Tag Archives: us

Live coverage dominates media’s inauguration plans

Following up from last week’s post on CNN and NPR’s plans to get social with their coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration as US President, the Associated Press (AP), Al Jazeera and Sky News have all announced plans to host their own online broadcast events:

AP
The agency will live stream the inauguration day events from 7am on its online video network, which is syndicated to partner newspaper and broadcaster websites, in a development of its live coverage of election night in November.

“AP Television News will provide unanchored coverage, from morning coffee at the White House, to the swearing-in ceremony, to the multi-camera shots of the inaugural parade. APTN, with access to dozens of pool cameras along with a dozen of its own, will have cameras in the crowds to capture the sounds and emotions of the millions who plan to attend,” says a release.

Al Jazeera English
The broadcaster will make the most of its recent deal with Livestation by hosting a live webchat on the platform between senior Washington editor Rob Reynolds and viewers on Thursday (Jan 15) at 9pm GMT.

Sky News
Sky News made use of plenty of multimedia and some streaming technology in its coverage of election night. On January 20 a news package ‘Obama: The Inauguration’ will be shown in high definition online and live streaming of the inauguration ceremony from 5pm GMT will also feature.

Experiences of using Publish2 to report the Washington flooding

As reported on the Journalism.co.uk main site, Washington newspaper rivals have joined forces to publish shared links relating to extreme flooding in the Western Washington region, in one of the first examples of ‘networked link journalism’ in action.

Journalism.co.uk contacted Paul Balcerak, assistant editor of dynamic media at Sound Publishing, publisher of the PNWLocalNews.com site.

Further to his comments in the main piece, Balcerak shares here his thoughts on using Publish2, the link journalism site and application:

What does it have over other link applications (e.g Ma.gnolia/Delicious)?
“The big selling point for me is the create-a-widget that lets you bundle links by tag and embed them (via Javascript) on your web page. Sure, if we wanted to build our own Delicious widget we could have done that, but this was already there for us and allowed us to work a lot faster.”

What benefit is it to you to work with your competitors?
“It made our jobs a lot easier, too. Pnwlocalnews is an aggregate site for all the sites under the Sound Publishing umbrella (about 35 of them, which all represent small, community newspapers).

“Our newsroom staffs aren’t huge – some consist of only a couple or few people – and to be frank, there’s just no way for us to have all the breaking news, all the time.”

At the moment a lot of US regional journalists seem to be using it (hasn’t really taken off in UK yet) – do you think it suits that environment particularly?
“I can’t really say, as I’m really not aware of how the environment outside the U.S. differs.

“I think part of it might be that it’s sort of this ‘Delicious for Journalists,’ which appeals to those who are hesitant to embrace ‘citizen journalism,’ or whatever we’re calling it. It’s more exclusive.

“For my part, it’s just another aggregate network that a ton of great journalists are on – why wouldn’t I be there?”

How could Publish2 improve its service for journalists?
“There are a few little things that could be improved (I can’t seem to find a search function to look up other people on the network) but I think the only real downside is that, well, it’s another aggregate network.

“It’s another username/password that you have to remember and log into everyday. If the Publish2 people ‘Who Make Things Happen’ could get it listed in Shareaholic or ShareThis, that might make it a little more convenient.”

News sites get social for Obama inauguration

To mark President Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20, news sites are plotting and planning their online coverage already:

CNN

CNN’s going for the social networking angle, teaming its live video streaming site, CNN.com Live, with Facebook. Users will be able to update their Facebook status from the CNN site and see a stream of updates from their friends.

The updates entered via CNNLive will be tagged with the hyperlink ‘via CNN.com Live’ so Facebook contacts can click through to view the inauguration site from the social network.

NPR

At the end of last year, NPR used its inside blog to put a call out for social media ways to cover the inauguration. Among the ideas mooted in the post were:

  • Citizen journalism iPhone app
  • ‘Mobcasting’ – audio recordings of voicemails left by listeners about their experiences of inauguration day
  • An inauguration #tag – for Twitter, Flickr, blog posts etc. The tag #inaug09 seems to be in use already.
  • Maps of user-generated content

More help is wanted from techies and journalists – contact Andy Carvin (@acarvin on Twitter) via the blog post.

MSNBC on hyperlocal plans for interactive coverage of US election voting results

Msnbc.com has plans for interactive coverage of voting results on a hyperlocal level, Charlie Tillinghast, president and publisher told Beet TV in this interview.

  • Visitors to the site’s map will be able to click on states and counties to find results on national and local races.
  • Msnbc.com will stream live events, on air coverage by the network and NBC affiliates.

Growing effect of online advertising in US, OPA study suggests

Online advertising is going to overtake radio in the advertising market, MediaGuardian reported today.

Richard Wray’s article stated that while Carat – part of the Aegis marketing empire – had reduced its forecasts for the global advertising markets for 2008/9, it also said online advertising will continue to grow, overtaking radio as the third most popular advertising medium after TV and newspapers and magazines.

MediaGuardian’s report is interesting to look at in the light of statistics made available last week by the Online Publishers Association (OPA).

The US-based figures suggest that ‘consumers on all three types of local media sites – newspapers, television stations and magazines – are more likely to take action after viewing a local advert than visitors on all other local content sites’.

As part of the OPA study, JupiterResearch surveyed 2,069 US online consumers ‘who qualified as Local Online Content Users, by currently using online yellow pages, newspaper, TV, magazine, city guides, user review sites, portals or classifieds for local information.’

Here’s the breakdown:

Per cent of consumers taking action after viewing local adverts

  • Local Newspaper Site: 46%
  • Local Television Site: 44%
  • Local Magazine Site: 42%
  • User Review Site: 39%
  • Portal: 37%

Click here to view the full report and follow this link for the press release.