10 Trends In Online Journalism

Web developer Tim Burden has published his guide to the top trends in online journalism.

Writing on his Printed Matters blog, Burden has used his experience as a news website consultant to put together his Top Ten Current Trends In Online Journalism.

Here are some highlights from the post.

GATHERING THE NEWS

1 Mobile Journalism

Burden predicts the rise of the mojo will see reporters “cut the tethers to their desks” and will result in freelancers working in the field as professional/citizen journalists.

2 Social Networking

Sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook encapsulate “the idea that reporters will not be the first on the scene” and provide a way for news providers “to reach out and connect to the very people who will be reading your stuff, allowing them to help you shape it and target it”.

3 RSS Filtering

The latest trend is finding ways to manage the information coming from multiple RSS feeds using applications such as Yahoo Pipes.

4 Churnalism

“News companies should be using wire copy strictly to augment their news gathering ... they should not be dumping them up on their websites just because they can.”

AUGMENTING THE NEWS

5 Geotagging and Maps

“The location of the event is probably the most important piece of metadata you can share. And aside from the beautiful map interfaces you could put on your own site, you could syndicate your data to other sites that map the news.”

6 The Semantic Web

Burden says tagging every component of a story – from place to person to time – will enable the creation of timelines, databases, biographies and a multitude of other resources.

7 Multimedia

Includes everything from video to photos to slideshows and should be available for others to embed on their sites.

DELIVERING THE NEWS

8 News as a Platform

Make your content available for others to embed, use and build upon.

9 Aggregation

Making it easier for others to aggregate content.

10 Search

“Fifteen years into the web and many news companies still don’t have a decent search.”