links for 2009-05-07

  • Kevin: Fiona Campbell-Howes writes an excellent summary of a talk by Emily Bell, head of digital content at Guardian News and Media (yes, my employer). She was talking about the future of journalism. I think that one of the most important points is that journalism will be networked, not siloed. I think that some newsrooms have done well networking with their communities, but they still suffer from a lot of siloed thinking inside the newsroom. Another thing that will probably come as a shock to most is Emily's comment: "News has never been profitable".
  • Kevin: A great round-up of the views of multimedia professionals with a grid of questions. Just click on the 'play' button to hear their views on definitions, essentials of good multimedia and accepting contributions from members of the public.
  • Kevin: "While some news outlets have been trying to put the H1N1 flu virus in perspective, others just can't resist a good panic story. They've been contacting New York University Sociology Professor Eric Klinenberg asking him to talk about the widespread panic in reaction to the flu. Only problem, there is no widespread panic. Klinenberg explains."
  • Kevin: A list from Flowing Data on their favourite data and visualisation blogs.
  • Kevin: Newsweek announces a major shift in how it reports news. They won't 'scramble the jets' to cover a story that is already getting saturation coverage from 24/7 cable news and daily newspapers. "We will no longer reflexively cover the week's events if we don't have something original to add," says Kathleen Deveny. I could ask why the Washington Post and Newsweek didn't cooperate more, but working in the industry. I know the question to that. It's difficult to get journalists in the same newsroom to collaborate and cooperate much less journalists in sister publications.

    Other things to note from this announcement: 1) "We will drop our guaranteed circulation from 2.6 million to 1.5 million by next January." Ouch. 2) "We will focus on a smaller, more devoted, slightly more affluent audience." 3) They probably will charge more.

  • Kevin: Harris online poll looks at social networking use in the US. One data point to note is the low use of Twitter. The highest rate of use for Twitter is amongst 8% amongst 18-34 year olds. Twitter is immensely useful for communications, filtering and aggregation, especially the eco-system of applications that has grown up around it. Does it need to be a majority or mainstream activity to be important? Is this a reality check? Or as one of the commenters says, more broadly than Twitter, does this study show how quickly social networks have risen.