newspapers
Ever wonder who those commenters are?
Just about every news site or blog has them: a handful of frequent commenters who have something to say about almost everything under the sun. So hats off to the Las Vegas Sun which did a story on their prolific commenters, bringing real names and faces to their comment handles. From the story, which profiles [...]
Herald staffers question practice of quoting tweets
A letter posted on a bulletin board in the Miami Herald newsroom, signed by 23 staffers, questioned (among other things) the newspaper’s practice of quoting tweets, especially without attributing them to the authors’ real names. It reads: On Sunday, we devoted the week’s most desirable newspaper real estate to a series of tweets from our [...]
UK hyperlocal site starts paper edition
A site that covers an East Yorkshire, UK locale is now turning out a print edition. HU17.net, which covers Beverley, has started a weekly print version. It’s a small print run – about 100 copies. Paul Smith, the publisher, tells The Guardian: “Local shops have been very supportive with many signing up to advertising package [...]
Baltimore Sun curates Twitter List for Hopkins shooting
Here’s a very good example of when to use Twitter Lists. The Baltimore Sun has created @BaltimoreSun/HopkinsShooting as a stream of tweets from several sources reporting on the shooting at Johns Hopkins Hospital. (It isn’t promoting the list, however, which may account for the low level of subscribers.) Its own reporter is on the list, [...]
New Haven Independent turns 5, seeks donations
The New Haven Independent, a not-for-profit online news site, celebrates its fifth birthday today with an open house. (You better hurry – it’s this evening.) The site covers New Haven with a small staff — just a handful of employees — and is subsidized by a grant from the Online Journalism Project. (There are several [...]
Report: Apple to allow newspaper subscriptions
Newspapers may soon get their wish and appear in subscription format on the iPad, iPhone and other Apple products. The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that Apple will announce a subscription plan for newspapers. This, of course, could represent a new revenue stream for the papers as their print versions keep taking hits. (Reporter [...]
Using social media to report on the elections
TBD.com, the new Allbritton site out of Washington, DC is using map mashups and social media to help tell the story of today’s primary elections. On the site, you will find good use of the liveblogging tool CoverItLive, where voters are reporting about their experiences at the polls. TBD has also built a mashup map [...]
Washington Post starts #wherewereyou hashtag
The Washington Post had a great and tremendously simple idea to encourage people to share their 9/11 memories on Twitter — it created the hashtag #wherewereyou. The hashtag became a trending topic on Twitter, generating a flood of responses. “The Post’s solution was elegant and organic at the same time: It took a basic question [...]
New York Times – NYU hyperlocal partnership launches
UPDATE 3:31 ET: The site is now live. The hyperlocal partnership between The New York Times and NYU, “The Local East Village,” launches today. (It’s not up yet as of this posting, but according to a tweet from NYU’s Jay Rosen, the site will be up later today. We will update.) According to a press [...]
Social media takes center stage in San Bruno explosion
Updated: A big explosion in a high-tech city has sparked a torrent of citizen and media coverage over social media. One of the most emotional tweets to come out of the San Bruno fire is this one from @hector: He followed up with a tweet explaining that his cousin is missing, as well. According to [...]
NY Times, Betaworks working on social news service
The company behind TweetDeck and Bit.ly is working with the New York Times to launch a social news service called News.me. “We’re building something wonderful and amazing in the social news space,” said John Borthwick, CEO at Betaworks. It’s still in stealth mode, and both Betaworks and the Times are providing few details. But the [...]
Social media play key role in Boulder fire
Updated: A wildfire is burning above Boulder, Colorado, and Twitter and Facebook are playing an important role getting out the latest information on the fire’s path. When the Boulder Sheriff’s emergency alert system failed, its emergency operations center asked that residents use Twitter and Facebook to help spread the word of mandatory evacuations, reports the [...]
NY Times’ latest hyperlocal site launches next week
Back in February, the New York Times announced a collaboration with NYU to launch a hyperlocal site in the East Village, and today they’ve set a launch date — next Monday, September 13th. “We intend to add new value — in all media formats — to the East Village’s already rich and vibrant online presence,” [...]
Blogger catches Boston Globe’s site running ‘adult’ ads
Last week, the Boston Globe ran an editorial calling on Craigslist to remove its “adult services” listings, which it did over the weekend amid pressure from state attorneys general. But today, the Globe is caught with egg on its face for doing the same thing. In what we described as a “conflict of interest,” the [...]
Lessons from the journalist who burned himself on Twitter
There’s one golden rule of social media for journalists — if you wouldn’t write it in the newspaper or say it on TV, don’t send it out on Twitter. And one journalist who didn’t follow the rule went on CNN over the weekend to offer some advice for others. A week ago, Washington Post sports [...]
A busy week for Twitter news events
From the Discovery gunman — which first “broke” on Twitter — to the New Zealand earthquake, it’s been quite the week for Twitter on the news front. The Washington Post wrote a timeline story on how the Discovery story played out on Twitter, and Paul Farhri writes this: “TV can offer live pictures of an [...]
Advertisers pulling out of Times following paywall implementation
There is mounting evidence that putting up a paywall is bad for business. That’s not much of a surprise to most people, but London’s The Times is – for now – sticking with its paywall. The paper implemented the paywall in early July, and traffic has plummeted to 10% of what it was. Unsurprisingly, advertisers [...]
Conflict of interest: paper tells Craigslist to stop adult ads
The Boston Globe is running an editorial today asking Craigslist to stop running its “adult services” ads. This strikes me as a terrible conflict of interest and a bad decision by a paper whose business model is being decimated by Craigslist. Say what you want about the ads, but for a paper to write this [...]
Partnering for Better Journalism
This week’s episode of PBS’s “Frontline” was striking for two reasons. First, because of the outstanding reporting that went into its heartbreaking story of police behavior during and after Hurricane Katrina. But second, because Frontline didn’t go it alone. The episode, “Law & Disorder,” was a partnership of Frontline, ProPublica and The Times-Picayune of New [...]
A look at Miami Herald’s hyperlocal approach
The Miami Herald is one of the five newspapers part of J-Lab’s Networked Journalism Project, and compared to the other papers, the Herald is taking a different approach to community coverage with West Kendall Today. The site is hosted on MiamiHerald.com as part of its community news network, and it’s authored by Ana Acle-Menendez, who [...]
