:: Future of Journalism

Cooperative journalism - Why media outlets team up in an election year

Niemanlab :: We’ve reached the point in journalism where we barely bat an eye when two news organizations say they’re joining forces. But there’s something about politics in particular that seems to bring out the hugging and sharing in news organizations. A presidential election brings out the heavy news artillery, and that means a flurry of scooplets coming from all directions — from the networks, from newspapers national and local, from blogs, from campaigns, and everywhere else. All that firepower pointed in the same direction makes the urge to team up more tempting than ever.

Justin Ellis tries to find an answer, "why media outlets team up in an election year."

Continue to read Justin Ellis, www.niemanlab.org

Knight Foundation funds collaborative reporting center in Georgia

The opportunity to work in a professional environment is great for students no doubt. But as Justin Ellis notes in the highlighted section of the paragraph below, for news outlets j-students are "additional bodies to support their newsgathering." So is it also an opportunity to reduce inhouse staff? 

Niemanlab :: The Knight Foundation is launching a new program at Mercer University designed to prepare journalists, how to perform their craft in an increasingly interdependent industry.The Center for Collaborative Journalism at Mercer will partner students from the school’s journalism and media studies program with journalists from The (Macon) Telegraph and Georgia Public Broadcasting. Knight is investing $4.6 million over several years into the initiative, which will put students and professionals in the same newsroom. The aim is a two-fold benefit: giving students experience in live reporting and providing both news outlets with additional bodies to support their newsgathering.

Justin Ellis, www.niemanlab.org

Can mainstream and ethnic media collaborate?

Mediashift :: While investigative collaborations are blossoming in newsrooms across the country, few are taking place between mainstream and niche media. As a result, news organizations could be missing the opportunity to reach a wider audience, tap into reporters' talents, and uncover stories from perspectives not often examined.

Continue to read Rosa Ramirez, www.pbs.org

10,466 Main Streets in the United States: the story of places

Mapping Main Street :: Once you start looking, you'll notice Main Streets are everywhere and tell all kinds of stories. There's a Main Street in San Luis, Arizona that dead-ends right into the Mexican border. The Main Street in Melvindale, Michigan runs through a trailer park in the shadows of Ford's River Rouge plant, once the largest factory in the world. Main Street is small town and urban center; it is the thriving business district and the prostitution stroll; it is the places where we live, the places where we work, and sometimes, it is the places we have abandoned.

Clipped from: www.mappingmainstreet.org (share this clip)

A collaborative documentary project - Continue to read www.mappingmainstreet.org

ARA - Associated Reporters Abroad

ARA :: Associated Reporters Abroad (ARA) is a Berlin-based journalism organization promoting international journalism with correspondents across Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, and now Japan, ARA helps news outlets in the US and Europe, coping with shrinking budgets and shuttered foreign bureaus, to expand their news coverage.

Clipped from: www.ara-network.com (share this clip)

http://www.ara-network.com

Continue to read www.ara-network.com

Cooperate to keep quality high - KQED public radio embarking on two new partnerships

Niemanlab :: San Francisco’s public radio KQED is embarking on two partnerships you might not expect: one with just-launched Huffington Post San Francisco, the other with four hyperlocal news sites as part of J-Lab’s Networked Journalism Project.

[Bruce Koon, KQED:] One of the new realizations in the journalism world today is this notion that the ability for single institutions to do it all has been threatened considerably.

Koon explains, that as a regional news entity that serves the area broadly, in terms of the nine-county Bay Area, KQED can’t get deep into neighborhoods necessarily, but that’s what a lot of these new emerging news sites and blogs are doing. Koon: "Is there a model in which we can help surface and distribute the kind of great journalism they’re beginning to do to a wider audience?”

Continue to read Andrew Phelps, www.niemanlab.org

Liquid Newsroom - Nearby and global in its impact. A look into the future of journalism.

Many people have stopped reading newspapers on a daily base. Circulation figures are on the decline worldwide. Don't worry. It is a declining interest in a content presentation form not in reading. Demand for stories is still high. While on the move many already prefer access to stories worth reading at the time they like and wherever they are. But the stickiness to a specific story brand, a specific publisher, is also likely to lose its strength. Highly connected and globally aware, people are open for changes, new reading experiments, and experiences. We are already living in the era of News3.0.

Liquid Newsroom :: a typical working day

A (near) future day - my smartphone is always on. Push services send me short little messages of breaking news to my little device making information available wherever I am and at any time of the day. The latest push notification tells me, without going into too much detail, that the dictator in the North African country has now been arrested. It is enough to catch my attention. My tablet in my pocket allows me to read the follow up on the news online while driving through a rural area in Southern Bavaria, Germany. So far it is only a ticker message without much more concrete information and more and more questions pop up. Who has confirmed the news? Are photos already available as visual evidence or video footage to support what I read before?

The story is *hot* enough for me to decide to open a Liquid Newsroom, a virtual on-demand environment for collaborative writing. I label the topic *Northern Africa* and set up the topical *room* for it on-demand and in real-time. I quickly check my social network of trusted news sources - people in the area of interest, Nothern Africa to see whether anyone can be reached and can provide me with details or material. When the new topic working space on the Liquid Newsroom platform is opened, a new portal front-end comes into existence, where readers connected to the Internet via PC or mobile devices can easily check in to stay informed. The Liquid Newsroom is not run by a publisher, it is an on-demand network for publishing news as a team that can vary over time, only conneted via the topic they like to address.

A first flow of information hits my virtual desktop in the *Northern Africa" newsroom. News sources have started to pick up the story. But now it is time to guide my readers through the growing stream of information and update it, analyzing the value added by each of the new stories coming in. I publish the information I have gathered almost immediately to the front-end to create a constant flow of what's new to readers who opt-in to the content stream e.g. subscribing to the feed via their smartphone devices. They do not stay in a passive mode. Some are concerned about what's happening and return questions via the integrated Q&A-button in their smartphone app. The questions from the readers connected to the topic stream provide a constant feedback in the editing and updating process. Together with real-time statistics (active views, reading, retweets, and the like) monitored on the screen as well, I decide which stories to follow up. In the meantime, friends working and living in the East and West Coast of the US have joined my *Nothern Africa* Liquid Newsroom to work on the stories as well.

I'm exhausted after hours of curating and am happy to pass the story lead on to these colleagues, knowing that they will pass it on in turn to Asian colleagues at the end of their day. In the virtual room we've already started to exchange thoughts via live chat, simultaneous editing of articles, and voice-over IP calls. Our discussion is interesting enough that we decide to make our editing process transparent on the corresponding website, so that readers can watch the process flow. It is time to relax and yes I know that after a few hours of sleep I will be back again.

Note: the platform is already in development. If you are interested please drop me a note and send me an email to steffen.konrath (at) im-boot.de

My article has been published in " I Read Where I Am. Exploring New Information Cultures." Compiled by Mieke Gerritzen, Geert Lovink, Minke Kampman. Graphic Design Museum, Breda Valiz, Amsterdam.

 Written by Steffen Konrath

OpenLibrary.org - 150 libraries partner to offer ebook lending program

ReadWriteWeb :: The Internet Archive, in conjunction with 150 libraries, has rolled out a new 80,000 e-book lending collection today on OpenLibrary.org. This means that library patrons with an OpenLibrary account can check out any of these e-books.

The hope is that this effort will help libraries make the move to digital book lending. "As readers go digital, so are our libraries," says Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

Continue to read www.readwriteweb.com - Internet Archive Partners With 150 Libraries to Launch an E-Book Lending Program

Skype's new record of 29.5 million users logged in at the same time

Skype Journal :: Checking just now, 29,527,474 accounts were connected to the Skype network. That will be close to today’s peak. That’s a lift of 12.8 million from 16.7 logged in last night. This suggests Skype is running at about 177 million active users. Skype’s dial tone is a measure of the value of the network to users; the ability to call and be called.

Skype is already my favourite place for overseas interviews, calls and collaboration. It get a protocoll of the conversation (text chat) or you simple record the exchanges (voice). It's powerful enough to enable international collaboration at low costs.

Continue to read skypejournal.com - Skype dial tone: 29.5 million users logged in at the same time

An Adobe competitor? - Crocodoc, secure real-time collaboration on PDF and Office docs

Crocodoc launched an embeddable HTML5 document viewing and collaboration tool last week. It allows to add comments and markups, highlights, drawings to documents without Flash or plugins required. It enables teams to collaborate in real-time and also to embed documents on websites or blogs.

The company is seeking to disrupt Adobe in the PDF editing and document collaboration space.

For details visit crocodoc.com