One of my favourite conferences takes place this week at Austin, Texas, the International Symposium on Online Journalism. It stands out by bringing together practitioners and academics, mixing experiences from the newsroom with research from universities. It also has an international outlook, with journalists and academics from Brazil, Finland, Spain, Australia and New Zealand to name a few. Among the keynote speakers is Richard Gingras, head of news products for
PDF The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, outlined the new context for journalism when he recently received the Goldsmith career award for excellence in journalism, one of America’s most prestigious accolades. In his keynote address, Rusbridger made the case for open journalism, arguing that “open is best” in all areas of journalism. His talk at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy starts about 47 minutes into the
Twitter, participation, start-ups, community, networks and trust are among the topics tackled by research papers due to be presented at the International Symposium on Online Journalism at UT Austin in April. The international scope of the research is impressive, with scholars from the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The abstracts for the papers have been posted online after a competitive peer review process.Only
On February 17, I was interviewed for CBC News Network on the Twitter campaign against Canadian Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and how social media has changed the way the public interacts with elected officials. Print
On February 16, John Paton, CEO of New York based Digital First, spoke in Toronto at an event hosted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation. I had planned to put together a Storify of the event, but my friend Saleem Khan got there first. Here’s his round-up of the talk and subsequent question and answer session. [View the story "@JXPaton on the future of newspapers at the #CJFForum" on Storify] Print
The world of journalism and Twitter is buzzing following the new Sky News policy on Twitter and the BBC’s new guidance on breaking news. Both organisations have told their journalists not to break news on Twitter first. In a post on the BBC’s Editors blog, social media editor Chris Hamilton acknowledged the value of Twitter but concluded: We’ve been clear that our first priority remains ensuring that important information reaches
An analysis of 43,738 tweets from 1,443 users offers some valuable insights into emerging communication norms on Twitter. The study (PDF) by researchers Paul André of Carnegie Mellon, Michael Bernstein of MIT, and Kurt Luther of Georgia Tech aimed to uncover what makes for a good message on Twitter. The team found that the most valued tweets were informative, funny and encouraged conversation. Perhaps surprising, they also found that self-promotional messages also elicited a positive response. By comparison,
For this month’s Carnival of Journalism, Michael Rosenblum asks if a good journalist can be a good capitalist? The question is timely, given the raft of new entrepreneurial programs at journalism schools. There has always been an entrepreneurial streak in journalism, typified in the freelance journalist who makes a living by pitching and selling their work to a range of clients. Journalists, by necessity, have to be entrepreneurial in finding
The demise of Eastman Kodak is a story of a company which did not take on the challenges of disruptive innovation. After 133 years, the company has filed for bankruptcy. Essentially, Kodak was caught out by a combination of factors. The technologies that enable us to represent with world in still images changed radically with the development of digital cameras. The rise of digital was bad news for a company that made
In a column, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton asked if the newspaper was innovating too fast. Pexton noted how “hardly a week goes by without the Web site or newspaper launching some feature, or a venture to attract more revenue, or a blog, or a social media innovation.” He later added, “I’m wondering, and readers are too, whether there’s just a bit too much innovation, too fast.” In response, the