Information travels so fast these days that it’s hard to keep track of where it came from. Technology makes plagiarism and deception a snap. Online text can be copied and pasted in seconds, photos can be manipulated and no one may be the wiser. But thanks to technology, problems are also easier to detect. If [...]
Taking notes used to be a simple matter. You pulled out a pen and a pad of paper and you wrote things down. Over time, if you developed your own shorthand, you could take notes faster and more accurately. If you could read your own shorthand months later, you were a pro. Laptops changed the [...]
Many journalists already use their smartphones as news gathering and publishing tools, but Mark Briggs of KING5.com in Seattle and the blog Journalism 2.0 says mobile devices can do so much more. “Few reporters use smartphones as a research device,” Briggs says–a missed opportunity, in his opinion, because smartphones are “location aware.” As an example, [...]
Every time a new gadget comes on the market, someone tries to figure out if it’s as good as or better than what came before. There have been plenty of reviews of Apple’s latest tablet, comparing it to the previous iteration and to similar devices. But how does it compare when it comes to shooting [...]
More and more news organizations are creating interactive graphics that help users explore and understand their worlds. Some are pretty basic, others are more visually appealing, but all serve the same function of bringing data to life. On the hunt for some new examples, I searched a Twitter chat last week and found a boatload, [...]
Journalists are notorious for hating anything to do with math. If we’d been any good with numbers, I often joke, we might have chosen a different career. But it’s essential for today’s journalists to get comfortable working with data, and the good news is that more and more of them are. What’s changed? For one [...]
Remember when websites used to measure traffic in hits? The results didn’t signify much of anything, of course, because every element on a page generated a hit. Page views came to be considered a better way of counting online traffic, but they couldn’t tell you anything about actual users. Enter the “unique visitor,” a measurement [...]
The folks at the Guardian have been doing inspired work with data for several years. Now, they’ve added a new data store–one stop shopping for anyone interested in making data more meaningful. In addition to the data blog that highlights the British newspaper’s own analysis and projects, the new site includes: • The key data [...]
One possible consequence of staff cuts in newsrooms is more collaboration between and among journalists. While it’s always been possible for people in the same news organization to work on a story on a shared computer system, it’s not so easy to include someone from outside. Remote desktop apps can be cumbersome and freelancers working [...]
The transition from general assignment reporter to multi-platform journalist isn’t always easy, but people who’ve made the switch often say they’d never go back. For Josh Hinkle of KXAN-TV in Austin, Texas, working as a one-man band makes it easier to be creative. “I don’t have to explain my concept to a photographer or editor,” [...]
Smart phones are revolutionizing journalism much the way computers did 20 or 30 years ago. But it’s going to take time for newsrooms to adapt to mobile newsgathering and distribution because it requires a new way of thinking, says Louis Gump, CNN’s vice president for mobile. “People assume that the mobile device is just a [...]
Should you ditch your laptop for an iPad? Kerry Northrup votes yes. He’s the brains behind the long-running NewsGear project, formerly based at the IFRA Newsplex at the University of South Carolina, and he issues an annual list of state-of-the-art mobile technology for journalists. This year’s list, unveiled at the SPJ conference in Las Vegas, [...]
Everybody’s working on it, from Google to Verizon. “It” is the holy grail that will finally merge live television with the Internet, letting users watch and click in real time on any device they choose–TV, laptop, mobile phone or tablet. No, we’re not there yet. Not even close. But the BBC has been experimenting with something [...]
Little interactivity and even less innovation. That’s the headline from a new study of the state of mobile news from the University of Colorado. The report chides news organizations for playing it safe and creating apps that just do the basics. “Most of the news applications that have been created by single news brands do [...]
The Web was supposed to help news organizations expand their reach and make it easy for people to find the news they want when they want it. But when it comes to local television, it seems, that’s just not happening. According to a new report from the consulting firm AR&D, the vast majority of visitors [...]
Take a mobile phone and a broadcast quality microphone and the world is your storybook. That’s what multimedia guru Stephen Quinn believes. Quinn, who teaches at Deakin University in Australia, shared a bit of his enthusiasm about mobile journalism at the World Jounalism Education Conference in South Africa. Quinn calls mobile phones a “Swiss army [...]
If there’s one thing most solo journalists will agree on, it’s that doing it all requires terrific time management skills. Backpack journalist Kevin Torres of KUSA-TV in Denver literally backtimes his entire workday, setting mini-deadlines for every step. That way, he knows when he needs to stop shooting, start writing and finish editing in order [...]
When all hell is breaking loose, they say, the best camera to shoot with is the one you have on hand. And one lesson we’ve all learned from YouTube is that technical quality doesn’t matter all that much when it comes to newsworthy video. That said, it’s always worth the effort to capture the best [...]
Idiot-proof, lightweight and compact–the Flip camera appeared poised to revolutionize online video when it was introduced a few years ago. Reporters and photographers quickly took to using Flips or similar point-and-shoot cameras to produce Web-only video blogs and interviews. Sometimes, Flip video even showed up on TV newscasts. But now, it appears the Flip may [...]
We’ve all read the stories about the sea change in television news. From the ABC network news division to local stations from coast to coast, VJs are taking over, the stories say. The “one man band” reporter who shoots and edits once was found primarily in small markets but is now common in the top [...]