Agencies collaborate online for Copenhagen

An interesting story from Holdthefrontpage rounds off this week in online journalism news.

It reports how The Press Association has teamed up with ten other international news agencies to interact with the world during the UN Climate Change Conference.

The group has is using Facebook to bring news directly from the event, which runs from 7 to 18 December in Copenhagen, and has set up a page called 'The Climate Pool'.

Holdthefrontpage describes how the agencies hope that it will allow readers directly communicate with journalists covering the event, sparking a global conversation.

The other agencies involved are Agence France-Presse, ANP of the Netherlands, Associated Press, APA of Austria, APcom of Italy, Canadian Press, dpa of Germany, Kyodo of Japan, Lusa of Portugal and RIA of Russia.

According to the report the Facebook page will feature a blog format, providing a behind-the-scenes view of the conference, and link out to coverage of the talks from the agencies and the media outlets they serve.

It will be produced in English and incorporate content from the participating agencies, along with links to coverage from around the world.

The group will also use Twitter to attract followers.

PA's head of digital development Chris McCormack told HTFP: "Everyone is wondering whether there are new opportunities for news and information flow across social networks, and that's what we are exploring with this blog and fan page.

"Social networks are where the digital conversation is, so that's where we need to be but we are also counting on the Facebook fan page to direct a highly engaged global audience to the best news stories and analysis among our UK media customers."

Berlin Wall project: a lesson in multimedia?

If you have been watching coverage of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, chances are you may have seen the multimedia project by City University graduates that they have dubbed "a documentary on online journalism".

As reported on journalism.co.uk, the Berlin Project, which was launched on the 5th November, plans to provide 7 days of initial coverage (till the 12th November) using a variety of tools, including audio service Audioboo, Twitter and mobile video service Qik.

The article states how the project will assess how free services can be used to create, consume and distribute multimedia reports.

The project has been partnered by Reuters who, according to team leader Alex Wood, have been using the team to cover more unusual stories surrounding the anniversary in a range of media.
The team previously collaborated to provide coverage of the G20 summit protests in April using Twitter and Qik.

G20 Live attracted more than 80,000 unique users to a site only built the night before, but the Berlin Project will be about more than using mobile and mixed media for journalism, said Wood.

"It's about connecting the dots [between different mediums]. It's all about context rather than just content," he added, explaining that how a reader of viewer watches the team's work will inform their choice of tool and medium for covering an event. The quality of video streaming offered by Qik, for example, would be used to cover events that might be watched back on mobile.

Think of it as a documentary on online journalism. For online journalism the rules aren't written, so we're trying a different thing."

Interestingly, the team have kept navigational features to a minimum in order to allow users to 'get lost' and discover new reports and features. Content will also be published on Facebook and Reuters.

News wire criticised for inaccuracies

As debate focuses on how to make online content pay, it is important not to forget about reporting standards.

Journalism.co.uk highlights how this was raised at a recent debate hosted by Thompson Reuters, titled 'What Price the News?', which saw the wire service coming under fire from former employees for apparently favouring speed over accuracy in an increasingly competitive market.

They cited two examples where the company reported inaccurate stories from other media without checking primary sources first.

The first example was from this month, when Reuters initially published a report, first broadcast by Sky News, that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, had died, until his lawyer corrected them.

The second example was CNN's report on a US Coast Guard training exercise on the anniversary of September 11 this year, which was wrongly claimed to be a gun battle.

Audience member Paul Iredale, a former Reuters journalist of 30 years, said he was 'deeply concerned and sad' about what he heard during the debate.

"In Reuters it seems to have gone to speed rather than accuracy," he said. "What we used to say about Reuters was we got it last, but we got it right. I don't think that is the case now."

Reuters' political and general news editor Sean Maguire defended the news wire, saying that it was completely transparent when the stories were found to be untrue.

He said: "When we saw it was wrong, we said we were wrong."

"Because Sky had been a good source on the [al-Megrahi death report] story we reported it. We very quickly said what they said was nonsense."