects in this field have been innovative and have got him noticed by many a news organisation – not least the Chicago Tribune, where he now works as a news applications editor. He blogs at Hacker Journalist.

Ushahidi

Originally built to map reports from citizens of post-election violence in Kenya, Ushahidi’s development of interactive, collaborative and open source mapping technology has been adopted by aid agencies and news organisations alike. It’s a new means of storytelling and a project that’s likely to develop more tools for journalists in the future.

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