This promo video provides a taste of a forthcoming exhibition at the British Library in London showcasing new research tools and techniques.

The exhibition, called Growing Knowledge, runs from October 12 2010 to July 16 2011. The aim is “to inform and inspire today’s researchers, consult and engage with them, demonstrate the value of investment in digital research tools, and spark a debate on the future of research.”

Hopefully there will be a strong web component for those who can’t make it to the show.

PBS Mediashift is running a special series called Beyond J-School, taking an in-depth look at journalism education in the digital age.

The series was kicked off by a piece I wrote on how to teach social media at journalism schools:

Teaching social media is more than showing students the mechanics of Twitter. Rather, they should learn how to build a network of relevant followers and how to interact with them to be a better journalist.

In the classroom, we need to stress that social media technologies do not just offer journalists new ways of doing old things. They offer the potential to explore new ways of telling stories, of collaborating and connecting with audiences, of rethinking how we do journalism.

The article looks at how journalism professors are incorporating social media in the curriculum within an academic environment where the pace of change is slow. It includes practical examples of how educators are engaging with students.

The full piece is on PBS Mediashift.

This visualisation of Mark Thompson’s MacTaggart speech highlights the most commonly used two words.

The visualisation shows Thompson placing an emphasis on British television, public service, British public and licence fee.

Google has hired two of the leading researchers in visualization.

In an understated post entitled That was fast!, Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg announced that they had joined Google.

Viégas and Wattenberg led IBM’s Visual Communication Lab, where they created the ground-breaking collaborative visualization platform Many Eyes.

They left and set up Flowing Media a few months ago. But in the post dated August 5, the pair said they were “bidding the company adieu.”

Right now we’re at orientation in Mountain View, becoming, as they say, more “googley.” In the months to come we’ll be starting a visualization group in Google’s office in Cambridge, MA. We’re very excited about the possibilities!

This is a smart move by Google. It already has a lab project called Google Public Data Explorer that aims to makes large datasets easy to explore and visualize.

My essay on how the internet is changing science journalism has been published as part of a collection called Science and the Media by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The volume includes contributions from leading science journalists such as Alan Alda, Cristine Russell and Cornelia Dean, edited by Donald Kennedy and Geneva Overholser. The editors write:

The essays in this volume discuss the roles of scientists, journalists, and public information officers in communicating about science and technology. The authors look at the role the media play in boosting Americans’ scientific literacy and at how the new digital media are changing the coverage (and consumption) of science news. They discuss how inadequate press coverage combined with poor communication by scientists can lead to disastrous public policy decisions.

The collection is the result of a series of workshops organized by the American Academy and supported by the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, which considered ways to enrich Americans’ engagement with science and technology.

In my chapter, I discuss how the internet offers new ways to cover science, concluding:

More than other media, such as television or newspapers, digital platforms can offer science journalism a greater diversity of coverage and voices. The multimedia, nonlinear, and networked nature of online journalism is forcing journalists to rethink storytelling for a digital age. For science journalists, the Web offers a multiplicity of ways to delve into complex issues. The participatory potential of the Internet offers the means to engage with audiences in ways that were unthinkable when those science writers came together in the 1930s to form a professional association. Today, the potential to reimagine and revitalize science journalism for a digital world is here.

The volume is available as a free PDF download or can be ordered from the American Academy.

The surprise news that the head of CBC English services, Richard Stursberg, was leaving his post dominated Twitter in Canada on Friday.

Within hours of the official announcement, Richard Stursberg was the top trending topic in the country.

The news of the immediate change at the top of CBC provoked more of a discussion on Twitter other more usual topics, such as Emma Watson and Megan Fox.

No reason was given for the departure. In a statement, Hubert T. Lacroix, president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada, talked of Stursberg’s record and added:

We are in the midst of developing a new strategic plan that will guide CBC/Radio-Canada through the next five years. This is the opportune time to bring new leadership to English Services and to ensure alignment of the senior team on the future of the public broadcaster.

The interim replacement is Kirstine Stewart, general manager, CBC Television.

At the AEJMC conference, Richard Karpel, executive director of the ASNE, provided an assessment of the state of the newspaper industry in the US.

He said the US had 1,400 daily newspapers. In 2009, the industry had lost 5,200 jobs, about 11% of full time jobs. This compares to 5,900 job losses in 2008

Now there were around 41,000 jobs in the newspaper business. Karpel expected the decline in positions to slow, partly because papers that were in the red are profitable, largely by cutting costs.

Karpel said the major trends in the newspaper industry was a rapid move to online and to mobile platforms.

It meant that newsrooms were seeking to employ journalists with multimedia and social media skills.

Additionally, due to a 24/7 news cycle, Karpel said reporters needed to be able to report and write faster, maintaining an acceptable level of accuracy.

There was also a greater need for journalists to be aware of the business side and be more enterpreneurial.

The state of the media in the US was the focus of one of the panels at the AEJMC annual conference.

Bob Papper of Hofstra University reported on the state of TV news in the US from a survey of local TV stations.

His message was that things aren’t as bad as they seem. TV news was still making money, though there has been a slight decline in revenue, coupled with a fall in loses due to cost-cutting.

Papper said 45% of station revenue came from news, a figure that has held steady for more than a decade.

The number of jobs in TV had dropped by 5.8% since 2007. But Papper put this in context by pointing out that the figure mirrors what is happening in the wider economy in the US.

In 2009, started with 770 TV stations producing local news and ended up with 762.

Papper said TV news departments are supplying content to more outlets than ever behalf, with half providing content to local radio outlets and to mobile devices.

“The big picture is that the TV news department is not just on TV,” said Papper.

He suggested the figures showed that TV stations had realised that they will have to make up on loss television revenue by moving to other platforms.

Another trend was TV stations being more heavily involved in cooperative ventures, with 60% collaborating with somebody else.

Papper said the typical station has several digital channels. Only 4% had all news channels, with just over 20% offering a weather channel.

TV stations seem to be embracing social media. 67% are covering it newscasts, 58% incorporating it in storytelling and 78% integrating it in website. But, Papper added, the quality and way of using social media varied widely.

In terms of Twitter,  38% of TV newsrooms constantly used it and 35% used it on a daily.

69% of stations had a three screen strategy: TV, web and mobile, with TV as the top priority.

By comparison, 61% of radio stations were not using social networking.

The picture for pay was promising, said Papper. TV news salaries rose 2.5%  in 2009 while radio news salaries were uncharged.

Starting salaries remained low, with the median being $24,000 in TV and $19,000 in radio.

Papper predicted there could be further news expansion, with more all news digital stations and a rebound in jobs in television.

He forecast that TV could recoup all the job losses that took place in 2009.

John Russial of the University of Oregon posed a provocative question at the AEJMC annual conference.

In a research paper, he and co-author Arthur Santana studied whether the industry wants every journalist to have cross-platform skills.

In a survey of 210 US newspapers, he found that different members of the newsrooms rated skills differently.

Russial argued that if role convergence was real, then newsrooms would share a common view of the essential journalism skills of staff.

The most role convergence was among the online staff, who tend to work across media as a rule.

The survey also found a slight increase in the creation of video by newspapers. But most were online doing a few video reports a week.  And this was mostly done by photographers.

Russial suggested that there was movement towards cross platform work but questioned if this was as extensive as some might believe.

The study found that convergence of skills was taking place in the online parts of the newsroom, but much less elsewhere

Russial concluded that job specialisation remained the dominant organizing principle, with editors prizing depth rather than breadth.

Change, he suggested, was taking place in newsrooms but not on internet speed.

At the AEJMC conference, Serena Carpenter of Arizona State talked about her experiences in teaching social media.

She only spends between 6 to 8 hours teaching social media but tries to weave it into other parts of the course. Her main areas of focus are blogging, Twitter and reputation management.

Carpenter said students tend to treat all social media like Facebook, so it is important to teach them the different norms and practices on different social media services.

One of the ways she encourages student discussion is by using CoveritLive when she brings in a speaker.

Among her teaching ideas:

• Create a Facebook album cover using Photoshop
• Find a story and source via social media
• Twitter list
• Twitpic contest

She asks students to consider why they are using social media. Students have to name goals for their use of social media and then consider which are the most appropriate platforms and services.

Carpenter also has students Google themselves to research their online identity. She has found students are encouraged to adopt social media when they see themselves appear high up on Google.

Students have to write a reflection paper on their participation in social media.  By the end of the class, students are talking about how they have to participate online or they don’t exist.

Carpenter is going to incorporate social media into her teaching methods by creating a Facebook page on her course and posting due dates and handouts.