Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Does journalism need a new crowdsourcing tool?

It strikes me there’s a kind of assumption around journalism that it somehow needs bespoke tools to do its job in the new digital media world. But actually I think it should stick to its existing strengths. In the spirit of research, I’ve just visited the Royal College of Art summer graduation show to check out […]

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Twitterfeed update

So – no sign of the post I was expecting on my Twitter account, but Twitterfeed managed to pull out my previous post about the Yemeni air crash. Something’s working – I’m just not sure what it is. [Twitterfeed update UPDATE: Of course, this post has made it in. Which looks silly…]

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

RSS is dead – long live Twitterfeed

The Online Journalism Blog says RSS is dead and newspapers should abandon their useless RSS news feeds for Twitter. As the OJB is such an authority, when it says “jump”, I obviously ask “how high?”. And then, sheeplike, I swap my no-doubt useless RSS feed for a link to my Twitter account. How easy will this be? […]

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Um – who survived the Yemeni air crash?

History is rewritten by the internet, as yesterday’s five-year-old boy survivor of the Yemeni air crash off the Cormoros islands today morphs strangely into a 14-year-old girl. I’m sure it’s nice that the incorrect official statements have been corrected. But I’ve noticed that sometimes this has happened without much acknowledgement of the change. So Google […]

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

The future of digital publishing – a conversation

Today I’ve invited another blogger to join me in a discussion about the future of web journalism and the economics of publishing in a rapidly digitising world. Blogging about the world of amateur horticulture under the name Soilman (well, it’s nice to have a hobby), he also has wide experience in journalism and editorial training. […]

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Summer reading suggestions for journalism students #2

Yesterday I suggested journalism students should read Jeffrey Goldberg’s financial feature “Why I fired my broker” from the May issue of The Atlantic magazine. But I’m well aware that most student journalists aren’t that keen to write insightful business articles.  Instead, I’m sure a lot of you want to write witty and amusing columns of your clever […]

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Summer reading suggestions for journalism students #1

A little while ago, I suggested journalism students should read Raymond Chandler instead of just reading journalism. But I also promised some suggestions for really good journalistic writing to read. (Well, it’s summer, so what better way to relax on the beach?) I’ve got two suggestions – one, which I’ll look at today, is a […]

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Blogs are dying. Great news for bloggers… and journalism graduates

It seems that “the long tail of blogging is dying”. For those who prefer English to techie jargon, the long tail refers to the millions of blogs with few incoming links, compared to a relatively small number of dominant blogs with many thousands of readers and lots of presence in the wider web.  But this […]

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Calling new journalism graduates

FleetStreetBlues is offering a fantastic opportunity to blog about your search to find work in the journalism business for no money at all.  But you do get, you know, exposure. Go on, give it a go…

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Print versus online journalism – the view from Belgium

Here’s a very interesting post by, of all things, a Belgian linguistic researcher, about the differences between print and online journalism. I like its academic slant (something which often puts me off), as it actually helps to illuminate the murky way that news journalism is constructed and then passed off as something whole and authoritative.  […]