A crash course in journalism and Web 2.0
Monday, 22 January 2007, 10:46
A lot of people have been linking to the new issue of Nieman Reports, a special issue titled “Goodbye Gutenberg” and about the transformations happening in newspaper journalism and the rush to digital.
There’s a lot to get through, but a good place to start is the introduction to Journalism and Web 2.0 by Francis Pisani. It begins with a summary of the always-controversial discussion of what “2.0″ actually means, and then admonishes journalists to take note of these developments even if they can’t see the immediate relevance to their craft as it is traditionally understood:
Change starts at the edges. That’s where people—our readers and viewers—probe new practices. That’s also where their emerging culture is forming, a culture in which they look at media from a different perspective. And so journalists’ new thinking needs to begin at the periphery, where change comes quickly among the younger generation of users, and a lot more slowly for us. Tomorrow’s potential readers are using the Web in ways we can hardly imagine, and if we want to remain significant for them, we need to understand how. Yet news organizations have been all too slow to notice movement in places that are away from what has been their center.
In remarkably few words, Pisani runs through the effect on traditional media being caused by the ideas underlying Google, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Digg, Newsvine, and news mashups like ChicagoCrime.org. Blogging, citizen journalism and RSS are covered, too. It’s an invaluable crash-course introduction.
links for 2007-01-08
Monday, 8 January 2007, 12:25
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A blog dedicated to exposing the errors of The Sun’s showbiz editor Victoria Newton. Hat Tip: Independent on Sunday.
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Contrary to the view expressed by Jeff Jarvis, Monck writes: “Life is not on the record in many places, and it’s not just in Baghdad. In Britain, for example, we still run government communications on a system that operates precisely against that ‘on the
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Francis Shennan: “Privacy will replace libel as newspapers’ main legal problem this year”
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A good profile of one Delaware blogger shows how regionally-oriented political bloggers in the United States are influencing political journalism and politics in their rea.
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Katharine Seelye visits the newsroom of the new political web site The Politico, which recently poached John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei from The Washington Post, Mike Allen from Time magazine and Roger Simon from Bloomberg.
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“From the number of stories that regularly appear based on data revealed under the Act, you could be forgiven for thinking that the legislation had proved a resounding success. But what is often not fully appreciated is how long it takes …”
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“More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites”
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Guardian Readers Editor Ian Mayes on the staff reaction to the coverage of the Saddam Hussein execution.
