Journalism News & Articles

This week in web publishing we learn that Clinton loves his iPhone; consumers create more challenges for newspapers; and Wired changes the definition of a digital magazine.

Tom Foremski of the Silicon Valley Watcher has continually called for the need of the media engineer -- an individual who is part journalist and part software engineer -- in today’s web publishing industry. Lately, his vision is becoming reality.

Friday is usually conducive to a more relaxed state of mind, so we hope as you’re reading this you’re at ease, enjoying casual wear or some other end-of-the-week perk. Why? Because we’re going to talk about Twitter.

TWITTER! The name alone is enough to make many of you twitch, start sucking your thumbs, or fall to the floor in the fetal position and pray that we were just kidding when we said TWITTER! WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT TWITTER! And that’s precisely why we have to have this discussion. For many, Twitter is like an uncontrollable giant, taking over things we never gave it permission to take over. Like our minds. Or journalism.

Web publishing is alive with activity. From acquisitions to spending advertising dollars, the industry can be up one day and down the next. Same is true for journalism. One day it will be saved, the next it's extinct. Today, web publishing promises some optimism about the future of journalism, advertising and social media. 

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Journalists Don't See The Potential Twitter Has
• Social Network Use Growing and Growing
• EU: Social Networks Need To Beef Up Privacy Practices
• Does your CEO Participate in Social Media?

At a time when publishers, print and web alike, struggle to stay relevant while providing the means to produce, publish and profit, Mediaspectrum sees itself as a solution for evolving social media initiatives. And Red Herring agrees. The Red Herring 100 recognizes the most innovative private technology companies based in North America, of which Mediaspectrum was included.

Mediaspectrum provides a web-based service solution aimed at addressing all aspects of advertising, content, community and e-commerce. Their Media 2.0 platform helps media companies, from the Washington Post to the Trinity Mirror, increase revenues, manage editorial content and streamline workflows.

The Poynter Institute is a school for journalists, future journalists and teachers of journalism. They offer seminars geared towards print and online reporters, photojournalists, designers , educators and are dedicated to providing students with the necessary tools and ideas to handle the challenges of producing news, whether online or in print.

With seminars addressing issues of ethics & diversity, journalism education & training, leadership & management, online & multimedia, reporting, writing & editing, tv & radio, as well as visual journalism, students are bound to find many engaging classes from which to choose. Classes are available at their campus in St. Petersburg, Florida or through their e-learning site, News University.

NewsTools2008 takes place April 30-May 3 at the yahoo! Conference Center in Sunnyvale, California If you’re a Drupal programmer, user-experience expert, social-network innovator, or web 2.0 entrepreneur, you’re invited! The topic of the event is “Technology and the New Ecology of News: How will technology innovation support journalism and participatory democracy?” It’s billed as an event in which journalism’s ideals will meet Silicon Valley’s tools in a three-day, conceptual mashup. Groovy.

It seems that the continuing writer’s strike is making people anxious and nervous. With growing access to free online content, shouldn’t all writers - from film to television to newspapers - be compensated fairly for their content accessed on the Internet?

Oh good. Newspapers and blogs are finally getting along. Or so says the LA Times.

Sure, newspapers still talk behind blogs’ back, dismissing their whiny opinions and misinformation, but they know that they can drive in the revenue as well as anyone, so they’re willing to post and plug them.

There may be nothing sacred left in the eyes of newspaper purists, but then again, this is online media, and nothing is truly sacred anymore. “Any new information source is a potential competitor to a local newspaper. Smart newspapers are figuring out they don’t have to fight with those competitors — they can make alliances with them,” said Robert Niles, editor of the Online Journalism Review.

I dig analyzing online media; the pressure on the industry combined with the multitude of studies conducted of late make it so darn interesting.

Consider the latest report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), for example, which compared a week’s worth of news from three user-driven sites — Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us — and Yahoo News to 48 traditional news outlets. What the MSM are feeding versus what the foragers are gathering just ain’t the same thing.

Agence France-Presse, the international news agency, has launched the AFP Foundation with the goal to train journalists in developing countries and help humanitarian groups and other enterprises with media training.

The foundation will work to promote higher standards of journalism around the world.

The Web journalism niche has seen a lot of pushback from traditional publications trying, understandably so, to protect their line of work. But the industry has changed, for better or worse, with the speed and ease of online publishing, so smart institutions are leveraging that understanding.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is one such institution. Having long taken it upon itself to help journalists hither and yon find the training they need, its latest effort, JournalismTraining.org, is a treasure trove for journalists — online and off — seeking information about professional development opportunities.