Wikis on journalism skills

Online Journalism Review has introduced a new feature -- a series of wikis on journalism skills, designed for bloggers, "grassroots" reporters and others who write online but who haven't formally studied journalism.

Starting with basic guides on writing, reporting and journalism ethics, each also includes a discussion area, where readers can ask specific questions about projects they are working on or debate controversial elements of these topics. Future topics will include: creating multimedia, media law, the business of self-publishing, managing online communities.

EmPRINT

Steve Outing has reviewed the Columbia Missourian's EmPRINT trial. EmPRINT is a new electronic newspaper format. It's an important component for newspapers to consider in future planning - and there have been a number of attempts at it. But Outing has reservations:

"I'm not sure this advances newspapers much. But it certainly could be the future of magazines. This is the pleasurable printed-magazine reading experience modernized for the portable digital tablet. I do most of my professional reading online these days (Web, e-mail, RSS), but I enjoy the experience of reading print editions of magazines I subscribe to for pleasure. For the latter, I can envision replacing that with the improved digital experience of tablet magazines.

If forced to make a prediction, I'd say that this format of newspaper won't be that popular -- but that the concept has promise for some magazines and futuristic books."

Beginner's guide to the next big thing

It's del.icio.us and it’s a great way to keep track of things on the web.

Thanks to Beelerspace for the step-by-step directions:

"Delicious is easy to use, but it lacks any kind of serious documentation. Its interface is simple, which I find attractive, but it has that ubergeek slashdot unfriendly look to it. So, here’s the way to do it nice and easy ..."

The new journalism ... according to John Stewart

US comedian John Stewart rips into bloggers in an hilarious skit on the Daily Show featuring an interview with a bemused Jay Rosen.


The video is here.

Whose news?

A conference at Harvard's Nieman Foundation, titled "Media, Technology and the Common Good" is discussing the future of media. Reports are available on the Media Center at the American Press Institute

Questions being discussed include: Should the traditions of professional journalism survive? What are the implications for society? How can we trust in the emerging ecosystem of participatory, always on media?

Len Apcar, Editor-in-Chief of nyt.com, opened with these remarks: "The stakes have never been higher. There is a serious question in my mind whether this new medium can support the great news-gathering operations that big media represent. I don't think it can. Newspapers will have to reinvent themselves."

There you have it. The dirty secret. If online operations can't earn the sorts of revenues that traditional print businesses have, or if the development of new revenue streams takes too long, then journalism as we've known will be in real danger.

The conference organisers are producing some nice Flash-based multimedia pieces of the speakers.

David Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and co-author of Cluetrain Manifesto, speaks about his curiosity about the conversational nature of blogs and how big media responds to the changing reader-author relationship.

Blogger Halley Suitt told the group, "it's not what the bloggers are doing, it's what the audience is doing that we should be focusing on."

EPIC co-creator Matt Thompson talks about the feedback the piece has generated, how and why there is a forthcoming new version, and what intrigues him now.

Chasing Google rankings

Google sends large amounts of traffic to news websites. Consequently, it's vital for news organisations to register on search engine rankings. If they don't they'll remain largely invisible to the online majority. For sites that require subscriptions or that move their stories to paid links after a week or ten days, this is a problem.

Dave Weinberger writes:

"The NY Times famously moves stories from their original links to new ones in the for-pay archive after a week. As a result, important stories exit the public sphere, and the newspaper of record becomes the newspaper of brokenlinks. ... So, starting in April, NYTimes.com is going to publish thousandsof topic pages, each aggregating the content from the 10 million articles inits archive, going back to 1851, including graphics and multimediaresources. Topics that get their own page might include Boston, Terrorism,Cloning, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Condoleeza Rice. News stories willlink to these topic pages. And - the Times must hope - these pages, withtheir big fat permanent addresses, may start rising in Google's rankings. "

Here's the New York Times link generator.

Dan Froomkin from washingtonpost.com gives their perspective on this issue:

"It may be worth pointing out that washingtonpost.com has had a lot of 'special report'/archive pages like that for at least seven years. And the links to articles on those pages all go to stories with URLs that work just fine. No archive switcheroo (washingtonpost.com URLs never die.) Interestingly enough, I don't believe this gets washingtonpost.com any Google bang. Though it well should! These are hugely valuable resources."

Do they or don't they?

Savvy newspapers have a future, reports The Oz. Well, yes, they probably do. Thing is, it may not be in print. But even if it is APN News & Media CEO Brendan Hopkins is a little too bullish for my liking.

Hopkins is:

"dismissive of the internet's impact on newspapers. He did not believe it could replace newspapers as long as publishers kept innovating. Then, the internet would 'become just another delivery mechanism in the same way as radio and everything else'."

That's too simplistic by far. It might sound like an echo from Marshall McLuhan but it's not. In 1964, in his seminal Understanding the Media, McLuhan wrote "A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them."

That phrase - new shapes and positions - is very important. Unfortunately Hopkins glosses over its implications.

He does make an interesting observation about the changing emphases within news organisations, though:

"Gone are the days when there were two powerhouses of any good newspaper: the newsroom and the advertising sales force ... the editorial and advertising teams must now be joined, directed and in some cases led by the product development and marketers as the third force in newspaper publishing."

Editorial excellence on its own is no longer enough to sell papers. Newspapers need to achieve publishing excellence.

Peter Wilson weighs in on the same page (of the printed version) with a piece about attempts by the Evening Standard to halt declining circulation figures by producing a free lunchtime paper ahead of their evening edition. Simon Jenkins had covered the bases in last month's Prospect.

News online is growing

Audiences have increased dramatically. A study by washingtonpost.com in partnership with Nielsen/NetRatings:

"About half of all online news users are still increasing their use of the Internet, even as this medium reaches saturation. For these Internet users, more time is spent online in a given week than with any other medium. In prior research, we’ve always seen the Internet and TV in a close horse race; this year, the Internet has pulled ahead. When we look specifically at sources for news and information, online pulls far ahead, with 60% of users going online DAILY. Fewer than half use TV or any other source of news on a daily basis."

Of course it's a US sample, but the trends are widely relevant.

[Methodology and full findings available in powerpoint.]

Twighlight of the moguls

The media moguls who built the big publishing and broadcasting networks of the 20th century are getting long in the tooth. So who are the next generation of executives waiting to get their chance at the big table? And will there still be a big table?

"In this twilight of the moguls, a new, younger generation of executives is waiting in the wings to inherit an industry in upheaval. They're baby boomers with MBAs and law degrees. They are women. They have had media gigs in all parts of the business and the globe. They grew up embracing technology but know all too well that pirates are around every corner."

They're not all baby boomers, but you know what Business Week means.

Observer gets the blog bug

The Observer has got itself a shiny new blog. They launched it last week with this explanation:

"We are impressed by the quality and breadth of writing and reporting that is available on blogs and elsewhere on the net. We recognise serious competition when we see it. But as a bricks and mortar institution full of journalists with great contacts and a lot of experience we also like to think that we still have something unique to offer. Hence the need for civilised and honest dialogue. This is an experiment that we enter into in good faith to try to make the Observer a better newspaper."