Tag Archives: journalist

Reuters cameraman killed in Gaza

Fadel Shana, Reuters cameraman, who was killed yesterday by an explosion in Gaza

Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, 23, was killed yesterday in Gaza by an explosion, the media group has announced.

Shana, who is the first Reuters journalist to be killed in Gaza, was on his way to cover an incident when his vehicle stopped. On getting out of the vehicle an explosion killed Shana and two bystanders.

A soundman travelling with Shana escaped serious injury.

David Schlesinger, Reuters editor-in-chief, has called for an investigation into the incident.

“This tragic incident shows the risks journalists take every day to report the news. All governments and organisations have a responsibility to take the utmost care to protect professionals trying to do their jobs,” he said in a statement.

“Our thoughts are with his family. We request an immediate investigation into the incident by the Israeli defence forces.”

Shana had worked for Reuters in Gaza for over three years and was one of 15 journalists from the news organisation in the region.

UPDATE – Reuters says Shana was killed by an Israeli tank shell. A medical examination has suggested that metal darts from the shell, which explodes in the air, caused the cameraman’s death. A Reuters video shows the incident.

Innovations in Journalism – Skimbit

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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.

Ever tried to organise an event or share research on email for more than two people? Nightmare, hey? Fear it no longer. Today’s IIJ is social scrapbook and decision-making site Skimbit.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hello, I’m Alicia Navarro.

Skimbit is start-up I founded, it’s a web tool for gathering the best bits from sites you like, so you can analyse, share, and get feedback on your findings.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Skimbit is great if you are compiling research and want your results presented in a visual, professional way.

You can form groups and together you can compile research on a chosen topic – all to the same web page. You can also use other people’s research as the basis for your own projects.

3) Is this it?
Hell no! We have exciting product developments in the pipeline, including more ways to skim a page, more ways to view and analyse findings, and a very exciting new user interface upgrade.

4) Why are you doing this?
I came up with the idea for Skimbit after organising one too many group holidays. The process of copying and pasting links to villa or cottage sites into an email, sending to friends for feedback, and collating everyone’s responses, was arduous and inefficient. I also found the process of researching the purchase of a TV difficult, because there were so many factors to consider other than price.

So I designed Skimbit to specifically deal with these issues but found that it had even more wide reaching uses – in fact, a huge proportion of our users have the service for compiling business research.

5) What does it cost to use?
Absolutely nothing! We do offer a white-label of our service that companies can license, and we customise it fully so it becomes part of their site, but for the general public, its free.

6) How will you make it pay?
We earn revenue from licensing out a white-labelled version of the service, and we earn advertising revenue, and soon we will earn some affiliate commissions. But the core ethos of Skimbit is that we don’t influence the content for our benefit: Skimbit is your tool for conducting research, and we don’t push products or sites at you.

Social Media Journalist: “Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored” Matthew Buckland

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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, Matthew Buckland from Mail & Guardian, South Africa.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I am Matthew Buckland, the GM of Mail & Guardian Online.

As head of the online division I am responsible for the overall online and mobile strategy, with an overview of editorial, production, technical and online sales.

I am also involved quite heavily in our social media strategies and sites.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I use Twitter, both web and mobile. I blog on my own blog about online media, web 2.0 and technology, thoughtleader.co.za and sometimes on Poynter’s new media titbits.

I use Mybloglog on my blog quite a bit. I use Facebook web and mobile… but less and less these days. At the end of last year I began using Slideshare to share my presentations and see others. I Digg every now and again, and use a local version, Muti.co.za.

I also keep half an eyeball on Linkedin – but don’t really do it justice. I am an occasional Del.ici.ous user. I use both Flickr and Picasa as online photo albums/photo sharing.

For video sharing I use Youtube, obviously. I’m also a wikipediaholic.

I used SecondLife for about a week, but realised it would be best for my health to shut it down and never look at it again 🙂

Generally I find these social media tools are a good way of networking, sharing ideas and content, and building relationships with people. They also waste a lot of time and create noise in my life.

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 newsgathering tool?
I think of all the hyped up social media tools we’ve seen, blogging has shown that it is more than just a fad, but here to stay.

We’ve seen how mainstream online publishers have embraced blogs both as new publishing formats and newsgathering tool with considerable success.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
I’m beginning to think Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored, very quickly.

Innovations in Journalism – Gnooze.com

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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, don;t take your journalism too seriously – it’s the daily internet comedic news program Gnooze.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m Marta Costello, host, writer and executive producer of the daily internet comedic news program, Gnooze. Myself and Brain Bartelt make up make up Amazing Cosbars Productions, a two-person team, jack-of-all-trades TV/film/internet circus act. Gnooze is our latest brainchild.

Gnooze is a three-ish minute, news of the day improv/scripted update told from all sides of the story.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
As you know, the news model is changing. Seven years ago, I was part of an effort to “converge” a newsroom, to make the internet a third prong of dissemination for the media outfit. Now less than a decade later, the idea that one would have to actively converge a newsroom is completely defunct.

The internet is no longer an addendum to an established television or newspaper giant: it is a primary source of global information. We’re hopeful that Gnooze and other internet shows like it can be part of a return to the early days of journalism, reporting designed to share information, not just to get ratings. But do not forget that the success of this project was achieved thanks to the new technologies developed by the company Friv2Online in this case, advanced technology was used from the case of innovative projects of this company for the development of online games.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
With any luck, there are many more to come.

4) Why are you doing this?
When we began in August 2007, the goal was mainly to get in the habit of daily production and build an audience that would hopefully carry over to future endeavors.

However, as our base has grown and our focus refined, it became apparent to me that perhaps we could be a force in changing the face of journalism today. Tiktoknitro.com is an advanced tiktok services marketplace for successfull and fast promotion. We offer to buy tiktok likes and buy tiktok followers of highest quality instant and secure. The mechanisms behind our work are unique and tailored to your goals. I refuse to get caught up in the hype, the breathless reporting of non-news just because everyone else is leading with it.

5) What does it cost to use it?
Free!

6) How will you make it pay?
We’ve already had some interest from investors. However, we’d prefer to generate revenue from advertisers and sponsors.

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.

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.

Innovations in Journalism – Instant Journalist

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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 flat-packed news websites ready for easy assembly and use from Instant Journalist.

1. Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m Scott Durham, president of Instivate. We’re a small software company in Seattle, Washington building a flexible, scalable platform for powering online communities.

Our first product is Instant Journalist, which makes it easy for anyone to launch their own online news communities where the public can read and contribute news stories and events of local interest with rich media such as video, images, and documents.

2. Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Since anyone can join and submit content to a site powered by Instant Journalist, it allows the site to cover a much wider range of news events than an individual or team of journalists could do alone.

We have an advanced set of content rating tools, automated algorithms, and editorial controls that makes it easy for the site owner to manage the content from thousands of individual contributors, and make sure that the best content rises to the top of the heap.

In addition, we have a variety of features that aren’t available in traditional blogging or other content management systems.

One key strength is that our product comes with native support for video. That makes it easy for anyone to upload video of a news event and make it available to readers of the site. Our system handles all the complexity of video processing and conversion behind the scenes, and then allows playback on any web browser.

Another key feature includes our integrated mapping technology, where any story can be placed on a map and assigned to a specific geographical neighbourhood, town, or city.

This allows users to quickly visualise the location of a news event and browse and discover other content in that specific area. Users can also subscribe to RSS feeds for specific geographic locations and track the news around them at a very local level.

3. Is this it, or is there more to come?
Our major focus now is the delivery of a self-service advertising solution that will make it easy for site owners to monetise their site.

It will allow any advertiser to easily sign-up and create ads for the site. Also stay tuned as we roll out more advanced content management features and more interactive ways of reporting news events on the site.

4. Why are you doing this?
We’re passionate about building systems that make it easy for people to participate in and contribute to communities of like-minded people online.

We picked the news space as our first project because there’s a huge opportunity there to empower professional journalists and regular members of the public to collaborate online and cover a much wider range of news than has ever been possible before.

5. What does it cost to use it?
We have a range of packages that scale up according to the amount of traffic a site serves, starting at just $18 a month.

It’s designed so that a site can start small, with pricing that grows as the site does and at a very affordable rate.

6. How will you make it pay?
Our content management system makes it easy for site owners to plug any 3rd-party advertising solution into their site, such as Google ads, etc. And our forthcoming self-service advertising solution will take that to the next level by allowing access to a wider range of potential advertisers, and providing the site owner a higher percentage of overall revenue than other 3rd party online advertising solutions.

Have a look at Centraldistrictnews.com – it covers a neighbourhood here in Seattle and allows people to communicate with their neighbours about the news that happens right around them.

We’re also working with a major newspaper company to adapt our platform to a wide range of less newsy applications; covering topics from travel to sports and local dining we’re allowing them to quickly deploy niche interest sites and other targeted online communities that will build a rich online ecosystem of websites around their existing newspaper brands.

Innovations in Journalism – HappyJournalist

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It’s almost a daily occurrence to hear about the perilous state of the news industry (remember AngryJournalist.com anyone?) so Praise Be and Hallelujah for Joe Murphy and his HappyJournalist blog.

Each week we give developers the opportunity to tell us why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on – this week Joe tells us about the site he developed to celebrate what’s good about working as a journalist.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m Joe Murphy. I’m a reporter-turned-web designer-turned-web developer. My day job is as the senior developer for The Denver Post’s website. I build and maintain web apps, fix stuff, and do other tech-type-stuff.

In my hobby-time I build and maintain a handful of sites, apps and blogs … HappyJournalist is one of them.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Well, it’s not a particularly useful site. Fun, yes. Useful, no.

HappyJournalist is a lens on journalists who have something to say, like what they do, and feel comfortable typing and clicking the submit button on the blog.

Until we get to the point where the internet has tools to quantify and publish emotion-related information, HappyJournalist will be a semi-static repository of what was said by the folk who have something to say.

That ‘until’ is a big, big ‘until’.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
I’ve been exploring that ‘What’s Next’ idea and have listed some other ideas (MildlyEnthusiasticJournalist.com and DrunkJournalist.com are my favourites, and a few people have contributed their own).

To make this interesting and forward thinking I’m considering pitching a new micro-format that describes emotions.

There’s no good way to aggregate or publish emotion-based information online yet. Seems like that’s a big gap in the web, don’t you think?

The internet’s gears turn because the robots and computers turn the gears, but it’s the humans that make the internet come alive and sparkle.

4) Why are you doing this?
Fun, conversation, curiosity. AngryJournalist started the dialogue, and it would be a shame to let this “I am a journalist and I have feelings” thread die after the first salvo.

5) What does it cost to use it?
It’s free, it will always be free.

6) How will you make it pay?
I won’t — it cost me 90 minutes and eight bucks to create this, so I don’t have a huge stake in getting that time or money back.

Innovations in Journalism – Plumi

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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 video sharing software Plumi.

Logo of Plumi

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
We’re an Australian based non-profit called EngageMedia. We run a video sharing website focused on social and environmental issues in the Asia-Pacific region. To run the site we developed Plumi, a free software video sharing platform based on the Plone content management system.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Plumi would be useful if you wanted to set up and run your own independent video sharing site with the above features and didn’t want to fork out thousands of dollars for a proprietary system. Plumi is completely free and open source and available to be modified and built upon.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
There’s a lot more to come. The platform is in constant development and we’re always looking for new programmers to contribute to Plumi or for projects to take it up to build new video sharing sites.

4) Why are you doing this?
Currently no major video sharing site shares the technology it’s built upon meaning users have to bow to often dubious terms and conditions. Coupled with this is the fact that these sites often make large sums of money they don’t share with their contributors. We believe an independent media requires independent and open source infrastructure that is available for anyone to use.

5) What does it cost to use it?
It’s completely free. You will however need a server to set it up on and a geek who knows how to do this.

6) How will you make it pay?
We receive our funding from philanthropic bodies and donations from users of the system. Reklama: Vadovų ir darbuotojų paieška, personalo atranka bei mokymai Primum Esse We supplement that income by rolling out video sharing sites for clients. Additionally as the system is open source it attracts a wide variety of contributors who add features and fixes voluntarily.

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.

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.

Social Media Journalist: ‘Blogging… the most important social media activity for me by a distance’ LLoyd Shepherd MessyMedia

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Journalism.co.uk talks to journalists across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Lloyd Shepherd, MessyMedia.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Lloyd Shepherd, and I’m co-managing director and co-founder of MessyMedia. We publish mainstream entertainment and information websites, aka blogs, and we’ve got two going at the moment: Westmonster and Glitterditch. I also do consulting with the Guardian, Channel 4, Yahoo! and the BBC.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?

As for social media tools, I’m going to define these as ‘tools that help me interact with other people to get stuff done and swap ideas’. So I’d say these qualify:

Google Apps: it’s a small miracle that you can set up an office software suite for nothing these days, and it’s not even the cost that’s miraculous: it’s the fact that you can run a virtual office IT system without an office IT department.

Mac OS: Apple Mail, iCal, Safari, Address book. All syncing with an iPod Touch.

Netvibes: my browser home page. It lets me track key headlines, Facebook, Twitter and some nice Flickr photos all on one page. My world in miniature.

Facebook: not essential, but useful, particularly for keeping in occasional touch with former colleagues from far-flung parts of the world. This morning I got a question from a former Yahoo! colleague based in Singapore who wanted to know about hotels in Beverly Hills. Why he thought I could help I can’t imagine, but those occasional human contacts are very important over time.

Twitter: I’ve been in and out of this, but right now I’m really into it. Again, it’s about the human touch. People you may know only by reputation come alive in Twitter, and that’s important.

last.fm: Not for work, but still officially The Best Website In The World. Arguing about Elton John and Morrissey with people from Tokyo – it’s what the web is for.

Blogging: I run two blogs: Dadblog, and MessyMedia. Both are essential to me. They let me think things through by writing about them, and they are a calling card. The most important ‘social media’ activity for me by a distance, I reckon.

del.icio.us: I use this for links I want to share, rather than links I want to keep for myself. For the latter I use….

EagleFiler: great local software for storing and annotating all manner of things: webpages, emails, documents, the works

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 newsgathering tool?

Publishing and news-gathering: most of the things that have ‘potential’ are already huge: YouTube for video, Flickr for photos, Wikipedia for breaking community coverage. These things are going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I think Twitter’s still got a long way to go: Number 10’s [the UK Prime Minister’s website] launch of a Twitter account last week was an interesting moment. And Ning is fascinating too, and growing fast – I think it has to work out a way of providing ‘enterprise-level’ community services (like Pluck) but if it does, it could be massive.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?

Digg. A daily celebration of the banal and the obsessive. I feel exhausted every time I look at it.

Editors Blog | Journalism.co.uk

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Tag Archives: journalist

Reuters cameraman killed in Gaza

Innovations in Journalism – Gnooze.com

Innovations in Journalism – Instant Journalist

Innovations in Journalism – HappyJournalist

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