Citizen journalists and Youtube succeed where degrees can not. And beware of posting!
The station WKRN found a story they wanted to share with the public. So instead of gathering a news team with reporters and camera crews, they stayed in their studio. But how ever did they get the story?! Well as the Red River was rising and the coast guard was helping people from roof tops, they had their very own camera man, and then they posted the material on youtube. They go reports from citizen journalists and footage from the coast guards very own youtube site. So in hindsight they saved the station a lot of money, and still got the footage they needed. Of course they missed out on having the personal touch to their story, and they didn’t have a reporter on site, but that’s the drawbacks that they accepted.
Is interactivity all it’s cracked up to be?
The Australianis online newspaper of the year.There’s a link to video some of it’s video content in the top tool bar on the home page but it also has video stories under it’s headline stories. One such story was called “Paul Kelly’s budget 09 preview.” It had 270 views by 7 o’clock on the 7th of May, but it only had ’3 votes’ towards how the viewers would rate the video content. While another video called ‘Risky, but no choice‘ had 16 views and 13 ratings.
Magazines out do the papers.
When people think of journalism they tend to automatically think of papers, news, RTE 6 o’clock, The Irish Times website e.t.c. It is often forgotten that journalism resides in other places. Granted this may be because there is the stereotype that is difficult to shake that good journalism and good stories simply do not come from magazines. But one thing is for sure, their websites are giving online paper websites a run for their money.
Oh “The Times” we live in…!
“Video use is now central to online publishing” – The Gazette.
The Times Online have a link on the top of their home page to video content. However The Irish Times fall short of it’s British rival. In fact there was no link to video content at all on the home page of The Irish Times. With video content being seen as the future of online journalism, are Irish onine news even competing in the survival of the fittest?
Letters to the who?!
Letters to the editor are a way in the past. Interactivity has taken over, but are people willing to express their opinions? There has been much controversy over the 20 year old British girl who was jailed in Laos for possession of heroin. On the CNN news website there was been serious discussions about the fate of the young girl. The discussion area allowed for people to post their thoughts on the situation and allow them to interact with the news and with others.
‘The Essential Site for Journalists’ like serious journalism… also to blog and to Twitter!
Journalism.co.uk, ‘The essential site for journalists.’ It’s tag line sums up what the online site thinks it’s about. It has news feeds, it has expert comments, it has features, lists job opportunities, it even has links to help out free lance journalists letting them advertise online e.t.c. An online site that is fair to say is journalism and journalist friendly. It looks out for the needs of the journalist.
Online journalism – recognition it deserves and same old scepticism!
Online journalism has been eligible to be considered for the Pulitzer Prize since 2006, but allowing the online only sites to apply for the award ‘ is recognition of the growing importance of online media’ according to Amy Mitchell, the deputy director for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
In this article she also said “We’ve clearly hit a point now where we’ve seen the audience migration to the Web accelerate.” She goes on to say that online journalism has enabled new tremendous reporting that could simply not exist without the multidimensional tools that online web sites allow the journalist to use. While there was much praise for online journalism in the article, the expected scepticism had to appear at some stage. Read the rest of this entry »
Social networking sites – Is there any such thing as privacy?
This blog by Niamh Mongey looks at the issue of privacy relating to online social networking sites. Mongey found an article on The Irish Times online about an Irish man, Michael Dwyer, who is presumed dead in Bolivia. The Times said the man was supposedly part of a plot to kill the Bolivian President. It is obvious from the article in The Irish Times that the journalist, Patrick Logue, gathered a lot of his information from Dwyer’s Facebook account.
On the 19th of April, the next day, the UK version of The Times did a story on Dwyer. They had quotes from Bebo including one from a friend saying ‘RIP Bro’. Instead of the traditional interview with friends and family, they described the man by taking quotes from Dwyer himself about what he liked to do, what he ‘was up to’, and his fears; ‘god damn south American insects.’
Twitter – It rocks, but is it made of stone?
This blog had an interesting article about the Twitter website that has soared to popularity ‘from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009.‘ The blog by Shaun Dunne focused on an article he found from USC Rossier school of Education. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang conducted a study to see if Twitter was in danger of numbing people’s emotions with the quick and snappy news it provides.
In 2002, if we had read in 140 characters that 18 people had been killed in a shooting in Germany, would it have had the same impact on us as the BBC article? Compare the BBC article on the German shooting that killed 18, to the CNN Twitter update about the Italian earthquake that killed 150. It’s easier to glance at 150 dead in less than 140 characters and move on to other news. The BBC article is about 132 less people and yet the impact is hard hitting.
Citizen jouralists earn trust of Washington Times.
The time has finally arrived. Only time will tell if this is a positive or negative thing for both journalism and journalists. This article from editorandpublisher.com sees many journalists worst fears come to life. The Washington Times has dedicated a page of it’s paper to citizen journalists, with each day set aside for a particular area of interest of news, or particular area in Washington. For example Mondays are for feature stories from academic circles, while Wednesdays are for stories from the District of Columbia.
