Media

Digital first if we really have to …

Bernie Russell digital first, Internet, Journalism, Media, Technology

Dave Winer’s latest post, Online journalism remains unexplored, gets this right, I think.

We still tend to see the internet either as a place/space/platform where we can carry on doing whatever it is we’re doing, but just get it out there quicker and cheaper.

Money quote:

… for the most [journalists] have gone to the Internet with a feeling of necessity not wonder.

That said, he’s hard on journalists, whom he accuses almost of setting up roadblocks and checkpoints between the reader and the source.

Is that all we do – just get in the way? Does our disintermediation (his word) add no value to the reader at all?

Glassed up

Bernie Russell Media, Technology

The University of Southern California is starting a course where students will learn to tell stories using augmented reality and Google Glass.

Journalists as techno trailblazers?
My first job-related thought: interesting; and course leader Robert Hernandez makes a good point when he says journalists have never been technology trailblazers (which is putting it mildly), but that “the industry has a chance for a head start with Glass”.

I spy with another little eye
My first non-job-related thought: Yay! more surveillance; just what I’ve always wanted.

The UK is already the most spied-on nation on the planet, with one surveillance camera for every eleven people (at least—this piece is dated 2013).

Yes, I know there’s  difference between being spied on by the state and being spied on by journalists.

But I’d just as soon not be spied on by anyone, to tell the truth.

Spies ‘R’ already us
There’s nothing new about journalists using surveillance technology, as we found out during the Leveson inquiry.

But do tools like Google Glass take it to a new level?

Should we be so keen to add these new surveillance tools—cheap and getting cheaper; more pervasive; and more suited to fishing trips, rather than targeted news-gathering—to our toolkit?

Droning on
Journalism schools in the US are already running courses on using new-gathering drones to find stories.

(Though not over Deer Trail, Colorado, where residents last year wanted to issue licences to shoot down drones flying over their air space;  the plan has been postponed while a spoilsport court decides whether it’s legal.)

And there’s a strong argument that as more sectors use technology like this, it makes no sense for journalism to be left behind.

All in all, I’d say this is clearly an issue that should go to our ethics classes before it reaches our production workshops.

My own view:

  • Google Glass: don’t make a spectacle of yourself; or anyone else.
  • Drones: I’m with the good people of Deer Trail, Colorado: if it flies, it dies.

The Lincoln School of Journalism Content Monitoring

Bernie Russell Media

For journalist and editor, read content monitor and content manager.

According to news executive David Montgomery (Press Gazette, 21/11/2013), in the future, most local news will come from “third party contributors”, and not from journalists.

All the journalists will do is  provide “attractive formats for this third party content in the first instance online”, and then monitor the content “to instigate its promotion to a position of prominence”.

Editors will be replaced by “content managers” who may or may not come from a journalistic background.

Session journalism
Shifts will also vanish. On a small weekly newspaper, a single content manager will “skim largely online published content to create the newspaper in a single session or small number of sessions”.

Hmmmm.

I wonder how we’ll build all this into our employability strategy?

Macked off

Bernie Russell Media

We’re in the throes of trying to make our new attendance monitoring system work at the moment. I was hoping to print my registers off at home, until I saw this message from central admin:

Over the weekend the biggest issue so far has been access externally, one route that can be used is the virtual desktop (apart from Mac users).

Sigh …

LSJ social media survey

Bernie Russell Media

LSJ colleagues will know I’m doing a survey of how we all use social media in our teaching. I thought I’d start this survey via my blog.

Just us
This survey isn’t about how students use social media themselves. I know that in my production modules, for example, they mostly use Facebook for project management, scheduling meetings, etc.

And they use Twitter for finding sources and stories. I imagine this is true across the school.

It’s really about our using social media as a teaching aid.

What are we talking about here?
I’d think we need a fairly broad range. I’d want to know how we use:

And anything else you can think of that I’ve missed?

Owning up
And I’ll start off my admitting that, aside from blogging, I don’t use social media at all for teaching purposes. I don’t even tweet about my classes.

I already know I should be doing more, but I stuck to Blackboard this term.

This has obvious advantages for management and admin purposes (easy to contact students, set up groups, accept hand-ins, etc.).

But we all know its disadvantages: it’s not that intuitive, and while it’s fine for distributing basic documents (handbooks, etc.), it’s a bit clunky for things like sharing URLs, or quick notes.

Next term
I’m planning to set up Facebook groups for all my modules next term and next year, and to work more systematically with social bookmarking and archive services.

Any thoughts?
So … what’s everyone else doing, or planning to do?

Anti-northern bias: the Guardian speaks

Bernie Russell Media

The Guardian is on great form today. This piece laments the lack of ‘positive European journalism relating to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’.

I wonder why that is?

It couldn’t be the state-induced famines, could it? Or their electoral system?

The concentration camps don’t help either, I suppose. Nor do the executions.

Still, at least Pyongyang can count on the comrades at Guardian towers to redress the balance.