Tag Archives: Mumbai

FT scoops six prizes at SOPA awards

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The Financial Times’ Chinese-language website, FTChinese.com, took the prize for best feature writing at the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awards last night.

The site was one of six winners for the FT, which also took home gongs for newspaper design, digital journalism (for reporting on China and the Olympics) and scoop of the year. https://bcasino.io/

FTChinese.com’s winning effort was an article on 30 years of reforms in China.

The title’s Mumbai correspondent, Joe Leahy, was also named journalist of the year at the event.

A full list of the award winners, which also saw the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek recognised, can be downloaded at this link.

Ethan Zuckerman on hashtags, breaking news and disinformation

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There have been discussions previously on accuracy vs speed when it comes to breaking news on social media platforms such as Twitter (see the debate around the reporting of the Mumbai terror attacks), but Ethan Zuckerman’s recent blog post raised some interesting points relating to the recent Moldova protests.

The #pman tag used to report the protests was also used to spread disinformation, says Zuckerman, who references Jon Pincus’ post on the hashtag as an open channel.

“[I]n the same way that the #skittles tag, promoted by the company as a form of viral marketing ended up being used for NSFW posts, it’s hardly surprising that #pman would attrack trolls and disinformation,” writes Zuckerman.

“On the other hand, participatory tools may be particularly effective at debunking this form of disinformation.”

A commenter on Zuckerman’s blog tested this out during the protests by posting fake, hashtagged updates, and seeing if these were seized upon by the media. The ‘troll/experiment’ was quickly rumbled however.

Zuckerman says he will be looking into whether Romanian speakers will challenge the information spread in English-language updates, as well as whether good or bad nuggets of information spread more quickly.

FollowtheMedia (Write On): A look at Al Jazeera English coverage of Gaza

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By and large, Al Jazeera is ‘doing ok’ in its Gaza coverage, writes Philip Stone. He takes a look at the aspects of its reporting and concludes that “its coverage of the Mumbai attacks and now Gaza shows it certainly has logistical advantages in that part of the world, and if it can only keep its reporters and anchors straight for a mainstream international audience, then it really can be a viable cable news alternative to CNN International and BBC World.”

AP: Top 10 news stories of the year

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Barack Obama’s election victory named top news story of 2008 in Associated Press’ annual poll, voted for by US editors and news directors.

Oil prices, the Beijing Olympics and Mumbai terror attacks all feature in the list.

FromtheFrontline: More Twitter conventions would have aided Mumbai coverage

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“As Twitter use becomes more widespread, so it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint the type of information you are looking for,” writes Daniel Bennett.

“A vast of sea of tweets with #Mumbai quickly developed, and if you were a journalist trying to find eyewitness accounts you found yourself painstakingly wading through them all. Those who did probably found it was time well spent, but is there a better way?” Bennett asks.

Mumbai and Twitter: how the BBC dealt with Tweets and accuracy

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Some interesting lessons learnt by the BBC News website from last week’s coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, according to a blog post by editor Steve Herrmann.

The site used Tweets which seemed to be reports from Mumbai as part of its live updates page, which also featured news updates and excerpts from correspondents and blogs.

This page has a specific role, explains Herrmann in the post, to provide ‘a running account, where we are making quick judgments on and selecting what look like the most relevant and informative bits of information as they come in’, prior to making more considered reports for the main news items and bulletins.

“These accounts move more quickly and include a wider array of perspectives and sources, not all verified by us, but all attributed, so that in effect we leave some of the weighing up of each bit of information and context to you.”

Referring to one particular tweet about the Indian government attempting to clamp down on Twitter, which many tried to verify at the time, Herrmann asks whether this – and other potentially unverified items – should have been included in the coverage.

Not if it’s not attributed and not if it’s going to appear in a main news item, he says:

“In one sense, the very fact that this report was circulating online was one small detail of the story that day. But should we have tried to check it and then reported back later, if only to say that we hadn’t found any confirmation? I think in this case we should have, and we’ve learned a lesson. The truth is, we’re still finding out how best to process and relay such information in a fast-moving account like this.”

There is an argument for including such reports, whether they come in by Twitter, email or photograph, as means of passing on the information to readers as quickly as possible ‘on the basis that many people will want to know what we know and what we are still finding out, as soon as we can tell them’.

It is clear that with every major news event the site is experimenting and developing its newsgathering and reporting strategy, showing just how flexible and online news organisation needs to be to serve its users at times of breaking news.

Mumbai bloggers interviewed – video collection

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Here are clips of the various Mumbai blogger interviews. Fuller multimedia round-up here.

Dina, who blogs at Mumbaihelp.blogspot.com and on her own site and Vinu, whose photographs have been viewed by nearly 100,000  (at time of writing) on Flickr, speaking on CNN.

Amit Varma, who blogged a first-hand account, interviewed by the BBC (vision very poor but audio is adequate)


Gaurav Mishra, also interviewed in a text interview on the main page of Journalism.co.uk, here featured in the CBS Early Show coverage, looking at the reportage through citizen journalism:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Mumbai online: the attacks reported live (updating)

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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?

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(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.”