Giornalismo Digitale

In early May, Reuters began rolling out previews of its new design for Reuters.com. Nieman Lab covered the functions and underlying design and business philosophies behind the redesign:

 

Yesterday Reuters unveiled a preview site for the future look and design of Reuters.com; it had given a sneak peek earlier. It’s a river-of-news type of approach that mirrors the flow of data on one of Reuters terminals, but has also become increasingly popular in the era of social media. Go to an article page and you find that you’re actually placed in the middle of a larger stream of content—scroll up or down and you’ll find your story’s text actually lives in a bifurcated version of the Reuters front page. If every page is your homepage, why not treat them all like one?

 

The Nieman article is a great piece of analysis and left us wanting the nerdier details of the redesign, so we checked in with Paul Smalera, Editorial Tools Product Manager and Technology Editor at Reuters.com, who fought his way out from under a stack of redesign-related work to answer our questions.

 

The CMS and API

Q. What’s going on under the hood on the new site? We want to know every little thing about yourCMS and API.

Ok! Let’s start with where much of our content comes from: an API called Media Connect, which is how we serve our media clients. When we started this project, we threw away everything downstream of that because we had some really fundamentally different ideas about how the new Reuters.com should work that we wanted to try. The Media Connect API, however, serves content to other systems, and isn’t a permanent store of Reuters content. So we had to build our own API both to poll Media Connect and pull down all the content we needed to populate our own data store.

We also wanted this API to serve all of the applications we were building as the next generation of Reuters Digital: our new website, our new mobile apps, and our new CMS. Yep! All of those apps are actually clients to the new API. This is because we wanted to control content for all the public facing platforms from one place—the new CMS—and keep the display rules on each individual client. API power!

 

continue to read http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/reuters-redesign/

Comment trolls are often used as an example of why blog comments are a waste of time, but a recent series by the Climate Desk showed how they can quickly be turned into human beings.

 

If you write anything on the internet — or for that matter, read anything on the internet — you’ve undoubtedly experienced comment trolls, flame-wars and plenty of other bad behavior. Some blogs and news sites have tried either handing over their comments to Facebook or not having comments altogether as a way of preventing this kind of activity, but one site called Climate Desk took a different approach: theytracked down and interviewed their most persistent troll, and in the process revealed him to be a fairly normal human being.

Fanpage, testata giornalistica nativa digitale, è un caso di successo straordinario che nasce da una grandissima attenzione ai social media come dimostrano sia i dati presentati da Vincenzo Cosenza all’ultima edizione del Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo che laclassifica mensile di Socialbakers. Abbiamo voluto approfondire le motivazioni intervistando il suo Direttore Francesco Piccinini  a tutto campo sulla struttura organizzativa della testata, le problematiche dell’informazione online in Italia e, ovviamente, sulle strategie che l’hanno portata ad essere la fonte d’informazione con il maggior numero (oltre 1,5 milioni) di fan su Facebook.

Fanpage.it tra le testate d’informazione all digital italiane primeggia per numero di lettori, di utenti unici sorpassando ampiamente tutte le altre testate che hanno una penetrazione di gran lunga inferiore. Quali sono gli elementi chiave di questo successo?

“La forza di Fanpage nasce dalla capacità di costruire un giornale che si muove lungo due assi: la presenza sui social e la capacità di andare ad intercettare un pubblico al quale le altre testate non puntano. Non cerchiamo di doppiare – nei modi e nella sostanza – l’informazione che altri giornali fanno ma puntiamo a differenziarci sia in senso divulgativo che di tematiche. A volte cerchiamo di anticipare le notizie grazie al supporto del social media team che – avendo un osservatorio privilegiato sulla rete – ci permette di anticipare gli altri competitors. Non ultimo un flusso sempre maggiore di notizie video generato dai nostri videoreporter e dai citizen che animano, ogni giorno, la nostra piattaforma di citizen journalism YouMedia”.

 

continua a leggere http://it.ejo.ch/9391/nuovi-media/first-is-better-il-segreto-del-successo-di-fanpage

Scrivo da anni della necessità di nuove metriche per siti e pubblicità online, metriche ancor oggi eccessivamente ancorate agli utenti unici e soprattutto alle pagine visualizzate, le cosiddette pageview.

 

"Taroccare utenti unici e pagine visualizzate è ormai un classico per molti editori online: per guadagnare pageview vengono usate tecniche evidenti anche al profano (come il classico auto refresh dell’home page dei più noti quotidiani), ed altre un po’ più sofisticate e meno lampanti a primo acchito (come l’acquisto di traffico su keyword dai bassissimi costi, da network di pessima qualità, per non parlare di webpage che si aprono dentroiframe da 1×1 pixel o via popup/popunder)".

Gawker has just taken checkbook journalism to a whole new level — asking the public to help buy a video tape that is likely to bring down the mayor of a major city.

This piece at Forbes about Boston journalist Justin Rice is interesting for a few reasons:

 

— It describes how Justin, a few years back, started an independent, no-revenue site called BPSsports that covered high school sports in the urban Boston public schools — something local media wasn’t particularly interested in covering. After building it up, it was scooped up by The Boston Globe, where it lives on as BPS Sports Blog at Boston.com, with Justin still serving as lead writer. It’s a nice example of the value of just starting something and of the opportunities that can open up.

There’s been a bit of a backlash brewing in media circles lately: a growing movement against the idea that online journalism has to consist solely of hundreds of tiny news briefs or slideshows, and in favor of the idea that “longform” writing can also thrive online. Along those lines, the technology site Fast Company provided some interesting data recently about its experience with writing longer pieces — but I think the conclusions it arrived at aren’t about length as much as they are about engagement…..

Su NiemanLab la sintesi di un recente studio che affronta l’ ipotesi di una analogia fra la presunzione di oggettività dell’ algoritmo e i suoi meccanismi fondativi e la concezione della ‘’oggettività’’ che è alla base stessa del giornalismo occidentale.

 

Una Conferenza alla New York University sulla ”Relevance of Algorithms”.

 

 

 

Gli algoritmi sono sempre più invocati come entità potenti, che possono controllare, governare, ordinare, regolare e dare forma a tutte le cose, dai traffici finanziari ai mezzi di informazione. Tuttavia, la natura e le implicazioni di tali strutture sono tutt’ altro che chiare. Che cosa ‘’fanno’’ esattamente gli algoritmi? Qual è il ruolo attribuito agli “algoritmi”? Come trasformare il “problema algoritmi” in un oggetto di indagine produttiva?

 

Questi interrogativi erano al centro di un incontro che si è svolto alla New York University dal titolo Governing Algorithms conference.

 

La conferenza è stata preparata da una serie di contributi preliminari.  Fra di essi  Niemanlab segnala in particolare quello di Tarleton Gillespie ,  “The Relevance of Algorithms” , che collega l’ idea di una possibile natura ‘’oggettiva’’ dell’ algoritmo alla concezione giornalistica della ‘’obbiettività’’.

 

Niemanlab ha selezionato i passi più rilevanti di questo studio e li sottoponiamo ai lettori di Lsdi perché contengono spunti  interessanti, anche sul piano dell’ approfondimento della cultura giornalistica americana (i neretti sono del redattore di Niemanlab)

Troy Thibodeaux pubblica su Poynter “10 tools that can help data journalists do better work, be more efficient” , una guida pratica per chi vuole cimentarsi nel campo del data giornalismo e desidera avere una panoramica degli strumenti migliori e più utilizzati dagli esperti nel settore. La nostra redazione vi offre la traduzione integrale della guida Thibodeaux così da renderne la fruizione più ampia e significativa possibile.

 

 

10 tools che aiuteranno i datagiornalisti a fare meglio il loro lavoro, ad essere più efficienti.

 

È difficile sviluppare competenze professionali che ci aiutino a gestire con pari destrezza tutte le mansioni richieste dal datagiornalismo.

A rendere le cose più complicate (o a migliorarle, in verità) sono i data giornalisti che non accennano a voler rallentare la loro vorace corsa verso la scoperta e l’applicazione di metodologie e strumenti digitali sempre nuovi.

We wrote to three publishers—Evan Ratliffof The Atavist,Aaron Lammerof Longform, andJohn Shankmanof The Awl—to ask how they continued to publish long form work, how they manage to pay writers for time-intensive projects, and how the industry is changing.

 

Long form journalism is time-consuming, research-intensive, and often expensive to produce. How does anyone continue to publish it? What recent changes in journalism are most apparent to you?

 

“I think the biggest change that could cause people to present this ‘long form is dead’ mentality is the STRONG emergence of the type of and sheer volume of new media,” said Shankman. “The emergence and shininess of [Tweets, Facebook updates, and pageview turning blog posts] have just taken the spotlight off of long form to a certain degree.”

 

“The most important shift in the last five years,” said Lammer, “has been the move to mobile. The web browser is a crappy place to read at any length, and phones and tablets are built for it…. As smartphones and tablets become completely commonplace (we’re already close), the audience will grow, and I expect a diverse set of publishers will connect with them.”

“The main change,” wrote Ratliff, “that’s most apparent is that an area that five years ago was considered a backwater, being drained of its life by the heartless Web, is now bordering on some kind of trend. In some ways I’m not sure which is more scary. But more and more places are concluding that their readers may not be idiots, and that actually a lot of people still want—or even need—context and beauty amidst their daily deluge of information. And that to me can only be a good thing.

 

“It’s still a struggle for writers to make a living creating this kind of work. But the truth is, at least in my career, it’s always been so. “

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Cody Brown, of Scrollkit, made a replica of the ballyhooed New York Times "Snow Fall" story—in about an hour. Naturally, the Times made a copyright complaint: he was, after all, using their images and whatnot! So he removed it. Then they insisted that he "remove any reference to the New York Times" from his website. Heh.

 

He writes:

The backlash to “Snow Fall” is that it’s an indulgence only the Times can afford. It took them six months and a powerful multi-person dev team to hand-code it. Most news orgs don’t have anywhere near these kinds of resources, and this is why we’ve spent the past year creating a tool that opens the ability to produce these stories to significantly more people.

Thinking outside the box: Pointers for producing immersive storytelling online in ways which break the mould, based on the experiences of industry experts

 

Most news outlets are keen to maximise the opportunities available on digital platforms to tell stories in the most engaging way as possible, to both attract readers to the content in the first place, and hold their attention.

There have been many stories which have given newsrooms the chance to flex their creative muscles, and think beyond the standard article 'box', perhaps the best known example is the New York Times's Snow Fall feature, detailing an avalanche which resulted in the deaths of three skiers.

Toronto-based freelance reporter Naheed Mustafa always paid her own way when she reported from abroad. But that meant that about 70 percent to 80 percent of what she earned went straight toward paying for the costs of traveling.

 

Most news organizations don’t reimburse freelancers for travel costs, and the ones that do don’t offer a lot. Mustafa was looking for a more cost-effective solution, so she turned to crowdfunding platform Indiegogo to raise $15,000 to travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan for in-depth reporting on how its citizens are affected by conflict and war. After two months, she successfully reached her goal and will head abroad this month.

In a shrinking economic climate, many newspapers are cutting back on freelance budgets and expense reimbursements. Frustrated with this new reality, some journalists have taken financing into their own hands.

Joey Coleman has completed two crowdfunding campaigns, raising more than $20,000 in total,  and used the funds to provide extensive coverage of Hamilton, Ontario, municipal politics. And a Carleton University journalism student is hoping to raise $5,000 to help pay for costs while reporting in Uganda.

 

- See more at: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/05/crowdfunding-journalism-a-new-financing-model-for-freelancers#sthash.kDe6GNOO.dpuf

 

 Journalism, as an industry, has gone through difficult times since publications moved online.

Ad revenues are down and local newspapers are closing, leaving many reporters unemployed. Crowdfunding has been brought up as a potential solution, and individual campaigns have shown that the new way of fundraising can, indeed, support journalism.

Consider, for example, Planet Money’s recent Kickstarter campaign that raised nearly $600,000 from over 20,000 backers. Or, the Dutch news startup ‘De Correspondent’ that raised $1.3 million before publishing a single article. On a smaller scale, Homicide Watch D.C., raised over $45,000 for a crime reporting lab.

 

But we have yet to see a crowdfunding platform for journalism take off in a big way. That’s not to say these platforms don’t exist: one of current players in the space, Emphas.is, focuses on the photojournalism niche and has funded over 45 such projects. But it’s one of very few successful platforms. Spot.us, a pioneer in the crowdfunded journalism field, started off with much promise, but hasn’t funded a story since November 2012.

There’s a lot of untapped potential here, and Vourno, a new platform that launched today, is taking a crack at filling the crowdfunded journalism gap.

 

Vourno site: https://www.vourno.com

Did you ever think that consumers would prefer digital magazines over print magazines? We do, and we think it'll happen within the next seven years.

And that judgement isn’t even based on speculation.

We just completed our first annual 2013 Mequoda Tablet Study, which revealed that in 2013, 55% of internet users own or have access to a tablet.

If growth occurs at the same rapid pace we’ve been witnessing thus far, we predict that market penetration will be at 85% by 2020".

I just finished reading Ryan Holiday’s book Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. If you haven’t read this book yet, you should… in self-defense.

 

Holiday is a media strategist who has worked for, among others, Dov Charney, Tucker Max, and Robert Greene. The book provides some insight into online media, with Holiday styling himself as an insider who is spilling the beans on how easy it is to get publicity, make rumor and innuendo seem like credible news, and distort the truth. Holiday charges that far from being a grass roots alternative to “mainstream media,” the blogosphere is actually dominated by big networks that use poorly paid writers to churn out endless amounts of sensationalist crap to gain “pageviews” from fickle readers like you and me.

I love this “secret of adulthood” by Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project: “Happiness doesn’t always make me feel happy.” Continue reading →

It is no longer enough to tell audiences that your product is great and that they should buy it. One of the buzzwords that characterizes the shift away from pure selling is ‘storytelling.'

Tips on building communities, retaining followers and growing an engaged social media following

 

link to podcast: http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Growing-social-media-communities_mixdown.mp3

Community manager at the Guardian Laura Oliver explains how the Guardian's flagship Twitter account is managed and shares her tips on community building

 

The Guardian yesterday passed the 1 million follower milestone on Twitter for its flagship @Guardian account, which acts as a showcase for the top stories and best content from the news outlet.

It is not the Guardian's first account to pass the mark, with@GuardianTech already attracting more than 2 million followers, helped by both being in Twitter's 'suggested users' list in the early days, and arguably by the technology audience being big users of Twitter.

Journalism.co.uk has been speaking to Laura Oliver, community manager at the Guardian, to find out the how the @Guardian account is managed, how it attracts new followers, and to gather some tips on growing a Twitter community.

Managing the account

The @Guardian account is "highly managed" by the community team, Oliver explained. There are three community coordinators who manage the account, with one person focusing on it at any given time between about 8am and 7pm on weekdays. At other times the account is managed by other editorial teams in London and by the US team. Some scheduling also takes place, with the community coordinators using HootSuite to push out content at key times.

The community coordinators "identify stories they think will play well for the Twitter audience, identify stories that need to go out at different times of day depending on what geographic audience we are trying the attract", Oliver said. They are constantly "looking at the language we use, looking at how we cover breaking news events with this account, and how we recommend our journalists and the site sections we have".

continue to read: http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/twitter-tips-how-guardian-reached-1m-followers/s2/a552990/