When Journalism.co.uk spoke with social media storytelling tool Storify last week, it was predominantly US news sites that we could see using it. So it’s good to see Northcliffe Media’s Localpeople site, Westbury-On-Trym, getting in on the act for its coverage of Gordon Ramsay’s programme on the UK’s best restaurants:
If you spot any more examples of Storify being used let us know – we want to know how this tool develops.
Having a job in mainstream media before the age of 25 is fanciful thinking for many aspiring journalists, but having a blog could help turn those dreams into a reality.
Just ask young journalists Josh Halliday of the Guardian, Dave Lee of the BBC and Conrad Quilty-Harper of the Telegraph, all of whom credit their blogs as being fundamental to their success.
Speaking at an event at City University London last night, Halliday, a technology and media reporter and Sunderland University graduate, said: “The most important thing I did at university, including my degree, was to blog and get online. That’s what got me the job.”
Lee, who also started blogging while doing his undergraduate degree at Lincoln University, echoed Halliday saying: “I credit everything I’ve got to my blog at university.
“There is no possible way that I would have been able to go into the BBC newsroom on the basis of my degree, or the basis of my freelance cuttings or the basis of my student newspaper. ”
While Quilty-Harper, a data mapping journalist, said having a good blog and presence on Twitter, which he could readily show to potential employers, was what got him his job after he finished his postgraduate degree at City University London.
The three online trailblazers yesterday revealed their experiences of how to “blog your way into a job”:
Build a brand
Using your blog to promote yourself correctly is essential. Halliday stressed the importance of “being yourself” and marketing yourself in a way that is “likable”. While Lee highlighted that you never know what part of your branding will be the most fruitful, so you must do it all.
Conversing, linking and networking
Linked to the above is the idea that you must be in active dialogue with as many people as possible to build a dedicated following. Part of this involves linking to people who are blogging about similar topics to you, to create a mutually beneficial relationship. However, do not forget that, as Halliday highlighted, it’s a “two-way street”. So don’t just push yourself, relationships – especially ones with journalists already in the industry – should develop organically. Use the net’s networks appropriately.
Be patient
You won’t go from 20 to 5,000 twitter followers overnight. Cultivating a twitter following and developing a community takes time, so don’t get too caught up on this. Make content the driving force behind your website or blog and the community will come.
Find a niche
With an increasing amount of people entering the blogosphere standing out is harder than ever before, but what could really help is finding a topic that nobody else or very few people are writing about. Lee blogged about his experiences of being a student in the developing online media using himself as a “case study”; Halliday created a hyperlocal blog about Sunderland; and Quilty-Harper had a blog about gadgets and technology. All three were unanimously behind blogs having a niche, as Halliday highlighted “journalists are paid to cover a single beat, so just do that”.
Advertising
Increasing traffic to your site is one of the most difficult elements of blogging, but all three panellists deplored the idea of buying advertising space to this end declaring it a waste of money. Instead they advocated networking and conversing with the right people as the means by which to increase your popularity.
Rajvir Rai is a postgraduate journalism student at City University London. He can found on Twitter @R_Rai.
Missed this story from last week – the Daily Beast’s attempt to crack Facebook’s algorithm for who and what it puts in users’ news feeds. Interesting reading for any news organisation or brand attempting to use Facebook as a promotional tool.
The Daily Beast set out to crack the code of Facebook’s personalised news feed. Why do some friends seem to pop up constantly, while others are seldom seen? How much do the clicks of other friends in your network affect what you’re shown? Does Facebook reward some activities with undue exposure? And can you “stalk” your way into a friend’s news feed by obsessively viewing their page and photos?
As reported by Journalism.co.uk last Tuesday, the Guardian has introduced a new set of blogging and commenting guidelines for its journalists.
The eight guidelines offer advice on “best practice” for Guardian journalists and writers when blogging for the site or responding to comments on Guardian.co.uk.
It’s something the site has been considering for a while – but we asked the Guardian’s head of digital engagement Meg Pickard to explain how the new guidelines were developed:
For a couple of years now we’ve had a dedicated intranet site (“Really Social Media”) providing training, resources, case studies, best practices and guidelines for digital engagement (covering social media, blogging, commenting and so on), to be used by staff in conjunction with established company policies about internet use. As this is an evolving field, we regularly update the guidelines to reflect best current knowledge and to help staff navigate the changing landscape of sites/services, skills and situations.
During the summer, the editorial management team worked on the current refresh, which includes interaction guidelines, as well as legal notes and editorial best practice. When publishing the updated guidelines internally at the Guardian, we thought it would be interesting and appropriate to be transparent with readers about the advice we’re giving to staff members, so we published them on guardian.co.uk as well, as part of our extensive and recently relaunched info section.
I gave a presentation last week at the Social Media Academy’s Journalism in a Social Media World conference. I was asked to give an overview of some of the best practice examples of social media use by journalists and news organisations. It’s not an exhaustive list, but I thought I’d share the presentation and my notes (please forgive any typos in the Scribd document).
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, Yahoo is preparing to launch a new feature called ‘Y Connect’ which would allow online publishers to integrate with Yahoo.
With Y Connect, users could register with and log into media sites simply by clicking on a Yahoo button. Then, users’ activity on the media site can easily be shared with contacts on Yahoo. Content on non-Yahoo sites would be shared via Yahoo Pulse, a hub connected to Yahoo Mail accounts.
According to WSJ.com, the service could also then be used by companies to “better understand the interests of users and figure out which online ads are more likely to be effective”.
There doesn’t seem to be any official word yet from Yahoo on these reports, but the WSJ report says it expects a formal announcement later this year.
Robert Hernandez takes an interesting look at two new web tools over on the Online Journalism Review website, offering his thoughts on how new social media technologies could be used by the news industry for ‘real-world’ user engagement.
The first tool, Whrrl, collects images and notes and groups them geographically, enabling an individual to share and view their activities on a map. Hernandez discusses its basic use, to share for example the experience of a birthday with those who could not be there in person. Now swap the word ‘birthday’ to ‘election’, he says.
Reporters and citizens are posting their experiences — comments, photos, videos, etc. — at polling sites, leaving a virtual marker filled with content for others to add or re-live. This would also work for a sporting event, a protest/rally or any news event where people gather in one location. Collectively, we can capture the moment in real-time with rich multimedia. This doesn’t replace the article or video piece, but can really enhance them.
The second tool is stickybits, which is a way of attaching digital content to everyday objects using a sticker barcode which when scanned with a smartphone reveals the experiences of those who have already used the technology there.
Imagine going to a polling place where people can scan a sticker to read or leave messages. The only way to get that unique experience from that polling place is to be at that location.
From news to reviews, we could possibly embed our stories on anything and anywhere. And, more importantly, we can get user engagement. We’re not talking about from behind a computer, we’re talking about out in real life.
An interesting look at blogging journalists and their relationship with commenters by Mediating Conflict, following BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew’s comments on Twitter that he stopped his BBC blog because of the comments left on it.
There seems to be something of a backlash against the value of comments on blogs at the BBC. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that existing reservations about comments on blogs are beginning to surface.
Only last month, the BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, described them as “the biggest problem” with his Newslog blog.
Now cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew has revealed he stopped blogging at the BBC because his posts were “always full of appalling comments“. Agnew now publishes a column on the BBC website instead and says he simply wouldn’t write a blog open to comments any more – “even with moderation in place“.
Twitter is launching a serious overhaul of its design, adding more multimedia options. An attempt to move people away from Twitter apps to using the tool via twitter.com perhaps?
The key changes as far as news organisations and journalists using Twitter are concerned are the additions of embedded video and images – e.g. rather than following a link to an image on TwitPic that image will appear within the tweet.
When reporting on a live or breaking news event using Twitter, journalists can now offer readers more and a more user-friendly, all-in-one experience. I can also see clever journalists using the embedded feature to tease stories with video snippets and by giving their Twitter audience more content encourage those followers to visit a news site and engage there too.
In terms of newsgathering, the new design should also prove useful. When a tweet is clicked, a sidebar showing details of the author or subject will appear, as well as relevant @replies, a map of where it was sent from if geotagged and other tweets by that author. Essentially, it’ll offer journalists a more efficient way to build up a profile of an individual tweet or tweeter and assess how useful that information or contact might be to their story.
The changes will be rolled out across all accounts eventually – for now, you can see more details about the redesign on the newtwitter site.
Public service radio and TV shows in Sweden that encourage listeners to join or discuss stories on Facebook are in breach of the Swedish Radio and Television Act, according to a new ruling reported by Media Culpa.
According to the Commission, it is accepted to inform the public of the existence of a Facebook page or group, but encouraging listeners or viewers to join them is considered one step too far.
