Long-term work and blogging compadre David Higgerson and I were asked to give a talk on blogging recently. Obviously David has lots of thoughts on this subject because... pause... he still actually blogs (and there aren't many journo bloggers from way back when resolutely still plugging away - Hello! Adam and Paul !) Every one seems to be... Continue Reading →
#ONALondon ‘When news breaks bad: UGC in the newsroom’ session
Panel: Mandy Jenkins, VP ONA board, head of news, Storyful; Fergus Bell, ONA Ethics committee, and Dig Deeper Media Ok, so for this blog post to make much sense you probably need to head straight to http://toolkit.journalists.org and have a look at that, because this is what we're talking about. Done that? Good - the... Continue Reading →
15 thoughts on innovation for smaller newsrooms
How do you innovate in smaller newsrooms, was one of the questions that was sought to be addressed at the WAN IFRA international newsroom summit I attended in Hamburg on October 5. My answer is an emphatic: “Better, and more ambitiously than anyone tends to give us credit for”. The big guns, like the NYT and The Guardian,... Continue Reading →
Dealing with witnesses: Why the Eyewitness Media Hub’s guidelines are so important for journalism
A while ago I was asked to join a group of journalists assembled with the aim of providing some input into Eyewitness Media Hub's principles for journalists working with UGC* - user generated content (or 'other people's words and images', as non-journalists might say). It was a privilege to be involved in the discussions and workshop... Continue Reading →
Off with their heads! Crimes against cropping in tweets
Update: Some more cropping tools. This one, which is - I think - called Favicon Generator, was suggested by @ourman and Twitshot by @xxnapoleonsolo. Thanks chaps. When it comes to critiquing others' work, I am very much of the 'there but for the grace of God...' school of thought. I'm fairly sure, for example, there are enough spelling... Continue Reading →
The how and why of Twitter lurking
It looks like there's an interesting new paper out on social media use. I can't be entirely sure because, y'know, academic paywalls, but when I saw this, I had to know a bit more... I have a new article out in Journalism: ‘Tweet or be sacked’: Twitter and the new elements of journalistic practice http://t.co/zNP6WGMIGX... Continue Reading →
A short guide to longform
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/178691173 It sounds like one of the speakers to hear this year was Aron Philhofer at #hhldn this week, when he levelled some zingers at mainstream media for complacency about their future. I wasn’t there, but Richard Kendall very thoughtfully grabbed a lot of the tweets around his talk into a Storify and it makes... Continue Reading →
Social media monitoring and analytics (infographic)
Not 100% sure who I owe a hat tip to for tweeting a link to this infographic about social media monitoring (I suspect David Thackeray though).It is exceptionally useful, anyway, and I thought I would store it on my blog as it's a reference source I will probably come back to in the future. The World of Social... Continue Reading →
Tweetdeck: A short user guide to getting the most out of it
(Photo credit: estherbester)I ran my first Webex training session this week; it was a 45 minute run-through of How To Be a Tweetdeck Ninja, which contained my tips for getting the most out of Facebook. Ahem.I've used Tweetdeck for years and I like the Chrome extension very much - I personally find Tweetdeck the desktop tool for Twitter... Continue Reading →
Definitely NOT another ‘How Journalists Should Use Pinterest’ post.
I've read various articles recently about Why Companies Should Be Using Pinterest (I haven't saved any of them, but Zemanta will no doubt provide the latest selection as I write this - it's like trying to put down a hydra). However, any social media wrangler in a newsroom knows a site has to be proven earn... Continue Reading →
Alison Gow | Building the New 