‘My brain basically farts all over my BlackBerry’
As promised, ESPN’s Bill Simmons has written a column explaining how he accidentally sent a tweet that broke a huge NFL story with two words, “Moss Vikings.” If you have a few minutes — it’s a bit lengthy — Simmon’s explanation about sports journalism in a new social media world is a terrific read. But [...]
Win some badges on Philly.com
Through a partnership with a company called Badgeville, Philly.com will roll out a rewards program next week that includes Foursquare-like badges and trophies (for the record, not the ones on the right). Users will get one point for visiting the site, one point for reading an article, and one point for commenting, reports Nieman Lab. [...]
Seattle Times to offer portfolio of paid apps
A couple months ago, the Seattle Times dipped its toes in the paid content waters with the debut of a $2.99 iPhone app for University of Washington Huskies football fans. “We’re pleased with the progress,” said Heidi de Laubenfels, Deputy Managing Editor at the Times. “The app reached 20 percent of our total predicted sales [...]
Public media’s plan: 100 journalists per city
Some big news from Ken Doctor, who posted a story about a plan by public media to invest heavily in local news in four markets. How heavily? To the tune of $5 million and 100 multiplatform journalists per city. Four public radio stations — in New York, LA, Chicago and the Twin Cities — are [...]
How many reporters does it take to cover a mine rescue?
This is a little off-topic. But there are an estimated 1,300 – 1,700 reporters at the Chilean mine covering the rescue. Yes it’s a good story, but couldn’t at least some of these resources be used elsewhere? Twitterers are all a-tweet on this one: @rockpiggery: There’s about 1700 journalists hanging around covering the Chile mine [...]
Poll: When should you retweet the competition?
Last week we posted an entertaining Twitter exchange between competing TV stations in Seattle, and “Zhendirez” left the comment, “Heck, I retweet the competition when they have something interesting that I know we won’t.” So what do you think? When (if ever) should a news organization retweet something from a competing news organization? Of course, [...]
Boston Globe and Boston University partner on local news
The Boston Globe’s effort to cover communities in the region just got a whole lot of help, thanks to students at Boston University. The Globe’s portal, Boston.com has online local sections called “Your Town,” and BU students will now write for the sections.
According to the press release, Tom Fiedler, the dean of the BU College of Communications sees the project as a win-win. “This program offers benefits for both community residents, who gain from increased news and information about their neighborhoods, and our students, who learn journalism by doing it under the guidance of our faculty and Globe editors,” Mr. Fiedler said. Press release after the jump.
Palm Beach Post thanks its Facebook fans
After hitting 10,000 fans on its Facebook page, the Palm Beach Post put together a video that incorporates the names of 50 randomly-chosen fans as a way to say thanks. The names appear in different newsroom scenes, in stock photos and graphics — powered by Animoto, the photos-to-video animation application. “I got the idea for [...]
Free tools from Google for your election coverage
You may not know it, but Google has tools you can use for your website’s coverage of the upcoming election. Columbia Journalism Review points us to the tools. They include: Google Moderator, which Google says is “a tool for collecting ideas, questions, and recommendations from audiences of any size.” YouTube Direct. Writes CJR: “The benefit [...]
Facebook gets you shared, Twitter gets the clicks
A lot of sites tend to treat their approach to Facebook and Twitter equally. But, despite being labled as “social media,” the two have less in common than we might think. According to a study from SocialTwist, it’s Twitter that gets the click-throughs while Facebook gets you shared. 78% of sharing is now done through [...]
Patch responds to complaints, employee criticism
Patch is finding out just how difficult it can be to be a journalism startup. Employees have been complaining about work conditions and there has been criticism that the company is little more than a “content farm.” In Business Insider, the company’s communications director answers some of those charges. There is a long list of [...]
Twitter to offer local advertising next year
You likely already know about Twitter’s promoted tweets, promoted trends and promoted accounts. But now they’re about to get a lot more local. From a NYTimes.com story today about Twitter’s push into the advertising world: (CEO Dick Costolo) said that next year Twitter would offer a self-serve tool for local businesses to buy Twitter ads, [...]
Patch site launches early after school shooting
Patch was planning to launch its hyperlocal site in Carlsbad on Monday, but on Friday afternoon the biggest story of the year broke in the San Diego, California suburb. A man with a pistol and a can of gasoline started shooting at kids on a school playground. Two were hit, and the suspect was tackled [...]
Las Vegas Sun rolls out hyperlocal features
The Las Vegas Sun has launched an extensive hyperlocal section that features drag-and-drop widgets for just about everything, well, under the sun. Among the widgets are the things you might expect: neighborhood news, events, restaurant reviews and high school sports. But it also includes a searchable crime map, a real estate map (that includes foreclosures), [...]
Globe publishes student investigation into candidate
Students taking a course in investigative journalism at Boston’s Northeastern University have had their work published in the Boston Globe, and it’s a great piece of journalism that calls into question the ethics of a candidate for state auditor. The piece investigated candidate Suzanne Bump and it involved her claim of two primary residences, and [...]
Knight News Challenge ’11 focuses on new areas
The details are out for the 2011 Knight News Challenge, and it’s interesting to see its sharpened focus this year. The challenge will give grants in four categories: mobile, authenticity, sustainability and community. Here’s part of how the folks at Knight define these categories: Mobile: “…projects that use mobile devices to produce, deliver, consume share [...]
Entertaining Twitter exchange between TV stations
Saw this fun exchange between two competing Seattle TV stations, @kiro7seattle and @king5seattle, both of which do a terrific job on Twitter: Touché! Quite refreshing, actually, since the generally-accepted culture in most local TV newsrooms is to publicly ignore each other.
How and where people share news stories
A new study by CNN uncovers a few interesting tidbits on how news stories are shared. The major social networks (43%) have now bypassed email (30%) for the way that most stories are shared, according to the study. Ongoing stories (65%), breaking news (19%) and quirky or funny news (16%) are the most shared stories. [...]
