links for 2011-02-21

links for 2011-02-17

Could I help out?

Is there a charitable news (preferably English language) organisation anywhere in the world that might benefit from having a volunteer for two-to-three weeks this year?

Loving travel, but not being a fan of beach holidays, I’d love to spend some time exploring a cool part of the world but being useful at the same time.

What I could offer:

– Trained journalist (short-hand 100wpm).

– Working with technology/new reporting and publishing tools

– Development of online engagement and community strategies using social media.

– Experience of working with both regional and national news brands.

– Energy, positivity, willingness.

I’d pay my way, of course. That’s what volunteering’s all about. I’d just need a place to volunteer, details of how to get there and probably a suggestion of a nice place to stay.

Anyone?

links for 2011-02-14

The first paragraph

One thing all journalists are taught is that the most important part of your news story is the first paragraph. This is because most people don’t read past it. It begs the question: why do we invest so much time and effort creating more than one paragraph?

Guardian SXSW Hack Day – the hacks I was involved with

I spent this weekend at the Guardian offices for the Guardian/Rewired State SXSW Hack Day.

The theme was to look at 21st century tools for journalism, and used covering the SXSW conference as a starting point.

Sorely lacking in any useful coding skills, I think my best input came at the beginning of the weekend when a few developers sought me out to talk through some of the barriers and frustrations journalists face when trying to cover events.

The most interesting of these conversations was with Sym Roe, who came to the event wanting to create something that would have a wider use for journalists beyond reporting SXSW.

We talked over a number of issues journalists face.

One notable one that didn’t make it past the discussion stage was how to filter out noise on Twitter to get to the really interesting stories. This is really needed when you report on an event that has hundreds of social media-savvy people present and (as with SXSW) many sycophants willing to furiously retweet certain folk in the hope they might mention their startup, app or idea.

We decided there might be a very simple tool that could count retweeted links, but then allow you to inspect the results in quartiles. That way you could check for stories below some of the more frenetic retweeting. A hack for another time, perhaps.

However, the idea that got us both really interested was what became known as Fluffbox.

Fluffbox, which was developed by Sym and Premasagar Rose, is designed to let journalists curate from a variety of social sites and file all the interesting stuff they find into one, searchable “box”.

This box then lets you drag and drop the pictures, tweets, links, audio, etc, into a document that renders them all in lovely, clean html.

This is fantastic in two ways: one, it allows us journalists to have one place to store all the little bits and bobs we might want to use for a story. And, two, the clean html also makes the finished document something that can be copied and pasted into pretty much any editorial content management system.

Fluffbox was highly commended, but I personally think Sym and Prem’s work is probably the most practical journalist tool that came out of the Hack Day… but then again, I may be biased!

As if he wasn’t busy enough, Sym also helped me realise a second hack that I’d been wanting to do for ages.  This one, however, had absolutely no practical use.

The Romp-o-meter pulls in all the stories that contain the word “romp” that are published in the UK tabloid press. They are aggregated together, the sport-related “romps” are removed, and then the UK is given a “romp” score, based on the amount of naughty nookie appearing that day. In my unwittingly double entendre-filled presentation, I noted that “romps can go up and down” and that this might indicate then general moral (or morale!) levels of our nation.

Sym had less than 40 minutes to pull this hack together, so I was impressed he even had something to demo! There are plans, however, to make the fully-fledged version. I’m really hoping it will involve a romp-o-meter swing-o-meter.

You can also browse some of the hacks on Rewired State’s project page.

links for 2011-02-11

  • Bringing together the dominant culture of the legacy media with a younger, less politically powerful culture of digital media has had a predictable effect. There are few examples of digital leaders taking over integrated print or broadcast operations, and there are several high profile examples of almost wholesale takeovers of digital divisions by legacy management. 
    (tags: innovation)
  • Executives at parent group Trinity Mirror are finalising which content to charge for on mirror.co.uk and sundaymirror.co.uk. Final details of the strategy are expected to be confirmed later this year.

    Daily Mirror columnists, including political writer Paul Routledge and sports columnist Oliver Holt, will provide the foundation for the title's premium content strategy. However, the Daily Mirror's general news will remain free.

  • Partnerships and collaboration, in the spirit of openness, are absolutely key to this structure. That applies internally as much as externally, and was the starting point for the Guardian Hacks SXSW that kicks off this weekend. Even though they are only a floor apart, there are plenty in our editorial teams who hardly know the technology staff. I think that's wrong, and that journalists, as craftspeople, need to start understanding that developers are creatives in their own right; the root of the word 'technology', tekhne, is Greek for art or craft.

links for 2011-02-10

  • Truthy is a system to analyze and visualize the diffusion of information on Twitter. The Truthy system evaluates thousands of tweets an hour to identify new and emerging bursts of activity around memes of various flavors. The data and statistics provided by Truthy are designed to aid in the study of social epidemics: How do memes propagate through the Twittersphere? What causes a burst of popularity?
  • Last year City money made up 50.8% of all Conservative Party donations, a leap from 25% five years previously, when Cameron and Osborne took over the helm.

    The City has donated a total of £42.76m since 2005. Last year City money accounted for £11.4m, compared with £2.75m when Cameron took over.