Netscape lost ground to Microsoft's internet Explorer
The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease
development because of lack of users.
Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported
after 1 February 2008, the company has said.
Monday, December 31, 2007
The Miami Herald to outsource some copyediting, ad work to India
MIAMI - The Miami Herald is outsourcing copyediting of a weekly
community news section and some advertising production work to India,
a newspaper editor said Friday.
community news section and some advertising production work to India,
a newspaper editor said Friday.
Starting in January, copyediting and design in a weekly section of
Broward County community news and other special advertising sections
will be outsourced to Mindworks, based in New Delhi.
The project remains in the testing phase, so it was unclear if or how
jobs in south Florida will be affected, executive editor Anders
Gyllenhaal said.
Mindworks will also monitor reader comments posted to online stories, he said.
Earlier this month, The Sacramento Bee, also owned by the McClatchy
Co., said it would outsource some of its advertising production work
to India.
In May, news website, pasadenanow.com, was widely criticized after
editors hired two reporters in India to cover the Los Angeles suburb.
Information from: The Miami Herald, http://www.herald.com
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Key media organisations and trade unions in Sri Lanka recognise bloggers as journalists
A statement by the five leading media organisations and journalist trade unions in Sri Lanka carried in the Daily Mirror today is the first expression in the history of journalism in Sri Lanka that bloggers are defined as being inextricably part of the media community.
In reply to the Media Minister's statement five media organisations comprising the Sri Lanka Working Journalists' Association, the Federation of Media Employees' Trade Unions, the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Federation, the Sri Lanka Tamil Journalists' Association and the Free Media Movement said: "According to the views of a democratic society all those in print and electronic media as well as those who are professionally engaged in collecting information and distributing it to the public are considered journalists. Even those who maintain political and social blogs are considered journalists."
The statement was issued in response to the Sri Lankan Media Minister's denial of the contents of a report by the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) that ranked Sri Lanka as the third most dangerous place in the world for journalists.
A related article by Free Media Movement (FMM) spokesperson Sunanda Deshapriya (in Sinhala) explores this issue further, where he notes that:
"ïn saying that the only journalists the Minister recognises are those with ID cards issued by the Media Ministry, the Government of Sri Lanka conveniently ignores the vital social and political critques of bloggers in Sri Lanka. From Myanmar to China to Iraq, the world today gets news and information through bloggers."
But it is not just the Government in Sri Lanka that does not understand the emergent power of bloggers. The behaviour of some traditional media in Sri Lanka towards bloggers earlier this year, and one Editor's incredible response to this author's efforts to point out the traditional media's responsibility to treat bloggers in the same manner as other media sources, demonstrate that blogs clearly pose an irksome challenge to old school journalists as much as repressive governments.
http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/key-media-organisations-and-trade-unions-in-sri-lanka-recognise-bloggers-as-journalists/Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Why Was Blogging Journalist Llewellyn Kriel Fired?
Why Was Blogging Journalist Llewellyn Kriel Fired?
South African Journalist Paul Jacobson, who blogs at The Blogumist, one of the blogs of the Johannesburg, South Africa-based The Times', notes in a December 19, 2007, post that, "A hot topic in the last few weeks was [journalist] Llewellyn Kriel's [November 29, 2007] dismissal from the Sowetan (a sister publication to The Times) after he blogged about morale at the Sowetan on Thought Leader, a group blog run by the Mail & Guardian (the competition).
"A debate has raged about whether he was fired simply because he blogged or because he actually divulged confidential information (the reason given for his dismissal)," Jacobson writes.
Media in Transition's Vincent Maher contends in a November 30, 2007, post headlined "Sowetan Journalist Fired for Blogging " that:
What this situation highlights is the strategic complexities of Media 2.0 as a set of publishing principles, and the risks corporates now face when every irritated employee could potentially have a voice on the web that will be indexed by Google in perpetuity. What it does is raise several important questions about the role of the journalist in the media company. On paper Kriel must have violated several confidentiality clauses in his contract if one ignores his argument that what he was saying was already on public record but, looking at things slightly differently, what Kriel said would have faded away had he been disciplined subtly and constructively. As always in these things, I suspect there is more to this than meets they eye but, nevertheless, Kriel will become a sort of martyr for the cause.
For more of Jacobson's December 19, 2007, post, see " Getting Fired for Blogging." Also see "Blogger of the Week: SA's first media blog casualty " and "Fired for blogging."
To read the post Kriel was purportedly fired for writing, see "Working on that pig's ear, baby." To read his response to being sacked, see "The 'gross misconduct' of blogging."
http://www.thebloggingjournalist.com/2007/12/why-was-bloggin.html
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Encouraging people to contribute knowledge
The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.
Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.
The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.
A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.
Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.
Once testing is completed, participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality. Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.
We do not want to build a walled garden of content; we want to disseminate it as widely as possible. Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine.
As always, a picture is worth a thousands words, so an example of a knol is below (click on the image twice to see the page in full). The main content is real, and we encourage you to read it (you may sleep better afterwards!), but most of the meta-data -- like reviews, ratings, and comments -- are not real, because, of course, this has not been in the public eye as yet. Again, this is a preliminary version.
Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.
The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.
A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.
Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.
Once testing is completed, participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality. Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.
We do not want to build a walled garden of content; we want to disseminate it as widely as possible. Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine.
As always, a picture is worth a thousands words, so an example of a knol is below (click on the image twice to see the page in full). The main content is real, and we encourage you to read it (you may sleep better afterwards!), but most of the meta-data -- like reviews, ratings, and comments -- are not real, because, of course, this has not been in the public eye as yet. Again, this is a preliminary version.
Posted by Udi Manber, VP Engineering
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.htmlThursday, December 13, 2007
Five billion people will be connected to the Internet by 2015
The Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), the organisers of GK3 are optimistic that five billion people will be connected to the Internet by 2015.
Walter Fust the Chair of the GKP Executive Committee expressed this while closing the conference. Fust, who is also the Director-General, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) said the plan, will not only create enormous job opportunities for software and hardware suppliers, but also connect billions of people to the Internet.
"The Internet will make a huge difference in terms of quality, quantity and availability to grow and expand global knowledge. This will bring enormous market opportunities," he said.
He noted that the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) will reduce the transaction costs of doing business.
The conference's theme Emerging People, Emerging Markets Emerging Technologies focused on the challenges to effective socio and economic development and use of ICTs as an enabler to connect those excluded from progress by providing them with access to knowledge through technology.
In support of the conference theme, Fust appealed for support to 'emerging people' who are the drivers of the information and knowledge revolution.
He commended youth for actively taking part in Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) initiatives.
He hastened to add that dangers of misuse of ICTs as well solve cyber waste.
"Cyber security and cyber crime are the themes that deserve special attention," he concluded.
Conference participants called for the inclusion of ICTs not only in early-age education, but also for life long learning.
They also called for increasing use of low energy consumption made possible by green technologies and availability of low cost devices to contribute to affordable access to information and knowledge.
The conference attracted about 2000 delegates from different sectors, including private companies, governments, international institutions and civil society groups.
The United Arab Emirates has approached the secretariat with intent to host GKP4.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Journalism scholars fail the test
Guy Berger: CONVERSE
Spot the difference:
… Two areas of new interest are in the fields of business magazines and technology. Business Today, Business World, the Economic Times, and Technocrat, launched fairly recently, are doing well ... Bhutan, with less than 1 million population, can now boast of publishing its own national newspaper.
Authors: Anju Chaudhary and Anne Chen, in the book Global Journalism, third edition, 1995 (pages 278 and 281)
… Two areas of new interest are in the fields of business magazines and technology. Business Today, Business World, the Economic Times, and Technocrat, launched fairly recently are doing well… Bhutan, with less than 1 million population, can now boast of publishing its own national newspaper.
Authors: Jiafei Yin and Gregg Payne, in the fourth edition of Global Journalism, 2004 (pages 354 and 355)
There is supposed to be a difference. The second excerpt suggests that what happened prior to 2004 (the fourth edition) was the same as almost a decade earlier (the third edition). Worse, the later work should also have identified where the information came from.
There are at least a dozen items of information in the popular Global Journalism textbook, all lifted without update or credit regarding the original authors' research. These are serious issues in academic scholarship -- and in journalism.
One of the original authors, Anju Chaudhary, is sore about Yin and Payne, but she's even more aggrieved with the publishers, Pearson Education, and with the book's editors -- United States scholar John Merrill and South African academic Arrie de Beer. Seen from her point of view, the two editors neglected to spot, or stop, the use of her research without either crediting her or properly updating it.
The problem is that no one will acknowledge any wrong in what happened.
Chaudhary says that despite herself having co-authored the Asian chapters in both the second and third editions of the book, she was not invited to do the fourth. Instead, Yin and Payne were commissioned. This week, Yin former referred queries to the publishers; Payne ignored two emails on the issue.
On its part, Pearson has written to Chaudhary, claiming that it is the author and copyright holder, and under "no obligation" to attribute the material to her. For good measure, it adds that this would be inappropriate anyway because the material had been "revised".
Yet parts of the fourth edition show no updating at all. One instance is the passage: "Today (sic) 146 daily papers are published in the country (Bangladesh -- GB) ... presently (sic) there are approximately 242 weeklies ...". Taken verbatim from the 1995 (third) edition, these facts are presented as still current in 2004.
Despite such problems, Pearson's website proclaims that the fourth edition has been "almost entirely rewritten". Contacted for this article last week, the company replied it would not disclose "proprietary information".
Chaudhary is particularly unhappy about the book's co-editor De Beer, who she says brushed off her concerns during a meeting in the US where she raised the matter.
"He just listened and said that Dr Chaudhary has already heard from the publisher, who stated that the copyright belongs to the publisher. That's all he had to say. I think it is extremely unethical and highly unprofessional on his part ..."
De Beer is an older-generation media academic in South Africa, and is described in a forthcoming version of his journal Ecquid Novi as having been "an inspiration to younger generations of scholars".
In an article last year he described plagiarism as one of the "ethical scandals" facing journalism and journalism education.
He is a part-time "extraordinary professor" at Stellenbosch University's journalism school, whose website states: "Plagiarism is stealing other people's words and ideas and making them appear to be your own." Students are advised that a plagiarism offence will prevent them graduating.
Told about the problem, the head of the Stellenbosch department, Professor Lizette Rabe, said: "I am shocked by the allegations, especially in the light of the strict copyright policies we have in our department -- a basic principle in an environment and industry in which words are the 'currency', and where integrity and credibility are the foundation of our profession."
But emailed last week for his side of the story, De Beer replied (his original in Afrikaans): "I really don't know where you fall out of the bus with this business ... In case you and/or the person concerned continue with the case, and bring my good name into disrepute, I will be compelled to take the necessary steps against you, and if necessary the publication involved."
Co-editor Merrill failed to reply to email queries.
De Beer is a man who once loyally served the apartheid-era South African Broadcasting Corporation board, and was later reported to have told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: "I did not know. I remained silent when I should have protested."
There is no self-criticism in this case, although he and Merrill either missed or condoned the shoddy scholarship by Yin and Payne. Compounding that problem now is reluctance to account for the matter.
Coincidentally last month, Merrill was dropped as a contributor to the Missourian newspaper. He was caught out for having appropriated other people's words without acknowledgement in at least six of his columns.
The US scholar is the original (sole) author of Global Journalism, which the Pearson website boasts as having "established itself over 20 years as a trusted authority on international media".
At least as regards his Missourian misdemeanour, Merrill is reported to have acknowledged the problem and described his action as carelessness.
But in relation to Global Journalism, none of the parties has taken the ethical step of admitting culpability. Their book continues to be prescribed around the world, no doubt earning tidy sums for all.
Meanwhile, Chaudhary's complaints run into a stonewall, her contribution to knowledge remains uncredited and outdated information has been passed off as if it were contemporary.
In a late response to the column, Merrill commented:
I didn't oversee any article in the fourth edition. Arnold De Beer did all the editing; I never saw the Asia section (or any other) prior to publishing. I had heard about the charge. My reaction to the original authors would probably be something this: I was on a tight deadline, extremely busy, had faith in the new writers, and simply did not read the new version carefully enough (with comparison to earlier edition). Hope this will help. I have great faith in De Beer and know that it was simply an oversight on his part if there were any overlap between the two editions.
In the meantime, without De Beer or Pearson being big enough to step forward, Chaudhary still sits without an apology.
credit : http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=326859&area=/insight/insight__columnists/
Spot the difference:
… Two areas of new interest are in the fields of business magazines and technology. Business Today, Business World, the Economic Times, and Technocrat, launched fairly recently, are doing well ... Bhutan, with less than 1 million population, can now boast of publishing its own national newspaper.
Authors: Anju Chaudhary and Anne Chen, in the book Global Journalism, third edition, 1995 (pages 278 and 281)
… Two areas of new interest are in the fields of business magazines and technology. Business Today, Business World, the Economic Times, and Technocrat, launched fairly recently are doing well… Bhutan, with less than 1 million population, can now boast of publishing its own national newspaper.
Authors: Jiafei Yin and Gregg Payne, in the fourth edition of Global Journalism, 2004 (pages 354 and 355)
There is supposed to be a difference. The second excerpt suggests that what happened prior to 2004 (the fourth edition) was the same as almost a decade earlier (the third edition). Worse, the later work should also have identified where the information came from.
There are at least a dozen items of information in the popular Global Journalism textbook, all lifted without update or credit regarding the original authors' research. These are serious issues in academic scholarship -- and in journalism.
One of the original authors, Anju Chaudhary, is sore about Yin and Payne, but she's even more aggrieved with the publishers, Pearson Education, and with the book's editors -- United States scholar John Merrill and South African academic Arrie de Beer. Seen from her point of view, the two editors neglected to spot, or stop, the use of her research without either crediting her or properly updating it.
The problem is that no one will acknowledge any wrong in what happened.
Chaudhary says that despite herself having co-authored the Asian chapters in both the second and third editions of the book, she was not invited to do the fourth. Instead, Yin and Payne were commissioned. This week, Yin former referred queries to the publishers; Payne ignored two emails on the issue.
On its part, Pearson has written to Chaudhary, claiming that it is the author and copyright holder, and under "no obligation" to attribute the material to her. For good measure, it adds that this would be inappropriate anyway because the material had been "revised".
Yet parts of the fourth edition show no updating at all. One instance is the passage: "Today (sic) 146 daily papers are published in the country (Bangladesh -- GB) ... presently (sic) there are approximately 242 weeklies ...". Taken verbatim from the 1995 (third) edition, these facts are presented as still current in 2004.
Despite such problems, Pearson's website proclaims that the fourth edition has been "almost entirely rewritten". Contacted for this article last week, the company replied it would not disclose "proprietary information".
Chaudhary is particularly unhappy about the book's co-editor De Beer, who she says brushed off her concerns during a meeting in the US where she raised the matter.
"He just listened and said that Dr Chaudhary has already heard from the publisher, who stated that the copyright belongs to the publisher. That's all he had to say. I think it is extremely unethical and highly unprofessional on his part ..."
De Beer is an older-generation media academic in South Africa, and is described in a forthcoming version of his journal Ecquid Novi as having been "an inspiration to younger generations of scholars".
In an article last year he described plagiarism as one of the "ethical scandals" facing journalism and journalism education.
He is a part-time "extraordinary professor" at Stellenbosch University's journalism school, whose website states: "Plagiarism is stealing other people's words and ideas and making them appear to be your own." Students are advised that a plagiarism offence will prevent them graduating.
Told about the problem, the head of the Stellenbosch department, Professor Lizette Rabe, said: "I am shocked by the allegations, especially in the light of the strict copyright policies we have in our department -- a basic principle in an environment and industry in which words are the 'currency', and where integrity and credibility are the foundation of our profession."
But emailed last week for his side of the story, De Beer replied (his original in Afrikaans): "I really don't know where you fall out of the bus with this business ... In case you and/or the person concerned continue with the case, and bring my good name into disrepute, I will be compelled to take the necessary steps against you, and if necessary the publication involved."
Co-editor Merrill failed to reply to email queries.
De Beer is a man who once loyally served the apartheid-era South African Broadcasting Corporation board, and was later reported to have told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: "I did not know. I remained silent when I should have protested."
There is no self-criticism in this case, although he and Merrill either missed or condoned the shoddy scholarship by Yin and Payne. Compounding that problem now is reluctance to account for the matter.
Coincidentally last month, Merrill was dropped as a contributor to the Missourian newspaper. He was caught out for having appropriated other people's words without acknowledgement in at least six of his columns.
The US scholar is the original (sole) author of Global Journalism, which the Pearson website boasts as having "established itself over 20 years as a trusted authority on international media".
At least as regards his Missourian misdemeanour, Merrill is reported to have acknowledged the problem and described his action as carelessness.
But in relation to Global Journalism, none of the parties has taken the ethical step of admitting culpability. Their book continues to be prescribed around the world, no doubt earning tidy sums for all.
Meanwhile, Chaudhary's complaints run into a stonewall, her contribution to knowledge remains uncredited and outdated information has been passed off as if it were contemporary.
In a late response to the column, Merrill commented:
I didn't oversee any article in the fourth edition. Arnold De Beer did all the editing; I never saw the Asia section (or any other) prior to publishing. I had heard about the charge. My reaction to the original authors would probably be something this: I was on a tight deadline, extremely busy, had faith in the new writers, and simply did not read the new version carefully enough (with comparison to earlier edition). Hope this will help. I have great faith in De Beer and know that it was simply an oversight on his part if there were any overlap between the two editions.
In the meantime, without De Beer or Pearson being big enough to step forward, Chaudhary still sits without an apology.
credit : http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=326859&area=/insight/insight__columnists/
Saturday, December 08, 2007
What Does a 'Data Delivery Editor' Do?
Apparently there are a lot of black bear sightings in Virginia. If you live in that state, you might want to know where and when those bears were spotted. That's why Matt Chittum, of The Roanoke Times, is building a database and accompanying map. His title at the newspaper is "data delivery editor."
This bear map will join a rapidly expanding set of databases collected in the newspaper site's DataSphere, which launched last Thursday. The DataSphere, modeled after the DataUniverse at the Asbury Park Press and RocDocs at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, collects in one place a couple of dozen databases with information important to the local audience. (Learn more about DataUniverse.)
The Roanoke Times -- known for its pioneering efforts in multimedia and interactivity -- hadn't put as much thought into how it handled databases until a dust-up earlier this year involving a decision to publish concealed-weapons permits on the site.
As you might predict, many, many people were unhappy," Roanoke Times editor Carole Tarrant explained in an e-mail interview.
"I didn't want that controversy to ruin any exploration with databases. I didn't want us to forever shy from running them because we had one really bad experience. I wanted to show they could be used for the good -- for good journalism -- if you carefully weighed the value of the information you were presenting."
So Tarrant created the new staff position of data delivery editor and set about building new databases, linking to existing databases on the Times site, and linking to outside databases of government and community information.
"The data delivery editor wasn't an additional position -- we had to make a choice to not do something else," Tarrant said. That's not an easy decision when your newsroom is shrinking. Chittum explains his role and what he's working on in the Datablog.
One piece of the DataSphere, The Beamer File, allows users to follow the 21-year career of Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer. You can sort by season, month, opponent, the opponent's conference and games that were televised.
Other than a couple of maps, there isn't much visual representation of data so far in the DataSphere. The New York Times is showing what's possible in this regard: a graph of a presidential debate transcript and a map of presidential campaign visits. Also, Ben Fry (who literally is writing the book on visualizing data) built a cool Major League Baseball salary analyzer to show which teams have the most cost-effective payroll. A slider bar on the graph enables the viewer to see how the results changed throughout the season.
Chittum has some good ideas for how he'd like to improve the DataSphere with visualization tools. One tool would convert data to tag clouds, bar charts, pie charts and fever charts. (For the uninitiated, a tag cloud or data cloud is a weighted list. Here' an example showing world population weighted by font size.)
"I'm especially fascinated by tag clouds, partly because I haven't seen them on mainstream newspaper sites, but they can offer quite effective quick-read presentation," Chittum wrote in an e-mail. "One idea I have in mind is a tag cloud of the most common drugs people overdose on. Maybe the causes of death of for all Virginians as a tag cloud."
Pretty innovative stuff for a newspaper. That's what can happen when you create staff positions such as "data delivery editor."
http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=132248Blogging, Creativity and Formal Writing in the University
This is an interesting conversation about writing and creativity and how this is important in blogging, online communication, and web-based education. Prof. Campbell makes the case for using online tools to find new ways of learning and communicating about ourselves and our world. He makes some interesting comments. One that I like is how writing public blogs is something that students will carry with them after they graduate. I have been trying to get this idea across in my classes (most of which have some public social media presence), though not quite as concisely as Prof. Campbell did.
While I have no background in the arts, I think I agree that literature and the arts need to be free of boundaries. However, I believe that the sciences require a formal knowledge foundation, including formal forms of communication. Only then can creative insights expand the boundaries of our knowledge.
I agree with his comments that social media requires some new writing skills, and that this new medium can generate creative and new depths of communication. But as the editor of an academic journal in the social sciences, I think there is a necessary role for teaching formal rules -- especially writing. Even Wikipedia is trying to get its articles written in a more formal and academic manner.
Unfortunately, there are few more frustrating challenges for me than the poor writing ability of many of my students. If they cannot write a coherent sentence and paragraph (let alone a whole paper), then they will not be able to effectively communicate in the real world when they graduate. You cannot gain professional respect unless you are able to write to the level of your professional peers. And I am always wonder just what my students are being taught in those required English classes that they take.
Finally, I agree with his chagrin over a computer system designed to automatically grade essay exams -- and its tie to a textbook publisher. At the same time, as a former department chair in a publicly funded teaching university, I am aware of the demand from state legislators for faculty to teach as many students as possible in the most efficient manner possible. Departments that do not play the game risk the loss of faculty positions and degree programs.
Structure vs Agency
I think that there has always been a tension between structure and creativity in education (e.g., the old "structure vs agency" debate). I see it in the kindergarten classes that my wife used to teach, and I have seen it on graduate research committees. I think that the reason why the US higher education system has been so successful is because this tension is recognized and accepted, if not always appreciated (physical sciences are always better funded than social sciences and the arts).
It should be no surprise that these same tensions arise in the use of social media tools in education. To me, social software is a tool. How it is used is up to the instructor. Many of the the potential uses of social software actually evolve out of collaborative learning and student-centered learning, on which many books have been written in the past several decades, and from which those of use who teach mostly online have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon.
So anyway, it was a thought provoking interview -- and one that took me away from an encyclopedia article that I am working on, that is already past-due to the editors!
I highly recommend listening to this interview on ITConversations:
While I have no background in the arts, I think I agree that literature and the arts need to be free of boundaries. However, I believe that the sciences require a formal knowledge foundation, including formal forms of communication. Only then can creative insights expand the boundaries of our knowledge.
I agree with his comments that social media requires some new writing skills, and that this new medium can generate creative and new depths of communication. But as the editor of an academic journal in the social sciences, I think there is a necessary role for teaching formal rules -- especially writing. Even Wikipedia is trying to get its articles written in a more formal and academic manner.
Unfortunately, there are few more frustrating challenges for me than the poor writing ability of many of my students. If they cannot write a coherent sentence and paragraph (let alone a whole paper), then they will not be able to effectively communicate in the real world when they graduate. You cannot gain professional respect unless you are able to write to the level of your professional peers. And I am always wonder just what my students are being taught in those required English classes that they take.
Finally, I agree with his chagrin over a computer system designed to automatically grade essay exams -- and its tie to a textbook publisher. At the same time, as a former department chair in a publicly funded teaching university, I am aware of the demand from state legislators for faculty to teach as many students as possible in the most efficient manner possible. Departments that do not play the game risk the loss of faculty positions and degree programs.
Structure vs Agency
I think that there has always been a tension between structure and creativity in education (e.g., the old "structure vs agency" debate). I see it in the kindergarten classes that my wife used to teach, and I have seen it on graduate research committees. I think that the reason why the US higher education system has been so successful is because this tension is recognized and accepted, if not always appreciated (physical sciences are always better funded than social sciences and the arts).
It should be no surprise that these same tensions arise in the use of social media tools in education. To me, social software is a tool. How it is used is up to the instructor. Many of the the potential uses of social software actually evolve out of collaborative learning and student-centered learning, on which many books have been written in the past several decades, and from which those of use who teach mostly online have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon.
So anyway, it was a thought provoking interview -- and one that took me away from an encyclopedia article that I am working on, that is already past-due to the editors!
I highly recommend listening to this interview on ITConversations:
- Interview with Gardner Campbell (English Professor, University of Mary Washington) - on John Udel's Interviews with Innovators podcast
- UMWBlogs - mentioned in the interview
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
How & When to Credit Bloggers?
A blogger posts something interesting. The local metro newspaper sees that post, reports a story, and doesn't mention the blog. Should the blogger be credited? What about if the blog post is the first local coverage of the story? Or if the reporter interviewed the blogger?
Those questions and others -- about the media food chain, originality, transparency -- are bouncing around the Twin Cities blogosphere following a Minneapolis Star-Tribune story (http://www.startribune.com/535/story/1584700.html) that apparently owed some inspiration to a local blogger's posts.
On Nov. 29 and 30, Twin Cities blogger Ed Kohler posted (here (http://www.thedeets.com/2007/11/29/targets-undercover-facebook-operation/) and here (http://www.thedeets.com/2007/11/30/more-on-target-rounders/) ) on an emerging story involving Minneapolis-based Target Corp.: Students doing viral marketing for Target on Facebook were asked to conceal their affiliation with the company. Kohler's posts hat-tipped and expanded on posts by University of Georgia senior Rosie Siman , who revealed the concealment on Oct. 8 (http://%20rosiesiman.blogspot.com/2007/10/target.html) . (In an Oct. 9 update (http://rosiesiman.blogspot.com/2007/10/target-update.html) , Siman posted that she'd learned the administrator for the Target Rounders program claims the original request was a "miscommunication.")
A few minutes before midnight on Nov. 30 the Star-Tribune published its version of the story online. They also bannered it across the front page of the Dec. 1 paper. The story quoted Siman, Target and Target's marketing arm. It did not mention Kohler's blog; even though referred to Target being "outed in online blogs."
In response to the newspaper story, Kohler called out (http://www.thedeets.com/2007/12/01/blogger-sees-red-over-startribunes-lack-of-citation/) reporter Jackie Crosby , saying that she had phoned him after his first post and that he had discussed what he knew and provided contact info for some sources. Crosby commented on Kohler's post (http://www.thedeets.com/2007/12/01/blogger-sees-red-over-startribunes-lack-of-citation/#comments) that she appreciated his help, but "Reporters talk to people all the time who don't get quoted every time we write stories. ... We use sources to help us better understand things we don't understand." (Disclosure: I also commented on this post.)
Was Kohler only a source? Local bloggers don't think so. They have objected on Kohler's blog and on a local online daily, the Minnesota Monitor (http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2832) , saying that he furthered the story and brought it to local attention. (Of note, late on the day of Kohler's first post, Crosby put a please-get-in-touch note (http://rosiesiman.blogspot.com/2007/10/target-update.html#c2073477862761650844) on Siman's blog.)
I think that the overarching question (as I commented (http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showComment.do?commentId=10249) on Minnesota Monitor): Sometimes stories are truly original and exclusive, but sometimes they are value-added. Is it time to start being up-front about which is which? Which is ultimately more harmful to credibility: adding a phrase such as "also reported in XX," or hearing from a host of talkative online readers who noticed that we didn't?
Poynter online, E-Media Tidbits Posted by Maryn McKenna
Those questions and others -- about the media food chain, originality, transparency -- are bouncing around the Twin Cities blogosphere following a Minneapolis Star-Tribune story (http://www.startribune.com/535/story/1584700.html) that apparently owed some inspiration to a local blogger's posts.
On Nov. 29 and 30, Twin Cities blogger Ed Kohler posted (here (http://www.thedeets.com/2007/11/29/targets-undercover-facebook-operation/) and here (http://www.thedeets.com/2007/11/30/more-on-target-rounders/) ) on an emerging story involving Minneapolis-based Target Corp.: Students doing viral marketing for Target on Facebook were asked to conceal their affiliation with the company. Kohler's posts hat-tipped and expanded on posts by University of Georgia senior Rosie Siman , who revealed the concealment on Oct. 8 (http://%20rosiesiman.blogspot.com/2007/10/target.html) . (In an Oct. 9 update (http://rosiesiman.blogspot.com/2007/10/target-update.html) , Siman posted that she'd learned the administrator for the Target Rounders program claims the original request was a "miscommunication.")
A few minutes before midnight on Nov. 30 the Star-Tribune published its version of the story online. They also bannered it across the front page of the Dec. 1 paper. The story quoted Siman, Target and Target's marketing arm. It did not mention Kohler's blog; even though referred to Target being "outed in online blogs."
In response to the newspaper story, Kohler called out (http://www.thedeets.com/2007/12/01/blogger-sees-red-over-startribunes-lack-of-citation/) reporter Jackie Crosby , saying that she had phoned him after his first post and that he had discussed what he knew and provided contact info for some sources. Crosby commented on Kohler's post (http://www.thedeets.com/2007/12/01/blogger-sees-red-over-startribunes-lack-of-citation/#comments) that she appreciated his help, but "Reporters talk to people all the time who don't get quoted every time we write stories. ... We use sources to help us better understand things we don't understand." (Disclosure: I also commented on this post.)
Was Kohler only a source? Local bloggers don't think so. They have objected on Kohler's blog and on a local online daily, the Minnesota Monitor (http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2832) , saying that he furthered the story and brought it to local attention. (Of note, late on the day of Kohler's first post, Crosby put a please-get-in-touch note (http://rosiesiman.blogspot.com/2007/10/target-update.html#c2073477862761650844) on Siman's blog.)
I think that the overarching question (as I commented (http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showComment.do?commentId=10249) on Minnesota Monitor): Sometimes stories are truly original and exclusive, but sometimes they are value-added. Is it time to start being up-front about which is which? Which is ultimately more harmful to credibility: adding a phrase such as "also reported in XX," or hearing from a host of talkative online readers who noticed that we didn't?
Poynter online, E-Media Tidbits Posted by Maryn McKenna
Monday, December 03, 2007
Community Development Principles and Strategies for Campus Radio Stations Communique
*/_COMMUNIQUÉ_/*
*/This communiqué emerged from a four-day workshop on Community
Development Principles and Strategies for Campus Radio Stations held at
the Confluence Beach Hotel, Lokoja, Nigeria. The workshop was organized
by the Institute of Media and Society (IMS) and the Open Society
Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA). Participants were representatives of
approved/licensed radio broadcasting stations and awaiting–approval
radio projects in higher education institutions in Nigeria./*
______________________________________________________________________________
We, the participants of the workshop, which was held from 26^th to 29^th
November 2007, make the following observations:
* The decision of the federal government to approve radio stations
for educational institutions portends positive developments for
access to media, communication pluralism and national development
in general.
* The federal government started a policy reform process in 2004,
but the final documents from the process are still being awaited
by the public.
* The regulatory body, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC),
has been working assiduously in creating a conducive regulatory
space for campus radio stations, and community radio stations, in
general.
* The operation of campus stations has immense potentials for the
development of Nigerian academic communities.
* The enthusiasm to establish and operate campus stations is high in
Nigerian educational institutions. But the licence approval
process is not keeping pace with demands from academic communities.
* Authorities of the institutions still require some
capacity-building interactions to facilitate appropriate
management and optimization of benefits of campus radio.
* Continuing regulatory reviews and decisions by the NBC are
throwing up issues which will require continuing engagement with
stakeholders;
* Licence approvals have so far been limited to academic communities
while applications for licences by other types of community such
as rural, sub urban, etc are still waiting.
Following these observations, we make the following recommendations:
1. Educational institutions who have obtained or about to obtain
broadcast licenses should:
(a) recognize the diversity of the campus community in the
management of campus radio stations/projects;
(b) understand and manage campus radio as non-profit and
community development tools;
(c) encourage the campus radio stations to generate
programmes that would be relevant to their primary and secondary
communities;
(d) establish mechanisms that will ensure accountability and
transparency in the day-to-day running of the campus radio stations.
2. The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) should:
(a) Continue and strengthen its productive interactions with
stakeholders to, among other things, ensure that its decisions continue
to be in consonance with international best practices and that
regulatory information on campus radio management is available to
stakeholders on a timely basis;
(b) create public awareness on the need for citizens to
monitor professional performance of radio stations and to channel
complaints for regulatory actions;
(c) discontinue the regulatory provision which requires
campus stations to pay 2.5% of their annual turnover to the NBC;
(d) standardize the allocation of transmitter power between
100 watts to 500 watts, depending on the physical, geographical and
other characteristics of the institutions;
(e) approve the re-use of frequencies (among other options)
to address the needs of multi-campus institutions and those with
Distance Learning mandates.
3. The Federal Government should:
(a) Expedite action on the pending policy reform processes.
In this connection, the National Mass Communication Policy, the
Community Radio Policy and the National Frequency Spectrum Management
Policy should be released, while the review bill on the National
Broadcasting Commission (NBC) Act should be re-introduced in the
National Assembly.
(b) Fast track the approval of all pending licenses
applications for campuses and other types of communities, in line with
global trends.
4. The Nigeria Community Radio Coalition (CRC) should:
(a) Develop a strong framework for self-regulation for
campus radio stations;
(b) Work towards creating campus radio networking in areas
of training, content sharing, programme syndication and extending
collaboration with other tiers of broadcasting;
(c) Partner closely with the National Broadcasting
Commission (NBC) to realize the success of campus radios
*Issued in Lokoja, Nigeria, this 29^th day of November, 2007.*
*/This communiqué emerged from a four-day workshop on Community
Development Principles and Strategies for Campus Radio Stations held at
the Confluence Beach Hotel, Lokoja, Nigeria. The workshop was organized
by the Institute of Media and Society (IMS) and the Open Society
Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA). Participants were representatives of
approved/licensed radio broadcasting stations and awaiting–approval
radio projects in higher education institutions in Nigeria./*
______________________________________________________________________________
We, the participants of the workshop, which was held from 26^th to 29^th
November 2007, make the following observations:
* The decision of the federal government to approve radio stations
for educational institutions portends positive developments for
access to media, communication pluralism and national development
in general.
* The federal government started a policy reform process in 2004,
but the final documents from the process are still being awaited
by the public.
* The regulatory body, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC),
has been working assiduously in creating a conducive regulatory
space for campus radio stations, and community radio stations, in
general.
* The operation of campus stations has immense potentials for the
development of Nigerian academic communities.
* The enthusiasm to establish and operate campus stations is high in
Nigerian educational institutions. But the licence approval
process is not keeping pace with demands from academic communities.
* Authorities of the institutions still require some
capacity-building interactions to facilitate appropriate
management and optimization of benefits of campus radio.
* Continuing regulatory reviews and decisions by the NBC are
throwing up issues which will require continuing engagement with
stakeholders;
* Licence approvals have so far been limited to academic communities
while applications for licences by other types of community such
as rural, sub urban, etc are still waiting.
Following these observations, we make the following recommendations:
1. Educational institutions who have obtained or about to obtain
broadcast licenses should:
(a) recognize the diversity of the campus community in the
management of campus radio stations/projects;
(b) understand and manage campus radio as non-profit and
community development tools;
(c) encourage the campus radio stations to generate
programmes that would be relevant to their primary and secondary
communities;
(d) establish mechanisms that will ensure accountability and
transparency in the day-to-day running of the campus radio stations.
2. The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) should:
(a) Continue and strengthen its productive interactions with
stakeholders to, among other things, ensure that its decisions continue
to be in consonance with international best practices and that
regulatory information on campus radio management is available to
stakeholders on a timely basis;
(b) create public awareness on the need for citizens to
monitor professional performance of radio stations and to channel
complaints for regulatory actions;
(c) discontinue the regulatory provision which requires
campus stations to pay 2.5% of their annual turnover to the NBC;
(d) standardize the allocation of transmitter power between
100 watts to 500 watts, depending on the physical, geographical and
other characteristics of the institutions;
(e) approve the re-use of frequencies (among other options)
to address the needs of multi-campus institutions and those with
Distance Learning mandates.
3. The Federal Government should:
(a) Expedite action on the pending policy reform processes.
In this connection, the National Mass Communication Policy, the
Community Radio Policy and the National Frequency Spectrum Management
Policy should be released, while the review bill on the National
Broadcasting Commission (NBC) Act should be re-introduced in the
National Assembly.
(b) Fast track the approval of all pending licenses
applications for campuses and other types of communities, in line with
global trends.
4. The Nigeria Community Radio Coalition (CRC) should:
(a) Develop a strong framework for self-regulation for
campus radio stations;
(b) Work towards creating campus radio networking in areas
of training, content sharing, programme syndication and extending
collaboration with other tiers of broadcasting;
(c) Partner closely with the National Broadcasting
Commission (NBC) to realize the success of campus radios
*Issued in Lokoja, Nigeria, this 29^th day of November, 2007.*
Sunday, December 02, 2007
None of the papers have grasped the fundamental difference between the internet and print- Accessibility 2.0 Project
Richard Warren is technical manager with Userite Website Auditing, here he comments on the results of the Journalism.co.uk Accessibility 2.0 project.
None of the eight newspapers reviewed have grasped the fundamental difference between the internet and the print media. All have tried to replicate the look of their printed version and just added a confusing set of navigation menus.
The result is a collection of cluttered pages that are not very user-friendly and make little, or no, concession to disabled users.
The Guardian and the Daily Mail make statements that they are attempting to meet accessibility guidelines, which at least shows that they have given the issue some thought.
A common problem found by your reviewer was the need to listen to an extensive list of links (navigation menus) and other page furniture before getting to the main content of the page. This is because Jaws (and other assistive software) reads the page in the order in which it is written.
The sighted user has his or her attention drawn to the main story in the middle of the page by the colour and size of the headline font and associated images.
The blind user has to listen whilst Jaws works it way through all the menus, advertisements and other clutter on the page.
To a lesser extent sighted people who cannot use a mouse accurately share this problem. If they want to use a link in the main story they have to use the keyboard tab key to jump through all the preceding navigation links before they get to the main story.
There is an easy solution to the above problem, which is to introduce a new link at the top of the page that takes the user directly to the main page content thus avoiding all the navigation links.
This is called a skip links option and is very easy to implement. The Mirror, Daily Mail and Guardian each provide this option with varying degrees of success.
The Guardian and Daily Mail even try to provide a selection of shortcut keys that, fortunately, your reviewer did not test.
This technology is incorrectly implemented on both newspapers and could cause users to save unwanted files on their computer rather than navigate to the required page.
Given the above it is not surprising that your reviewer frequently selected links that did not do what he expected. On the Independent he assumed that a link to 'Front Pages' would present him with today's headlines.
He had no way of knowing that this particular link was a submenu of another link so unfortunately he got a montage of the printed front pages as displayed on newstands.
As screen readers cannot read images, this was of little use. Your reviewer also missed some content because (sensibly) he did not waste time following links that merely said 'click here'. The sighted reader can guess what a link will do by its context, but a blind user is largely dependent upon the actual text used for the link.
A second, common problem found by your reviewer was the use of pop-up windows. These are annoying for sighted readers, but they can be a disaster for the blind who often have no way of knowing that the focus of Jaws has changed from the main page to a pop-up window.
As a result the reviewer tried to continue navigating as if he was on the original page and got totally lost.
One advantage that your blind reviewer had is that Jaws does read out all the navigation links on a page, including those presented as pull-down menus (for example the Independent).
Sighted people with limited mouse control are unable to select accurately from these pull-down menus as the cursor frequently losses its focus on the menu, which then closes before they have had time to select the desired option.
Videos and blogs are newer technologies so the accessibility functions might not be as well known. However this is still not an excuse for not trying.
Videos should have an alternative transcript of the associated audio available for deaf people to read and an alternative text description of the scene/s to enable blind people to put the audio into context.
A good role model for blogs is the BBC, probably because it is not cluttered up with adverts, but it is still worth using as a benchmark.
Only the Daily Mail provided a text-only version of its website for blind and visually impaired people, but the link to this was so far down the page that blind people may fail to find it (as did your reviewer).
However, the provision of text-only pages is not the only, or indeed the most desirable, solution for accessibility.
The newspapers tested could easily apply the W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WAIG) to their existing content, make better use of their style sheets so that important content is coded near the top of the page and use the HTML codes for headings and lists in a proper manner.
This would avoid a number of the problems your reviewer encountered.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/6/articles/530811.php
None of the eight newspapers reviewed have grasped the fundamental difference between the internet and the print media. All have tried to replicate the look of their printed version and just added a confusing set of navigation menus.
The result is a collection of cluttered pages that are not very user-friendly and make little, or no, concession to disabled users.
The Guardian and the Daily Mail make statements that they are attempting to meet accessibility guidelines, which at least shows that they have given the issue some thought.
A common problem found by your reviewer was the need to listen to an extensive list of links (navigation menus) and other page furniture before getting to the main content of the page. This is because Jaws (and other assistive software) reads the page in the order in which it is written.
The sighted user has his or her attention drawn to the main story in the middle of the page by the colour and size of the headline font and associated images.
The blind user has to listen whilst Jaws works it way through all the menus, advertisements and other clutter on the page.
To a lesser extent sighted people who cannot use a mouse accurately share this problem. If they want to use a link in the main story they have to use the keyboard tab key to jump through all the preceding navigation links before they get to the main story.
There is an easy solution to the above problem, which is to introduce a new link at the top of the page that takes the user directly to the main page content thus avoiding all the navigation links.
This is called a skip links option and is very easy to implement. The Mirror, Daily Mail and Guardian each provide this option with varying degrees of success.
The Guardian and Daily Mail even try to provide a selection of shortcut keys that, fortunately, your reviewer did not test.
This technology is incorrectly implemented on both newspapers and could cause users to save unwanted files on their computer rather than navigate to the required page.
Given the above it is not surprising that your reviewer frequently selected links that did not do what he expected. On the Independent he assumed that a link to 'Front Pages' would present him with today's headlines.
He had no way of knowing that this particular link was a submenu of another link so unfortunately he got a montage of the printed front pages as displayed on newstands.
As screen readers cannot read images, this was of little use. Your reviewer also missed some content because (sensibly) he did not waste time following links that merely said 'click here'. The sighted reader can guess what a link will do by its context, but a blind user is largely dependent upon the actual text used for the link.
A second, common problem found by your reviewer was the use of pop-up windows. These are annoying for sighted readers, but they can be a disaster for the blind who often have no way of knowing that the focus of Jaws has changed from the main page to a pop-up window.
As a result the reviewer tried to continue navigating as if he was on the original page and got totally lost.
One advantage that your blind reviewer had is that Jaws does read out all the navigation links on a page, including those presented as pull-down menus (for example the Independent).
Sighted people with limited mouse control are unable to select accurately from these pull-down menus as the cursor frequently losses its focus on the menu, which then closes before they have had time to select the desired option.
Videos and blogs are newer technologies so the accessibility functions might not be as well known. However this is still not an excuse for not trying.
Videos should have an alternative transcript of the associated audio available for deaf people to read and an alternative text description of the scene/s to enable blind people to put the audio into context.
A good role model for blogs is the BBC, probably because it is not cluttered up with adverts, but it is still worth using as a benchmark.
Only the Daily Mail provided a text-only version of its website for blind and visually impaired people, but the link to this was so far down the page that blind people may fail to find it (as did your reviewer).
However, the provision of text-only pages is not the only, or indeed the most desirable, solution for accessibility.
The newspapers tested could easily apply the W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WAIG) to their existing content, make better use of their style sheets so that important content is coded near the top of the page and use the HTML codes for headings and lists in a proper manner.
This would avoid a number of the problems your reviewer encountered.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/6/articles/530811.php
Monday, November 26, 2007
User-generated breaking news and open source reporting website launched
Finnish news publisher Sanoma Digital has launched a user-generated news website that also uses an open-source journalism platform to gather material for a series of weekly freesheet newspapers.
Launched last month, Vartti.fi is a fledgling project that allows users to break news by uploading multimedia content direct to the site.
Vartti editors also publish story threads on the website and ask for multimedia submissions from the readers - setting them deadlines for their contributions.
The stories are then published in a series of ultra-local weekly papers distributed in and around the Helsinki area.
"With the Jokela High School shooting we had one of the first pictures in Finland [from the scene] which was taken on a mobile phone, we then sold it on to publications in Norway and Sweden," Janne Kaijarvi, editor-in-chief of Vartti, told Journalism.co.uk.
The site also broke news about a train fire in Helsinki, Kaijarvi added, with reporters first finding out about the incident when a passenger uploaded a picture to the site from inside the train.
Launched last month, Vartti.fi is a fledgling project that allows users to break news by uploading multimedia content direct to the site.
Vartti editors also publish story threads on the website and ask for multimedia submissions from the readers - setting them deadlines for their contributions.
The stories are then published in a series of ultra-local weekly papers distributed in and around the Helsinki area.
"With the Jokela High School shooting we had one of the first pictures in Finland [from the scene] which was taken on a mobile phone, we then sold it on to publications in Norway and Sweden," Janne Kaijarvi, editor-in-chief of Vartti, told Journalism.co.uk.
The site also broke news about a train fire in Helsinki, Kaijarvi added, with reporters first finding out about the incident when a passenger uploaded a picture to the site from inside the train.
Contributors are paid for pictures that make it into the print edition, usually in the region of 50 euros, for which Sanoma then takes the copyright.
However, the contributor for the Jokela picture was paid significantly more, Kaijarvi added. Sanoma publishes seven local editions of Vartti in Helsinki and a further seven in other areas.
However, the contributor for the Jokela picture was paid significantly more, Kaijarvi added. Sanoma publishes seven local editions of Vartti in Helsinki and a further seven in other areas.
The papers in the Finnish capital serve catchments which populations that range from 60,000 to 100,000, with each paper having a fulltime editor.
Developers claim that 15 to 20 per cent of each paper is user-generated content. A figure they hope will be nearer 50/50 by next year.
"The market for these kind of news sites in Finland is very tough, we have tabloids which are very strong so we are trying to learn all the time what different approaches people may want," Kaijarvi added.
"By the end of next year the site might be totally different from what it is like now as we develop more and more user-generated content."
Vartti.fi is just one of five news site start-ups which have been launched Sanoma Digital, one of the largest Nordic publishers, since the start of the year.
Developers claim that 15 to 20 per cent of each paper is user-generated content. A figure they hope will be nearer 50/50 by next year.
"The market for these kind of news sites in Finland is very tough, we have tabloids which are very strong so we are trying to learn all the time what different approaches people may want," Kaijarvi added.
"By the end of next year the site might be totally different from what it is like now as we develop more and more user-generated content."
Vartti.fi is just one of five news site start-ups which have been launched Sanoma Digital, one of the largest Nordic publishers, since the start of the year.
Friday, November 23, 2007
blogging and vlogging an event
Do you want to learn more about blogging or video blogging at events?
Read Joitske Hulseboach excellent blog posting on this
See full text below
happy reading
Editor- penplusbytes
Read Joitske Hulseboach excellent blog posting on this
See full text below
happy reading
Editor- penplusbytes
Blogging and vlogging an event
For a question by Simone Staiger on the knowledge management for development list, Peter Ballantyne, Chris Addison and myself compiled our experiences so far.
1. For the euforic annual meeting this year we tried to capture a lot of the discussions with blogs and short videos. see the Euforic AGM blog where we published a whole bunch of stuff. we started drafting stories on different sessions, by the end several participants were doing their own stories. At the feed you can also see some stories published by off our site about the conference. Doing videos has transformed our approach.
2. At the brusselsbriefings blog you can see where we use a more structured approach and a blog as the primary advertizing and reporting mechanism for, in this case, a series of short meetings. The blogging really changes the way the meeting is reported. Instead of a heavy policy paper we ended up with a four page newsletter format closely based on the blog. Interestingly the organisers offerred no comments on the blog postings but the moment the same text was in word it was closely edited. The video played an important role in the last
brussels briefing in the dynamic of the meeting itself. We were able to incorporate over 20 blips, many from non-speakers. As a result many people felt their views were taken seriously by the organisers. It also gives the meeting a buzz, we often get people thanking us for the
opportunity to talk to video.
3. We think it is VERY worthwhile to blog an event. Even if it just adds an extra documenting element and gets people used to the idea that others maybe listening. There is a difference in whether you want to capture the live presentations, or rather the voices of others who are
listening/reacting. You may have an aim of changing the conversations if you reach out to capturing other voices than the plenary speakers.
4. the blog (or site) MUST have feeds, and have the feeds on the sites of others [and get people to subscribe to them]. i think you want people to blog your conference and its blog on other blogs or platforms. Before, during and after. establishing a conference tag to be used
across different platforms may also be good. we need to go where the 'audiences' are and not expect them to come to us. I think the blog needs to have quite 'instant' stories, giving atmosphere and opinion as well as text and presentations. so the feeds change and it's worth
coming back.
5. However, a blog has a normal 'pace' and blogging an event can be overwhelming for the readers. Personally I still have 105 unread blogposts on the web2fordev blog. Suddenly
you are overwhelmed with information. ...So there could be other alternative ways of displaying
things too. For inspiration, here's an example of a vlogged event from rocket boom using a site which is very attractive. Erwin Blom wrote a great blogpost in Dutch (important language for all to know :). He writes about an aggregator page for an event. They asked people who were
interested to use twitter, youtube etc. to help cover the event. And aggregated all the content on a site of the event: Picnic07. They discovered (as we did) that you need a UNIQUE tag, picnic will also be used by anybody picnicking in 2007. You can have a look at the site, it's in english.
6. On tools: One thing that blogger allows (but not wordpress) is to be able to post directly to draft by email. This would make my job easier as I write posts in the meeting on my phone and email them for editing. It is also much more difficult to have relaxed blips if you use a tripod for the camera. We use small digital cameras rather than video cameras and talk to the person over the top of the camera. A little camera shake can add to the immediacy of the blip. (See Mabel
on euforic.blip.tv)
7. The experience of following meetings remotely. Although I don't have the stats for web2fordev, the anecdotal evidence was that very few followed the event live, and I only had direct feedback at the meeting from one person, watching the videos has been higher than I expected (over 100views for individual items) but the impact is far higher as videos are shown at other meetings and we show at individual training sessions.
Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani have compiled a tips for conference bloggers guide
Question for you: how do you as an online viewer experience an event from far? What makes it easier to connect? And how do you use the online documentation of events you have attended?
blogging and vlogging an event
Colleagues,
Do you want to learn more about blogging or video blogging at events?
Read Joitske Hulseboach excellent blog posting on this
See full text below
happy reading
Editor- penplusbytes
Do you want to learn more about blogging or video blogging at events?
Read Joitske Hulseboach excellent blog posting on this
See full text below
happy reading
Editor- penplusbytes
Blogging and vlogging an event
For a question by Simone Staiger on the knowledge management for development list, Peter Ballantyne, Chris Addison and myself compiled our experiences so far.
1. For the euforic annual meeting this year we tried to capture a lot of the discussions with blogs and short videos. see the Euforic AGM blog where we published a whole bunch of stuff. we started drafting stories on different sessions, by the end several participants were doing their own stories. At the feed you can also see some stories published by off our site about the conference. Doing videos has transformed our approach.
2. At the brusselsbriefings blog you can see where we use a more structured approach and a blog as the primary advertizing and reporting mechanism for, in this case, a series of short meetings. The blogging really changes the way the meeting is reported. Instead of a heavy policy paper we ended up with a four page newsletter format closely based on the blog. Interestingly the organisers offerred no comments on the blog postings but the moment the same text was in word it was closely edited. The video played an important role in the last
brussels briefing in the dynamic of the meeting itself. We were able to incorporate over 20 blips, many from non-speakers. As a result many people felt their views were taken seriously by the organisers. It also gives the meeting a buzz, we often get people thanking us for the
opportunity to talk to video.
3. We think it is VERY worthwhile to blog an event. Even if it just adds an extra documenting element and gets people used to the idea that others maybe listening. There is a difference in whether you want to capture the live presentations, or rather the voices of others who are
listening/reacting. You may have an aim of changing the conversations if you reach out to capturing other voices than the plenary speakers.
4. the blog (or site) MUST have feeds, and have the feeds on the sites of others [and get people to subscribe to them]. i think you want people to blog your conference and its blog on other blogs or platforms. Before, during and after. establishing a conference tag to be used
across different platforms may also be good. we need to go where the 'audiences' are and not expect them to come to us. I think the blog needs to have quite 'instant' stories, giving atmosphere and opinion as well as text and presentations. so the feeds change and it's worth
coming back.
5. However, a blog has a normal 'pace' and blogging an event can be overwhelming for the readers. Personally I still have 105 unread blogposts on the web2fordev blog. Suddenly
you are overwhelmed with information. ...So there could be other alternative ways of displaying
things too. For inspiration, here's an example of a vlogged event from rocket boom using a site which is very attractive. Erwin Blom wrote a great blogpost in Dutch (important language for all to know :). He writes about an aggregator page for an event. They asked people who were
interested to use twitter, youtube etc. to help cover the event. And aggregated all the content on a site of the event: Picnic07. They discovered (as we did) that you need a UNIQUE tag, picnic will also be used by anybody picnicking in 2007. You can have a look at the site, it's in english.
6. On tools: One thing that blogger allows (but not wordpress) is to be able to post directly to draft by email. This would make my job easier as I write posts in the meeting on my phone and email them for editing. It is also much more difficult to have relaxed blips if you use a tripod for the camera. We use small digital cameras rather than video cameras and talk to the person over the top of the camera. A little camera shake can add to the immediacy of the blip. (See Mabel
on euforic.blip.tv)
7. The experience of following meetings remotely. Although I don't have the stats for web2fordev, the anecdotal evidence was that very few followed the event live, and I only had direct feedback at the meeting from one person, watching the videos has been higher than I expected (over 100views for individual items) but the impact is far higher as videos are shown at other meetings and we show at individual training sessions.
Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani have compiled a tips for conference bloggers guide
Question for you: how do you as an online viewer experience an event from far? What makes it easier to connect? And how do you use the online documentation of events you have attended?
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Let's Hope Kindle Is Only Chapter One
Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos has done the seemingly impossible: He's created a piece of technology more bookish than a book.
The Kindle, launched Monday, is a slim handheld device that holds around 200 novels' worth of words and--using electronic
ink technology that physically arranges a dark chemical under the screen--displays them so crisply that the text is only
barely distinguishable from ink on a page. Unlike the Sony Reader, a device launched about a year ago that uses the same
e-ink display technology, the Kindle connects to Amazon's servers with an EVDO cellular connection to download books
from a stock of more than 90,000 titles, and can pull an entire novel's text directly onto the device wirelessly in
less than a minute.
Weighing just over 10 ounces and displaying text on a 6-inch diagonal screen, the Kindle does a remarkable job of
reproducing the feel of a book. The passive display technology produces no light, so a two-hour charge of its
battery lasts for 30 hours of uninterrupted reading. In fact, it only takes thumbing through a few digital pages of a novel
to forget that you're using a newfangled gadget and become completely immersed in its content. The goal, says Bezos, was
to create a device that "disappears completely and lets you enter the author's world."
The Kindle, launched Monday, is a slim handheld device that holds around 200 novels' worth of words and--using electronic
ink technology that physically arranges a dark chemical under the screen--displays them so crisply that the text is only
barely distinguishable from ink on a page. Unlike the Sony Reader, a device launched about a year ago that uses the same
e-ink display technology, the Kindle connects to Amazon's servers with an EVDO cellular connection to download books
from a stock of more than 90,000 titles, and can pull an entire novel's text directly onto the device wirelessly in
less than a minute.
Weighing just over 10 ounces and displaying text on a 6-inch diagonal screen, the Kindle does a remarkable job of
reproducing the feel of a book. The passive display technology produces no light, so a two-hour charge of its
battery lasts for 30 hours of uninterrupted reading. In fact, it only takes thumbing through a few digital pages of a novel
to forget that you're using a newfangled gadget and become completely immersed in its content. The goal, says Bezos, was
to create a device that "disappears completely and lets you enter the author's world."
watch kindle video
But from a design perspective, the sooner the Kindle "disappears" the better. Amazon's reader is in many
ways the anti-iPhone. It does one thing very well: downloading and displaying text. Unlike Steve Jobs' wondertoy,
But from a design perspective, the sooner the Kindle "disappears" the better. Amazon's reader is in many
ways the anti-iPhone. It does one thing very well: downloading and displaying text. Unlike Steve Jobs' wondertoy,
it's not likely to become a status symbol for hip digerati.
The Kindle is an off-white, asymmetrical tablet. Its screen is entirely gray-scale and never gets brighter than a dingy
gray; images look as if they were printed in a Depression-era newspaper. Menus are navigated with a clunky up-and-down
click-wheel, and when they load, the screen flashes black like a TI-82 calculator.
The Kindle's business model has another set of problems. To avoid a monthly subscription fee, Amazon is charging a wallet-
taxing $399 for the device--then $9.99 or so for every book that you download from Amazon's "Kindle Store." Publishers
seem reluctant to put their entire stock into the discounted e-book format. Bezos brags that 101 of the 112 current New
York Times best sellers and new releases are available for download. Just don't ask about best sellers from past years.
I went searching for Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and came back with only I Am Charlotte Simmons.
For content that's already available on the Web, the Kindle is even less practical. A variety of magazines, including
Slate, The Atlantic Monthly, Time and Forbes are available by subscription or individual purchase: for instance, $1.50 will
get you a single issue of Forbes, or $2.49 will get you a month's subscription.
The Kindle is an off-white, asymmetrical tablet. Its screen is entirely gray-scale and never gets brighter than a dingy
gray; images look as if they were printed in a Depression-era newspaper. Menus are navigated with a clunky up-and-down
click-wheel, and when they load, the screen flashes black like a TI-82 calculator.
The Kindle's business model has another set of problems. To avoid a monthly subscription fee, Amazon is charging a wallet-
taxing $399 for the device--then $9.99 or so for every book that you download from Amazon's "Kindle Store." Publishers
seem reluctant to put their entire stock into the discounted e-book format. Bezos brags that 101 of the 112 current New
York Times best sellers and new releases are available for download. Just don't ask about best sellers from past years.
I went searching for Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and came back with only I Am Charlotte Simmons.
For content that's already available on the Web, the Kindle is even less practical. A variety of magazines, including
Slate, The Atlantic Monthly, Time and Forbes are available by subscription or individual purchase: for instance, $1.50 will
get you a single issue of Forbes, or $2.49 will get you a month's subscription.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Washington Post collective wisdom on blogging in the newsroom
With more than 50 blogs on its Web site, washingtonpost.com and their counterparts at the Washington Post have learned quite a bit about blogging. And lucky us, they've decided to package their collective wisdom in a single memo on this ever-evolving news art.
If you want to set standards of blogging in your newsroom, this article is a good read
Blogging at The Washington Post
All blogs should draw on our principles for Washington Post journalism on the web, including meeting our standards of accuracy and fairness and rules for expressing personal opinions.
WHAT WORKS?
All blogs should draw on our principles for Washington Post journalism on the web, including meeting our standards of accuracy and fairness and rules for expressing personal opinions.
WHAT WORKS?
- A news column/opinion blog with two or a single contributor. Examples: Raw Fisher, White House Watch.
- A breaking news or event-driven blog that can accept many contributors but should generally be supervised by one editor. Example: The Trail.
- A blog oriented around a relatively defined issue with two or a single contributor. Example: soccerinsider...
- Blogs with voice, a consistently strong (even provocative) writing tone. Example: Achenblog.
- Blogs with active editors. Guidance is important and all blogs need editing and benefit from the back-and-forth between the author and an editor.
- Group blogs that lack focus.
- Blogs that lack voice.
- Blogs that are not updated (several times a week AT LEAST).
- Grab-bag blogs that are a dumping ground for notes that will not make the paper.
TYPES OF BLOGS
Breaking News Blogs. Created for a big breaking news story, such as the Virginia Tech shootings. One editor should supervise the blog content and another editor the coverage in the newspaper. The two editors should be in constant communication with each other and the corresponding wpni editor.
Event Related Blogs. Created for a one-time or periodic event, such as the Maryland Legislature or the ACC Tournament. An editor should be assigned to oversee the blog in collaboration with the editing of the newspaper's coverage.
Subject Blogs. These are long-term blogs around a clearly specified topic. In most cases the number of contributors should be limited to fewer than three reporters, with exceptions such as The Trail.
BLOG LAUNCH "9 POINT CHECKLIST"
- What's the blog's topic or what event will it cover? Blogs with relatively narrow topics do better than loosely defined blogs. Either way, the topic of each blog needs to be clearly defined. A strong personality or voice can serve a similar defining function (Achenblog, the Kurtz media summary).
- What's the competition, and how will your blog win? You're unlikely to find many topics that someone else isn't already blogging about. Identify the competition and tell us why your blog is special.
- How will your blog supplement what appears in print and online? Blogs on washingtonpost.com must contain original material – newsworthy reporting, useful information and/or strong commentary. Some of the best blogs have a live and fresh feel precisely because they take readers inside the news. Outline how your blog will relate to existing print and online features.
- How often will it be updated, and at what time(s) of day? Blogs need to be updated at least once each weekday.
- Who will write your blog? Blogs usually benefit from a distinctive voice. At the same time, reporters can't offer personal opinions on a blog in a way that would not be acceptable in the newspaper (critics exempted, for example). Proposals should include at least three "test posts" to judge whether the writer can produce posts with effective and acceptable voice.
- Who will edit your blog? Blog items need to be edited. Your proposal needs to say who will edit blog copy.
- Who will moderate comments on your blog? User comments typically account for 10-25% of a blog's traffic and are a key to success – but need to be moderated. Who will review comments that appear to violate the site's discussion policy and delete them if necessary?
- How and where will your blog be promoted? Successful blogs typically "live off the land" by attracting bloggers who link to them and a loyal audience. But promotion on washingtonpost.com and in print is helpful, particularly at launch. Work with appropriate editors on both sides on a realistic promotion plan.
- What names and "taglines" do you propose for your blog? Since many names are already taken, you should include several possibilities in your proposal, and do a quick web check to make sure none is in use.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Accessibility 2.0: How accessible are UK newspaper website
A report published earlier this year looking at website accessibility claimed that the UK's 10 most widely read newspaper websites are 'effectively barring millions of disabled people from obtaining up-to-date information' by failing to meet minimum standards.AbilityNet, a charity that helps disabled people with their ICT needs, published its second State of the eNation report, detailing how it believed the online editions of those leading papers had failed to meet the criteria it claimed was required to facilitate access for users with visual impairment, dyslexia or a physical disability.
A Disability Rights Commission (DRC) review of 1,000 websites in 2004 found that 81 per cent failed to meet even the most basic standards of accessibility for the disabled.
In many cases, it seems, instead of liberating disabled people by providing greater access to news than ever before, the internet is proving as limiting a medium as the printed page.
Journalism.co.uk decided to conduct its own, first-hand assessment by asking members of the blind and visually impaired community to give us their views on the accessibility and ease of use of the websites of several leading UK newspaper websites.
Over the course of the next week Journalism.co.uk will publish the findings from its assessments of:
The Guardian
The Daily Telegraph
The Times
The Independent
The Sun
The Mirror
The Express
The Daily Mail
To conduct the study, Journalism.co.uk enlisted the help of retired research worker John Allnutt, whose bilateral retina blastoma rendered him blind for most of his life.
In addition to John's assessment, pupils from Dorton College of Further Education provided a further perspective.
(Read full profiles of our volunteers.)
The intention of the study was to evaluate what impact new media is having - positive and negative - on those with a keen interest in the news but an impairment that prevents them accessing it in a way millions of other Britons take for granted.
Despite the obvious benefits for users, good accessibility has advantages for publishers, including higher ranking and more matches from search engines, which can more accurately index the content.
Yet these benefits are overlooked by many of the UK's major newspapers in their online strategies. Our study found that only the Guardian and the Daily Mail have sections dedicated to accessibility on their sites. In addition, no newspaper site has yet earned an RNIB 'See It Right' logo, awarded for excellence in this area.
Usability experts told Journalism.co.uk that blind and visually impaired users tend to approach news sites in an inefficient way, persevering with the difficulties they find and working out 'best fit' ways to surf. We wanted to test this theory and see what other problems arose.
We took advice from behavioural research consultancy Bunnyfoot on the common difficulties visually impaired and blind users faced when interacting with websites and advised us on the criteria for our test.
Accordingly, we asked users for their general impressions of each site, then to attempt to access the lead story and then navigate to a news story of interest to them away from the home page.
We then asked them to locate and play a piece of audio or video, use the search function to track down a story, find the blogs or user-interaction sections - and interact with them, and locate the accessibility section.
To conclude our study of each newspaper site, we asked an expert on accessible design to comment on our findings and the paper in question to also respond.
Tags for this article: accessibility, blind, visual impairment
http://www.journalism.co.uk/5/articles/530590.phpSaturday, November 17, 2007
Correspondent TV
Correspondent.tv a new platform for independent TV journalism is now live, introducing some major innovations and changes. According to correspondent tv their overall aim is to create a global TV journalist network that connects you and other professionals worldwide to help deliver independent TV journalism.
(1) Correspondent.tv's new Video Portal has been introduced to help you showcase your work and so maximise your exposure to more broadcasters worldwide. Our aim here is to offer TV journalists a unique means of(2) Correspondent.tv's enhanced online Journalist Network aims to provide a single point of contact for the global TV journalism community. We have therefore introduced some changes to the platform so that all the players (TV reporters, freelancers, journalists, service providers [crew, edit, play out, satellite trucks, producers, technicians], as well asTV Broadcasters and Media Organisations) can make contacts, discuss and communicate securely.
Friday, November 16, 2007
BBC News reorganises into multidmedia newsroom
by Peter Horrocks, head of BBC Newsroom
As a consumer of BBC News on the web, do you expect it to cover the same stories as BBC News on TV and radio? I ask, because today is a very big day for BBC News which has now been re-organised in a fully multimedia fashion. As the head of the new multimedia newsroom that is responsible for our core output on web, TV and radio, I want to know about our audiences' preferences in the world of multi-platform news.
I hope you agree, if you use our services on a number of platforms, that the BBC has a generally strong reputation in all media. But up until today the editorial decisions have been taken separately in three different departments – Radio News, News Interactive and TV News. Now those proud departments are no more. Instead we have a new system that allows the great strengths of each of our editorial areas to create an even stronger editorial proposition. We have re-organised into two main departments responsible for our audience-facing services:
• The multimedia newsroom comprises the BBC News website, the radio summaries and bulletins (except for Radio 1), BBC World Service news, BBC News 24, BBC World, BBC Breakfast and the bulletins on BBC One at 1, 6 and 10, among others.
• The multimedia programmes departments contains Five Live, the Today programme, World at One, Newsbeat, Newshour, Newsnight, Panorama, the Andrew Marr Show, Hardtalk and a wide range of other diverse programmes.
This new structure will help us to be more efficient and so save money to invest in improvements to BBC News. We will be putting more into on-demand news – for instance developing content for new platforms such as mobile and IPTV; increasing personalisation and providing purpose-made audio/video for the web.
The new organisation also allows for our journalism to be used more dynamically across our three main existing platforms – web, radio and TV. But I'd like to know how far we should go with this. So for web users such as you I'd like to know if you mainly look to BBC News for an in-depth approach on the day's most significant stories, or do you value more diversity in the range of subjects we cover?
If we drive our stories more across platforms you will see greater consistency within BBC News – with similar editorial judgments being made across different services. We could concentrate resources on developing the most significant and original stories in greater depth. However the downside could be a narrowing of the range of stories we cover, with less coverage that is distinctive and tailored for each medium.
Of course, I'm painting a somewhat polarised view of the strategic choices available to us. In reality we will choose a balance between these two extremes. But it would be helpful to know your broad preference– should we move in a more coherent or a more diversified direction in our core news?
For thousands of journalists in BBC News, today is the start of one of the biggest changes we have ever been through. Many of the people who bring you the news are uncertain of their own futures, but I know that all of us are determined to improve further the service we bring to you. BBC News wants to be the most successful multimedia news operation in the world – competing with and excelling against the best newspapers, broadcasters and news aggregators on the globe. Your comments will give us some indications to help us do that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/11/multimedia_news.html
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Workshop on Medias and ICT issues in West Africa :new journalism, new technologies, improved governance
Dakar (Senegal), December 13th to 15th, 2007
Call for productions – Grants for participation
Deadline : November 21st , 2007
THE WORKSHOP
The Panos Institute West Africa (PIWA, http://www.panos.ao.org), through its
"Uses and Policies of Digital Technology" Programme (ICT Programme),
will organize on December 13th to 15th, 2007, in Dakar, Senegal, a
workshop entitled "3rd Regional workshop on Medias and ICT issues in
West Africa : New journalism, new technologies, improved governance".
This workshop aims at:
- promoting uses of blogs and new ICT tools by medias for improved
governance in West Africa
- strengthening reporting on ICT in the region
The workshop will give the opportunity to assess the use of blogs by
medias and citizens in west Africa and to discuss about blogs and
"citizen journalism".
Apart from discussions, practical sessions will help participants learn
or strengthen knowledge on the use of blogs, podcasts, and new digital
communication applications.
About 40 people, including 30 journalists from West Africa (radio,
written press, English and French speaking countries) and some delegates
from media and ICT organizations will attend the event.
The workshop is organized within the framework of the West African
Portal (or Haayo) Project funded by Osiwa and of other PIWA projects
funded by Freevoice.
18 GRANTS TO SUPPORT JOURNALIST PARTICIPATION
To enlarge participation in the workshop, PIWA will provide 18 grants
for participation for selected African journalists. Priority will be
given to journalists from English speaking countries and to radio
journalists.
The grant covers expenses in relation to the participation in the
meeting except insurance. It costs in particular:
- international travel (air ticket from your country to Dakar, Senegal –
economy class),
- food and accommodation,
- Shuttle from and to airport.
How to apply:
To apply for the grants, journalists need to send either an article of
3, 000 letters or a 5 mn audio programme (such as reports, but not mere
interviews) in mp3 or ogg format. The article or audio production may
have been published in the past (not more that 6 months ago) or may be
original (produced for this call).
This production will deal with one of the 2 following themes:
- uses of blogs in Africa
- ICTs and local/democratic governance
PIWA will select best articles or audio programmes. Authors of selected
articles will received the grant for participation in the workshop.
APPLICATIONS AND MODALITIES
All applications should include the following:
- One article in French or in English dealing with one of the topics
proposed (if the article has already been published, attach a photocopy
of the newspaper and/or address of the website where it was published,
including the date of publication);
- OR one radio production in French or English, about 5 minutes long
(give precise references on the media in which it was broadcast, if this
is the case);
A CV that shows, if appropriate, a list of previous articles or radio
productions on ICTs (please indicate the newspaper/website where they
were published, the date of publication, etc.);
A document attesting that the candidate is actually a journalist in a
press organ.
An acknowledgement of receipt will be sent accordingly, via e-mail and
within 48 hours, to applicants whose files have been received.
The article or audio programme should be sent by electronic mail no
later than on November 21st 6:00 PM GMT, to the two following addresses:
contact@cipaco.org AND judith_lenti@yahoo.fr .
People living in Senegal may bring, in addition, their production
directly to PIWA to the address below:
INSTITUT PANOS AFRIQUE DE L'OUEST
6, rue Calmette
BP 21 132 Dakar – Ponty
Dakar – Senegal
Tel: +221 33 849 16 66
Authors of selected productions will be informed by November 26th, 2007.
PIWA will not return submitted productions to their authors. PIWA may in
the future publish, within the framework of its programmes, some
productions received; the authors therefore accord to PIWA the right to
publish, for non-commercial purpose, their productions.
The decisions made by PIWA are supreme and beyond all possible dispute.
All participants in this call for participation accept the rules
presented in this document.
MORE INFORMATION
For more information on this call for participation or on the workshop
or in case of sending troubles, please contact Judith LENTI
jlenti@panos-ao.org or Ken Lohento contact@cipaco.org at PIWA.
Call for productions – Grants for participation
Deadline : November 21st , 2007
THE WORKSHOP
The Panos Institute West Africa (PIWA, http://www.panos.ao.org), through its
"Uses and Policies of Digital Technology" Programme (ICT Programme),
will organize on December 13th to 15th, 2007, in Dakar, Senegal, a
workshop entitled "3rd Regional workshop on Medias and ICT issues in
West Africa : New journalism, new technologies, improved governance".
This workshop aims at:
- promoting uses of blogs and new ICT tools by medias for improved
governance in West Africa
- strengthening reporting on ICT in the region
The workshop will give the opportunity to assess the use of blogs by
medias and citizens in west Africa and to discuss about blogs and
"citizen journalism".
Apart from discussions, practical sessions will help participants learn
or strengthen knowledge on the use of blogs, podcasts, and new digital
communication applications.
About 40 people, including 30 journalists from West Africa (radio,
written press, English and French speaking countries) and some delegates
from media and ICT organizations will attend the event.
The workshop is organized within the framework of the West African
Portal (or Haayo) Project funded by Osiwa and of other PIWA projects
funded by Freevoice.
18 GRANTS TO SUPPORT JOURNALIST PARTICIPATION
To enlarge participation in the workshop, PIWA will provide 18 grants
for participation for selected African journalists. Priority will be
given to journalists from English speaking countries and to radio
journalists.
The grant covers expenses in relation to the participation in the
meeting except insurance. It costs in particular:
- international travel (air ticket from your country to Dakar, Senegal –
economy class),
- food and accommodation,
- Shuttle from and to airport.
How to apply:
To apply for the grants, journalists need to send either an article of
3, 000 letters or a 5 mn audio programme (such as reports, but not mere
interviews) in mp3 or ogg format. The article or audio production may
have been published in the past (not more that 6 months ago) or may be
original (produced for this call).
This production will deal with one of the 2 following themes:
- uses of blogs in Africa
- ICTs and local/democratic governance
PIWA will select best articles or audio programmes. Authors of selected
articles will received the grant for participation in the workshop.
APPLICATIONS AND MODALITIES
All applications should include the following:
- One article in French or in English dealing with one of the topics
proposed (if the article has already been published, attach a photocopy
of the newspaper and/or address of the website where it was published,
including the date of publication);
- OR one radio production in French or English, about 5 minutes long
(give precise references on the media in which it was broadcast, if this
is the case);
A CV that shows, if appropriate, a list of previous articles or radio
productions on ICTs (please indicate the newspaper/website where they
were published, the date of publication, etc.);
A document attesting that the candidate is actually a journalist in a
press organ.
An acknowledgement of receipt will be sent accordingly, via e-mail and
within 48 hours, to applicants whose files have been received.
The article or audio programme should be sent by electronic mail no
later than on November 21st 6:00 PM GMT, to the two following addresses:
contact@cipaco.org AND judith_lenti@yahoo.fr .
People living in Senegal may bring, in addition, their production
directly to PIWA to the address below:
INSTITUT PANOS AFRIQUE DE L'OUEST
6, rue Calmette
BP 21 132 Dakar – Ponty
Dakar – Senegal
Tel: +221 33 849 16 66
Authors of selected productions will be informed by November 26th, 2007.
PIWA will not return submitted productions to their authors. PIWA may in
the future publish, within the framework of its programmes, some
productions received; the authors therefore accord to PIWA the right to
publish, for non-commercial purpose, their productions.
The decisions made by PIWA are supreme and beyond all possible dispute.
All participants in this call for participation accept the rules
presented in this document.
MORE INFORMATION
For more information on this call for participation or on the workshop
or in case of sending troubles, please contact Judith LENTI
jlenti@panos-ao.org or Ken Lohento contact@cipaco.org at PIWA.
Who is Blogging and Why? Is the Blogosphere in a Digestion Phase?
Interesting post at who is blogging and why?
The article start with taking a look a tBlogging Trends and Stats then Professional Blogging,Blogging for a Cause,Blogging for Business and Pleasure, Personal Blogs and Spam blogging.
The article start with taking a look a tBlogging Trends and Stats then Professional Blogging,Blogging for a Cause,Blogging for Business and Pleasure, Personal Blogs and Spam blogging.
Study : UNESCO’s Series on Journalism Education Criteria and Indicators for Quality Journalism
Training Institutions & Identifying Potential Centres of Excellence in Journalism Training in Africa
by Prof Guy Berger & Corinne Matras
In association with:
School of Journalism & Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa & École supérieure de journalisme de Lille (ESJ), France
countries and schools covered :
1. Kenya: University of Nairobi; United States International University; Daystar University
2. Uganda: University of Makerere
3. Namibia: University of Namibia; Namibia Polytechnic
4. Mozambique: Eduardo Mondlane University; Mozambican School of Journalism; NSJ media training centre
5. Ghana: University of Ghana at Legon; Ghana Institute of Journalism; African Institute of Journalism and Communications
6. Nigeria: University of Ibadan; University of Ilorin; University of Lagos; State University of Lagos; Polytechnic of Ibadan; Lagos State Polytechnic
7. South Africa: Rhodes University; Stellenbosch University, Tshwane University, Walter Sisulu University
8. Burkina Faso : University of Ouagadougou
9. Cameroon : École supérieure des sciences et techniques de l'information et de la communication – ESSTIC
10. Democratic Republic of Congo: FCK, IFASIC, UNIKIN, ICA
11. Rwanda: University of Butare (EJC)
12. Burundi: University of Tanganyika Lake
13. Zambia: ZAMCOM, University of Zambia
14. Zimbabwe: National University of Science and Technology; Midlands State University
see full report at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001514/151496E.pdf
by Prof Guy Berger & Corinne Matras
In association with:
School of Journalism & Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa & École supérieure de journalisme de Lille (ESJ), France
countries and schools covered :
1. Kenya: University of Nairobi; United States International University; Daystar University
2. Uganda: University of Makerere
3. Namibia: University of Namibia; Namibia Polytechnic
4. Mozambique: Eduardo Mondlane University; Mozambican School of Journalism; NSJ media training centre
5. Ghana: University of Ghana at Legon; Ghana Institute of Journalism; African Institute of Journalism and Communications
6. Nigeria: University of Ibadan; University of Ilorin; University of Lagos; State University of Lagos; Polytechnic of Ibadan; Lagos State Polytechnic
7. South Africa: Rhodes University; Stellenbosch University, Tshwane University, Walter Sisulu University
8. Burkina Faso : University of Ouagadougou
9. Cameroon : École supérieure des sciences et techniques de l'information et de la communication – ESSTIC
10. Democratic Republic of Congo: FCK, IFASIC, UNIKIN, ICA
11. Rwanda: University of Butare (EJC)
12. Burundi: University of Tanganyika Lake
13. Zambia: ZAMCOM, University of Zambia
14. Zimbabwe: National University of Science and Technology; Midlands State University
see full report at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001514/151496E.pdf
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Wall St. Journal to Make Web Site Free
The Wall Street Journal, one of the last major U.S. newspapers that still charges for online access to its content, may soon go free. According to News Co. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, who has signed an agreement to acquire the Journal's parent company Dow Jones & Company, he plans to make access to WSJ.com free.
Speaking at a shareholders meeting in Australia on Tuesday, Murdoch said, "We are studying it and we expect to make that free." As a result, Murdoch anticipated having 10 to 15 million worldwide subscribers as opposed to the current 1 million.
In related news yesterday the WSJ.com site became populated with social-bookmarking site Digg buttons. According to a blog post by Digg founder Kevin Rose, the Journal will allow its users to submit WSJ.com articles to Digg and Digg users will also have free access to any WSJ.com article submitted to the service.
In September, the New York Times ceased its TimesSelect service, which previously cost subscribers $49.95 a year.
The Wall Street Journal currently charges $79 a year for its online edition.Tuesday, November 13, 2007
PROMOTING VISITORS TO YOUR BLOG(Driving Traffic) AND VISITOR COUNT
By Kwami Ahiabenu, II
Recently, one of my students sent me an interesting email with this question: how can he promote his blog that is drive traffic to it and secondly how can he count visitors to his blog. Good question because creating a blog is very easy but becoming a well read and influential blogger is a different ball game. But you can achieve this objective if you work hard at it.
Driving traffic to your blog, is very possible and every blogger is encouraged to promote his and her blog to its intended audience
Broadly speaking there is a number of ways to promote your blog, namely using off line means, use of appropriate online promotion tools and quality of your content (posts)
1. OFFLINE Promotion
Though your blog is located in the virtual world, you can always use offline means to drive traffic to it
1. Put your blog address on your card or complementary card, that is in addition to your telephone, fax, address, email, your blog address should be found on your card
2. When published hard copy articles remember to add your blog address at the end of the article
3. If you have the chance of doing public speaking remember to ask your audience to visit your blog at the end of your speech. This also true for lecturers and teachers, encourage your students or learners to visit your blog
4. In meetings, do not feel sly to share your blog with participants if appropriate
5. If you are can afford, you can place an ad in your local newspaper, or on the television or the radio
6. What about a big billboard with your blog address ?
2. ONLINE Promotion
There is no doubt that the Internet is your best bet in driving traffic to your blog. The good news is that the Internet offers you thousand and one tools to help you promote your blog:
1. Add your blog address to your email signature in additional to your contact details
2. You can send email to your email contact list and invite relevant contacts to visit your blog. In addition to your contact list you can also capture email address of visitors to your blog by asking them to subscribe to your blog.
3. You can post your blog address to relevant online mailing list or discussion boards
4. Build links to your blogs. Exchanging links are great ways of promoting your blog ask your fellow bloggers to set links to your blog.
5. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines through search engine optimisation and submit your blog to search engines as well. Submit your blog and RSS feed to directories as well
6. The use of keywords is crucial to promoting traffic to your blog. Use appropriate keywords in the title of your post, in the body of your post and in the achor text of links inthe body of your posts. Most blog service would allow you to add tags to your blog, adding tags help visitors find your blog when they are searching for your blog. So for each post make use you add tags
7. Create your own online community who are interested in your blog
8. Make use of Ping your blog services such as Ping O Matic which basically a service which update your blog to different search engines when your blog is updated.
9. Make use of Social marketing in promoting your blog sites such as Digg or Bumpzee, Stumbleupon, etc comes to mind
10. Join blogging networks such as LinkedIn Bloggers, 9rules, Blogrush
3. CONTENT IS THE KING.
At end of the day, people would visit your blog if the content is relevant to them since CONTENT IS THE KING.
In this direction:
1. Write Posts that your audience will want to read. First you need to be clear about your audience, who are you writing for? Once you know your audience, make sure your posts are going to be relevant to their needs. There is no point in writing about pets if you blog is about knowledge management.
2. Edit your blog post into articles and submit them to article directories
3. Your posts should be topical and it should be very current
4. Do not be afraid to write about controversial topics, it can help drive visitors to your blog
5. Your blog should have a clear cut focus and it should attempt to reach out to specific community of practice or special interest topics
To read more about promoting traffic to your site and sustaining it, see 99 ways to promote your blog for free , promoting your blog from blogger and how to promote your blog .
How do you measure visitor to your blog?
After working hard to drive traffic to your site, you actually need to measure or count visitors to your site, where they are coming from, who are repeat visitors, which posts they read and how long they stay at your blog. Thus you basically need to count visitors to your blog in order to find out if your strategy of promoting visitors to your site is working. Take a quick read at website statistics article to find out more about web basis of measurement.
There are a number of services which count visitors to your blogs and you can sign up for this service by going through a simple registration and activation process.
See a selection of some visitor count services:
2. http://www.hit-counter-download.com/
3. http://www.statcounter.com/
4. http://www.freestatscounter.com/
5. http://www.maploco.com/view.php?id=695306
Ends
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