The Standard will launch an application for smartphones later this month, an announcement by developers Handmark to coincide with this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
According to the launch release, “content within the London Evening Standard mobile application will be refreshed automatically and available for offline reading”.
Handmark’s mobile publishing platform has already been used by Thomson Reuters, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.
A week on since a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, how are news websites covering the story? What tools are being used and how are media organisations helping those affected with information on top of news for a wider audience?
Here’s a selection of sites that have made the most of multimedia tools to break and roll reports of the crisis. Please add your own examples in the comment space below or email Journalism.co.uk.
Unsurprisingly, the earthquake took out all the landline and mobile phone lines in Haiti immediately. This obviously disabled the country spectacularly – as well as the pressing issue of not being able to speak to each other, it meant that Haitians were not able to speak to the rest of the world. As a result, the classic ways of gathering information for a rolling news channel – call everyone we know and find out what’s happening – were redundant. We had a map, and that was it.
Twitter, Google Chat, Skype and Facebook were used to contact sources and conduct interviews; while YouTube and searches of TwitPic provided on-the-ground footage. These tools were being picked up by the entire newsroom, Purser tells us, not just the online team. What’s more the geography of the newsroom (the online desk is right next to the studio floor, for example) helped grow the story across platforms, she adds.
Macguire describes how some of the first video footage of the disaster was sent back to London by a Reuters’ videographer thanks to a “friendly embassy” in Port au Prince with an internet connection.
Helping to find the missing
Online news coverage and multimedia from Haiti has been used to locate missing persons by relatives. CNN in particular is using its citizen journalism site iReport to help connect people with family, friends and loved ones in Haiti.
An ‘assignment’ on the iReport site asks users to submit photos of missing people, including their last name, first name, age, city and any other significant details. So far, 6,753 iReports have been sent in for this assignment.
“We are also in the process of integrating incoming e-mails, phone calls to CNN and tweets to the #haitimissing hashtag,” a CNN spokesman said – helping individuals conduct a wider search for information about missing loved ones.
“Since the earthquake hit, the Impact Your World page has had an increase of 7,545 per cent in page views over the previous week. The site lists opportunities to donate via phone, text and website, with special sections devoted to texting and international currencies.”
Social media coverage and real-time tools Digiphile blog has a great round-up of this, but Twitter lists have been used extensively by news organisations to group together twitters and correspondents on-the-ground in Haiti.
Elsewhere the New York Times is bolstering its main news channel coverage of Haiti by using its The Lede blog to provide rolling coverage. The blog is updating with links to reports from other news sources as well as the Times’ own coverage and has posts filed under different days stretching back to when the earthquake occurred. The aggregation of multimedia reports on the disaster available on the site’s homepage has been replicated through a Facebook page posting updates on the situation in Haiti.
In a city without electricity, with no functioning newspapers, no TV signals, no telephone lines, and cellular service so spotty that it is hardly service at all, radio stations in Haiti have become the lifeline of news about the living and dead.
(…) The station operates on two diesel generators and owner Mario Vian’s promise not to stop.
Reuters’ Gaza bureau ran a four-day training course this week in recognition of cameraman Fadel Shana, who was killed in the region on 16 April 2008.
Twenty Palestinian journalists received tuition in TV production, with extra training on aspects of safety and ethics in conflict zones, a release from Reuters said.
Sessions on filming and editing ran alongside first aid training, including the treatment of gunshot and blast wounds.
In April 2008, Shana was killed by a shell fired by Israeli soldiers. He was the first Reuters journalist to be killed in Gaza. The cameraman 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.
Commenting on the training programme, Reuters bureau chief in Israel and Palestinian territories, Alastair Macdonald, said: “Fadel was killed doing a job to which he was dedicated and to which he brought immense talent and promise. To honour his memory and to improve opportunities for young Palestinian journalists who would wish to follow his example, we are delighted to be able to provide this training.”
While I was away Reuters’ head of visual projects Jassim Ahmad dropped me a link to his team’s latest project: a stunning interactive timeline of the last 365 days of the economic crisis – marking the year from September 15 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed.
Aside from stunning visuals, the ‘Times of Crisis’ timeline can also be filtered by topic and date, and mixes text, video and images to tell the story.
Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, yesterday questioned Rupert Murdoch’s plans to put general news content behind pay walls at some of the News Corp titles, Reuters reports.
General news publishers would find it hard to charge for their content because too much is available for free elsewhere, Schmidt argued, speaking via video link to the Royal Television Society audience in Cambridge.
“[M]y guess is for niche and specialist markets … it will be possible to do it but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news.”
Over a year has passed since Ibrahim Jassam, cameraman for global news agency Reuters, was arrested without charge by the US military and still no one, not Jassam, his family nor Reuters knows exactly what he has been imprisoned for.
Jassam, who was cleared for release last November by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI), has only been told that the accusations have something to do with ‘activities with insurgents,’ a reference to the Sunni Islamist groups – one of which is Al Qaeda. Reuters states that Jassam is a Shi’ite Muslim.
Although cleared by the CCCI, a year on Jassam is still being detained by the US army, which under a special security agreement claims they are entitled to hold Jassam for as long as they need. The US military also claims that it is ‘not bound’ to provide evidence for Jassam’s detention and that the reason it has kept him so long past his agreed release date is that he represents a ‘threat to Iraq security and stability’.
As also reported by the International Press Institute, David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of Reuters said the situation was ‘unacceptable’. “In a year of trying to get specifics, we’ve heard only vague and undefined accusations.”
Lt. Col. Pat Johnson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military in Iraq said: “Though we appreciate the decision of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq in the Ibrahim Jassam case, their decision does not negate the intelligence information that currently lists him as a threat to Iraqi security and stability.”
The US Military claims that all high security threat detainees will go before an Iraqi judge in December 2009, where the evidence against Jassam will finally be aired.
Reuters and others argue that this treatment of a journalist within a war zone is exactly against the US’s advocacy of press freedom around the world, and see Jassam’s continued detention as going against the security pact, known as the Status of Forces Agreement, made between the US and Iraqi forces.
Independent News & Media ‘will likely agree another extension to a standstill deal with holders of a 200 million euro ($283 million) bond originally due for repayment in May’, an industry source said, according to Reuters. It reported today:
“The Irish publishing group has until Aug. 27 to agree a deal with holders of the senior debt but the industry source, who declined to be named because talks are ongoing, said another rollover was inevitable as this month’s deadline looms.”
Reuters’ Gaza bureau ran a four-day training course this week in recognition of cameraman Fadel Shana, who was killed in the region on 16 April 2008.