Tag Archives: Journalism

Journalism and ‘the words of power’

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Excellent, must-read from Robert Fisk:

This isn't just about clichés – this is preposterous journalism. There is no battle between power and the media. Through language, we have become them.

[...]

this vocabulary is not adopted through political connivance. It is an infection that we all suffer from – I've used 'peace process' a few times myself, though with quotation marks which you can't use on television – but yes, it's a contagion.

And when we use these words, we become one with the power and the elites which rule our world without fear of challenge from the media.

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Environmental news site Grist adds humour to reader donations campaign

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Jennifer MacDonald on Grist's fundraising campaign for environmental journalism:

we have noticed how the economic downturn hit environmental reporting particularly hard, with several eco-columns and publications going under in the last year. So we decided, why not mimic campaigns to save endangered species, which in a way journalists really are? Grist is known for our zany fundraising campaigns. We’d rather err on the side of humour than earnestness. The element of humour is there, painting our staff members as wild animals, but we also hope to strike a chord of urgency, showing our readers that we really do need their support as an independent, non-profit news site.

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Twitter relies less on traditional media than blogs

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    Great overview of recent analysis of social media by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

    Among the highlighted findings:

    "Social media and the mainstream press clearly embrace different agendas. Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied. Twitter was even less likely to share the traditional media agenda — the lead story matched that of the mainstream press in just four weeks of the 29 weeks studied. On YouTube, the top stories overlapped with traditional media eight out of 49 weeks."

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    Del.ici.us tags: twitter pew socialmedia research journalism agenda

#wmf: Jon Snow slams leaders’ debates in ‘golden age’ for journalists

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    Jon Snow speaking at the Westminster Media Forum event, 'The Future of News Media':

    "Three debates and the lifeblood was drained from the rest of the campaign. You used to have spontaneous press conferences (…) but [in 2010] in terms of actually putting out their stalls in which policies are aired in a structured way over three weeks, there was none of it. There were three men everywhere you went.

    [...]

    The tabloids had a dreadful election because there was nothing to report. All there was to report was the TV debates, they had to hook into TV (…) When the viewer had thought that somebody had won they were then told by the media, the tabloids, they were wrong."

    Read on for comments on current and future of journalism.

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    Del.ici.us tags: jonsnow futureofjournalism future journalism election2010 tvdebates

How Facebook’s (flawed) privacy settings can help your reporting

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    Robert Hernandez on the "good" side of Facebook's flawed privacy settings:

    "Facebook gives you a false sense of private… but by now you should know better.

    The walls around the Facebook garden have crumbled because of the company's seriously flawed privacy settings.

    And while as a user you should be freaked out and proactive about your personal settings (and more conscious of what you are posting!), as a journalist this is presents an incredible, unfiltered opportunity to access your community on a diversity of topics.

    Hold your nose and thank youropenbook.org for making it easier to access your the community on Facebook – for better or worse.

    You can now quickly query what's on the mind of the millions of users that are sharing their raw opinions about any topic… sadly, they usually think it's "private," often sharing their opinions with their social guard down."

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    Del.ici.us tags: facebook privacy journalism practice

The Oxymoronic Citizen Journalism | paidContent:UK

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    Interesting take by Frederic Filloux:

    "Does it means public input in news should be kept at bay? Certainly not. Quite the contrary, actually. Newsrooms have a challenge on their hands, they need to get better at handling such input.

    [...]

    But, to thrive, journalism requires more than a checkbook. It has to be built around a set of cultural traits that are in total contradiction to the engineering efficiencies of a search engine or an internet portal. Evidently, the modern news business requires more technology; and journalists needs the dialectics from their public. But news requires more professionalism than mere crowd-powered demagoguery. Today and, I believe, for as long as trust is to be part of the relationship with readers."

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    Del.ici.us tags: analysis citizenjournalism journalism ugc blogs

Dear Peter Preston: universities shun the NCTJ too – Online Journalism Blog

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    Paul Bradshaw:

    "I don’t have a problem with NCTJ training in particular – indeed, I wish more journalists had the sort of understanding of local government and law that their courses teach – but I do have a problem when it is seen as the only, or best, route into journalism (an image perpetuated by the NCTJ’s own marketing materials). The same is true of university courses, which vary wildly in quality and scope (the latter is not such a bad thing; a one-size-fits-all approach cannot be good for any creative industry).

    The only good advice I can think of for aspiring journalists is to simply go out there and do journalism – because there’s no longer anything stopping you – me or Peter Preston included."

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    Del.ici.us tags: nctj journalism education

Why Twitter is the quickest way from Q to A – The Observer

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    John Naughton

    "If you're not into network theory, then the difference between six and four may not seem very significant. But if you're interested in how news spreads around a network then it's dynamite. Next to traditional, few-to-many broadcasting, Twitter is the fastest way to spread news and information. In fact, it's the nearest thing the web has to wildfire. And the key mechanism that enables that is retweeting. The Korean researchers have found that this single facility generally enables any given message to reach a much bigger audience than those who are followers of the original tweet. So the moral for those politicians out there who are thinking about the next election is: forget Facebook, think Twitter."

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    Del.ici.us tags: twitter history future journalism