Image via Wikipedia The proposal to take money from the BBC licence fee to partly ITV regional news services was one of the headlines of theUK government’s Digital Britain report. According to the proposal, a small part of the expected £200m digital switchover surplus would fund three ITV regional news pilots in Scotland, Wales and one English region from now until 2013. The pilots are a response to ITV’s decision

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

Academic presentations dominate the second day of the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas. The research papers cover a wide range of topics, but one topic that kept coming up was user-generated content, also described as citizen journalism and participatory journalism. Normally, I would have blogged the papers and highlighted some of the research. But my energy levels are low today so instead I recommend reading 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,

An end of year list by NowPublic.com shows how far user-generated content played a role in the big news events of the year. According to its CEO, Len Brody: 2008 not only proved the concept of user-generated news, but also tipped the scales. The pillars of mainstream media, including the Associated Press, BBC, CBS and CNN have all made significant efforts to embrace the new model. Top of the list

Following on from the attacks in Mumbai, Mindy McAdams has put together a short timeline of key events that have affected the development of online news. Among these are 9/11 attacks and the July 2005 bombings in London. Her list got me thinking about two key events in 1997 that had a big impact on the evolution of the web as an accepted platform for news. I was with the

Image via Wikipedia There’s somewhat of a contradiction in the latest posting on the BBC’s Editors Blog by Helen Boaden, director of BBC News. Introducing the post, she writes: This week I gave the keynote speech at the e-Democracy conference. You can read what I said below. I would be interested to know what you think. The speech gives an overview of the BBC’s approach to citizen journalism. But even

Image by garyturner via Flickr Comments by a senior BBC News executive at the Media Society event, ‘Broadsheet vs Broadband’ in London offer an insight into how the corporation views user-generated content. Pete Clifton, who has the unwieldy title of head of editorial development for multimedia journalism explained how UGC fit into the BBC’s newsgathering: It’s gathering in insights that the audience have that we can make sense of and

Image via Wikipedia There are just a couple of days left to get in your Knight News Challenge proposal. The deadline to apply for a slice of the $5m up for grabs is November 1 at midnight PDT. On Wednesday, I submitted my idea – Legacy2010.com: Helping Vancouver citizens understand how the Winter Olympics are changing the city. The 2010 Winter Games are a source of controversy in Vancouver. Supporters

Edie Rubinowitz of Northeastern Illinois University provided a fascinating insight into Chicago Public Radio’s community radio project, :Vocalo, at the Convergence and Society conference. And yes, it is supposed to be “:Vocalo”, as Rubinowitz explained at the start of the talk.  The colon is a deliberate attempt to create an emoticon. :Vocalo is its own distinct radio station which downplays its relationship with Chicago Public Radio (CPR).  Rubinowitz explained that