Speaking at the BBC spring briefing in London on May 4, Rosenbaum talked about the importance of sharing content that is interesting, valid thoughtful and useful.

The film, called Morning Paper, follows the different stages of the process, from the daily editorial conference to the printing presses.

“Britons are inveterate newspaper readers,” says the presenter. “The morning survey of events at home and aboard is for them almost a ritual.”

Thanks to Richard Sambrook

In an attempt to help newsrooms, journalism professors Susana Herrera and José Luis Requejo have put together a list of 10 best practice guidelines for using Twitter.

The article is published in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies (subscription required).

For the guidelines, the scholars looked at the academic research on Twitter and studied the official accounts of leading news outlets such as The New York Times, the BBC, The Washington Post and National Public Radio.

The 10 best practices they identified are:

1. Have a voice that is credibile and reliable, but also personal and human
2. Be generous in retweets and credit others
3. Link to external material rather than simply broadcast your own content
4. Listen and respond to others
5. Provide information that adds value
6. Seek out the views of users
7. Promote the most interesting and useful content for audiences
8. Use hashtags created by the Twitter community
9. Include multimedia with tweets
10. Link to other networks where a conversation is happening, such as Facebook

The paper includes examples of tweets that reflect the best practices above so you can see how they are implemented by the various news organisations.

(Full disclosure: I am collaborating with Susana Herrera on a research project on Twitter).

Photo courtesy of Steve Jurvetson

The abstract is available on the papers site of the International Symposium on Online Journalism.

Japan tsunami photos highlight human cost, study finds
In the final research panel at ISOJ, Rosellen Downey, Erika Johnson, and Bailey Brewer, University of Missouri, looked at the coverage in photos of the Japanese tsunami.

WSJ Raju Narisetti on the need to create great news experiences
The last keynote at ISOJ was Raju Narisetti, managing editor, Wall Street Journal Digital Network Narisetti said the big challenge faces journalism is turning great content into great experiences.

Study points to prominence of activists in Andy Carvin coverage of Arab Spring
A new study shows how far NPR’s Andy Carvin, known as “the man who tweets revolutions,” favoured the voice of protesters in his reporting on Twitter of the Arab Spring.

Insights into data journalism in Argentina
Angelica Peralta Ramos, multimedia development manager, La Nación in Argentina, gave an insight into the challenges of doing data journalism.

Making data visualisation useful for audiences
At ISOJ, Alberto Cairo, lecturer in visual journalism, University of Miami, raised some critical questions about the visualisation of data in journalism.

Bob Metcalfe on disruption and how to get readers to pay
Day two of the ISOJ started off with a keynote by Bob Metcalfe, professor of Innovation and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise, University of Texas at Austin Cockrell School of Engineering.

Study of Samoa Topix finds local news forum falls short
Linda Jean Kenix of University of Canterbury in New Zealand presented the results of a study of Samoa Topix at ISOJ.

The challenges for journalism start-ups in Europe
Online journalism start-ups in Europe are struggling, according to a report from the Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism.

The inside story of a local newspaper’s cafe project
At ISOJ, John White, deputy editor for online, Winnipeg Free Press, Canada, outlined the paper’s News Café. A year ago, the Free Press created the café downtown.

The six traits of successful entrepreneurs
Mark Briggs, author of Entrepreneurial Journalism and director of Digital Media at KING 5, Seattle, got people thinking at ISOJ by going over the six traits for entrepreneurs.

Local media as news for a mass intelligent audience
The afternoon keynote at ISOJ was by Jim Moroney, publisher & CEO, Dallas Morning News, and chairman of the board, Newspapers Association of America.

Study into Twitter as a community reporting tool
The first academic presentation at International Symposium on Online Journalism came from Carrie Brown of the University of Memphis. For her study was called #Memstorm: Twitter as a community-driven breaking news reporting tool.

Global insights into the mobile media revolution at ISOJ
The second session at International Symposium on Online Journalism focused on the impact of mobile and tablet.

Google’s Richard Gingras calls for a rethink of journalism at ISOJ
The International Symposium on Online Journalism for 2012 kicked off with a talk by Richard Gingras, head of news products, Google.

The study, Through the lens: Visual framing of the Japan tsunami in U.S., British, and Chinese online media, looked at how the Japanese tsunami was reflected in the images of US, British and Chinese media.

The researchers examined at 242 photos, 58 from NPR, 52 from the BBC and 132 from Xinhua. The photos were collected over three days from March 11 to 13,

The study found that two-thirds of the photos had people in them and the majority of people were Japanese.

In photos on the BBC, there were few photos that just had officials. They tended to have a mix of officials and civilians. Xinhua, by comparison, featured mainly civilians

Few photos featured a single individual. Most were of groups.

China had the most visual coverage, due to geographic proximity.

The researchers didn’t find as many officials in the coverage as expected and instead tended to feature civilians and aid workers, highlighting the human dimension of the tragedy.

Narisetti said the big challenge faces journalism is turning great content into great experiences

He noted that great content is now available in a wide variety of places. So just having smart content is not enough. Instead, he said, we have to create experiences to engage the user.

We are terrible at turning the multimedia parts of stories into a great experience, said Narisetti. There are words, images, perhaps video. But collectively, they do not make for a great experience

For him, a great experience comes at the intersection of technology and content.

Narisetti said that great experiences will not just come from developers or programmers. Instead we should think about embedding the developers in the newsroom.

“The physical architecture of the newsroom matters a lot,” he said. Titles matter now, he added, as a title will affect how journalists in the newsroom perceive and react to a developer.

In his view, a title like frontend developer or backend developer makes it hard for journalists to relate to the work of developers.

Moreover, Narisetti said the credits matter. He recalled how at the Washington Post, a major project credited the journalists but not the developers.

Looking ahead, Narisetti said we need to consider how projects will live on in the future. Is there a shelf-life? Do we post a note to readers, telling them this database is no longer updated?

We have to maintain the experience, he said, or think of the shelf-life of an experience.

In other words, newsrooms must plan for impermanence.

Talking about journalism education, Narisetti asked how students were being taught about engagement, about metrics, about enhancing loyalty to the brand.

One of the things they are doing the WSJ is thinking about the news as a stream of content. He showed an example of the WSJ live coverage of the Oscars.

The WSJ is doing the same thing with market coverage, to have a stream of news and information.

For Narisetti, it is about finding ways of having readers come back to your journalism and your brand.

A new study shows how far NPR’s Andy Carvin, known as “the man who tweets revolutions,” favoured the voice of protesters in his reporting on Twitter of the Arab Spring.

The rigorous analysis of more than 5,000 tweets found that Carvin’s feed gave higher priority to the messages from citizens in repressive societies who were documenting and expressing their desires for social change on Twitter.

During key periods of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings in early 2011, just under half of the messages on his Twitter stream came from activists and bloggers (48.3%), even though they only made up a quarter of his sources (26.4%).

Carvin also relied mainstream media journalists as sources. While they made up about a quarter of his sources (26.7%), journalists accounted for 29.4% of tweets.

The study, “Sourcing the Arab Spring: A Case Study of Andy Carvin’s Sources During the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolution” by academics in Canada and the U.S., points to the dramatic impact social media is having on journalism and the ways news is being reported.

University of British Columbia professor and lead author Alfred Hermida said: “Our findings suggest a new style of near real-time reporting where journalists tap into social media to include a broader range of voices in the news.”

“The prominence of what many may consider to be rebel voices raises questions about traditional journalistic approaches to balance and objectivity.”

Carvin, a social media strategist for U.S. public service radio broadcaster NPR, rose to prominence during the uprisings in the Middle East for his mastery of aggregating and verifying real-time news on Twitter.

The study shows how his approach to sourcing marks a break with established news practices. Traditionally, journalists cite a small number of sources who hold institutional positions of power and authority, such as government officials, police or business leaders. Journalists rely on these elite sources, shaping what news gets reported and how it is reported.

News coverage quoting ordinary people still fills only a small part of the news. When it comes to covering protests, journalists tend to cite on officials and police, and tend to discredit activists.

The researchers analysed tweets from two periods in 2011, identifying and categorizing Carvin’s top sources (322 in all). The first, from January 12 to January 19, covered the major portion of Tunisian demonstrations leading to the fall of President Ben Ali. The second, from January 24 to February 13, covered the Egyptian protests and subsequent resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

University of Minnesota professor Seth C. Lewis, a co-author on the study, said: “This research focuses on the work of a single person, but it’s a key case study for understanding larger transformations occurring as journalism evolves through social media.”

The study is authored by Alfred Hermida from the University of British Columbia, and Seth C. Lewis and Rodrigo Zamith from the University of Minnesota.

Note to editors:

The results of the study will be presented on Saturday, April 21, at the International Symposium on Online Journalism at 11:15 a.m. CDT (12.15 p.m. EDT). A live video stream of the conference will be available on the symposium website.

The abstract for the paper, “Sourcing the Arab Spring: A Case Study of Andy Carvin’s Sources During the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions,” is available from the symposium website on Friday, April 20.

About the researchers:

Alfred Hermida is an award-winning associate professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research focuses on social media and emerging genres of journalism. An online news pioneer, he was a founding news editor of BBCNews.com and was a BBC correspondent in the Middle East. He co-authored Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers and is currently working on his second book on the impact of social media on the news.

Contact: alfred.hermida AT ubc.ca - Twitter: @hermida

Seth C. Lewis, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. His research on the changing nature of journalism in the digital era has received several top-paper awards and has been published in leading academic journals. He co-edited two editions of The Future of News: An Agenda of Perspectives, and he is affiliated with Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab. Previously, he was an editor at The Miami Herald and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Spain.

Contact: sclewis AT umn.edu - Twitter: @sethclewis

Rodrigo Zamith is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. His primary research interest is in the interplay between media, public opinion, and policymaking, with a focus on foreign affairs. He has previously worked as reporter at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Contact: zamit001 AT umn.edu

(Photo by David Skok)

In her ISOJ talk, she explained how La Nacion started doing data visualisations with few resources and in a less than friendly government environment.

Peralta pointed out that Argentina ranks 100 out of 180 in corruption index. The country does not have a freedom of information law and it not part of the open government initiative.

But there is hope said Peralta. La Nacion wanted to do data journalism but didn’t have any programmers so they adopted tools for non programmers such as Tableau Public and Excel.

One of its initiatives involved gathering data on inflation to try to reveal more accurate inflation levels.

The newspaper has been taking public data and seeking to derive meaning from masses of figures.

For example, La Nacion took 400 PDFs with tables of 235,000 rows that recorded subsidies to bus companies to figure out who was getting what.

It is using software to keep track of updates to the PDFs to show how subsidies to the companies are on the rise.

Peralta’s short presentation showed how some media organisations are exploring data journalism in circumstances which are very different to the US or UK.

La Nacion have a data blog and will be posting links to the examples mentioned by Peralta.

Cairo explained that an information graphic is a tool for presenting information and for exploring information.

In the past, info graphics were about editing data down and summarising it. But this worries me, he says, as it is just presenting information but does not allow readers to explore the data.

Today we have the opposite trend and often ends up as data art which doesn’t help readers understand the data.

Cairo cited a New York Times project mapping neighbourhoods which he said forced readers to become their own reporters and editors to understand the data.

We have to create layers, he said. We have the presentation layer and we have the exploration layer, and these are complementary.

But readers need help to navigate the data, he said. Part of the task is giving clues to readers to understand the complexity of data.

Cairo quoted a visualistion mantra by Ben Shneiderman: “Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand.”

His approached echoed earlier comments by Brian Boyer, news applications editor, Chicago Tribune Media Group. Boyer said that we should make data beautiful, inspirational but make it useful to the audience.