What is the stuff we call journalism that doesn’t advocate for people or principles, that doesn’t serve the public need? At worst, it’s exploitation — audience- or sales- or click- or ratings-bait — at best it’s entertainment. The first is pejorative, the second need not be, as entertainment — whether a journalistic narrative or a book or a show or movie — can still inform and enlighten. But if it doesn’t carry information that people can use to better organize their lives or their society, I’d say it fails the journalism test.
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Robert Freeman is a social media specialist with the BBC College of Journalism. Robert was Head of Multimedia at The Press Association and Head of Video at The Guardian, as well as a member of BBC News Online's original launch team. Delete the scoop?
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The problem with most news apps and data journalism is that they rely on the government to produce the data. If the government keeps numbers and you can pry it loose, game on. But what happens when the government doesn’t keep the data? Or you have a reason to believe it’s fatally flawed? Or what if you just want more?
radiomike's insight:
The problem with data journalism as practised in most newsrooms is that it usually relies on other people's data. It's a classic case of Garbage In - Garbage Out. The problem I see here is that most of the journalists I know simply don't have either the technical or scientific skills to acquire their own data. Delete the scoop?
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Reporters Without Borders is very worried by the growing number of news providers being arrested in connection with the continuing anti-government protests in Turkey. Delete the scoop?
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Debate is growing over whether social networks such as Twitter will overtake beacons of journalism like The New York Times.
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A look at the process behind creating the narrative and 'rich article pages' which make up the Guardian's new interactive feature about the Tasmanian bushfires.
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When we're discussing the future of news online, a lot of the focus is still on bite-sized video clips. But the Guardian shows us - like NYT's 'Snow Fall' - the enormous potential for combining long-form narrative with stunning visuals.
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For news organisations to survive and thrive, they have to understand their competitive advantage and the relative competitive advantage of different digital strategies. I was reminded how important this is when I read a great article by Anika Gupta, the product manager for Citizen Journalist Online, a new user-generated content portal for Indian news channel CNN-IBN. Writing on MediaNama, Gupta points out that free content is not the competitive advantage for user-generated content: "Either you pay content producers or you pay content editors, but somebody has to get paid. There is no such thing as a free lunch." 
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June 1, 8:42 AM
Embrace user-generated content because it adds voices and opinions to your output and enables you to develop a deeper relationship with your community, says Kevin Anderson.
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Barbara Serra is a news presenter and correspondent with Al Jazeera English. She anchors the main news programmes from Al Jazeera’s London broadcast centre and has also reported extensively from across Europe and the Middle East. Delete the scoop?
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In a 2011 court case in Diyarbakır, Turkey, a student is on trial for membership in a terrorist organization. The case is legally open to the public, but no journalists are present in the small, cramped courtroom. After several hours, one of the police officers perusing his Twitter account outside discovers that someone is tweeting updates from the trial. He marches in during a break and angrily forbids the unknown user from covering proceedings. When the Tweets continue, the officer informs the judge, who also insists the tweets stop. Delete the scoop?
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Is there too much hype around 'big data'? The Economist's data editor, Kenneth Cukier, thinks so, and yet he remains passionate about what we can achieve with it. Delete the scoop?
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Embedded in the heart of the New York Times, Aron Pilhofer runs an experimental news team made up of veteran journalists and top-notch computer scientists. Their job is to tell stories using software, data, and old-fashioned journalistic skills. Here’s how they do it.
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Facebook has launched Media on Facebook, a portal that houses best practices, case studies and research for media companies. Delete the scoop?
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Twitter is hiring a 'head of news' in its bid to be even more indispensable to global media, but will it work?
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Twitter is aiming not only to strengthen, but also to formalise its relationship with news media. Delete the scoop?
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Al Jazeera is well-funded and doesn't need to make money. But its prospects, here and in Middle East, are uncertain Delete the scoop?
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The Guardian and blogger Glenn Greenwald shocked the U.S. and much of the world with their stories about government surveillance, scoops that may have come about in part due to their outsider status in U.S.
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Former NOS Editor-in-chief Hans Laroes shares some thoughts on Bradley Manning, Wikileaks and why the Watergate Deep Throat wouldn't get very far today.
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The line that editors walk between legitimate investigation and entrapment can sometimes be a fine one, says The Guardian's Roy Greenslade.
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Data visualisation creates powerful, elegant images from complex data. It’s like good prose: a pleasure to experience and a force for good in the right hands, but also seductive and potentially deceptive. Because we have less experience of data visualisation than of rhetoric, we are naive, and allow ourselves to be dazzled.
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After the brutal murder of Lee Rigby, a British soldier, in London on May 22nd, many viewers watched a video of one of his suspected killers, with bloodstained hands and a meat cleaver, addressing onlookers. The video was broadcast first on ITV News, a British network, which dozens of media firms then credited. But that video was not a piece of professional journalism. It was shot on a BlackBerry by a man on his way to a job interview. Shortly after the killing, ITV sent journalists and producers to the scene. The man shared his video but asked to remain anonymous.
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June 1, 8:45 AM
The Economist looks at the complementary skills of citizen and professional journalists
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What are the ethical responsibilities of public service journalists covering events as dramatic and disturbing as the recent attack in the London suburb of Woolwich, in which a man was hacked to death? ITV’s decision to broadcast pictures of one of the attackers with his hands apparently covered in blood has provoked a fierce debate.
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Why should we believe claims made in The Times and the Daily Telegraph that a senior Tory referred to the party's activists as "mad, swivel-eyed loons"? Because, frankly, it stretches credulity to think that two reporters from competing titles would concoct a fake story based on such a specific quote.
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Google Glass is the perfect medium for receiving news updates about the topics you care about, but up until today no one had quite perfected how to do that. The New York Times app comes standard with every pair of the high-tech glasses, but only sends the paper’s top headlines on an hourly basis. News isn’t tailored to fit your interests, nor is the frequency of news headlines are sent to you. The result? You end up with a backlog of news stories in Glass you likely don’t care about. For those you do care about, the app is only capable of reading you the first few sentences of the story or letting you share the story with friends on Google+.
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How Google Glass could change the way we consume news
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Since ITV News launched its atomized, live, streaming redesign a little over a year ago, they’ve adhered fairly resolutely to a single maxim: “We’ll tell you what we know, when we know it.” Julian March, ITV’s online director, argues that because of that philosophy, ITV has become widely considered the speediest outlet for breaking news in the U.K.
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ITV News online is using social media in a clever way to reconcile speed with accuracy. It has earned them a reputation as the fastest outlet in the UK for breaking news and increased unique views to their site by more than 500 per cent in one year.
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The AP is fine-tuning its social media guidelines for reporters, specifically on how to exercise caution while tweeting. Given the confusion and misinformation that spread around the Boston Marathon bombing story, not to mention its recent recent Twitter hacking, the news service wants its reporters to exercise extreme caution, saying “Staffers are advised to avoid spreading unconfirmed rumors through tweets and posts.”
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Even journalists who never broadcast or publish facts that they haven't verified seem to lose all self-control on Twitter. Is it the pressure to be first?
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