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

Spain made a big impresson at the Online News Association awards, picking up the two awards that non-English websites were eligible for. Elpais.com took the newly created award for general excellence by a large non-English site. Its compatriot, Soitu.es, won the general excellence title for small site. One is an example of how a print newspaper is reinventing itself online. The other is a an independent, web-only new site, just

This year, the ONA annual conference has provided a platform for academics to share their research with the industry. Leslie-Jean Thornton from the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and Susan Keith at Rutgers [initially I incorrectly said she was at ASU] looked at how newspapers and TV stations were adapting to the web. Broadly, what they found was that newspapers were far more dynamic in using the

Image via Wikipedia Amy Webb races through 10 tech trends at the ONA annual conference. Fortunately, she also has posted the list online. First up are 2D, or QR, barcodes and how mobile phones can be used to scan these. The codes are already used in promotional ads but also in magazine ads.  Webb talks about how a news outlet could use these point readers to resources online.  The easy

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown Robert Scoble sets the theme for his keynote at the Online News Association conference in DC by doing something that wasn’t possible a year ago – video streaming his talk live via a mobile phone. This changes journalism, he argues, as people can send questions as an interview takes place live. Scoble says this takes advantage of the audience, who is smarter, richer, more educated

A piece on J-Source lays into NowPublic for reproducing content from mainstream media. Enticingly titled, The Revolution will be Plagarised, it argues that the citizens are failing us at NowPublic. As of 2 p.m., Sept. 11, nearly 60 per cent of the stories in the citizen-journalism site’s Canadian Election section consist of quoted material from other, largely traditional media outlets. The problem with this article is that it misunderstands what

More nonsense about blogs, this time from the former editor of The Times, Simon Jenkins. According to Jenkins, a newspaper column is like writing “a collected essay”, while blogging is like “laying down your pen, going to the pub and telling the guy next to you what you really think”. And if that weren’t bad enough, Jenkins continues digging: It’s the difference between writing and a bar room chat, which

Blogging in journalism is one of those topics that can provoke strong emotions. Usually critics of blogs are quick to proclaim that “blogging isn’t journalism!” This kind of debate is fruitless, as it confuses form with content. Blogs have developed to become a publishing platform, just like television or radio. The content may or may not be journalism. As with any platform, it has its own conventions which has developed