Archive for the ‘Multimedia’ category

Thisishowyousortyoursiteout.co.uk/listen!

June 27th, 2008

I hate the ‘ThisIs’ series of websites. I hate the name. I hate the designs. Urg urg urg. Many of these local sites would benefit greatly from just having all the rubbish whipped out and replaced with a simple publishing platform that everyone in the newsroom could operate. That’s what we’re doing at Whitireia, and that’s what should be happening pretty much everywhere.

And for heaven’s sake, stop calling them ‘This Is’. It’s annoying. Thisishullandeastriding.co.uk?! What a jumble. What on earth is wrong with just HullDailyMail.co.uk?

Anyway, Dan Ionescu, my successor on The Linc, has written a brilliant critique about the ThisIsLincolnshire website. Although it uses Lincolnshire as the example, the comments could be applied to pretty much all of the ‘ThisIs’ sites. Apart from maybe Hull, which is getting better, but their video content is still pretty shoddy. What is the point of a video clip that just films the newspaper pages…? Go and take a look. It’s getting better though, so hats off to the Hull Daily Mail.

Anyway, Dan’s advice is really terrific. The most insightful nugget for me is this:

* Asking users to make the page their home page (top, left) is quite 90s style, taking in consideration that Echo offers RSS feeds. They should be placed somewhere higher on the page, with a bigger emphasis. Also, Echo does not offer full RSS feeds, but does it in the old school BBC style, with snippets, redirecting to the article’s page. Wrong decision, as nowadays RSS feeds can be monetised easily, and their visitor stats can be effortlessly monitored;

And…

* Geotagging, for a more comprehensive local reporting, together with interactive maps and graphs.

 

Outdated and useless wire services: BE GONE!

June 22nd, 2008


Reuters mobile journalism kit. I really, really want one. Picture: KevGlobal (Flickr)

This post is for the June Carnival of Journalism. Andy Dickinson has posed this question:

Is (digital) journalism better the more local it is and what does that do to growth?

And I’ll attempt to add my views on that question by bringing up an idea that’s been bubbling in my mind the last couple of days. I think this idea will affect growth.

Read on, if you please…

I won’t go into all the reasons why wire services are busted beyond repair. Go and read Flat Earth News.

I also made it perfectly clear — after my time working at Sky News Online — that I think news agency stories should be given the heave-ho. I still stand by that. As Jeff Jarvis has continually said, lets do what we do best, and link to the rest.

Anyway, I left that out there to stew for a while without offering much in the way of a solution to it all. Well now I have an idea.

In New Zealand, the NZ Press Association (NZPA) is in deep, deep trouble. It’s running out of moeny. And with no money, they’ll have no staff. Which, pretty much, is the state most wire services are in now. Minimal staff cover areas far greater than one person can ever cover effectively. Terrible. You can’t turn over well-researched copy when you’re that busy.

Meanwhile, local newspapers everywhere are also running out of money. Reporters are losing jobs left, right and centre. And the lack of adequate pay means good quality local journalists are drifting into the realms of PR. And who can blame them? A stay in one of Auckland’s flashiest waterfront hotels courtesy of Vodafone recently taught me all I need to know about money-printing license many of the top corporations have.

So you’re left to journalists who are not only underpaid, underexperienced and undermotivated, but also overworked: time that should be spent newsgathering is spent dealing with press releases or re-writing wire copy.

Here’s my proposal for how that should change:

Wire 2.0 – the NewsHub

Imagine a service, we’ll call it the NewsHub. The NewsHub acts as a collector of news, gathered in from local reporters up and down the land. It also acts as a distributor of news, sharing it out to other local reporters, who are in turn submitting their own local copy. Big stories will then be shared upwards to the national and international media.

And… that’s it. Simple. The NewsHub concept would improve journalism — both national and local — a thousand times over. Why? Because it will provide capital for more journalists to be hired, and will make it financially viable to send reporters out into the community.

Story Share ServiceOutlets that opt in to NewsHub would pay a fee — much like they do with current wire services. The difference here, of course, is that the fee would be pooled across the service. The income being spread to local newspapers/websites/whatever on the basis that the more you produce, the more you will earn.

In other words, the more good reporting you do, the more money you will have available to do it. Much like the manner in which a freelance photographer would distribute pictures.

Which would mean good reporters would suddenly become very valuable to local press. It could even mean — gasp — that local media outlets can afford to hire more reporters, knowing that a bigger news-gathering operation could be much more profitable than, say, telling one reporter to write up all those press releases or slave over an advertorial.

Not to mention the positive influence of good, old-fashioned journalism. Imagine a weekly local paper crammed full of insightful reporting, investigations, human interest and community spirit. I know my local papers aren’t doing this at the moment — are yours?

This focus would then filter up and up to the national and international press. ‘Flat Earth News’ stories would be snuffed out and eliminated quickly and effectively. National media could follow leads from local press as to the biggest stories, as local reporters would now be adequately funded to produce 24-hour coverage. They’ll be Twittering, blogging… the whole shebang. And the community will be right in there too, sharing all their content to reporters at a local level who then, through NewsHub, would distribute their content, turning it into what will be a very profitable exercise for all.

We don’t need traditional wire services. They were invented before we could all communicate without help. Example: If an explosion happens in Cambridge, a reporter for the Cambridge Evening News will be right on it. He’ll be monitoring tweets/pictures coming in from the incident. He will report on the situation, and as he does, he’ll be sharing it all via NewsHub. Earning money for the CEN as he goes. At what point does the PA need to be there? It’s a redundant service — only in existence because 1) until now, there hasn’t been a suggestion of an alternative and 2) because editors are too bloody petrified to ditch it. Come on, editors, own up.

As you’ll have noticed, these are skeleton plans at the moment. There is still plenty of thinking to be done, but to return to Andy Dickinson’s question (bet you’d thought I’d forgotten, eh?), by harnessing the power of local digital journalism and turning it into a mutual, lucrative business, local media can grow and grow. Easily. The only limit is in how much brilliant journalism we can, en masse, produce for the benefit of the rest of the world.

Click here to see a Powerpoint presentation (929kb) comparing the old model and the ‘NewsHub’ model (very kindly put together by Jim Tucker).

Give me advice: How can this Google map involve the Wellington community?

June 5th, 2008


View of Hataitai, Wellington. Picture: Peter from Wellington (Flickr)

Howdy!

This, I hope, will be a very exciting project. Not only for Whitireia students, but also as a journalism experiment for everyone out there.

Small crimes, bigger problem

Let me explain. A few years ago, back in the UK, the local police introduced a Neighbourhood Watch map. It showed the local town, divided up into tiny segments. Each segment consisted of a few streets, and was labeled with the details of who we could contact if an incident occurred in each little section. One person whose sole goal was to represent the people living in that small area. Hyperlocal policing.

Of course, hyperlocal is a word we journalists should be getting used to. It is a goal we should be aiming for within our news websites. After all, every news story is hyperlocal… you just need to live in the right place.

The effect of the Neighbourhood Watch hyperlocal scheme was huge. Suddenly, local residents who were a victim of petty crime felt they had somewhere to go. By emailing their local rep, they felt like they were reporting the problem without bothering the ‘real’ police — the investigators and coppers in the town centre.

What they didn’t realise, of course, is that their little problems translated to a major problem in the bigger picture. If you get your car window smashed, is it a big issue? No, probably not. But if, by reporting it to your local rep, you found that people all over town were having their car windows smashed in the same way, all of a sudden there’s a big crime problem.

Small stories, bigger issue

How does this involve journalism? Simple: we’ll apply the same strategy to news gathering. At Whitireia, we’ve assigned each journalism student — there are 27 of them in total — to a very precise area of Wellington (plus some bigger patches for the surrounding areas). We are going to promote our ‘news map’ to local people, under the branding of ‘Who is YOUR journalist?’. Just like the Neighbourhood Watch, we need to give off the impression we want to hear everything that’s going on; no matter how small or insignificant it may be. There are thousands of stories sat out there, but the residents don’t think they’re important enough to bother the busy journos at the Dominion Post.

So, instead, they’ll come to our students.

Anyway, this news map will feature highly in the new news website I am developing for Whitireia. For this, I have added all the data we have — so far — to a Google map, below.


View Larger Map

By zooming in, you can see how each section of Wellington is divided up. Click on each slice, and you’ll find the name of the reporter in charge, and a telephone number to get in touch.

As I recently discovered, those bubbles allow me to put HTML code in, so that opens up a whole wealth of options for local news coverage.

Magical map of marvellous minisites

So the plan is thus: fill each segment with news relating its geographical position. Make each slice of map its own minisite. This won’t be a problem. An RSS feed will be generated by the main news site — powered by Wordpress — and fed directly into each bubble. And, er, that’s it. Simple coding, simple concept… but I think it’s a powerful one that all our local newspapers should adopt.

But that’s not all. In time I will be feeding reporter’s Twitter feeds into that bubble too, allowing visitors to see what they’re working on. One student here is doing a story about bicycle accidents in Hutt. If she was to Twitter the message “researching bike accidents in Hutt, any experiences?”, people could immediately get in touch.

And then…?

Well what next? Google Maps is a platform I’m only just learning about. In time, perhaps, all our news stories can be tagged to certain locations. So, for example, any stories about a school could appear as a bubble in that school’s location… perhaps. But then perhaps it should be kept as simple as possible — we don’t want to drive away the people who would be the source of stories.

Over to you, guys. I’m very interested to hear what you have to suggest. Is this a good idea? What else should we be trying? What can I add?

Web 2.Much!

June 1st, 2008

(image from Flickr, by premiardiego)

Can you ever be too Web 2.0? I’m starting to think so.

Zac Echola posts this brilliant list of tools for streamlining reporting in the modern newsroom. I say ‘brilliant’ with a hint of unease, however, as the list is as long as your arm — and then some.

I worry that with all these great tools, we’re going to get wrapped up in user accounts, feeds and social media. While some of these methods make reporting easier, more efficient and, you’d hope, better, we’re hurtling towards Web 2.0 meltdown.

So, I’d like to streamline the streamlining list into some essentials. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to write why I decided to ditch the other ones too. Of course, feel free to disagree. I change my Web 2.0 allegiences more often than I change my socks (so that’s alot… you cheeky buggers).

Here we go:

Firefox – YES

I agree. Firefox is far quicker, and can be customised beyond belief. It’s not just about saving time, it’s about putting all the tools that I’m about to write about in easy reach. I didn’t know about the portable version which Zac mentions, but it seems a good idea for all of us who are blocked from installing anything by frightened IT technicians.

ADrive – NO

I’ve had a look around, and this seems clunky and unreliable. If you’re a professional outfit, you’re far wiser to use Zac’s second suggestion: A private FTP server.

del.icio.us – YES YES YES!

I first saw del.icio.us in full swing when I observed Martin Stabe at work. His use of the social-bookmarking super-tool was to collect links that might be of interest to other people, and then to privately save links that are of use to him. I’d urge every journalist to do this. I hate how MSM sites don’t bother to actively acknowledge other MSM sites exist. You should, as a provider of news, send your readers to wherever is important. The best bloggers are the ones that are trusted by their readers to steer them in the right direction — even if it means sending them to a ‘rival’. (Sidenote: Do bloggers have rivals?)

Google Reader – YES!

If it wasn’t for Google Reader, I wouldn’t have learned about Zac’s post. It was recommended by Ryan Sholin — his favourite bits of Web-ness end up in my feeds too.

Google Reader is a terrific bit of kit. ‘Nuff said. Tie it in with the mobile version, the ‘badges’ and the shared item functionality and it’s undoubtedly one of the best tools on this list.

Gmail – Suppose so…

It won’t change your life… but if you’re not happy with your web email client, then Gmail is the best solution by miles. Although, I have to disagree with Zac on the usefulness of the IM feature. No-one pays any attention to it… at least not in my experience. Far better to Twitter them…

Google Docs – NO

It’s handy for quick edits, but I wouldn’t recommend it for much more. Certainly not, as Zac suggests, a cheap alternative to front-end word processing. If you want a free alternative to MonopolySoft’s Office suite, then try OpenOffice instead.

Why the hostility? Well… try opening a formatted document in Google Docs. It’s all over the place. Try copying text from Google Docs into a web-based form, and breaks will litter the page. You’ll need to painstakingly go through each line. Grrr.

Zac notes you can publish directly to blogging software and similar bits and bobs… but is it really that difficult to log into Wordpress? Nah.

Google Calendar – NO (sadly)

You know… calendars are great. I have a good one on my wall. Except it’s from 2003 and stuck on September. I also set up Google Calendar for my student newspaper team — except we didn’t update it. Are we lazy? No. Are we technically backwards? Of course not, you cheeky swine! What we are (were… *sigh*….) is busy journalists who keep on top of their appointments by using personal diaries, and phone-based calendars that vibrate and beep at me if I’m missing anything.

In an ideal world, everyone would use a Google Calendar to organise their time. Diary stories would be placed on there, assigned to different reporters, timed to perfection. But that’s not how a newsroom operates — thank God! They’re manic places, where stories and appointments change at the drop of a twitter. A Google Calendar doesn’t reflect that — so we don’t need it.

The most effective way to manage reporters is that big scribbly whiteboard in the corner.

Grand Central – Oh.. go on then!

I’ve never used or even heard of this before, but it looks good. Especially the WebCall function… unless you get prankers. Which you probably will.

“Do you like scary movies?”

Arrrgggh!

Flickr – YEAHHH!

I love Flickr. Give it time, I reckon Flickr users will have photographed the entire world. Well, the bits we inhabit, anyway. Most useful are the mobile-to-web tools. Imagine a world where your online reporters can post pictures and video to your news site within seconds of it happening? Imagine no more… go and get a Flickr account.

LinkedIn – NO

If you’re more worried about embracing social-networking and the ‘real’ people that use them, you’re far better off getting a Facebook and MySpace account. Facebook for sure.

If you need contacts, you can get them. Don’t waste your time signing up to too much.

Jott – NO

I’m always against technology that makes the user look like a bit of a maniac. Too busy to post to your blog? You’re likely to be in a busy situation then. Imagine whipping out your phone and talking your posts down it. You’ll sound insane, like those blokes who use handfree kits around the supermarket. Show offs.

Remember the Milk – NO

Aside from the fact the cheesy name of it makes me feel like being sick (cheesy… milk… geddit? Ho ho!), Remember the Milk seems like another pointless organisation tool. “Editors can see what you’re working on, while assigning quick tasks and deadlines,” says Zac. Just phone them, says I. It’s amazing how more productive an actual conversation can be.

Twitter/Brightkite – Oooohhh YES!

I love Twitter. I’ve never heard of Brightkite, but Twitter is just fantastic. When it’s working, that is, which at present is a bit haphazard. The thing I love about Twitter is that posting to it is simple — a nice, free text — and it’s versatility knows no bounds. My latest Twitter message appears on the sidebar of this blog. When I was at Sky, Julia Reid used Twitter to great effect, reporting from an aeroplane grounded at the shiny but shit Terminal 5.

Ning – NO

New to this, too, but it’s not needed. Firstly, the general public aren’t using Ning. So, for that reason alone, it’s of limited use to journalists. Want to build a community of your readers? You’ve already got one in Facebook and MySpace. Want to reach people who don’t use social media? Then your own website should be massaging discussion.

As for the second reason, the art of conversation is the best tool for newsroom communication. You don’t need Ning, and your readers don’t either.

Any good blogging platform – YES

Well this is a no-brainer, really. If you don’t have a good, versatile blogging platform then you’re pretty much stuffed. So get one. I suggest Wordpress.

***

So there we go. I sense I’m being very dismissive of some of the tools there, so please, get some comments over this way and I’ll happily debate with you until the cows come home.

To sum up, in the ‘yes’ pile:

Firefox
Del.icio.us
Google Reader
Flickr
Twitter
Blog software

In the ‘no’ pile:

ADrive
Google Docs
Google Calendar
LinkedIn
Jott
Remember the Milk
Ning

And in the ‘maybe’:

Grand Central
Gmail

The jury’s out!

Portfolio fodder: YouTube madness, walking on water and a screwdriver attack

March 26th, 2008

All in a day’s work.

Here’s some fruits of my labour today:

In Pictures: Nadal and Williams play tennis on water

Killer posed for photo with victim

And with a nice bold byline: Forced to fight: YouTube video probed

(Gotta admit, I do take some pleasure in recreating those headlines with lower case just like an Englishman should.)

[AUDIO] Me on BBC Radio Lincolnshire

March 19th, 2008

This is my short and sweet appearance on BBC Radio Lincolnshire on Tuesday morning. Great fun!

SJB: YouTube will revolutionise student journalism

March 5th, 2008

Press Gazette blogging…

We haven’t touched much on student television journalism on this blog yet, and for good reason.

There isn’t any. Or rather, there isn’t any we can watch and enjoy. Plenty of j-schools have TV modules – some even have dedicated TV courses – but the public enjoyment of this work is often restricted to the campus it is created on.

Which is all well and good, but it puts student broadcast journalists at a distinct disadvantage over their print counterparts. Aspiring TV journalists are not google-friendly. You’d never stumble across a brilliant piece-to-camera by accident. No, you would need to consciously go and download it.

And even if you got to that point, what university has the resources to be hosting all this multimedia? Not to mention the fact that many of the ‘men upstairs’ in British universities quiver in their leather chairs at the very thought of letting student journalists run riot under the university’s good name.

Is that all about to change? Yes! (Read more…)

[AUDIO] Kristine Lowe and I discuss blogging with Siren FM

March 3rd, 2008

(Two multimedia posts in a week?! Holy uploads, Batman!)

In this clip, Kristine Lowe and myself discuss blogging with Andrew David at Siren FM, the University of Lincoln’s community radio station. Thanks to Siren for giving permission to use the clip here.

What a difference a video makes

March 1st, 2008

What a week.

Monday saw my first ever lecture. Kristine Lowe explained to the students why we should all blogging. The ‘Do’s and Don’t’s of Blogging’ was my part — I spoke for 20 or so minutes. I think it went down well: a good new Lincoln blog appeared the next day. I’m glad at least one person caught the ‘buzz’.

My lecturers had some very kind comments for me afterwards, which I’m delighted about. It certainly bodes well for my New Zealand trip in May.

Hopefully by Monday I’ll have a recording of my talk, so I can stick it up on here for you all to enjoy/disagree with!

Then we had an earthquake. Awesome. I was up in my room at the time, about to go to bed, when all the empty cans on my desk rattled about and fell off, and then it got even more violent. In case you haven’t heard, Lincoln was right on top of the epicentre, so we got a good hit. All very exciting.

Then I posted THAT video. I remember thinking, at the time, that if I could get the video online quickly I’d stand a good chance of getting some hits in.

And then it all kicked off.

I woke up in the morning to find 20 emails from YouTube. Comments… and plenty of ‘em. It’s really quite funny, apparently, and I started to wonder quite how far this might all go.

Then I got a message from Julian March, saying how much he enjoyed it, and that he’d love to mention it on the Sky News Editors’ Blog. Which he did. I did what every cheeky student journalist should do in this situation — and applied for some work experience.

Then the Guardian got involved. “Give them a job at sky,” says the post on the Media Monkey blog. Couldn’t agree more, chaps.

Then, through the wonderful medium that is Facebook, I got this message: “In case no-one from Sky has got in touch with you to let you know, your video has caused a great deal of amusement within the newsroom. As I’m sure you can imagine, Sky likes nothing better than to beat the BBC to a story.”

That was from the Sky News presenter that night, Faye Barker.

Some more blogs got going. Journalism.co.uk wrote about it (although, mysteriously, the entry has now gone). Paul Bradshaw added his thoughts on the matter here.

Perhaps the most bizarre reaction was from a group of Sunderland students who emailed with some great comments after seeing the clip in a lecture. “I have been in a lecture since nine this morning, i’m tried, i’m irritable and I havn’t washed in days. But by god, the video you posted made me forget all my sorrows and now I feel clean again! Thanks for the emotional wash Dave pet,” wrote Lisa, who gloriously added ‘pet’ at the end too. Love it.

Back to Sky. I was contacted by Rob Kirk — editorial development manager for Sky News — who asked me to give him a call. Last time I’d spoken to Rob was while he was on his holidays, I was covering a story for Press Gazette about an internship he was running. Anyway, I gave him a ring, and he has asked if he can use the clip in a promotional video for Sky. Unbelievable.

Even more unbelievable is that he has invited me down for the day, and also offered to try and fit me in for some work experience in the near future; hopefully around Easter.

Which, I don’t really have to tell you, excites me a lot. Especially when I hear that they’ve been inspired by Jeff Jarvis this week. It seems that Sky might be the newsroom I’ve dreamed of: Multimedia everywhere. I’m not sure what I could possibly contribute to the whole situation, but I’m certainly looking forward to visiting. Just the very nature Sky got in touch tells me they are all tuned in: Julian sent a private message on YouTube, and Faye used Facebook. Says a lot, I think.
To top off the week (which, by the way, included a 2000 word essay and an ‘interview’ assessment day…. I almost forgot my course existed until they came along and knocked me into shape..), we did the SU Election Liveblog for the newspaper. And it went extremely well — some really good content, and over 2000 hits. A great result.

In retrospect, this whole affair with the video has been a strange one. I stick by the reasons for making the video — I still find it shocking — but do feel a bit ‘dirty’ for slating the BBC. It’s like the England football team. Sometimes I’m flabbergasted at how awful they are yet, after a good sleep, I find myself supporting them even more.

I could make a 2-hour long video about all the things the BBC does brilliantly. Better than Sky. It just so happened that on this occasion the BBC fell on their face in a massive way. I’m yet to hear any response from BBC, but this blog has been linked to via this url which I can’t access. It’s the BBC’s intranet. I’m dying to know what’s being said — so if anyone can find out, that would be great.

To finish this point on a lighter note, I’d like to tell a little story. I work, part time, at a Staples store in Lincoln. It’s a dull job, but one thing happened today that will live with me forever.

We’ve just had CCTV installed, and like many places, we have a monitor at the front of the store to make it obvious people are being filmed. Today, a little lad aged about 4 or 5, saw this screen. Like most children, he found it fascinating. Unlike most children, however, this particular lad found that the funnest use of this technology was to, er, drop his trousers. Bless the little fella. I hope for his sake he eventually grows out of it.

[Video] BBC earthquake coverage: A complete and utter shambles

February 27th, 2008

England shook tonight. I live in Lincoln — just south of the epicentre.

I was just about to go to bed when the plentiful beer cans on my desk began to shake. And then a few fell off. I grabbed my bed which wasn’t coping any better.

Naturally, I’ve legged it downstairs to my housemate. We both go outside to see what’s going on. People have come out of their houses to find what’s going on. Car alarms going off everywhere.

24-hour news is made for this. After we all went inside, we turned on our news channels.

Sky News were straight on it. Literally within fifteen minutes. They had Lisa Dowds, a reporter, on the phone from her home in Leicestershire. They were getting as much information as they could.

And what were the BBC doing? Well… feeling guilty for not turning a bit citizen journalist and filming everyone outside, I just filmed, er, the TV. Or rather, I filmed us waiting to see if the BBC would ever get their act together. The video is at the bottom of this post, and contains some strong language.

Now this may be a light-hearted ’students in a house taking the piss’ type video, but it has a bit of a serious meaning. The BBC were a full half an hour late on this story. And when they did finally pick it up, they continued to broadcast ABC’s World News Tonight. Dear me.

Meanwhile, Sky News have had callers from all over the country. They’ve told us the epicentre was in Lincoln (which, curiously, made us all cheer) and that more tremors could happen. Sure, there wasn’t anything else to add — the drama had happened — but at the end of the day, thousands of people have turned on their televisions to find out what the hell was going on.

4.7 on the Richter scale is nothing in the global perspective — but we were all terrified. Where was the BBC? Why didn’t they explain what was going on? Why did the newsroom go into complete meltdown? Why did they instead run three long adverts; one of which being one for how they’re always there with the breaking news?

Questions that need to be answered tomorrow. The BBC is our public service broadcaster. Yet, tonight, it failed to provide a public service.

Special shout-out to the Lincolnshire Echo. Not only did they post this story in double-quick time, but someone has clearly hit the social-networks to spread the link.

Facebook on top again: Is this the first video of the quake? On second viewing, clearly not.

My video can be viewed here!