Tag Archives: Online Journalism

OJR: How nationally-owned local publishers can get ahead

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The challenges facing locally and nationally owned publications are the subject of a post on the Online Journalism Review website by Robert Niles, who follows up on a previous post in which he questions the future of AOL’s hyperlocal start-up Patch.com and other national chains.

Niles ha previously claimed that locally-owned publications today have cost advantages which outweigh the “economies of scale” of national chains of local publishers. But pushed by a reader to come up with advantages for national chains which could make them more profitable, he puts forward two ideas as a starting point for further debate, shown in summary below.

National training

A smart, focused national training program could help reduce the time it takes a local editor to produce an engaging website. Local website publishers who don’t have access to such training will take longer to get up to speed.

Search engine optimization

A national chain can give its local publishers an advantage by arranging for aggressive cross-linking among its sites. That creates a potentially huge number of inbound links, helping push the chain’s sites ahead of its local competitors. In addition, by building a national brand for local news, the chain might be able to elicit more in-bound links to its sites from outside the network.

See his full post here…

BBC strikes video content deal with Russia’s GZT.ru

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The BBC has announced a new syndication agreement between its Russian news site bbcrussian.com and GZT.ru, a Russian online news portal, as part of efforts to open up greater access to BBC news video and text content within the country.

The deal will provide users of the GZT.ru website direct access to Russian-language video content from bbcrussian.com, which the broadcaster claims will see its news reports opened up to an additional audience of 1.6 million users each week.

In a statement on the BBC press office website, head of BBC Russian Sarah Gibson says the broadcaster is able to offer a unique resource to Russian consumers.

Our ambition is to build on BBC Russian’s well-established direct online audience through partnerships with highly-regarded online sites. Our global perspective makes us a unique resource for news consumers in Russia, and this is another way for them to access BBC news and analysis. We see Russian audiences turn to us on big stories, including Russian and regional ones, and we are really pleased to have another way through this partnership to make our content more accessible.”

Hatip: PaidContent:UK

Twitter transgression almost claims another job in journalism

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There is no shortage in opinion that journalists using social media such as Twitter are armed with an invaluable tool for staying connected to their patch and enabling communication with an extensive community of sources and readers.

But recent cases of journalists being reprimanded or even sacked for comments made on the instant messaging site repeatedly remind us of the importance of using the mouthpiece with careful consideration. The need for caution was well illustrated by a Washington Post sports columnist this week who sent out a false news tweet from his personal account, which identifies him as a reporter, landing him in hot water with his employer.

Mike Wise was suspended by the Post after sending out a tweet suggesting that a Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback was being suspended for five games, despite Wise being well aware the figure was inaccurate. He claims it was a ‘test’ of how fast incorrect news can spread over the internet.

But while his test succeeded in showing how quickly that piece of misinformation spread through the web, it also left him with a month-long suspension to reflect on what he admitted was a “horrendous mistake”.

According to a blog post by the newspaper’s ombudsman Andrew Alexander, the fabrication of news is “a major journalistic transgression” and an action for which Wise is “lucky” to not have been sacked for.

BBC: Prototype app feeds related web content into live TV streams

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The BBC is working on a prototype application that will feed links to relevant web content into live TV news reports available on BBC News Online, according to a post on the backstage.bbc.co.uk blog.

The prototype shows how hypertext which links to online articles relating to the topic of discussion can appear on screen as the news develops, signposting users to further reports on the web.

Andrew Littledale, who has been working on the prototype, explains that the idea has evolved from plans to develop an interface which will suit a future in which TV and the web become bedfellows.

The most useful application we could think of was something that would provide web content that was relevant to what was being talked about on TV. So we created a Flash application that pulls in live subtitles from an IRC channel and places them underneath a live feed of News 24 (…) As the subtitles appear on the screen they are sent off to a natural language processing API and relevant concepts are extracted from the text (and in our case returned as DBpedia terms).

When the concepts come back from the API they are placed over the EMP on the left of the picture. We’ve mapped these terms to BBC News content and clicking on them reveals links on the right. Clicking on these opens up the web page in a new tab.

While he admits it needs a bit of work yet, the concept is also being considered as a more tailored product for specific platforms on the site.

See his full post and demonstration of the prototype here…

Hyperlocal – what does it mean?

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Not long ago it was the buzzword of the media and news industry – but what does ‘hyperlocal’ really mean today?

It’s a question Guardian Local editor Sarah Hartley has sought answer on her blog, putting forward ten characteristics which represent the meaning of the phrase as it evolves.

First, she discusses the growing range of the term, which has developed from a postcode-focused news patch to now being used to describe focused subject matter, story treatment, or even geographical areas which are actually large in size. “Can these things be considered hyperlocal in nature?”, she asks. TikTok Follower Kaufen | günstig ab 2,99 € per PayPal

Here is a summary of the main characteristics Hartley associates with the term:

  • Participation from the author.
  • Opinion blended with facts.
  • Participation from the community.
  • Small is big. Scale is not important, impact is.
  • Medium agnostic. Use of different platforms.
  • Obsessiveness. Sticking with a story.
  • Independence.
  • Link lovers.
  • Passion.
  • Lack of money.

Readers are invited to comment on her blog on whether it is time to find an alternative to the term ‘hyperlocal’ or whether it is well used enough to keep.

See her full post at this link…

Amateur media watchdogs helping keep newspapers in check

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While a handful of established groups shoulder the responsibility of holding news and media organisations to account, the internet has fueled the growth of the individual online watchdog, according to an interesting post on the European Journalism Centre website.

Author Jamie Thunder, an Investigative Journalism MA student at City University uses several examples to illustrate the biggest media bloggers within the online community, such as Tabloid Watch, Five Chinese Crackers, Angry Mob and Enemies of Reason.

‘Watchdog’ groups are nothing new to the media. But these blogs are different. There’s no unifying political ideology, and they’re maintained alongside full-time jobs. They’re not run by media theorists or political activists – just individuals stirred to action by the daily iniquities of the press.

He says that while they accept their impact on the papers themselves will be minimal, it’s the online “groundswell” among readers which is where their power lies.

We all know the media landscape is shifting, and shifting fast – paywalls, user-generated content, and Wikileaks are just three recent developments. Yet little has been said about the increasing ability for non-journalists to analyse and publicise the press’s problems (…) And as long as newspapers keep misbehaving, they’re not going away.

See his full post here…

Sharing and signposting: Younger Thinking for news organisations

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Research carried out by university student Christopher Sopher as part of his Younger Thinking project has produced a series of recommendations for news organisations trying to reach a younger audience.

The biggest mistakes being made by online publishers at the moment? Overuse of sterotypes, publishing new content on old platforms and a lack of sharing facilities, according to his project blog.

His final ten recommendations for news outlets includes improved signposting, personalisation and explanatory reports giving background and understanding to confusing topics – which they term “wisdom journalism”.

Young people would also benefit from a more active, interpretive approach to journalism, sometimes called “wisdom journalism”. Knowledgeable journalists with a background in their subject matter could offer readers insight into what events really mean and break through the superficial he-said/she-said balance that dominates coverage of serious topics. This methodology acts on the idea that, in many news situations, it is better to be helpful and explanatory than it is to be first.

Hat tip: Editors Weblog

Could technology actually be a gateway to long-form journalism?

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There’s a useful post on PoynterOnline this week in which author Mallary Jean Tenore details some of the best tools and technologies available which support the future of long-form journalism on the web.

These include Nate Weiner’s Read It Later, which can “save, share and organize URLs”. He explains that this means users can return to the whole article offline at their own leisure, rather than simply bookmarking the URL.

“Read It Later is essentially the article’s second chance. It actually improves the likelihood that the article will be seen,” Weiner said via e-mail. “If any article is there, the user put it there. And in order for a user to have put it there, they would have to have visited the publisher’s site.”

Other examples include Marco Arment’s Instapaper, which not only saves web pages but also creates RSS feeds of saved stories and an ‘Editor’s Picks’ feature based on the most bookmarked content and Twitter account @LongReads, created by Mark Armstrong, for a constant stream of long-form journalism examples.

See her full post here…

Editors Weblog: Google CEO on telling people what to do

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Continuing the debate over how Google and online news publishers can, or can’t, work together in the future, Editors Weblog has a short article based on an interview between Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and the Wall Street Journal.

The overall message is that the future of digital news will lie in using advertising to “tell people what they should be doing” and capitalising on the movement of news searches to other platforms – namely mobile.

Once again, Schmidt promises newspapers a profitable place in Google’s future. “The only way the problem [of insufficient revenue for news gathering] is going to be solved is by increasing monetisation, and the only way I know of to increase monetisation is through targeted ads. That’s our business.” Newspapers have always answered questions that people were not aware they had to ask, and they simply have to continue doing this to fit in.

OJR: An interview with Washington DC’s new local news platform

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Following the launch of TBD.com, an online local news platform in Washington DC, the Online Journalism Review has published an interview with Steve Buttry, director of community engagement.

OJR’s Robert Niles asks what the near future holds for the site, which combines the work of two television stations, local journalists, online bloggers and other community sites.

We looked for blogs covering local news, life and issues. We looked for blogs that appeared to provide quality content and post frequently. Washington has lots of outstanding blogs covering national and international affairs that we didn’t invite. We may at some point add a “Washington people” section, but at this point, we have decided not to include any of the many outstanding blogs that are primarily personal. We have some blogs that are mostly about cooking. They have been told that we will be more likely to link to a post that has a sense of place (here’s the recipe that I used to cook the eggplants I got at the Reston Farmers Market) than just a recipe.

See the full post here…