Daar

She mentions the reports that the first President of Somalia Aden Abdullah Osman Daar had died in May of 2007, which (though he was ill and in hospital) were untrue (he did not die until 8th June) , as well as the incident o 5th  September 2008, where ‘a false Reuters article spread around the web claiming that Miley Cyrus had died in a terrible car accident’. She performed in concert the following Friday.

‘It is an ‘interactive graphic that traces Ian Tomlinson’s last movements and presents accounts by eyewitnesses’. It highlights the true benefits that online interactive material can bring.”

The Guardian’s Interactive Feature – G20 police assault

The interface is engaging and adds depth and interactivity to the story of the tragic death of Tomlinson following his assault at the hands of the police  at the G20 protests.

It is a timely reminder of just why the Guardian’s website has been voted voted website of the year at the British Press Awards two years in a row, as another fellow student Samuel Hamilton blogged about in his post ‘Still the Daddy of Newspaper Websites’.

Article

“It will understand what you are talking about,” Wolfram said. “We are just at the beginning. I think we’ve got a reasonable start on 90 per cent of the shelves in a typical reference library.”

Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard and the co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, who organized Wolfram’s talk, described the new service as a powerful “computable almanac.”

It looks set to become a powerful new resource for journalists , another tool to gather information and a potential rival to Google’s search engines and news aggragator.

The case was eventually settled out of court meaning that no legal precedent could be set in late January 2009.

The End of Online Journalism?

For me, the story echoed in many the ways the ongoing saga surrounding Google News. The Google service has indexed newspaper stories with a headline and short synopsis without paying anything to the newspapers for the content for years now. The argument in favour of this situation continuing has always been that allowing search engines to aggragate news stories drives a huge amount of traffics to these newspapers and news organisations’ websites. However, by bypassing their homepages  Google is effectively  devaluing their potential earnings from advertisements.

From a Cnet article by Greg Sandoval:

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?” Sam Zell, the new owner of the Tribune Company, asked reporters during a speech at Stanford University last month. The Tribune Company operates the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.
Zell didn’t wait for the reporters to reply, according to The Washington Post. “Not very,” he said.

“Newspapers are trying to find their way to understanding and addressing the value of linking,” said Aly Colon, an instructor at The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists. “The search engines are supposed to be sending traffic to newspapers. But on the other hand (journalism) is hard work…There is going to be some sort of attempt by newspapers to figure out how they can be fully compensated for their work.”

He points to a Guardian article that declares ‘Arianna Huffington is saving journalism’. In it, Jeff Jarvis praises the Huffington Post founder for creating a not-for-profit arm of her organisation dedicated to the task of investigation. The initial fund coming from both the public and the foundation starts at $1.7million. Aside from the financial aid, Huffington hopes to tap into other resources, such as the crowd-sourcing (contributions of effort rather than money) Wikipedia has successfully employed, availing of generous contributors to provide content and information.

Huffington feels investigative journalism dropped the ball when it came to rigorous coverage (or the decidedly lacking coverage in these cases) of the Iraq war and the financial crisis and this situation can not continue. She has started by setting her sights on covering the continuing economic recession the way that it should be covered, comprehensively.

In conversation with Charlie Rose, Huffington talks about 8 years of republican right-wing government in the US and how the media did not hold them to account sufficiently.

‘Imagine if you were a photo editor at a major publication, and you could view and search through every digital photo on every computer in the world to put together a feature. Or if something spectacular happened, and you could search photo tags to see what everyone at the scene was seeing.

This dream of a global photo album, compiled in real time by amateur and professional shooters, hasn’t quite materialized, but photo-sharing services such as Flickr and Buzznet are giving us glimpses into that future.’

A great article on the online presence of visual journalism

image from taylorphotography's photostream on flickr

The role of photojournalism differs of course, from print journalism. Whilst the aim of a written news story is to inform, photojournalism attempts to add some colour to the black and white facts, attempts to illuminate and bring an emotional, human resonance to a story. It makes the viewer connect with a story. Thanks to the internet, and prominent services such as Flickr, people could make millions upon millions of instant connections.

And now news in the bright, burgeoning world of internet photojournalism:

Flickr Hit Hard by Yahoo Layoffs

On a side note, in another nod to how we receive our information now, Rev Dan Catt, Ashot Petrosian and Neil Kandalgaonkar were amongst those who tweeted about their exits.

Aims:

Our aim is to host an open-ended space for debate, dispute, argument and agreement in which users are able to comment on everything they read.
The blog is updated regularly through the day and exists to provide instant commentary on current events while exploring the main preoccupations of a progressive, liberal newspaper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree

The website is an integral part of The Guardian’s commitment to protecting and enshrining freedom of speech and expression online, which has also led to the online site compiling a special report into free speech on the net, tackling issues such as the retention of internet records by telecommunications companies etc…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/freespeech/

Nico MacDonald of the Online Journalism Review wrote an in-depth piece on the development of the ‘Comment Is Free’ website and commented on its successes and its flaws.

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/060817macdonald/

The emails were sent by senior Gordon Brown aide Damien McBride to former Peter Mandelson adviser Derek Draper. McBride was forced to resign when Fawkes, whose real name is Paul Staines, published the emails on his website, www.order-order.com.

In his resignation speech, McBride squarely blamed Staines for the untenable position he found himself in, saying ‘I did not want these stories in the public domain – it is because Paul Staines has put them there, and I am sickened that he has done so.’

Bringing Down The House

The British-born Staines, a 43-year-old former financier and PD supporter, is an Irish citizen living in Duncormick, County Wexford with his Laois wife and two children. His blog has become one of the most read political blogs in the UK since it began in 2004.

Staines has frequently come under attack from politicians due to the outspoken and acerbic nature of his online persona. He has faced vilification for his right-wing leanings, drug-taking and criminal past, which amount to four alcohol-related offences and two drunk-driving reprimands.

He does not intend to write a blog on Irish politics, but feels there is a definite place for someone to do it. ‘There is a lot in there, but I don’t have the time at the moment. I’m already in big trouble with the wife.’

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Guido has also been responsible for unearthing a video featuring a long-haired raver bearing a remarkable resemblance to Conservative party leader David Cameron dancing at a Sunrise Gathering in 1988. Cameron has categorically denied that it is him. Whilst perhaps not the most solid of scoops or hardest of stories, the slow-motion dancing and dreamy rave soundtrack is quite relaxing.

One of the most prominent movers in the use of multimedia, sound, video and graphics is the online branch of the New York Times. What it allows the audience to do is fully engage with the news, moving the process of news consumption from a passive one to a more active and interactive one.

Their multimedia page gathers together stories and features which incorporate these new technologies into the stories.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

A perfect example of this new approach can be seen in how the NY Times have tackled the current swine flu story.

Swine Flu Story

This page allows the audience to track news and updates on swine flu cases worldwide.

What this essentially does is eliminate the need for (or at least provide an alternative to) a straight text, inverted period style report where the audience gets their information horizontally in decreasing order of importance. All the relevant news can be gleaned from a single graphic, such as a map, with the user directing their mouse over certain geographic points to be presented with the associated news (in this instance, cases of swine flu across the US and rest of the world).

It is altogether more visually appealing, user-friendly and dynamic.

Other types of this multimedia news include panoramic, 360 degree rotational photographs, interactive timelines and audio slideshows.

The use of video and audio by news organisations previously only involved in the medium of print has a number of implications for the journalists they employ. As jobs are lost in fields such as sub-editing, print journalists may be required to put together short camera pieces and audio reports for online content, adapting their roles to accommodate these multimedia needs. What it all amounts to is change in the way a story can be told

Are our fingers becoming quicker than our minds? Are our brains now reduced to shallow pools, basic functioning Operating Systems?

‘This may all be a moral panic, a severe case of the older generation wagging its finger at the young. It was ever thus. But what is new is the assiduity with which companies and institutions are selling us the tools of distraction. Every new device on the market is, to return to Eliot, “Filled with fancies and empty of meaning / Tumid apathy with no concentration”.’

What the author of the piece, Brian Appleyard, concludes, is that all these sweeping changes in the online world have not altered, but have in fact served to exemplify, mankind’s abilities of adaptation.

‘On the train to Wakefield, with my new 3G iPhone, distracted from distraction by distraction, I saw the future and, to my horror, it worked.’