Here is a brief write-up of some of the main points from my talk at the Screen Futures conference in Australia on the promise and practice of participatory journalism. The talk was based on findings in my co-authored book, Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers, into how journalists are thinking about their relationship with the people formerly known as the audience. Comments on stories have become a familiar feature on

During my trip to Australia, I was invited to deliver a keynote at the Screen Futures conference in Melbourne. In the talk, I explored the promise and practice of participatory journalism. It draws on the data from my co-authored book, Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers. We found that journalists are navigating uncharted waters – figuring out how to bring in the audience into the professional process of

Since I was on the last research panel at ISOJ, I was not able to blog about the strong papers by my fellow presenters. Fortunately, the ISOJ student team wrote a short wrap up. But I wanted to share the slides and text of my paper presentation for those who weren’t about to make the conference. The paper is also available as PDF. The Active Recipient Thank you. It is

Jim Brady, former editor of TBD.com and WashingtonPost.com, set the tone for a professional panel on engaging the audience at #ISOJ by saying they were going to stick to time and leave plenty of time for questions. First up was Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief of VG Multimedia, Norway. He started by stating that he tells his journalists to spend a minimum of 10% of time interacting and engaging with readers. Three-quarters of

This month’s Carnival of Journalism asks what steps can be taken to increase the number of news sources. The question takes it cue from the Knight Foundation’s 15 recommendations on the news and information needs of communities. One clear way for journalism schools to contribute is by having students cover the city. Our students at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism already do this, as do many other j-schools. By doing

Finally a solution to the problem of inane comments on websites. Thanks to the wonderful xkcd.com

In my latest post for PBS Mediashift, I discuss two recent developments in the Canadian media landscape. This week was marked by the purchase of the Canwest newspapers and the launch of OpenFile: Two Canadians took a gamble that local news still matters this week. The two represent the hopes of both old and new media. One was a $1.1 billion buyout (in Canadian dollars) of Canada’s largest newspaper chain,

The set of guidelines about user-generated content produced by industry body, the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA), aims to help broadcasters get the most out of working with the audience. The guidelines, available as a PDF, cover familiar ground on concerns about quality of the content and potential legal issues. It acknowledges that: The most apparent benefit for broadcasters of using UGC is that it provides free access to material which

In my latest piece for PBS Mediashift, I discuss how the mainstream media is incorporating user-generated content, drawing on research presented at the recent Future of Journalism conference.  Here’s an excerpt: The ability of anyone to play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and sharing news and information is seen as one of the big shifts in journalism over the past 10 years. But a growing

A study of UGC at the BBC has found that audience contributions have consolidated, rather than changed, journalistic norms and practices. The study by Claire Wardle, Andrew Williams and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen was presented at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff. They found that the BBC mainly views UGC as part of its newsgathering operations, in essence as a way of obtaining photos and video, eyewitness accounts or story tipoffs.