Tag Archives: journalist

Innovations in Journalism – Fromdistance

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Fromdistance logo

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

Fromdistance is a software company which makes products for mobile applications. Our main product is the Fromdistance MDM (Mobile Device Manager) – a tool for managing mobile devices. Based on this , we have built the Fromdistance Mobile Professional Reporter (MPR) and the Mobile Citizen Reporter (MCR).

The first is used by several media companies for their own content production; the latter is a service for publishers to get content from end users.

Both services transmit images and videos in their original quality without sacrificing resolution – making a sharp contrast with using MMS.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

Using the MPR service professional journalists can create instant reports for their publishers extremely easily. We can automate the whole process to a point where only the recording button on a mobile device is used – everything else is 100 per cent automatic.

In professional reporting it’s vital to have tools that work. As the MPR is based on our mobile device management product, we can take care of the devices and of the user like never before. For instance, remote desktop access can be established to devices to help reporters in trouble.

Citizen journalists can take advantage of the reporter service, as it can be used to send images, videos and text to a publisher of their choice. The user is asked to accept the terms set by the publisher during the submission process, which eliminates rights-related questions.

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

Live streaming is in the works.

4) Why are you doing this?

We believe that mobile devices and mobile networks facilitate new ways of content production, both in terms of processes and in terms of concepts. However, it’s important to ensure the technical quality of the material sent out – normally publishers don’t want scores of low-quality content.

We also want to help publishers in receiving material from end customers in order to get their stories heard. While traditional blogging is good, we would want to combine user generated content with professional publishing.

5) What does it cost to use it?

The MPR is a premium service – the cost depends on the number of devices, supported
video formats and level of integration needed.

Fromdistance MCR is free for end users. They only need to pay for the generated data traffic.

6) How will you make it pay?

Publishers/media companies are our customers and pay monthly fees for using either service.

NUJ’s Journalist magazine to launch website?

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The April edition of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) magazine the Journalist is available only as a downloadable pdf – a decision criticised by some, who argue that a dedicated website for the publication is needed.

However, according to an introduction to a feature in the current issue, there are plans afoot to launch such a site: “The Journalist Editorial Advisory Board is already working on a plan to go online with a site — a proper website, not pdfs — launching later this year. The relationship to the printed magazine — and to the union’s official website — are under discussion.”

In the feature, Chris Wheal, freelance journalist and chair of the NUJ Professional Training Committee, says a multimedia website for the union could demonstrate its ability to do multimedia content ‘in a planned, well thought-out and funded way’. Wheal also suggests that such a site might require a full-time editor’s post with less responsibility for union duties.

Reactions to the PDF version featured alongside this article show little support for an PDF-only Journalist. “This completely undermines our faith in the newspaper and magazine business. Many members will not bother to access the NUJ site,” says one commenter, while another suggests the experiment will ‘damage links with members and decrease their support’.

This month’s trial has certainly provided some food for thought, but what’s the answer: pdf, hybrid or online-only?

Innovations in Journalism – browser archiving plug-in WebMynd

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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 Firefox archiving plugin WebMynd.

image of webmynd

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
I’m Patrick Buckley, one of three entrepreneurs from Cambridge and MIT who have a passion for helping people find the things they are looking for on the internet.

We make a Firefox browser plug-in called WebMynd. It creates your own personal internet archive that is searchable and visual. It is a way of extending your natural memory to include what you have seen online. You won’t ever lose track of a website again because it will be in your WebMynd.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
WebMynd is a great tool for anyone who does online research because it saves web pages as you see them, not just a link. The pages you see are indexed so you can use text search to find them again.

You don’t have to do any upfront tagging, bookmarking, organizing, cutting, pasting, or screen shots. This is especially useful for obscure webpages that may change, be taken down, or would be impossible to find again using Google (very obscure, behind paywalls or logins).

When you visit a website you get a personal copy of the page as it was when you saw it. Bookmarks fail in this regard because they only save a link to a page on the internet, link rot can ensue and the page may no longer exists the way you saw it. WebMynd saves an actual page and the content for you to see again.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We have many more ideas on how to improve the experience and we are literally releasing new features weekly.

We are working on a sharing element so that people can create collections of pages with their friends or colleagues, a “Collective Mynd” that people contribute websites to and which could be great for group research.

Another feature for journalists which we are about to complete and which will work with FireFox 3.0 when it is released, is a system to surf your internet archive offline.

Any page you have seen before can be viewed without an internet connection, great for looking up old internet references when you are on a plane or away from the internet.

4) Why are you doing this?
Because bookmarking and tagging are no longer good enough systems for finding what you have seen.

5) What does it cost to use it and how will you make it pay?
In the future we may offer a premium pay for service but for now it is completely fee.

Innovations in Journalism – Reporterist, the ‘next generation wire service’

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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 ‘next generation wire services’ for independent journalists from Reporterist.

image of reporterist website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi, I’m Hemant Bhanoo. Reporterist is about bringing together journalists on a common platform where reporters can sell their pieces and editors can source reliable, quality work.

There is enough demand for original news content around the world that we believe this will grow into a next generation wire service for independent reporters.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
As a starting point, journalists can put up their work on our public portfolio. Right now we enable you to set up rules like “send my story (or story idea) to Editor A. If they don’t bite within 3 days, send it on to Editor B”.

You can specify different prices for each editor, and see if/when they have looked at your work.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
This is definitely not it. There’s a lot more to come, and it’ll hopefully evolve a lot faster as we bring on engineers to help us accelerate development.

A preview of some our features:

  • Full multimedia support (right now we’ve rolled out photo support to a few test users)
  • Directory to help journalists find publications that they may want to pitch to
  • A way for editors to put up specific events or story angles that they need to be covered (and for reporters to go cover them).

4) Why are you doing this?
I’m a big fan of public radio, and have been really moved by investigative/enterprise stories that I’ve heard. It scares me that there are fewer ways to earn a living actually doing investigative or enterprise reporting. Given today’s political climate, we need more people going out of their way to hunt down stories and bring them to the world.

When I found out how many good stories don’t actually see the light of day because journalists can’t find the right outlet or because they go stale while waiting for editors to take a look at them, I was taken aback.

I hope Reporterist will enable some of those important, untold stories to reach people.

5) What does it cost to use it?
We will take a percentage (10 per cent) of the transaction, though it’s free right now. There’s currently no listing fee – but we’ll charge one for large media (audio, video, pictures) once we fully roll out multimedia support.

6) How will you make it pay?
We can build a sustainable business from the transaction and listing fees. However, we plan to expand our offerings in various directions. We will also be building premium portfolios for journalists, and tools for news publishers that we will charge for.

Our core focus has been, and will be, on helping reward quality journalism.

Social Media Journalist: ‘Social networks are an echo chamber rather than a way of being exposed to anything new’ Adam Tinworth, RBI

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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, Adam Tinworth, RBI.

image of Adam Tinworth

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Adam Tinworth, and I’m currently head of blogging for business publisher Reed Business Information.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I’m a Twitter addict, and am constantly keeping up with the discussions there, either on my laptop or my iPhone.

More stories “break” to me through Twitter right now than any other sources. It’s so quick and easy to publish out with it, you can get news to people before you’re even on the second paragraph of a traditional news story.

I couldn’t live without my RSS feeds. I’ve been an RSS junkie for long enough that I predate Google Reader. I keep my subscriptions in Newsgator, so I can access them in NetNewsWire on my Mac, FeedDemon on my work PC, and the iPhone web version on my, well, iPhone.

While once upon a time I was a heavy forum user (and a Usenet/Mailing List guy before that), most of my conversational reading is in the blogosphere now.

I find the much stronger sense of a huge range of personalities you get on people’s blogs much more appealing than the handful of dominant personalities that tend to dominate forum-like discussion places. And I speak as someone who has been one of those selfishly dominant personalities in the past. I also occasionally flirt with social networks (note that that’s “flirt with” not “flirt in” :)), but find them limited and frustrating.

That said, both Seesmic and Flickr, which have strong similarities with forums, are sites I wish I had more time to explore the true potential of.

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?
Honestly, I think we’re only just scratching the surface of how blog-based CMS could completely change the way we deliver news to interested people.

I suspect that the news sites of the future will have much more in common with blogs that than monolithic sites with clunky, slow back-ends we build right now.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
Facebook (and social network sites in general). I think they’re interesting “walled garden” communication tools, but their strength is also their weakness: they only expose you to the thoughts and recommendations of those you already know.

They are something of an echo chamber, in which existing relationships are reinforced, rather than a way of being exposed to anything (or anyone) new.

Innovations in Journalism – Tiinker

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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 your news selected and filtered with artificial intelligence from Tiinker.

Image of Tiinker website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi I’m Alex North. Tiinker has been developed by Deep Grey Labs. We’re a young start-up in Sydney, Australia, focussed on bringing artificial intelligence and machine learning technology out of academia and into products and services people can use.

There’s masses of information published online every day – way too much for any individual to track. Tiinker lifts some of the burden by filtering and exploring to find content that’s interesting to you as an individual, hiding irrelevant or uninteresting stories.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Tiinker is great for keeping up with news in one or a number of interest areas. It gathers stories from thousands of news sources and picks out the interesting ones based on which articles you have previously found interesting.

Although you could visit all the sources individually, each one probably has only a few stories of real interest. Over time, Tiinker will learn to pick these out for you.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
Tiinker has much more to come. We’re working now on some features to help you share stories you’ve found on Tiinker with friends and colleagues, and continually improving the content selection algorithms.

4) Why are you doing this?
From a broad point of view, we want to help apply the amazing research that goes on at our universities into things people can actually use. More narrowly, tiinker addresses the growing problem of information overload – something which affects us all in some way and will continue to do so unless we bring computing to bear on the problem.

5) What does it cost to use it?
Nothing, it’s free.

6) How will you make it pay?
Eventually with targeted advertising running on the site, but right now it’s ad-free as well.

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.

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.

Social Media Journalist: ‘USG is the most overrated social media ‘news’ craze’ Jack Lail, Knoxville News Sentinel

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Journalism.co.uk talks to journalists across the globe about social media and how they see it changing their industry. This week, Jack Lail of Knoxville News Sentinel.

image of Jack Lail

1) Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Jack D. Lail. I’m the managing editor/multimedia for the Knoxville News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tennessee.

I am in charge of the editorial content on our family of websites that include knoxnews.com and govolsxtra.com.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
AIM, Twitter and Facebook mainly. I dabble in lots of others. Email? Is that a social media tool? Live in it. Google Reader? Certainly use it every day.

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 continue to think the unsexy RSS feed has the largest potential and is the most important tool. Twitter and Facebook have potential.

Next is blogging, if you consider that a social media tool. It is critical for mainstream media to adopt and adapt. Because it is a web native publishing platform as well as a social network, it engages and creates community in very effective ways.

Not a software tool, but the iPhone is the biggest game changer in terms of new platform. I’m actually starting to believe the hype about the mobile web.

Users get that product and every other hardware maker is improving their smart phone offerings at a more rapid pace. Did we just go from Gopher to Netscape in the mobile space?

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
YouTube and Facebook notwithstanding, user-generated content seems to be the most overrated social media ‘news’ craze or the most ineptly executed by traditional media organisations.

I think you’ll see a few sites that thrive at this and nail it and everybody else will suck. There seems to be a difference also in layering in news in social media sites and creating community around news.

Obviously, there are more social media sites being launched than can be supported by audiences or business models. Is it spring and time to prune?

San Antonio news site blogs tips for blogging staff

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MySanAntonio.com – the companion site of US newspaper the Express News and broadcast channel KENS5 – has taken a novel approach to improving staff blogs on the site.

The site has set up a blog offering ‘tips and ideas for blogging more successfully at MySanAntonio.com’ – thanks to Journalism Iconoclast for the link.

The blog ranges from technical advice on posting to more general posts about writing style. It’s also a way for housekeeping notices about the blogs to be delivered and for journalist bloggers to air their queries and concerns.

A great resource supporting the idea that if you ask staff to take on a new project like a blog, the training shouldn’t end with setting it up, but should continue throughout the process.