I earlier reported that NowPublic had laid off most of its staff, and commented that the site could face closure. The post was based on information from a well-placed and reliable source. Since the post was published, NowPublic co-founder Len Brody has said that NowPublic is not shutting its doors. In an exchange on Twitter, Len said: “Company is moving forward and working on the mandate we have been from

Some bad news from the participatory journalism start-up NowPublic, based in Vancouver. I’ve heard that the site had laid off most of its staff – 8 out of its team of 11 – and could likely be shutting down. (See update below: NowPublic denies it is closed) NowPublic was bought by Examiner.com last September. At the time, the plan was for Examiner.com and NowPublic to operate independently, retaining their unique

Interesting presentation of Thoora at the CAJ Innovate. Thoora is a platform that aims to analyse, filter and aggregate content from news sources, blogs and Twitter and turn it into meaningful data. The platform is pitched as a solution for newsrooms to make sense of the wealth of content in social media and find meaningful ways of integrating it with traditional media sources. The aim is to reduce huge amounts

Leonard Brody’s keynote address to Connect ’09 is well worth a watch. In his talk at the even for tech start-ups and innovators, organised by the BC Innovation Council, he outlines how we are in an age where innovation, entrepreneurial and technology are creating new opportunities. There are some lessons for the media here. [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.892602&w=425&h=350&fv=] Leonard Brody at Connect ’09 – Watch more Videos at Vodpod. (Via Techvibes)

Here are the slides and the text of my presentation on ambient journalism at the Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff University: Twittering the News View more presentations from Alfred Hermida. Twittering the News: The emergence of ambient journalism My paper looks at new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as “awareness systems”. For this I have drawn from literature on new communications technologies in computer science to suggest that these

Image via CrunchBase The big news in the citizen journalism space is that Vancouver-based participatory news site NowPublic.com has been sold to the local news network, Examiner.com. The new owners, Philip Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group, are reported to have paid around $25 million. NowPublic was started in 2005 by Canadian entrepreneurs Leonard Brody, Michael Tippett and Michael Meyers, and has raised more than $10m in venture capital. Writing on NowPublic,

Vancouver-based Orato.com used to describe itself as the “only news site in the world dedicated to First Person, citizen-authored journalism”. The citizen journalism site is perhaps best known for assigning two former sex trade workers to cover the trial of Robert Pickton, convicted in December 2007 on six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of six women whose remains were found on his farm. The concept behind Orato was

CBC has appointed the former BBC News online editor Rachel Nixon as its new director of Digital Media for CBC News. Rachel Nixon is an award-winning journalist, having spend nine years with the internationally acclaimed BBCNews.com in a number of increasingly senior positions. In 2007, Rachel was named BBC World Service Editor of the Year for cross-platform editorial leadership. Currently, Nixon is the global news director of Vancouver-based NowPublic.com, the

Speaking at the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas, Rachel Nixon, Global News Director at NowPublic.com talked about a new news cycle. The ability of people to witness and report the news to their network – Facebook, Twitter, etc – creates a emerging news cycle, argued Nixon. In the past, she said, someone would witness an event, tell a reporter, who would filter and process the information,

The 10th International Symposium on Online Journalism starts on Friday 17 April at UT Austin  and I’m planning to blog and Twitter from the two days of discussions on the state of online journalism. The conference is unusual as it brings together journalists, news executives and academics from across the world. The event kicks off with a keynote by Paul Steiger, the former editor of The Wall Street Journal, who