Online Journalism

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Online Journalism

‘Journalism Next’ by Mark Briggs: Chapter 3 summary

February 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on ‘Journalism Next’ by Mark Briggs: Chapter 3 summary · Comm361, Student Blog Posts

Summary: Crowdsourcing, open-source and pro-am journalism becoming the focus of news operations in the United States.

Crowdsourcing:

A larger group of committed individuals can outperform a small group of experienced professionals.

Example:

Encyclopedia Britannica cannot keep up with Wikipedia in terms of updated articles.

Encyclopædia Britannica

Image via Wikipedia

Image representing Wikipedia as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

  • Not a science; still experimental
  • Used for the gathering of information in a fast way

Open-source:

Design, development and distribution of a product; practical accessibility to source.

  • Journalism must be transparent, authentic and collaborative
  • Twitter and blogs bring bring the readers and journalists closer to each other
  • Welcomes reader feedback

Started: 2001, using e-mail addresses to correspond with readers.

Beatblogging: Building a social network around beat then lead, coax and weave the discussions to find new angles and tips on stories.

Pro-am journalism:

Allows audience to publish to same platform as professional journalists; “most unfiltered form of collaborated journalism.”

–Journalists cannot be everywhere all the time to cover breaking events, or stories that happen in an instant. Using the crowd and their blogs or photos to help catch what might have been missed in the moment is becoming more popular.

Example: TBD.com receives a lot of its local news from following users on Twitter who happen to tweet, post videos, or give story accounts around their area.

Free twitter badge

Image via Wikipedia

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Social media producer for TBD.com; Mandy Jenkins

February 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on Social media producer for TBD.com; Mandy Jenkins · Comm361, Student Blog Posts

Social media producer for TBD.com; Mandy Jenkins… Coming soon..

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Briggs Ch. 4

February 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on Briggs Ch. 4 · briggs, Comm361, Student Blog Posts

In this Briggs chapter about microblogging, the first site that came to mind was Discographies, a clever Twitter feed that reviews a musician’s body of work in 140 characters. It’s a concept so simple, so appealing and frankly, so maddening that years of hard work and transformation can be boiled down to a few sentences. But that’s what journalism has to be these days.

It’s fair to say that our collective attention spans have reduced over time. It’s not our fault; it’s technology–there’s too much of it for us to focus on one thing anymore, unless it’s really captivating–or more importantly, really short.

But here’s where it all comes together. Remember that talk about open-sourced reporting in chapter 3? Your readers are not going to be giving you manifestos (and if they are, you probably should be forwarding their comments to the FBI). Their content will be brief because that’s what they are looking for.

Take a look at this story from EW.com. It reports that Aaron Sorkin will appear on the NBC hit “30 Rock” later this season. The story is pretty short, especially given the background information that makes this an especially intriguing event. Indeed, one has to venture to the comments section to be reminded of Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” his dramatic venture that premiered the same year as “30 Rock” with essentially the same concept that initially triumphed over the creatively unstable Tina Fey show, then bombed as Fey’s picked up steam.

Without comments, the main draw of this story goes to waste. It’s a slight on EW’s part, but a credit to collaborative journalism.

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‘Journalism Next’ by Mark Briggs: Chapter 2 summary

February 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on ‘Journalism Next’ by Mark Briggs: Chapter 2 summary · Comm361, Student Blog Posts

Summary: The key to creating, maintaining, and gaining a following through a blog.

Evolution Directions of Mobile Device

Image via Wikipedia

Elements of a successful blog:

  • Dedication & determination
  • Continuing conversation

Step 1:

  • Find and read blogs which cover a subject that interests you.
  • Focus on the elements of the blog that you like and dislike.
  • Learn the language
    • Post – Blog entry.
    • Permalink – Link available on each post that provides direct access to it.
    • Trackback – Allows one blogger to know another blogger is linking to their material.
    • Blogroll – Collection of links available to reader of the sites the blogger visits.
    • Vlog – Blog using video as its primary medium.
    • Moblog – Blogging from a mobile device.
      Image representing Blogger as depicted in Crun...

      Image via CrunchBase

Step 2:

– Blog system

Blogger

WordPress

– Blog appearance

Edit the appearance by changing the template and adding widgets. These make the blog more personal to you and can help relate to the blog to your topic.

Step 3:

Audience, Audience, Audience

  1. Put reader first
  2. Organize ideas
  3. Be direct
  4. Be the authority, with personality
  5. Maintain civility and edit
  6. Make posts scanable
  7. Link, summarize, analyze
  8. Specific headlines
  9. Good attitude
  10. Photos/screenshots
  11. Post once/day
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Tech Blog – Steve Yelvington and the Progress of Journalism

February 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on Tech Blog – Steve Yelvington and the Progress of Journalism · Comm361, Student Blog Posts

In class last week, I had the (mis)fortune of having to display my blog to my fellow students. On the bright side, it was a bigger audience than I’ll probably have the rest of the semester, but I was forced to confront the fact that, as much as I like to think I’ve progressed as a writer and journalist over the past few years, I don’t know the first thing about writing for the Web.

Below, an excerpt from my original summary of the third chapter of the Briggs text:

As anyone can have their own blog, it’s only fitting that news itself has become a much more collaborative process given all the new technology that bridges the gap between citizens and the media elite. Even sites as prominent as CNN now rely heavily on readers submitting news stories and videos. This global sharing process, dubbed “crowdsourcing,” creates a more transparent news environment, so the cream rises to the top.

Zzzzzzzzzz. No links. No pizazz. Just a dull block of text. (I hope the revised version is a little better.) But I’m not alone, as Steve Yelvington laments on his blog. Despite the abundance of new technology, journalism hasn’t shown much progress in the past 50 years. Well, I’m making the call to journalists everywhere: let’s get our acts together.

Spice things up! I’m just as guilty as anyone else when it comes to the boring and bland blog that will languish as another unloved Internet entity in perpetuity. But I’m going to change that. That’s the first step, right? Making a bold pronouncement so that I’ll have no choice but to follow through or otherwise risk the wrath of my readers and/or professor?

Let’s get some pictures in here! That’s Zooey Deschanel to the right. Perhaps I’ll aim for some more relevant pictures in the future, but for right now I defy anyone to click away from a page with a Zooey Deschanel pic (unless you’re heading to do a Google image search).

The bottom line is that the field is evolving, nearly on a daily basis at this point, and we need to make our mark. There are far too many competing platforms for journalism of all sorts to lose the audience’s attention to, so before they turn to that “(500) Days of Summer” DVD or listen to a She & Him song, let’s not return journalism to its former glory–let’s build a new glory.

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‘Journalism Next’ by Mark Briggs: Chapter 1 summary

February 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on ‘Journalism Next’ by Mark Briggs: Chapter 1 summary · Comm361, Student Blog Posts

Summary: Breaking down the acronyms and jargon to define the basic concepts of online technology.

Bits and Bytes:

Name Abbr. Size (# of bytes)
Kilo K 2^10 = 1,024
Mega M 2^20 = 1,048,576
Giga G 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
Tera T 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
Peta P 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
Exa E 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
Zetta Z 2^70 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
Yotta Y 2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176

Keep in mind:

  • 80 gigabytes = approximately 80 billion bytes
  • Keep an external hard drive handy
  • Keep e-mail attachments under 1 MB
  • The speed of internet + size of file = how fast someone can download your content

Web browsers: Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer

  1. Search & find information
  2. Retrieve information
  3. Displays information

*Web browsers temporarily store the files downloaded when browsing the web in the cache. It is a good idea to clear the cache regularly to keep the browser running efficiently.

RSS – Really Simple Syndication:

“RSS is the most efficient way to consume massive amounts of information in a structured and organized way.”

– Set up a feed through a Google or Yahoo homepage

– Stand-alone readers like NewsGator, FeedDemon, and SharpReader let you set up feeds and launch software when you want to access the information.

Build an HTML page:

HTML tells a web browser how to display information.

Tutorials:

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Chapter three: Crowd-powered collaboration

February 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on Chapter three: Crowd-powered collaboration · briggs, Comm361, Student Blog Posts

In chapter three, Mark Briggs focuses on the new types of reporting methods that are becoming more prevalent in this day and age.

Crowdsourcing

Coined by Wired News’ Jeff Howe in 2006, this term basically means distributed reporting. It is using a lot of news sources at a given time to help research a specific story. The concept itself lends to grassroots organizations and projects such as InnoCentive and Amazon. According to Briggs, crowdsourcing aims a community power on a specific task and shows that a group of committed individuals can outperform a small group of experience and paid professionals that aren’t as committed.

Open-source reporting

This is a transparent way of obtaining news and showing off your news sources to the public. Due to open-source reporting, blogs and social media websites are important because they keep the media on their toes from making mistakes. And if they do make any errors, they can fix it with a click of a button. Open-source reporting welcomes the reader’s feedback and helps journalists increase their credibility and social capital.

Pro-am Journalism

This is the most unfiltered form of journalism on the web. Everyone is their own author and decides what to publish when and where. It is a do-it-yourself movement that made everyone want to play the role of journalist. The example that Briggs gives is CNN’s iReport. This platform enables users to upload and publish their own content to CNN’s stories as a local reporter. With this approach, everyone is a media outlet.

Happy reading folks.

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How a pro does a story on Storify

February 15th, 2011 · No Comments · Comm361, multimedia, online journalism, social media, Steve Buttry, Storify

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My first effort on Storify

February 15th, 2011 · No Comments · Comm361, multimedia, online journalism, Steve Buttry, Storify

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Telling true stories with video (part I)

February 15th, 2011 · No Comments · Comm361, multimedia, video

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