The world’s biggest news websites have been ranked by the University of Maryland’s International Center for Media and the Public Agenda according to their openness and accountability. The study looked at 25 international news websites, ranging from The New York Times to Sky News to Al Jazeera. The Guardian came in at first place. By comparison, the BBC fared pretty badly, receiving a “poor” verdict. As a former news editor

Photosynth, a photo app under development at Microsoft Live Labs, offers a glimpse of how the way we view images could change. The software was demoed at TED2007, wowing the audience. Watching the video of the presentation, Photosynth looks impressive. Using photos of Notre Dame taken from Flickr, the demo shows Photosynth creating a multidimensional representation with zoom and navigation. “Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year,” wrote

The launch of Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur; How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy is receiving much media coverage, a lot of it focusing on the fury from the blogosphere. I have not read the book so will refrain from comment. But I can recommend two reviews of it. Dan Gillmor describes it as “a shabby and dishonest treatment of an important

Here is a link to an analysis article I wrote on the digital dilemmas that social media poses for journalists for the Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen at the University of British Columbia. It looks at the ethical issues surrounding digital door-stepping, looking at what happened following the Virginia Tech shootings, when students turned to social networking sites to share experiences and express their grief. Here’s an extract: Reporters

I was at a lively panel discussion entitled Iran’s Generation Next: Sex, Blogs and Social Change on Wednesday evening organised by the New Windows Society in Vancouver. The main speaker was journalist, author and UBC adjunct professor Deborah Campbell, who talked about how Iran is changing. Also on the panel was Bob Hackett, SFU School of Communication, who discussed the media and democracy. For my part, I set the scene

A quick mention for a panel I am on this evening in Vancouver, discussing the impact of the internet on society in the Middle East. June 6, 2007, 7:00 pm: Iran’s Generation Next: Sex, Blogs and Social Change Keynote by journalist, author and UBC adjunct professor Deborah Campbell With Bob Hackett, SFU School of Communication, and Alfred Hermida, UBC School of Journalism Location: SFU Harbour Centre, Fletcher Challenge Theatre, 515

Here is further proof why journalism schools should be preparing students for a multiplatform, multimedia world – a letter from a J-School student about his internship at the Smithsonian magazine. This extract sums it up: Online is the way to go. Here at Smithsonian magazine everything is going in that direction. They ask their writers/freelancers to submit multimedia ideas and ask their sources if they have anything they can put

Over at PressThink, Jay Rosen neatly dissects Neil Henry’s plea for reparations from technology giants. In a posting entitled, Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class, Rosen writes of Henry: He’s bitter about the online world and its unjust economy of news, resents but resolutely will not grok it, and he wants the people there (“online…”) to know what they’re destroying. Anyway, Google News is good for news website, by helping to

Invisible Inkling has summed up 10 key points about the future of newspapers. They are pretty obvious points to anyone involved in new media, such as “it is not Google’s fault”. Essentially newspapers need to stop complaining and instead start training reporters with a new skillset that takes advantage of all the opportunities offered by Internet technologies

A satirical take on citizen journalism and user-generated content has caught the attention of editors at the BBC. David Kermode, editor of the BBC TV Breakfast show, cites a sketch by British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb on their radio show, That Mitchell and Webb Sound. Kermode describes it as “very funny. It is also a bit painful”. The radio show is available online, but the BBC only offers