MPs' Scandal Adds 1m Users

Telegraph.co.uk’s exclusive coverage of MPs' expenses brought more than 1 million additional users to the site in May.

According to a report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the website boosted traffic by 1.4 million unique visitors compared to the previous month.



The expenses coverage also helped the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) improve its print circulation performance during May.

Plus, advertising revenue received a boost as a direct result of the newspaper’s expenses coverage, reports Forbes.

And it is likely that June’s figures will see impressive growth too with the publication of the unredacted data in a pullout special distributed with the Daily Telegraph.

A searchable database holding details of all the expenses claims then went live on Telegraph.co.uk towards the end of the month.

TMG’s digital editor, Edward Roussel, told the Guardian that the publisher’s exclusive and in-depth coverage of the scandal has been of interest to a global audience.

“Our MPs’ expenses coverage brought new audiences to our website, helping to extend the Telegraph brand in the UK and across the world.”

Google Earth - Opportunity For Journalism?

Poynter Online’s Amy Gahran believes Google Earth and Street View could become useful story-telling tools for reporters.

Gahran suggests that online newspapers could create multimedia stories using Google Earth’s satellite pictures and photos from the controversial Street View service.

Writing on Poynter’s E-Media blog, she says journalists could use Street View to “show the effects of a disaster such as a flood, hurricane, earthquake or tornado”.

She adds that Street View pictures could also be used to show “the effects of a redevelopment project or environmental cleanup”.

And Google Earth’s historical images could be used with current photos to “create a sense of transition from past to present”.

Gahran concludes: “Seems to me that Google Earth is a field ripe with engaging journalistic opportunity - especially considering there’s a Google Earth iPhone application.”

Launched in the UK this year, Street View can be accessed via Google Maps and is available for cities including London and Manchester.

The below video shows you what it is and how it can be accessed.



[HT - Editors Weblog]

How To: Create Local News Mashups

Blogger Adrian Short has published a useful guide to building local news mashups.

Short blogs about hyperlocal news in Stonecot Hill (Sutton) and has created a Twitter feed for the area which pulls together news stories from a range of websites.

This mashup can be used by Short to gather leads for his own blog and also acts as a hyperlocal news distribution tool in its own right.



His step-by-step graphic guide illustrates the way that RSS feeds from news sources - his own blog, the Sutton Guardian and the website of his local MP - are filtered to supply relevant material to the feed.

Short also explains how his Yahoo Pipes mashup creation pulls in content from the local council website without the use of RSS feeds.

And he believes that all websites should pay attention to their mashable-friendly credentials.

“If you run a website, it’s time to start thinking of mashability with the same degree of seriousness as you treat human visitors.

“Your website needs to serve up feeds and APIs so that other programs can connect to your content and deliver it to people in ways and contexts that they find useful.”

[HT - Journalism.co.uk]

Guardian Opens Up Online Content

This month has seen The Guardian making some of its content and data freely available to developers through its Open Platform project.

Launched as a commercial initiative, Open Platform enables people to access its articles and data sets in order to create new applications and online offerings.

The beta trial makes the content available through the Content API and Data Store channels on Guardian.co.uk.




Visitors to the Data Store can access statistics on a range of subjects, from the cost of military engagements in Iraq to the makeup of the British population and the tax-paying habits of some of the UK’s biggest firms.

And developers can share their creations through a blog dedicated to the data applications built using Open Platform.



Several partners are already working with The Guardian on the project, including OpenStreetMap which is hoping to work with users to create a map of geotagged Guardian content.

Director of digital content Emily Bell believes that Open Platform is a great way for the newspaper to interact with the wider world on the Web.

“We try very hard and spend many pounds a year to put our journalism in from of a wider audience: this is another way to do that,” she writes.

“We also recognise that by opening up what we do to more people who have more expertise than we do, we can improve what we do and change the Guardian’s relationship with the web and the internet.”

And she stresses that such a project works well as an accompaniment to more traditional journalism.

“This ‘showing your insides’ approach to publishing might seem like a million miles away from the relatively controlled world of top-down journalism, but it is strangely complimentary.”

A number of news organisations are starting to make some of their content available online to developers, including the New York Times which launched its first API last year.

Visit Guardian.co.uk for more details on Open Platform.