07 April 2009

When dotcoms hire laid off journos

Sweetheart! Get me rewrite!

06 April 2009

Writing online when there is a publication ban

Also at the Online Journalism Blog is this article about writing online when there is a publication ban by the courts.

In Britain, the courts routinely send a notice to the press notifying them of what they cannot print. (Here they are.)

But the court order only binds those to whom it is addressed:

“Who is bound: This order binds all persons and all companies (whether acting by their directors, employees or agents or in any other way) who know that the order has been made.”

But if you do not know that the order has been made? It appears that it does not apply to you.

In particular, a blogger who picked up [a major newspaper story] (now the subject of reporting restrictions) and repeated it would not be banned from doing so, unless they had seen the court order (which they generally wouldn’t have done).

So the result is…

• Bloggers aren’t bound by the order unless they know it exists.
• If they know it exists, they have no way to find exactly what it says – so they can’t tell what they’re allowed to say and what they aren’t.
  

The News Diamond

The Online Journalism Blog has created a schematic to help understand what is need to publish serious journalism online and in print simultaneously.

It’s the ‘News Diamond’ and it’s brilliant.

Let’s take a typical mid-range news story: ‘public figure makes controversial statement’ to illustrate the process specifically:

• Alert: ‘Lord Smith: “stop ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees”‘ – link to…
• Draft: gives more detail, and is open to comments and discussion, linking to other blogs. One commenter points out that Lord Smith studied English Literature. Journalist seeks ‘official’ comment to put in the…
• Article: two blog post comments incorporated into a version that goes in the printed newspaper.
• Context: best links taken from blog post comments, as well as full transcript of speech, audio and some mobile phone video taken by one attendee. Tags (’LordSmith’) used to link to ongoing coverage and provide an instant ‘portal’.
• Analysis: one particularly well informed blogger who linked to the Draft post is paid to write a longer piece for the paper. A commenter – an academic – is invited to a podcast discussion with Lord Smith.
• Interactivity: website visitors are invited to ‘attempt an essay question’ from a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree, giving a real first-hand understanding of what is involved in the subject.
• Customisation: an RSS feed or email alert is available for any stories tagged ‘LordSmith’
  

The example is ridiculous – this kind of non-story is what I hope the New New Journalism will kill. But the method has now crystalised.

Reverse publishing

Late last autumn, Trinity Mirror launched a series of ‘hyper-local’ websites in Northern England, mostly populated by local, volunteer writers. Now they are taking the content from these sites and publishing six free weeklies.

How about nothing? Is nothing good for you?

Michael Kinsley has this suggestion about how to to save your local newspaper.

How about nothing?

You may love the morning ritual of the paper and coffee, as I do, but do you seriously think that this deserves a subsidy? Sorry, but people who have grown up around computers find reading the news on paper just as annoying as you find reading it on a screen.

As many have pointed out, more people are spending more time reading news and analysis than ever before. They’re just doing it online.

05 April 2009

Social media summed up

This guy makes a good point about the telephone and Social Media

It’s as if after the invention of the phone, marketing managers figured out people where using phones to talk about their brands, and dubbed that phenomenon “social media”.

And they went: “We should do something with phones!”

Which is utterly besides the point, people talk to their friends over the phone about brands, because the brand is relevant to them, not ‘cause that brand happens to have a phone number.

20 March 2009

Old Growth Media and the Future of News

Steven Berlin Johnson at SXSW

The first wave of blogs were tech-focused, and then for whatever reason, they turned to politics next. And so Web 2.0-style political coverage has had a decade to mature into its current state.
 
What’s happened with technology and politics is happening elsewhere too, just on a different timetable. Sports, business, reviews of movies, books, restaurants – all the staples of the old newspaper format are proliferating online. There are more perspectives; there is more depth and more surface now. And that’s the new growth. It’s only started maturing.
 
In fact, I think in the long run, we’re going to look back at many facets of old media and realize that we were living in a desert disguised as a rain forest.

Twitter and newspaper websites

Last week (w/e 14/03/09) Twitter.com was the 54th most visited website in the UK, up from 66th the week before. One consequence of Twitter rapid rise up the rankings is that the micro-blogging service has now overtaken most of the UK newspapers online. … Last week Twitter received more UK Internet visits than the homepages of the Guardian, Times, Sun and Telegraph. It also over took Google News UK. Of the main newspaper homepages, only the Daily Mail received more UK Internet visits than Twitter last week. Hitwise

Daily Mail readers obviously have figured how to get Twitter to work on their Sinclairs.

19 March 2009

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

Clay Shirky on Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.”

Obama's present to Brown can't be played in the UK

Remember that gift of classic American DVDs that US President Obama gave to Prime Minister Gordon Brown? They are all Region 1 discs They are unplayable here.

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