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.
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.”
A distraught bystander captured video of the killing on his phone and e-mailed it to a friend in the Netherlands. Within five minutes, the video was on YouTube and Facebook -- and became international news.
Mitchell says our news increasingly will be shaped by a similar process, one that begins with an event and is characterized by the collective sharing and enhancing of information. The process "provides lots of opportunities for journalists and non-journalists alike to assess what a story needs next, figure out what he or she is best equipped to contribute, and move the story along."
In Soltani's story, he identifies seven elements of this kind of storytelling, some more in need of professional journalism skills and values than others. Their common thread is the importance of collaboration.
* Documentation: Two cell phone videos captured the crucial moments after Soltani was shot Saturday evening, including the frantic efforts to save her. The low resolution of the videos and chaotic movement of the cell phone cameras did not get in the way of telling this critical part of the story, Mitchell points out.
* Context: The videos left many questions unanswered. But Soltani's fiance provided some context in an interview broadcast by Aljazeera, describing her views on recent events in Iran and explaining why she happened to be on that street corner.
* Verification: Some of the initial postings about the shooting included a message from someone identifying himself as a physician who said he witnessed the shooting and tried to save her. A series of tweets and re-tweets from around the world confirmed this information and identified the doctor.
* Correction: Some of the details distributed on the day of the shooting, such as the identity of a man standing near Soltani, turned out to be wrong. Within two days, a Los Angeles Times correspondent had tracked down the man and identified him as her music teacher.
* Analysis: Mitchell says the best analysis he has seen of the significance of Soltani's death has come from journalists, particularly highlighting an essay on Time.com by Robin Wright.
* Sense-making: "It's still too early in the Neda story for anyone to be able to provide the perspective and wisdom required by this stage the process," Mitchell writes. "Who will do it best? Journalists? That physician who tried to save Neda? Historians?"
More important than the who is the what, he concludes. This tragic story "has taught us plenty about what this kind of storytelling will require -- and what it can produce."
What the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 was to blogs, Iran's election crisis may be to Twitter: the moment when the value of a new publishing platform as a vital source of on-the-scene updates becomes clear.
The social networking site "has shown itself perfectly suited to a fast-moving situation where there is a thirst for snatches of information in real time," writes the Guardian's Esther Addley.
Foreign journalists have been expelled from Iran, confined to their hotel rooms or forbidden from covering the protests. But web users around the world have turned to their counterparts in Iran, who have become "the eyes of the world."
Twitter has been at the heart of Iran's resistance since last Friday's contested election -- so much so that earlier this week, the site's owners postponed routine maintenance until a time when Iranians, rather than Americans, would be in bed. The U.S. State Department had asked for the change, though Twitter officials say they made the decision independently as awareness grew that "events in Iran were tied directly to the growing significance of Twitter as an important communication and information network."
However, the crisis also has highlighted some of the problems with Twitter. Iranian authorities have been closing servers through which the site is accessed. And the risk of impersonation is high. People outside the country are pretending to be inside, while rumours suggest Iranian authorities are posing as ordinary citizens sympathetic to the government. It is nearly impossible to verify the provenance of Twitter feeds, Addley writes, "and traditional media have used unsourced material from the site with extreme caution."
In addition to Twitter, YouTube has been a critical tool to disseminate videos from Iran, New York Times reporters Mark Landler and Brian Stelter write. The BBC’s Persian-language television channel said that on Tuesday, it was receiving as many as five videos a minute from amateurs, even though the channel is largely blocked within Iran.
"We’ve been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony," said BBC World News Editor Jon Williams. "The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over."
A new chart from Technorati shows the most popular mainstream media websites linked to by bloggers.
The blog search engine gave an insight into its first Technorati Attention Index on a blog post, showing the 50 websites linked to by most bloggers in the past 30 days.
Leading the pack is video-sharing website YouTube, followed by the agenda-setting nytimes.com and BBC News.
Also making the Technorati top ten are: MSN, Guardian.co.uk, washingtonpost.com, and Reuters.
A number of British mainstream media websites also made it into the Top 50 but outside the top ten, including: Telegraph.co.uk, dailymail.co.uk and FT.com.
Writing on the Technorati blog, Jen McLean explains some of the reasons behind starting the new index.
She notes: “We know the independence and immediacy of the blogosphere has had a huge impact on mainstream online media.
“Much is made of the tension between the two – but what we’re seeing is convergence, and a symbiotic relationship.
“So what is the influence of mainstream media sites in the blogosphere? We’ve tried to answer with the Technorati Attention Index.”
A video showing the past and present South Wales Echo aims to promote the newspaper’s online redesign.
Created by multimedia specialist James Cuff, the video highlights the title’s history through some of its famous front pages.
The video also shows the Echo in the here and now with footage of its new website, with reporters immersing themselves in the news.
“I wanted to create a short film that would celebrate the Echo as an important part of the history of South Wales and look forward to its future both in print and online,” said Cuff.
In an article on the Echo website, Cuff also explained some of the secrets behind the video’s special effects.
A digital correspondent in San Diego has been sharing his tips for being an effective one-man band (OMB) journalist.
Joe Little works for KGTV 10 News and is responsible for shooting, presenting and editing his video packages.
A YouTube video showing samples of his work from last year – Joe Little 2008 - has caused a bit of a stir on the Web and prompted Little to share some of the secrets of his solo efforts.
Speaking to Poynter Online, the multimedia journalist said one of the most important tools of his trade is the reversible screen on his camera.
“I can flip the viewfinder over, stand in front of the camera and see where I am framed up in a shot. Without that, I add at least 15 minutes to a shoot.”
He added: “The tricks I use are the same ones a good two-man crew would use. I have to do both of their jobs. I look for meaning, balance and creativity.”
And he assured fellow reporters that the solo stand-ups get easier with practice, allowing him to get the basics sorted and move on to experimenting with effects such as split-screening (see above video).
However, Little admitted that OMBs can’t do everything and certain stories are much harder to put together than others.
“Courtrooms are brutal because you have to stay with the camera. I can’t go grab the attorney or the family member who just ducked out because I’m stuck behind a wall with a judge begging for a reason to throw me out.”
Confrontational interviews can be tough too: “If you have a photographer, it’s easier to fire away questions and make sure you’re right where the action is.
“It looks sloppy if I’m messing with the camera, looking through the viewfinder and still trying to focus on ‘this guy.’”
See Poynter Online for the full interview and Little’s step-by-step guide to split-screening using Final Cut Pro.
Little also shared the tricks of his trade in the comments section of his 2008 showreel on YouTube.
And if you want to know more about the day-to-day issues affecting OMBs, university students have put together a film entitled “One day in the life of Joe Little”.
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.”
Journalists should concentrate on delivering four of the five P’s of the Internet, according to a new media chief in the US.
Rob Curley from Greenspun Interactive says effective content on the net can essentially be split into five categories:
Passions – Think travel, sport, shopping etc
Practical – Information such as opening times, maps and so on.
Playful – This is YouTube and similar.
(As Curley puts it: “How many times have you heard someone say, ‘You know, I was on YouTube last night, and I just lost myself. I must have been on that site for two or three hours.’
“Now when was the last time you heard someone say, ‘You know, I was on my local newspaper’s website last night and I just lost myself. I must have been on that site for two or three hours.’”)
Personal communication – Such as social networking, instant messaging and all that jazz.
Porn – No explanation required!
Curley, who is president and executive editor at Greenspun Interactive, continues: “Here’s what is wild: With the exception of porn (and probably personal communication), newspapers should really be able to deliver on these things.”
Writing on his blog, Curley suggests that newspapers should take a look at the non-news things that work in print and try to “embrace those sorts of equivalents with new media”.
So he considers some of the initiatives followed by his newspaper – the Las Vegas Sun – and how they match two of the magic P’s:
Passions – Examples at the Sun include boxing features and entertainment news and gossip from the Strip.
Most importantly, Curley writes that these changes have had a very positive impact on the site’s traffic figures with a growth of 300% in the past six months.
And of particular interest is that he includes in his write-up some of the projects that so far haven’t elicited the kind of page views initially expected.
Users can cast their votes for some of the plays of the year in high school American football thanks to an online video feature from a local newspaper.
New York state’s Times Herald-Record has a whole site dedicated to schools sports – Varsity 845 – and its football section recently launched the Smashmouth Awards.
Journalists created ten categories – such as Elusive Quarterbacks and Crunch Time -and then allowed users to vote on their favourites from the video footage.
The winners of each section were then put forward for the main prize and could be viewed by voters in a video package embedded from YouTube.
A spokesman for Ottaway Newspapers, the group behind the title, told E&P’s Fitz and Jen blog that the competition generated some 30,000 page views in the first week alone.
Varsity 845 features reports and information on a plethora of school sports teams and enables users to search for content relevant to them via searches by sport or school.
The Record Online also has a similar channel dedicated to college sports called Varsity 845 U, which offers coverage of teams in the area and reports on local youngsters playing for colleges elsewhere in the US.
New research reveals that young web users are not lone surfers but like to feel part of an online community.
Writing on Poynter Online, Maryn McKenna says a Californian study of teenagers and their use of digital media shows that “community is king” among the younger generation.
And it’s a point that she says should be noted by news providers and reporters with regards to their future consumers.
In addition, McKenna states that the three-year project funded by the MacArthur Foundation contains other conclusions that the news media would do well to consider.
They are the “remix culture” and the adage that “multimedia rules” when it comes to online content and destinations proving popular with young surfers.
Regarding this remix culture, she writes: “Teens respond to information and culture by appropriating, sampling and remixing it. They then look to their communities for reaction.”
The report - entitled “Kids’ Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures” - was produced by staff at the University of Southern California and the University of California in Berkeley after interviewing some 800 young people and parents.
Researchers also observed teenagers using sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.
The full report and an executive summary are available on the Digital Youth Research website.
Now that the dust has settled on the US election, here’s a guide to some of the online coverage that caught the eye of commentators, bloggers and journalists.
The Look
If you want to see how the digital media reported the votes as they came in, student Gary Ritzenthaler spent the night taking screen grabs of websites from around the world.
Blogger and academic Mindy McAdams writes that the PhD student from the University of Florida has made these images public on Iterasi, an online bookmarking service for pages as well as links.
And guardian.co.uk has a collection of images showing how the global online media reported Barack Obama’s victory.
Blogs
An overview of some of the most popular US election blogs was provided earlier this month by TimesOnline.
Although the article is about websites rather than purely about blogs, most of its 25 picks either are blogs or have their blogging sections recommended.
The effectiveness of the pro-McCain and pro-Obama bloggers is discussed in this article by Judith Townend on Journalism.co.uk.
Meanwhile, the BBC adopted a three-pronged blogging strategy with Gavin Hewitt providing updates from the Obama camp in Chicago and Matt Price blogging from the McCain campaign headquarters in Arizona.
North America editor Justin Webb completed the triumvirate by offering an overview of the results via his regular blog.
Multimedia
The effectiveness and accuracy of some of the media’s fancy maps have been discussed on The Information Aesthetics blog, and the Australian resource also has lots of links to some of the most innovative ones.
And alternatives to the usual raft of red/blue maps dotting the online media landscape have been offered up by Mark Newman at the University of Michigan (HT - Martin Stabe.)
Users could view news from chosen locations and use the timeline to filter reports by date.
On the video and slideshows front, plenty of journalists in the US hit the campaign trail and polling booths to produce some great little packages.
In her round-up for Poynter Online, Regina McCombs points to an audio-visual piece from the Nashua Telegraph where voters were asked to sum up why they voted in one word.
McCombs also flags up a multimedia feature from the Star Tribune asking local politicians and activists what the Obama victory means to them.
While the New York Times contributed with its documentary – Choosing the President – which combines audio, video and some very flashy graphics to produce an effective overview of the election from party nominations through to November 5th.
How Obama harnessed the power of social networking websites like Facebook is discussed in this New York Times article (HT – Nigel Barlow).
And among the news outlets taking advantage of image-sharing websites was Sky News, which posted photos of its election coverage activities to its Flickr stream (HT Journalism.co.uk).
User-Generated Content
On a grand scale there was the YouTube-PBS partnership project – Video Your Vote, which encouraged the public to record their voting experiences.
While among the small but innovative UGC projects was the Word Train feature from the New York Times which asked users to submit one word to describe their current state of mind on election day.
The most common words were then displayed across the webpage and visitors could also choose to view words from a particular time period or from Obama or McCain supporters only.
Further Reading
There are lots of other round-up posts around the blogosphere, such as one on the Online Journalism Blog from Paul Bradshaw and this from Laura Oliver on Journalism.co.uk.
[Pictures from top - Jonathon Colman on Flickr and Shasti O'Leary on Flickr.]
Newspapers have to get to grips with online video if they want to survive in the future, according to Michael Rosenblum.
The video journalism visionary said reporters need to accept and embrace the new platform rather than hide away from it, reports Press Gazette.
Rosenblum pointed to comparative industries where the failure to harness new technologies has resulted in businesses going bust or falling behind.
He told the assembled audience at the Society of Editors conference: “As the web goes to video there’s a sort of Gresham’s Law - more dynamic media drives out less dynamic media.”
The former CBS producer added: “If you only have print or stills and your competitor has video, you’re going to get eaten.”
And he said there are no excuses for journalists to shy away from video now that the technology has become relatively cheap and easy.
“Any idiot can do this, making TV is not hard, it’s not complicated, it’s not difficult. The technology makes it incredibly simple.”
Rosenblum continued: “A nine-year-old can produce professional material and the cost is next to zero.”
Visit the Society of Editors site for further details on his speech, meanwhile guardian.co.uk has a video interview with Rosenblum on its Organ Grinder blog.
Voters in tomorrow’s US elections are being encouraged to film their voting experiences and post them online.
YouTube and PBS have teamed up to launch the Video Your Vote channel, where users can upload and share their election films.
And the pick of the user-generated content will be broadcast on a PBS election programme, reports CyberJournalist.net.
Users categorise their videos into groups such as “Voter Intimidation”, “Voting Perspectives” and “Polling Place Projects,” and they are then displayed as pins on a Google map.
The channel makes clear that it wants a broad range of videos, rather than just a visual record of people’s votes.
“Shoot a video of your voting experience before or on Election Day. Document the energy and excitement, as well as any problems you may see.”
The channel has a significant number of videos already submitted, many under the “Early Voting” tag.
And among the most popular is this video (almost 90,000 views so far) showing the voting experience of An American Abroad.
Videos entered for a citizen journalism competition are now available to view online.
Over 80 films were submitted to Project: Report, a contest for “non-professional, aspiring journalists” run by YouTube in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
Visitors to the Project: Report channel can watch all of the pieces entered for round one, which asked budding storytellers to make a short video profile of a person in their community.
Wired.com has opened up its editorial process to the public through a profile piece on film-maker Charlie Kaufman.
Visitors to the website are able to follow the evolution of the article - from the original idea and pitch through to the interview, writing, editing and design stages.
The “profile of a profile” is the brainchild of senior editor Jason Tanz and is based upon the idea of “radical transparency”.
Guest blogging on reportr.net, Tanz explains the notions behind the experimental piece: “At Wired, we’ve written about the notion of “radical transparency,” in which companies air their inner deliberations online and thereby create stronger relationships with their customers.
“When it came time to write my Kaufman profile, I suggested something similar: Let’s post everything that went into the pitching, writing, editing, and design of this story.”
So among the information shared with the audience via blogs are audio files with a “lightly edited” version of the full interview with Kaufman, edits of drafts, fact-checking notes and proofreading changes.
The blogs reveal the team of workers behind the finished article and each of them – from the writer to the photo editor to the designer – writes a post explaining their part in the process.
In addition, the main blog now has a full pdf version of the final article available for view several weeks before it will appear in print.
According to Tanz, the experimental profile is a way to bring journalists out from hiding behind “our objective voice”.
He writes: “We present ourselves as all-knowing seers, delivering the truth from the mountaintop, when really our product - like any - is the product of humans making decisions.”
Tanz concludes: “The underlying questions that we’re trying to address - how do we connect to readers and engage them in our process and our product - are ones we’re sure to keep asking.”
A regional newspaper is supplementing its online coverage of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin with submissions from local people.
The Anchorage Daily News has created a constantly updating multimedia resource on Palin, who has been governor of Alaska since 2006 and a well known public figure in the state for more than 15 years.
And among its features is “Palin and Me” – a user-generated content initiative which invites local users to send in their photographs with the governor.
“Send in snaps you made at a rally, a barbecue, on the street, or any other encounter with our governor,” requests the Daily News.
The website’s Palin section has a wealth of material, including slideshows with audio and photographic footage from past interviews with the Daily News, videos such as the recent Saturday Night Live Palin sketch and numerous photo galleries.
It also has a biography of Palin and links to the latest news stories about her, which users can also receive to their inboxes via the Sarah Palin newsletter.
Google senior advisor Richard Gingras recently exhorted newspapers to take a leaf out of Wikipedia’s book and create “living stories” on their websites which readers can refer to over time.
And this resource regarding a local public figure who has come to global attention is a good example of regional news journalists putting that notion into practice.
“The vision I have for the Web is about anything being potentially connected with anything.”
These are the words of the man credited with the invention of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and in them he encapsulates the central idea behind the Web - connectivity.
And it is through the act of linking that the millions of disparate institutions, groups and peoples that populate the Web can connect to one another.
Therefore, linking is a founding principle of the Web and a principle of its founder – and yet one blogger recently termed it the “Achilles’ heel” of mainstream media.
While a group of editors at a conference earlier in the year was reportedly “appalled” by suggestions that their online news articles need to link out more.
Are they missing a trick and failing to engage with the ethics of the Web? Or are they making a judgment call based on sound commercial ideas?
This SPOTLIGHT post will look at some of these issues while also highlighting some of the ways news sites are starting to get to grips with linking.
It will also take in the basics - what is linking, what are the different forms it can take and how can it be used by digital journalists.
Finally, we’ll round off with the usual suggestions for further reading.
DEFINITIONS
Hyperlink
“An element in an electronic document that links to another place in the same document or to an entirely different document.”
This definition from Webopedia shows the two main types of hyperlink (hereafter shortened to link) – an internal link to a different section on your own site or an external link to a new website.
Hyperlinks are usually a different colour from the main text to make them stand out and are often underlined, as in the above sentence where clicking on Webopedia would take you to its page entry on Hyperlink.
Rather than users being diverted to a new website (as with the above link), inline links open up within the document and usually open as a box with a select amount of content from a different site.
These are currently being used by both the Washington Post and by the BBC – more of that later.
Deep Linking
This takes users to a direct page on a different website as opposed to just the main page or homepage.
For example, a definition of deep linking can be found on Wikipedia – this deep link takes you straight to the entry on it rather than just the Wikipedia homepage.
More definitions of different types of links can be found on Netlitigation.com.
NEWS SITES & LINKING
Now that we’ve examined the most common sort of links relevant to digital news media, let’s look at how some commentators believe linking can enhance online journalism.
In this section we’ll also be looking at the ways that some mainstream news websites are experimenting with external links.
1 – The Web & The Ethic of the Link
To kick us off, here is academic and blogger Jay Rosen talking about “the ethic of the link”.
For Rosen, the “ethic of the web” is all about connecting people to each other and to knowledge - and this means online newspapers which do not link out are essentially “anti-web”.
Therefore, one argument for mainstream media to incorporate external links in their content is that they can never be fully integrated into the World Wide Web until they do so.
Former BBC journalist and new media blogger Alfred Hermida asserts that traditional media could also risk alienating users by not engaging with the connection capabilities of the Web.
“Editors should be thinking of their products as a service that is part of a larger network of news,” he notes.
Hermida adds: “Legacy media risks becoming irrelevant by insisting they are destinations and refusing to open up to the network.”
2 – An Information Gateway
In 2007, Jeff Jarvis wrote on his Buzz Machine blog: “Try this on as a new rule for newspapers: Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.”
Under Jarvis’s rule, this means local online newspapers link to content that other media provide rather than producing their own version of it.
Jarvis says this approach would enable regional news editors to “reallocate your dwindling resources to what matters, which in most cases should be local coverage”.
Local news websites then become an information gateway for the community, pointing users in the right direction.
3 – A Community Hub
An example of how this might work in practice was supplied earlier this year by blogger and local link journalism advocate Scott Karp.
When snow fell in Tennessee last March, KnoxNews.com produced its own news story on the biggest snowstorm for five years.
The site then also linked to the myriad of pictures and posts popping up across personal blogs showing how local residents had been enjoying the rare snowfall.
Writing on his Publishing 2.0 blog, Karp asserts: “Newspapers should aspire to be a hub for shared community experiences - and that’s what the link journalism piece on Knoxnews.com did, by presenting as a shared experience what would otherwise be disconnected blog posts.”
This approach could also be used for a non-geographical community, as shown by a new project from the Washington Post.
Launched this week, the Post’s Political Browser supplies links to all that day’s top political stories, including those on rival newspaper sites.
A press release from the Post states: “The Political Browser creates a hub for readers to instantly find the top news driving the day's political discussion selected by the Post's political team.”
And executive editor Jim Brady adds: “This section is a source for readers to find the best of the Web’s political stories all in one place.”
4 – Hypermedia News
Unlike the linear narrative of a print news story, a Web article can be read in different ways by different people thanks to the presence of links.
Therefore, readers can be given the option on whether they want to know more background information or follow links for further reading – just as in this blog post.
Or to paraphrase New York University’s Brooke Kroeger, according to PJNet, “a little story that any 6th grader can read can also be linked to an extremely sophisticated information base for a more sophisticated reader”.
Plus, linking can see a simple text article be supplemented with all kinds of multimedia to add an extra dimension for readers who want more than words.
It is this aspect of linking that the BBC has recently been experimenting with through its use of inline linking to its own pages and to sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr.
Last month, the corporation began using links within selected standard news articles to see if this enhanced the experience for some users without distracting others.
Readers can elect whether to have links enabled or not and clicking on one brings up a small box containing background information or a video or photographic content.
The user can then close the box and continue reading the BBC article or open a new browser window on this page.
Also making use of inline linking is the Washington Post, which introduced pop-ups to two of its blogs in April this year.
The Editors Weblog reports that the strategy (using Apture technology like the BBC project) was to give users extra information without sending them off-site.
5 – Transparency Of Sources
Jarvis terms this “supporting journalism at its source” - linking to original source material - and it’s a practice he says is prevalent in the blogosphere but not in the world of mainstream media.
Linking to sources shows the reader where the journalist has got his/her information from and credits the original author.
And according to blogger Tammi Marcoullier, encouraging reporters to link to source material should reduce incentives for journalists to plagarise others and will reward original content.
6 – Synthesis Of Stories
Simple linking will point out external sites which may be of interest to the reader if they want to know about x, y, z – the information gateway.
However, Scott Karp suggests that “link journalism” takes this whole concept much further by digesting and evaluating that information before presenting it to the audience.
For example, Karp writes about a post on the New York Times’s The Lede: Notes on the News blog concerning how newspapers were reporting oil price forecasts.
Karp notes “The value for the reader here is enormous - not only do they get Times blogger Mike Nizza’s framing and perspective, they get links to all of this original reporting and analysis on this issue.”
He adds: “The Lede has helped readers make sense of what they read elsewhere, helping to make the Lede more essential than those other sources.”
7 – Reciprocal Linking
This summer the SEO Company carried out an experiment to see whether mainstream news websites that included outbound links were likely to receive more inbound links.
Its conclusion? “In general there is a strong relationship between news websites linking out and getting links in return.”
This might just be in the interest of news websites when you remember how much value is placed upon incoming links by search engine software.
And it brings us back to the fundamental nature of the Web itself – a network of connections - and to its founder's vision of anything being connected with anything.
Linking & The Law
The fundamental right for websites to link to other websites has not yet been challenged in court (netlitigation.com), but there have been a number of cases challenging certain aspects or uses of linking.
Some of these saw victory for those linking (German courts legalised deep linking in 2003) and some saw defeat (French website fined for linking to site which committed breach of privacy).
At present, there are no formal rules and regulations governing links but here are a couple of websites which hold information on past court cases.
Netlitigation.com outlines some of the early legal challenges and this document from the World Wide Web Consortium offers an interesting defence of deep linking.
While Links & Law is a useful resource with details on various lawsuits concerning issues such as inline linking and deep linking.
Resources
The Web houses some good practical guides on linking for journalists, including this article from the Online Journalism Review about when and why to link in an article.
Another good authority is Jakob Nielsen, who has written extensively about usability on the Web.
This article may be four years old but it still has valuable advice on formatting links, while this page offers an interesting argument for deep linking over generic linking.
Of particular interest to journalists is a post put together by new media blogger Sarah Hartley with practical tips on linking.
And anyone who wants to know more about the ethical side of linking should take a look at this article on Poynter Online which has a set of online journalism ethical guidelines created by digital reporters.
Finally, more in-depth offerings and analysis of linking can be found in The Hyperlinked Society.
The chapters are available online and Lokman Tsui’s section on Newspapers and Blogs is well worth a look for its discussion on the dual function of links for citation and reciprocity.
And that wraps up this latest SPOTLIGHT post. Next time we’ll be taking a look at the related world of social bookmarking.
In the meantime, do get in touch if you have any interesting examples of online newspapers using links or if there are any topics or themes you’d like to see covered in this series.
A local newspaper’s video interview with Olympics star Tom Daley has been seen by almost 190,000 users on YouTube.
The Plymouth Herald recorded the video in spring this year and saw views take off after the young diver became one of the most famous faces among the Team GB athletes.
Web editor Neil Shaw told HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk that the video simply wouldn’t have been seen by anything near the current total had it been placed only on The Herald's website.
He said: “The video is branded with The Herald’s logo so this success has meant our name is now known across the world and is associated with content people want to watch.”
Shaw added: “We started uploading our videos to YouTube a few months ago, as well as uploading them to our own video player, and find it to be a fantastic way to get our content ‘out there’ and have it noticed.”
As well as being featured on the YouTube homepage, the video has attracted over 450 comments and was made a favourite by visitors.
Another regional newspaper making waves with its multimedia coverage of a local Olympian’s success is the Mansfield Chad.
Journalists provided extensive coverage on the double gold medal haul of Mansfield swimmer Rebecca Adlington.
This included real-time updates during her final races as well as photo slideshows and video footage of her homecoming parade.
A further 20 Trinity Mirror newspapers have created their own channels on video-sharing site YouTube.
The Liverpool Daily Post was the first Trinity title to launch its own branded space on the website last month.
It has now been joined by another 20 including the Huddersfield Examiner channel and the Liverpool Echo channel.
Journalists are able to upload videos to their own sites and to the channels by a single click since the incorporation of a YouTube application within the content management system.
Trinity Mirror’s online marketing manager told Holdthefrontpage.co.uk that its newspapers are creating YouTube channels as they launch their revamped websites.
Jessica Healy said: “Every new site that we launch, we set up the functionality and encourage them to use it.”
She added: “It’s very much in its infancy but the aim is that every video we put up on our sites will be put into YouTube.”
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.
