Friday, January 21st, 2011

Planning a live, multimedia newsday for journalism students

Today sees an experiment in both teaching and accreditation for the journalism courses at UCA Farnham. Rather than treat the scheduled accreditation visit from the Broadcast Journalism Training Council as a kind of external examiners visit, showing BJTC members boxes of completed student work, UCA aims to demonstrate student skills in action. The five visiting […]

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Reed’s Karl Schneider: “What is online journalism?”

Part 1;    Part 2;    Part 3;    Part 4;    Part 5; More from Karl Schneider’s talk to UCA Farnham journalism students (there’s no video for this section – stay tuned for the full multimedia experience in subsequent posts). How does web journalism differ from print? What are its defining characteristics? Five key areas: Multimedia Links Global […]

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

OJB undesigns redesign

I snarked a bit recently about the recent redesign of the Online Journalism Blog – I thought it made the site less usable and seem less full. It seems my campaign has been vindicated –  the OJB has reverted to its former design (or at least something like it), which, while not perfect (and what […]

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Yet another model to make online news pay

Thanks to Jessica for sending me the link to the new Journalism Online website – home of an effort to create a syndicate of paid-for newspaper content on the web [UPDATE: now rebranded]. This is the organisation that apparently has 170 daily papers on board already, though it hasn’t actually got around to telling us […]

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Vampires, iPhones and online news media

In a rare free afternoon hour, I am goofing off and watching Moonlight, a kind-of crappy new vampire private eye series on Virgin1. I normally like this kind of thing, sadly, though this series seems to suck more than the average vampire show should. (Which is why it seems it may already have been cancelled.) […]

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

Journalism's uncertain future

As they say, prediction is hard – especially about the future. Many years ago – sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s – I started to take note of the technological change revamping the journalism business, and I started to make some fanciful predictions about the direction it would take. Anyone who takes an interest in futurology […]

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Why free is not just about the money

Very interesting piece by Stan Schroeder on Mashable on the different implications of free online content. “Free” is not just about price – it’s also about simplicity and ease of use.  Some content will be difficult to charge anything for. Unfortunately for journalists, it’s news. Forcing charges down people’s throats is a bad way to […]

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Journalists can't afford to be purist about their trade anymore

There’s a nice rant over at Fleet Street Blues decrying the media’s current seeming obsession with the delivery of media content over its practice. The best thing about journalism isn’t blogging, or Twittering, or finding innovative multimeeja ways to tell a story, or even asking someone difficult questions Paxman-style. It’s about finding something out that no one […]

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Does journalism need a new crowdsourcing tool?

It strikes me there’s a kind of assumption around journalism that it somehow needs bespoke tools to do its job in the new digital media world. But actually I think it should stick to its existing strengths. In the spirit of research, I’ve just visited the Royal College of Art summer graduation show to check out […]

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

The future of digital publishing – a conversation

Today I’ve invited another blogger to join me in a discussion about the future of web journalism and the economics of publishing in a rapidly digitising world. Blogging about the world of amateur horticulture under the name Soilman (well, it’s nice to have a hobby), he also has wide experience in journalism and editorial training. […]