2010 - what will it hold for you?

Christmas is coming, the goose is on a credit-crunch inflicted diet and as the journalism world licks it wounds from this year's squabbles, many are starting to look what next year is set to bring.

Firstly, Patrick Smith brings a tale of caution on PaidContent – if you thought hyperlocal news was going to be your big thing of 2010, you may want to have a quick re-think.

He reports that whilst the promise for hyperlocal’s place in UK news is there, the boundless optimism is not in doubt and there’s even hints of a local business model emerging, the delivery of quality post-code level news across most of the country still a long way off, and sustainable revenues and—dare we say it—profits are even further.

He also says how unless the ifs and maybes surrounding the use of hyperlocal models do not turn into certainties the Digital Britain project won’t be up and running till 2012 and that includes any role that public money would play.

So, he says, 2010 will not be hyperlocal’s year. But, he counters, the signs are auspicious: increasing levels of online literacy and broadband connections mixed with more inevitable local newspaper closures mean it’s natural that readers—and advertisers—will shift to new outlets.

Next, acknowledging that talking about journalism and its future is the “lifeblood of Academia”, there’s a nice piece by Harvard’s Nieman Lab writer C.W. Anderson on what we have learnt from 2009 and what new squabbles will arise in the new year.

The article jokes how bloggers and journalists seem to have finally made peace and accepted their perceived war is over; that we realise not all content will be free but the new business models may not be enough to counter the financial losses many news organisations have suffered; and that, because of this, journalism will be produced in a different way – by smaller, niche publications.

Instead, our attentions will turn to the kind of politics facilitated by the digital world and the policies and laws that will govern this world (and whilst the focus of the article is on the US, it is still relevant to the UK as the government faces up to a growing campaign to reform libel law, something it has been considering because of the impact of the internet).

It also talks of the type of networks that might emerge in the new “media ecosystem” – that we may see that it is large media companies that have diversified and created a local branding – and how journalism schools will need to adapt as the industry itself mutates.

It also talks about what the increased use of a semantic web may have for the future of news in a world of Demand Media and computational journalism. Big questions indeed but something new to think about at least.

Finally, for any of those curious to know if the Manchester Evening News’ launch of an iPhone app was worth it – HoldtheFrontPage has the numbers.

They have reported that over 6,700 readers have downloaded the app to follow the latest updates from the paper.

This means that it has been downloaded at a rate of approximately 900 a week since its creation.

There are section for news and show business, among others, while fans of Manchester United and Manchester City can keep in touch with dedicated sections for the two teams.

Youtube Direct: Bringing news organisations and citizen journos together

The Guardian’s PDA blog this morning has described how a new service from Youtube has created a link between news organisations and citizen journalists.

According to the blog, Youtube Direct allows news and media organisations to request, review and rebroadcast clips directly from Youtube users.

It also stated how, following the established use of camera phone footage and PCs, this is the next step in an important part of the future of local news, which partly relies on the contributions of what it calls engaged citizens.

YouTube's head of news and politics, Steve Grove, told the Guardian: "People around the world are taking up cameras and covering news in ways big and small - from documenting global events, to filming local town halls in neighborhoods. YouTube Direct empowers news and media organisations to easily connect with these citizen reporters, and use the power of our platform to cover the news better than ever before."

The move by the Google-owned service has been embraced in the US, with it being beta-tested by the Huffington Post. They used the feature that allows users to upload a video to YouTube directly whilst staying on the news site.

The Post is currently using the tool in a competition to find a citizen journalist to cover the Climate Conference in Copenhagen. National Public Radio and the San Francisco Chronicle are also planning to use the service.

One hope is that the deeper interaction between users and news organisations will make the task of verifying the content and its source much easier.

Said Grove: "As we are trying to meet a need that news organisations have, we created an ecosystem between the news audience and YouTube. Think of it like this: YouTube Direct is like a loop between a news website and YouTube. It wraps up YouTube's upload site in a box and places it on the site of news organisations."

The Guardian described how this open-source application lets media organisations use customised versions of YouTube's upload platform on their own websites.

In addition, it said, the tool offers a virtual assignment desk in which news and media organisations can ask YouTube users to submit breaking news videos, user-generated reports, or reactions to questions or news events of the day.

Citizen Journalists to be syndicated

Citizen journalism site AllVoices has launched a syndication programme to bring professional and amateur newsgatherers together, according to a report on Journalism.co.uk, following in the footsteps of the likes of AssociatedContent.com, who already pay fees to their contributors.

Content providers will now receive 75% of the money paid for non-exclusive and exclusive images and video content whilst retaining copyright of the material.

AllVoices' Chief Operating Officer Aki Hashmi told the website that they are in talks with 'traditional' media groups in the US, Europe, Middle East and south Asia.

"The syndication programme is very good news for the community; it’s very good news for traditional media, because they’re looking for global content and most of them have been very dependent on Reuters and the AP," said Hashmi.

"These have become the global providers of news, but, if you look at it, in 40 per cent of the countries they have no coverage.

"If you have a platform where you can bring professional and citizen journalists together you can have global reach."

The programme has been developed after content providers expressed an interest in monetising their material.

According to Hashimi, the technology powering the site makes publishing and distributing contributors' work online low cost, enabling the site to give the majority of any sale fee back to the user.

This follows an incentive scheme that was launched earlier this year for contributors and is the next stage in marketing the site's content, which attracts more than 3.2million unique users per month.

Journalists Coach Contributors at `News Cafe'

A hyperlocal news project in the Czech Republic, built around Starbucks-style "news cafes" staffed by journalists, appears to be working, Larry Kilman reports for the World Association of Newspapers' Shaping the Future of Newspapers blog.

Roman Gallo, CEO of project sponsor PPF Media, told the 2015 Newsroom Conference that 13 weeks after launch in four Czech regions, circulation of the company's paid-for weeklies is growing, as is web traffic. The cafes are quickly becoming a centre of community life, with meetings, concerts, dance lessons and other events organised for local residents.

Editorial staff sit in the middle of the cafes, without walls or doors, allowing regular interaction with local residents. Gallo said half the newspapers' new subscriptions come from people who come in for coffee and conversation.

"The readers can go there and be in contact," he said. "For the editorial team, they're much more open to talk to people, to understand the problems of the people in the region."

If the success continues, the company expects a year-long nationwide rollout of 220 weeklies, 89 news cafes and 700 websites.

About a third of the content for the newspapers is provided by local people - fishermen, firemen, mothers with young children and so on. But none of it goes into the paper or websites without input from a journalist, called a "community manager." A central editor oversees all publications.

"This is a total change for journalists," said Gallo. "We changed the job - they're trainers, coaches -- they work with the communities."

He said the key is to provide "unique content, which you can't find anywhere else, and it has to be credible content. That's the model that worked for newspapers for 100 years, and I have no doubt it will work for another 100 years."

Debating Journalism’s Big Questions

An online resource now holds over 90 interviews and op-eds discussing the future of news in the digital age.

The Future of Journalism project is featured on the OurBlook website, which proclaims to be a cross between a blog and a book.

It is a collaborative resource which has dozens of interviews with industry experts sharing their thoughts on some of the biggest challenges facing journalism.

The site also has opinion pieces from journalists and academics pondering subjects such as citizen journalism and business models of the future.

Writing on the Online Journalism Review, OurBlook staffer Sandra Ordonez says: “The website is a collaborative, Web 2.0 platform created for the exchange of research, information and dialogue on national and global issues.”

She adds that the interviews and pieces have been compiled into an online book and can be viewed on OurBlook’s Future of Journalism pages.

How-To Videos On YouTube Channel

A YouTube channel dedicated to online journalism is building its stock of videos from industry experts and practitioners.

Launched in April, the YouTube Reporters' Center already holds more than 30 videos offering tips on key aspects of digital journalism.

Categories include Expert Videos, Interviews and Profiles, Investigative Reporting, and Ethics, Law & Fact-Checking.



Among the industry insiders offering the benefit of their experience are veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward, CBS news anchor Katie Couric, and HuffPost founder Arianna Huffington.

In addition to these general advice pieces, there are also technical instructional videos such as this one from Reuters.com about filming effective video interviews.



And this video from Bloomberg TV gives some valuable tips on how to tell a story with numbers.



YouTube says of the citizen reporting resource: “The YouTube Reporters’ Center is a new resource to help you learn more about how to report the news.”

Telegraph Adds User-Generated Newswire

The Daily Telegraph has subscribed to Demotix, a user-generated newswire that allows anyone to post stories and pictures from around the world, the Press Gazette reports.

The Demotix Widget appears on the World News page of Telegraph.co.uk, providing images and news stories from its 5,600 users in 120 countries around the world.

The deal is the first in the UK, but the Telegraph joins Le Monde in France, Lebanon’s Future News and the Himalayan Times of Nepal.

"For Demotix, this is really exciting," said CEO Turi Munthe. "The Telegraph was our very earliest supporter and immediately understood what we were trying to achieve. As for our contributors, the chance to get their stories out to so many people in the UK, US, Canada and elsewhere is fantastic. Demotix was founded to give a loudspeaker to the man and woman on the street. With this partnership, their voices just got louder."

Demotix is a 2009 winner of a MediaGuardian Innovation Award in the independent media category.

Northcliffe Set to Trial Hyperlocal Sites

Thirty new local Northcliffe sites combining citizen journalism, blogging and Facebook-style social networking will go live next month, according to an item posted to journalism.co.uk.

The initial six-month trial of hyperlocal websites will target towns with populations of 10,000 to 40,000 people that currently have no dedicated local newspaper or website, said Seamus McCauley, strategic analyst at Associated Northcliffe Digital.

"There is a real fear in the journalism industry about the future of local newsgathering. This at the moment is our hope for the answer," McCauley told an audience at City University. "In every town, there will already be a person who writes match reports for football games, businesses who like to talk about their work, churches who host events every week. We want to co-ordinate that activity."

He said the sites will be overseen by "community publishers", whose role will be to keep discussion live and active, oversee content, and provide fresh information. "To make this work, it's crucial to have people on the ground who can find, generate and curate the content," McCauley said.

The sites will be powered by social networking software and by Northcliffe's own news generation facilities. A central moderation team will monitor output across the network and advise the community publishers.

The 30 sites scheduled to launch in June will be concentrated in the southwest of England, from Gloucestershire to Cornwall, including 10 towns around Bristol.

McCauley said the new hyperlocal sites would not compete with its existing network of regional websites under the "thisis" brand. Northcliffe also publishes a series of postcode sites, automatically fed by content from a local title.

"In every town, sooner or later a big issue comes up, and local people will try and knock up a website very quickly. We want to set up these sites so that when an issue arises, they're already there," he said. "But they will also be a place to discuss minor issues and news. Newswires don't localise to that level, and there are no aggregators that provide anything sensible for smaller towns.

"The question is, can we get a certain proportion of a town's population onto each site? This launch will show us."

Citizen Journalism Guidelines From HuffPo

Guidelines to help citizen journalists produce quality content have been published by the Huffington Post.

HuffPo relies on voluntary contributors for much of its content and has published a set of basic guidelines to enable them to meet the editorial standards of the website.

The nine-point list asks potential citizen journalists to avoid expressing opinions irrelevant to the story, to give credit to work of others and to fact-check claims by sources.

Would-be contributors are also strongly encouraged to identify themselves to sources, avoid submitting misleading images and to avoid hearsay.

The list could act as a useful guide for other publishers looking to help enhance the quality of material submitted by users.

[HT – Poynter Online]

Telling The G20 Story With Social Media

News reporting via Twitter and AudioBoo became the norm last week as journalists used social media tools to tell the story of the G20 Summit in London.

The majority of the mainstream media got in on the action as social media software provided an ideal way for field-based reporters to provide real-time updates on events at the summit and on the streets of the City.

According to BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones: “It does seem as though just about everyone involved in G20 - from the politicians to the journalists, from bloggers to demonstrators - has been snapping, filming recording everything in site and uploading it to the web to share with the world.”

Several online newspapers provided coverage using CoverItLive blogs, including Times Online and Sky News.

On the Sky live blog, correspondents sent text updates and links to photos uploaded to TwitPic.

Meanwhile, the Times Online’s live blog featured embedded photos and eye-witness posts from members of the public.



On Guardian.co.uk, award-winning blogger Dave Hill posted regular updates to his London blog about the action on the ground at the Bank of England.

And the BBC offered multimedia coverage through its Live Map, which linked to geotagged video, text and photographic content.



The BBC also pulled together links to all its G20 related content on a Live Text Page which featured links to news articles and blog posts from journalists as they were published.

An abundance of content from citizen journalists appeared throughout the day on content-sharing sites such as Flickr, and a group of students from London’s City University used their mobiles and social media tools to provide extensive coverage of the street protests (HT – cybersoc.com).

For more on this, journalism.co.uk and the BBC’s dot.life blog have round-ups of how social media was used by the mainstream and alternative media during last week’s events.

NYT Readers Capture Hard Times

People are sharing their experiences of financial hardship via a new user-generated content initiative from the New York Times.

Picturing the Recession asks readers to submit photos which capture the signs of economic troubles in their homes, neighbourhoods and towns.

The result is an extensive gallery of interesting and often moving photos showing the effects of the global financial crisis on people’s everyday lives.



Subjects vary from empty fridges to closed shops, boarded-up houses and make-shift homes in tents and under motorways.



Pictures are grouped into categories - Business, Home, Sacrifice, Family, Work and Transportation.

The NYT invites submissions from users around the world and asks potential contributors: “How do you see the recession playing out in your community? What signs of hardship or resilience stand out? How are you or your family personally affected?”

[HT – Journalism.co.uk]

Twitter App Delivers News To Journalists

The creators behind a new Twitter application hope it will provide a “communication channel for people to reach journalists with news”.

Nyouse (pronounced news) is the brainchild of freelance copywriter Leif Kendall and app developer Jon Markwell and aims to divert news tweets to reporters.



Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Kendall said Nyouse provides a way for “ordinary people to alert the press” about stories that no-one else is covering.

He added: “It really takes two groups of people to understand the process and use it.”

It requires Twitterers to label their tweets with the #nyouse label or send them to @nyouse.

They can then be picked up by journalists who visit nyouse.com or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Power Of Networks

Here’s an interesting slideshow about the impact of digital networking upon the ways we communicate in the modern era.

It’s taken from a presentation recently given by David Armano, the vice president of Experience Design at Critical Mass and a new media blogger.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks considers social media and networking, participatory journalism, blogging, and branding among many other aspects of the digital age.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

View more presentations from David Armano.

[HT – cybersoc.com]

New Business Model Is PEJ Focus

The state of journalism in all its forms is laid bare in this year’s annual report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

An introduction to The State of the News Media 2009 highlights the main area of concern making its presence felt time and time again throughout the extensive study – “the revenue problem”.

This is attributed to two things that happened during the course of 2008:

“First, the hastening audience migration to the Web means the news industry has to reinvent itself sooner than it thought - even if most of those people are going to traditional news destinations.

“At least in the short run, a bigger online audience has worsened things for legacy news sites, not helped them.”

Secondly, and unsurprisingly, it’s the effect of the global economic downturn and its consequence for journalism:

“The numbers are only guesses, but executives estimate that the recession at least doubled the revenue losses in the news industry in 2008, perhaps more in network television.

“Even more important, it swamped most of the efforts at finding new sources of revenue.

“In trying to reinvent the business, 2008 may have been a lost year, and 2009 threatens to be the same.”

This sixth edition of the annual report is available online and includes a study of citizen media websites, a section devoted to coverage of the presidential election, content analysis of the news of 2008 and features on new revenue models.

Patch Launches NJ Hyperlocals

New Jersey residents are spoiled for choice with hyperlocal news coverage as another three sites are launched.

Just a couple of weeks after the New York Times went live with its community news sites in New Jersey, the newly-created Patch.com unveiled its websites covering Maplewood, South Orange and Millburn.

According to Lost Remote, each Patch platform is “deeper than NYT’s effort, featuring a business directory, video and data mapping, to name a few”.

The sites also offer interactive events listings and announcements, searchable directories of local restaurants, local facts sections and links to schools and colleges in the area.



According to its About Us page: “Patch is a new way to find out about, and participate in, what’s going on near you.

“We’re a community-specific news and information platform dedicated to providing comprehensive and trusted local coverage for individual towns and communities.”

Funded by private investors the Polar Capital Group, Patch.com is managed and staffed by media professionals and has plans to become a nationwide network in the future.

The Most Valuable Blogs In The World?

A list of the 25 most valuable blogs has been put together by market analysts at 24/7 Wall Street.

Taking into account partially known factors such as traffic and estimating advertising revenue and operating costs, they have calculated a value for some of the world’s best known blogs on the basis of what they’re worth to potential buyers.

And it seems that news blogs are faring well in the blogosphere, with the Huffington Post placed at number two on the list with an estimated value in excess of $90 million (£63.1 million).

Despite noting that the American blog probably costs over $18m (£12.6m) a year to run, 24/7 Wall Street places such a high value on it since “owning Huffington would be a prize, especially for a major media company”.

Behind HuffPo at number three in the chart is another American news and opinion blog - The Drudge Report.

With high margins, it is awarded a potential value of $48m (£33.7m), which would be reduced to almost nothing if Drudge himself was not part of it.

Other news / political blogs making the grade include Daily Kos at 22 and Talking Points Memo at 23.

Visit 247wallstreet.com for the full list.

NYT Launches Community Sites

Residents living in five New York neighbourhoods are being encouraged to write stories for two new community sites on nytimes.com.

The citizen journalism websites form part of a New York Times pilot project and will be launched this week.

According to Editor & Publisher, two websites will cover news from five communities in New Jersey and Brooklyn.

NYT staff will oversee the sites but the content – from articles to photos and videos – will come from people living within the areas.

And the newspaper’s editor for digital initiatives revealed that the overseers have already been busy recruiting volunteers ahead of launch.

“They have each recruited initial contributors and the mission of their sites will be to encourage and instigate people in their communities to do their own reporting and contribute their own creativity to the community we are trying to build online,” said Jim Schachter.

He added that the new sites are not intended to replace community coverage produced by professional journalists but they represent instead “a grassroots effort, to see if there is a new kind of journalism we can be part of”.

Schachter concluded: “There are ‘place’ blogs everywhere. We have to create a real quality community that figures out the answers to questions on the minds of people in each place.”

See Editor & Publisher for the full story.

Users Set Agenda At Patriot-News

Readers are getting their chance to dictate which stories a regional news reporter will cover in Pennsylvania.

Patriot-News journalist Daniel Victor is asking the audience for their ideas on which stories they would like to see him write about for both the newspaper and its online presence – PennLive.com.

Victor says that users will be able to submit their ideas via a comments section on the blog and he will then put these proposals together into a poll form where all web visitors can vote on them.

The beatblogging.org participant says the idea behind the blog is to build a community and to enable the audience to interact directly with their newspaper.

He writes: “Our role is shifting; we are not just story-tellers, we are community-builders. Harnessing the power of the Web is a crucial part of that.”

And he believes that using a blog as the platform for this project is a good way to attract people who maybe haven’t contributed much in the past.

“My theory, which I’m eager to test out, is that there are a lot of level-headed readers out there who may at times be intimidated by PennLive.

“Those people have a tremendous amount of value to contribute to the community if their voices are heard. They have stories that deserve to be told.”

He adds: “You don’t need to be a citizen journalist or have your own blog to leave a comment on a news site that would be valuable to your community.”

[HT – The Editors Weblog]

Students To Create Hyperlocal Content

Content for the community news sections of a regional news website is to be provided by students as part of a collaboration project.

The Teesside Evening Gazette has teamed up with the Stockton Schools consortia to create a new diploma which will see pupils producing material for the hyperlocal areas of the website – Gazette Communities.

Journalism.co.uk reports that students taking the new Creative & Media Diploma will also need to work with social media platforms as well as the newspaper website.

“We’ve been very keen to target younger age groups and get them involved and interacting on our websites,” said Lindsay Bruce, project leader and senior desk editor at the Gazette.

She added: “We’ve already recruited a number of youth bloggers and this builds on that success.”

Further details can be found on Journalism.co.uk and Press Gazette.

Newspaper Hires YouTube Finalist

A self-taught video-journalist has been taken on by the Washington Times as a direct result of his work for a YouTube competition.

Freelance writer Torrey Weekes entered the video-sharing site’s Project: Report competition, held in conjunction with the Pulitzer Center, and is now a multimedia journalist at the Times.



According to Journalism.co.uk, Weekes’s video report on life in Mexico brought him to the attention of both the contest’s judges and the managing editor of the Washington title.

Weekes said: “As someone who landed a job as a direct result of my work on YouTube, I’ve discovered first hand that it breaks down traditional routes to employment in a stunning way.”

He added: “I was really scraping it out as a freelance writer and didn’t have any credits to my name that would have landed me a job at a newspaper.”

Ultimately, he believes his experience shows that YouTube is a true meritocracy: “If you do good work people will pay attention to it, and the potential audience is staggering to contemplate.”