Twitter: a step-by-step guide to getting started :: Shane Richmond January 16, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentA useful guide from Shane Richmond at the Telegraph:
"Twitter is not a publishing platform, as I said yesterday, so you can’t simply go to the site and read it. Well, you can but that’s not really the point. To get the most out of Twitter you need to build a network and then start using a few tools."
Ten things every journalist should know in 2009 | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog January 16, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentGreat round-up by John Thompson at Journalism.co.uk
Current students, take this as a hint!
6 Sites that are changing the way you follow the news :: 10,000 Words :: multimedia, online journalism news and reviews January 16, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a comment"Even relatively new news aggregators like Google News seem antiquated compared to these game-changing tools."
These are new to me, except for MemeTracker. Do try to keep up…
Journalists — So why aren't you Twittering yet? January 16, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentRobert Niles adds to the momentum:
"Twitter has become what many of had hoped RSS would be, as well as the most vital forum for sharing links with other writers. Throw in Twitter's value as the ideal medium for breaking news, and you're crippling your online publishing effort by not participating."
The Future of Journalism in 560 Words (Four Tweets) « J-School: Educating Independent Journalists January 16, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentFrom Christopher Anderson, PhD student at Columbia:
"Successful journalism is social; the powerful institutions they watch are bureaucracies. What to do?
Social movements are social, like media, and they watch powerful institutions the same way journalism should and used to.
Therefore, a successful– and moral– future journalism will be place-based aggregations of the struggles of relevant social movements.
And objectivity will not be an attitude of disinterest, but an “objectfulness”– a gathering together of objects (once called “reporting.”)"
Profile of a backpacker: Inside Mara Schiavocampo’s toolkit » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism January 16, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentShe takes a bit more than an N95 — but then it needs to be broadcast quality:
"The total weight of her kit runs about 30 pounds, and it’s tight enough to carry on flights when she travels — she relegates her clothing and other necessities to the vicissitudes of the luggage crew. And the total cost is about $10,000 — a fraction of the cost of one of NBC’s high-end broadcast HD cameras."
Need for sustainable developers-slash-journalists « Computing for Sustainability January 16, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentA take on the Journalist-Programmer discussion from a computing prof at Otago (NZ):
"There’s no way a bit of database understanding will produce journalists capable of the development on the Times site (Casualties of War for example). However, it is probably equally “no way” that a bit of journalism bolted on to a Computer Science degree will produce the depth of understanding and craft of a journalist."
Not the time for journalists to write their misery memoirs January 12, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentToby Young, who reckons four national newspapers will disappear during 2009:
“I conservatively estimate that by the end of the year 25% of my colleagues will have left the profession [journalism].
How will all these people earn a living? Some will go into PR – the traditional retirement home for ex-journalists – and those who are still young will retrain in the few areas of the economy that are expanding, such as debt collection. But the most attractive choice, by far, will be to become full-time authors. […]
My own contingency plan for when the axe falls has always been to write a misery memoir. […] However, it looks as though I will have to abandon this dream.
“The market for misery memoirs has tailed off,” says Liz Thomson, the ex-editor of Publishing News and founder of BookBrunch.co.uk. “The wisdom is that in a fairly miserable climate people don’t want to be made more miserable.” ”
Bad Science » The Daily Telegraph misrepresent a scientist’s work, then refuse to correct it when he writes to them. January 9, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentBen Goldacre on the trail. University press release might be partly to blame.?
“To my mind this is poor quality journalism followed, more importantly, by cowardly editorial decision-making. This article could very easily be retracted or corrected, clearly and unambiguously, in the newspaper.”
Journalism meets data: J-school seeks professor, journalism seeks techies January 9, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, NYTimes, Newspapers, USA, database, journalism education , add a commentAn interesting vacancy at Medill School of Journalism (Northwestern University, Illinois), which is advertising for a professor of database journalism “to teach data analysis and interactive deployment of data”. Good stuff. According to the vacancy note:
The successful candidate will have expertise in analyzing data for journalistic work and will be expected to teach students how to create and deploy database-driven applications on the World Wide Web and other digital platforms.
I imagine this role will complement the Journalist-Programmer scholarships at Medill, set up by Rich Gordon (and funded by a Knight News Challenge grant). The scholarships are geared towards programmers or web developers who are interested in journalism.
Bringing people with an IT background into journalism, rather than vice-versa, echoes the experiences of Aron Pilhofer, head journo-techie at the New York Times. Eric Ulken wrote up some interesting points from their discussions, including:
When I throw out the old question about whether it’s easier to teach a journalist programming skills or to teach a techie the principles of journalism, he tells me it’s not so much a question of trainability. Rather, he says, “there are more programmers out there that will find journalism interesting to learn” than vice-versa. He tells me that, with a couple of exceptions, the people on his team have either “very limited journalism experience or none whatsoever.”
There’s another interview with Pilhofer here, on Old Media, New Tricks.