Arlington Hyperlocal Picks Its Own Patch, Turns a Profit Last week I was among the questioners at a panel of hyperlocal news sites in the DC region called, “Up Next – Hyperlocal Coverage: Neighborhood Blogs, Community Websites, and the Future of the News” at the National Press Club. If you click the link you’ll see folks from DCist to borderstan.com were on the panel, as was Brian Farnham, the editor-in-chief of Aol’s Patch (video here). Discussion floated among the usual hyperlocal topics while most the smaller sites seemed to restrain themselves from poking at Patch. In fact, Patch president Warren Webster later said over email: “This is arguably the most exciting time in the history of local media, as companies large and small help shape the rapidly changing landscape. All of the local DC sites represented themselves as passionate, caring and really hard-working leaders of their micro-community doing whatever it took to get the hyper-news — even if it meant riding a bike across town in the rain to get a picture.
Violence Against Journalists in Afghanistan Data journalism at the Guardian: what is it and how do we do it? | News Data journalism. What is it and how is it changing? Photograph: Alamy Here's an interesting thing: data journalism is becoming part of the establishment. Not in an Oxbridge elite kind of way (although here's some data on that) but in the way it is becoming the industry standard. Two years ago, when we launched the Datablog, all this was new. Meanwhile every day brings newer and more innovative journalists into the field, and with them new skills and techniques. These are some of the threads from my recent talks I thought it would be good to put in one place - especially now we've got an honourable mention in the Knight Batten award for journalistic innovation. 1. Florence Nightingale's 'coxcomb' diagram on mortality in the army Data journalism has been around as long as there's been data - certainly at least since Florence Nightingale's famous graphics and report into the conditions faced by British soldiers of 1858. The big difference? 2. 3. Sometimes. 4. Read more about this map 5. 6.
Infographie : les sites d'info pure players passés au crible - Médias / Net De Rue89 au nouveau Newsring, voici notre banc d'essai des principaux sites d'information en ligne indépendants de la presse papier. >Lisez aussi notre enquête “Les pure players ou le pari de la presse en ligne
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube et Google : nouvelles armes de la politique extérieure américaine au Maroc et dans le Monde arabe L’ascension de Barack Obama qui l’a mené à la présidence des États-Unis en 2009 s’est jouée sur l’impopularité grandissante des deux guerres (Irak et Afghanistan) dans lesquelles le pays était engagé. Aux premiers jours de la mandature d’Obama, et conformément à son programme de candidat, le président demande au Pentagone – ministère de la Défense – de lui proposer des plans de désengagement progressif des conflits irakiens et afghans, et au State Department - le Département d’État , centre névralgique de la diplomatie américaine – de réfléchir à une alternative crédible et innovante pour poursuivre les agendas américains (lutte contre le terrorisme et démocratie au Moyen-Orient) à moindres couts (soft power). « America’s image and influence had declined in recent years and the United States have to move from exporting fear to inspiring optimism and hope » comme le résumait Joseph S. Nye, théoricien du Soft Power. L’événement aurait pu en rester là. #netfreedom
Aides à la presse : ombres et lumières Le Spiil détient un siége de suppléant à la Commission paritatire des publications et agences de presse (CPPAPT), qui délivre les reconnnaissances pour la presse numérique comme pour la presse papier. Le Spiil y défend en particulier une conception large du principe de presse d'information Politique et Générale. Transparence des aides Le Spiil considère qu'une aide de l'Etat à un secteur indispensable à une démocratie fonctionnelle peut se justifier, sous réserve d'un contrôle démocratique de l'octroi de ces aides, et donc d'une trés grande transparence. Le Spiil défend cette position au Comité d'Orientation du fonds SPEL, où il détient un siège. Annonces légales Depuis un décret de 1955, les annonces légales sont réservés aux titres papier payants.
Vadim Lavrusik: Five key building blocks to incorporate as we’re rethinking the structure of stories If we could re-envision today’s story format — beyond the text, photographs, and occasional multimedia or interactive graphics — what would the story look like? How would the audience consume it? Today’s web “article” format is in many ways a descendent from the golden age of print. The article is mostly a recreation of print page design applied to the web. In the last few years, we’ve seen some progress in new approaches to the story format on the web, but much of it has included widgets and tools tacked on for experimentation. And the conversation around the story has become, at this point, almost as important as the story itself. 1. Context wears many hats in a story. Today, though, with publication happening every millisecond, the overflow of information presents a different kind of challenge: presenting short stories in a way that still provides the consumer with context instead of just disparate pieces of information. 2. Social design makes the web feel more familiar. 3. 4. 5.
How the BBC lost 60,000 Twitter followers to ITV Back in March, I wrote this piece looking at the ownership issues around Twitter profiles used for professional purposes. I noted that sensible consensus seemed to be that a personal feed (with no inclusion of a company or brand name) is owned entirely by the individual behind it, whilst a corporate feed (with no inclusion of an employee name) is owned entirely by the organisation to which it makes reference. However, the post raised the issue of Twitter profiles that combine both employee and employer names. At the time, I mentioned that the account of the BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg, was the perfect example of this – @BBCLauraK. Last week we got our answer. On Thursday 21 July, the BBC lost 60,000 Twitter followers when Laura Kuenssberg renamed her @BBCLauraK account to @ITVLauraK. I disagree. However, beyond the views of her followers, I think the BBC had a pretty decent ownership claim on the @BBCLauraK Twitter account.
What Legacy Media Can Learn from Eastman Kodak What do you do when your industry is changing? What do you do when your innovations are fueling the changes? Those problems have plagued Eastman Kodak Co. for three decades and the company’s experience provides some lessons for those running legacy media businesses. Eastman Kodak’s success began when it introduced the first effective camera for non-professionals in the late 19th century and in continual improvements to cameras and black and white and color films throughout the twentieth century. Its products became iconic global brands. The company’s maintained its position through enviable research and development activities, which in 1975 created the first digital camera. Digital photography created a strategic dilemma for the company. Today, the company has just 15% of the employees it once had and its stock prices are about 15% of what they were before it finally stripped out its production capacity and distribution systems. 1) Don’t try to fight change