Online Journalism

When is an online comment defamatory?

If you post something libellous on Twitter about a local rival politician, and have only 30 followers, you can get sued. If you say something potentially libellous, using a pseudonym, on a UK newspaper site, with page views in the millions, you’re fine – that’s just “pub talk”.

• While defamation, in the shape of slanderous and libelous comments, has been around for many decades, the problem has been exacerbated by the advance of the Internet as a reporting and social tool. While comments made in newspapers and even on the TV have a limited shelf life, those made on the Internet can remain on the website where they were first added as well as on other blogs and websites and even in the cache of search engines for many more years.

Fortunately, this same problem also leads to a possible resolution. While successfully trying an online defamation case can prove difficult, positive comments and good SEO can be used to beat defamatory comments by consigning them to lower search engine positions. This may not be an absolute solution but it can certainly help to rebuild character and improve online branding following a defamatory attack.

Twitter.

It’s been the buzz of the past few years. Now, that it has made it big, everyone is encouraged to jump on the bandwagon and get with it.  Here’s are the top five ways you can get in on the hype:

5. Interesting drives traffic

With Twitter, if you are smart, witty or cool enough, you will get a decent following of people who care what you have to say. So, as a blogger, you can host blog contests or ask your followers for advice, and they with so many followers, you are bound to get some traffic. The cool part is that if they care enough, they will spread the word as well by using the Twitter retweet feature. 

4. Be the expert

Whether it be politics, sports, fashion or food, become the expert in what you write about best. By picking a topic that you are passionate about, you will be established as the expert and would be able to answer questions via tweets, find new contacts and your credibility will grow.

3. Domino effect

When you have a Twitter account, you also probably have a Digg, StumbleUpon and Facebook account. By having a Twitter, you can direct your tweets to these various outlets as well and direct them to your blog posts.

2. And we are on…live!

Twitter lets you broadcast news live! Court cases, sport games and breaking news are all perfect scenarios for users to tweet what is happening. What’s better than sharing real-time information?

1. Talk to the experts when you are not sure!

Want to ask Mark Halperin a question? Look up to Lance Armstrong? Whoever it might be, Twitter gives each person a chance to build their name for themselves. Ask the experts questions about anything you want and don’t be afraid.

So, go establish a Twitter account now and blog your way to the top!

Visual storytelling with photographs

The digital age has allowed photography to transform into a craft that used to be reserved for professional photographers only. Now that film is not the primary medium for capturing images, memory cards and advanced point-and-shoot cameras allow anyone to play the role of photographer. Some of the benefits of digital photography are:

• Being able to take many more pictures, and viewing them as you work.
• Uploading pictures to the internet and having the ability to share them with others.
• Saving money from not having to purchase film.
• Having the ability to crop and edit photos.

This chapter provides in-depth explanations of how to take a good photograph, and how to edit them appropriately. Likewise, issues of copyright and fair use are addressed. Taking excellent photographs isn’t as easy as it looks, but the best way to improve photography skills is to practice.

Just the same way that anyone can be a journalist, anyone can be a photojournalist (just take a look at Flickr). You just need to be at the right place at the right time with either a camera or a cameraphone. But news is different things to different people, so any picture could potentially be photojournalism.

Here are a few pointers to make photos more professional:

• Lighting is important! Make sure it is not too bright or dark wherever you are. Natural light is preferable to flash light.
• Get close to the subject! Move around if you need to get a good angle
• Do what you can to keep still. Put your elbows on something or lean on a wall.
• Focus on the subject and cut out all of the clutter that could distract a viewer.

Photo editing is important too. Most times your picture will be a little too dark or blurry, etc. and you need to make the image as clear as possible. Here’s an example of a photo I took at the Chinese lantern festival at GMU:

Original Photo

Edited Photo

See the difference? It might not be perfect, but most times a little editing will make the photo much more clear and easier to focus on what’s important in the photo.

“Journalism without photographs is like writing without verbs,” Mark Briggs said.

Photographs are important in journalism, and in all other aspects, because they are able to expand on a story in a way that words cannot. In order to fully express an idea, journalists must understand how to capture the perfect image.

When possible, shoot images using natural light. Avoid shooting with a flash or mixture of flashes. If bright sunlight is in front of subjects being photographs, it will create face shadows and make people squint; if the sun is behind the subjects then their faces will be darker.

Great photographs are the ones where viwerers can see a picture within a picture.

According to Val Hoeppner, the biggest mistake amateurs and beginners make is that they do not get close enough to their subjects or to the action happening in front of them. Hoeppner suggests taking 10 steps forward after journalists think they are close enough to a subject.

Two secrets for capturing better photos are to be patient and to take more photographs.

Once journalists are done capturing photos, they should then edit them for online publishing.

Editing advice:

• Edit a copy of the photo – never the original.
• Crop the photo.
• Resize the picture.
• Modify the resolution.
• Tone and color correct the picture.
• Save a Web version.
• Keep it simple.

Remember that adding and/or removing objects from an image is strictly forbidden.  An image should never be altered in a way that can “mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects,” says Briggs.

“In this day and age of photo manipulation, students new to photojournalism must understand and adhere to the ethics of not creating images that lie or are deceptive to the viewer,” says Colin Mulvany.

Photo editing software:

• iPhoto
• Windows Photo Gallery
• Picnik
• Snipshot
• Picasa
• Flickr

In my summary of the fifth Briggs chapter, I mentioned how my friend Brian Chan did live blogs of sporting events at UNC Charlotte (he also did them in the past for Mason). Alas, via the trackback he saw my comment about his lame jokes and got ticked off. There is a downside to linking to everything I suppose. But I’ll take the risk and share this article about live blogging by Kevin Charman-Anderson. He says that live blogging is not just a collection of facts presented in real-time as they occur, but it allows news sites to compete with the immediacy of broadcast.

However, it remains a point of contention among journalists, and Charman-Anderson dubs the onslaught of continuous updates as “a fire hose of news”:

I really do worry that some of the aggregation that we’re doing is really difficult to navigate unless you’re a news junkie. We have to make sure that a stream of news aggregation doesn’t feel like a maddening stream of consciousness.

That almost raises the question of whether news sites should even want to compete with broadcast–it’s a matter of breaking the story versus passing on the necessities. Last night, “Survivor” host Jeff Probst tweeted a live commentary on the show as it aired on the west coast. As a fan of the show (albeit one who had to wait two hours after I finished watching the episode to follow Probst’s commentary), I loved the idea. But the execution left a lot to be desired, and hopefully if Probst repeats the experiment (he’s looking into watching with east coast viewers next week) it is handled differently. What Probst dubbed “the gobal [sic] conversation about ‘Survivor’” played out as a haphazard and not very informative review of what was on screen. An episode of “Survivor” is not a news story that needs to be catalogued in this way.

“If the French can do it, so can Americans”

Our video conference with Governor George Allen was a great experience. Former Senator George Allen (R-VA)

Governor Allen stressed the importance of, “do not spend what you don’t have.”

“Defense wins championships”

Campaigning and advancing ideas is how we can get this country back to work.

Governor Allen’s 4 pilars in a free and just society.

1. Freedom of religion
2. Freedom of expression
3. Private ownership
4. Rule of law (fair adjudication of disputes)

Sportsmanship, fight hard for what you believe in.

The internet has been the best invention since the Gutenberg press.

“Education is personal empowerment.” -Dr. Allan Merten