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Neil Gaiman’s Journal: Storms and how they start
“Twitterstorms are no fun when people are making up things about you or insulting you for things you didn’t do or think or say. When scores of people from a group that you consider yourself a part of are shouting at you, it’s incredibly upsetting, no matter who you are. “
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How BitTorrent Rewrote The Rules Of The Internet | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
Fascinating, short read about how BitTorrent’s use of Micro Transport Protocol has dramatically grown its user base, and made the net a less congested place. “Under uTP, any BitTorrent transfers you have going on in the background will politely wait for your streaming to be finished before they jump in. Then, in the uncrowded hours of the late night, uTP lets your torrenting get going, soaking up all that suddenly spare bandwidth. Now that uTP is used for 80% of BitTorrent transfers, traffic no longer peaks in that 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. time slot. This is also why the monthly userbase has grown from 60 million in 2008 to 170 million today–all while the share of peak traffic continues to go down. “
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The world’s largest photo service just made its pictures free to use | The Verge
“Getty Images is dropping the watermark for the bulk of its collection, in exchange for an open-embed program that will let users drop in any image they want, as long as the service gets to append a footer at the bottom of the picture with a credit and link to the licensing page. For a small-scale WordPress blog with no photo budget, this looks an awful lot like free stock imagery. “
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Wrexham.com overturns ban to film council meetings – Journalism News from HoldtheFrontPage
“A hyperlocal news website has been successful in overturning a ban on the filming of council meetings. Wrexham.com has published what it believes to be the first ever video of a Wrexham Council meeting following several rejected requests in recent years.”
Category: Uncategorized
This week, I’ve been reading… (weekly)
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14 takeaways from the news:rewired digital journalism conference
Does exactly what it says on the tin.
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Crossing the language boundaries across your newsroom: journo to dev and back
An open Google Doc that considers how traditional reporters and developer reports (for Noah Veltman considers them very similar in their goals) can work together and communicate more effectively. I see huge opportunities for better cross-working with these two groups; sometimes it feels like developers occupy that previous Bad Guy space owned by IT. Better communication and empathy is the start. “the secret is not to treat developers like a service desk — what ProPublica’s Al Shaw calls “the deli counter,” where you just hand in your order. The developers are reporters, too, and you should treat them as such. Communication in particular is hard. Email is bad; tickets are slightly better but still aren’t synchronous. Using chat or direct communication is better. Having time to test things can be very contentious. There are other concerns for developers: Are you going to reuse this later? Is this an ongoing project? Will the data be updated? How is that going to work? How is this going to be maintained? What’s the game plan? What is the minimum viable product, and what can be delayed until later?”
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How To Say “This Is Crap” In Different Cultures – Erin Meyer – Harvard Business Review
How different nationalities give management feedback. Very good, and also faintly horrifying… “Managers in different parts of the world are conditioned to give feedback in drastically different ways. The Chinese manager learns never to criticize a colleague openly or in front of others, while the Dutch manager learns always to be honest and to give the message straight. Americans are trained to wrap positive messages around negative ones, while the French are trained to criticize passionately and provide positive feedback sparingly.”
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The Battle of Little Bitcoin: Native American Tribe Launches Its Own Cryptocurrency – Forbes
Really interesting read – how MazaCoin is now the national currency of the Lakota Nation. “After signing a joint venture agreement with the Oglala Sioux Tribe Office of Economic Development early in 2014, Harris immediately began mining his new currency to produce 25 million MazaCoins ahead of its launch to serve as a “national reserve” for the Lakota Nation, which can then be used in times of crisis (like the collapse of Mt. Gox) to help stabilize the currency. A number of these coins were handed out to interested businesses and individuals within the community, to encourage them to get involved in trading and speculating .”
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Slides, Links & Tutorials from NICAR14 // Ricochet by Chrys Wu
A brilliant set of how-to tutorials around data, curated from NICAR14 by Chrys Wu. Shows more than ever how even a basic grasp of coding can make you a far more skilled and effective journalist.
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Some Bot to Watch Over Me – NYTimes.com
“For a month now, I have been spying on my apartment. I have spied in the afternoon, and I have spied late at night. Since I can see most clearly into the living room, my voyeurism has been focused there. Often I see only an empty room that could use a little art on the walls. Sometimes I catch the cat sleeping on the rug. One night last week, I watched my girlfriend watch TV. “
This week, I’ve been reading… (weekly)
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Olympian Bode Miller: ‘Be Gentle With Christin Cooper’ for NBC interview | Poynter.
Never a good look when an Olympic hero cries as a result of your question. However, I don’t think she was insensitive (although the camera work was too much) “Olympic skier Bode Miller told his Twitter followers that NBC’s Christin Cooper was doing her job when she asked him questions about his brother who died last year. Miller cried and viewers jumped online to complain. (“
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BBC journalists’ interviewing techniques – YouTube
This is a fantastic interview with Peter Allen, 5Live’s wonderful Drive journalist, talking about how to interview. It includes a particularly affecting interview with the mother of murdered Lucy Blackman, and you can hear him trying to maintain a professional interviewing manner, even as her hear audibly breaks on air.
This week, I’ve been reading… (weekly)
This week, I’ve been reading… (weekly)
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Outlook for 2014: InPublishing
“Is there light at the end of the tunnel for the regional press? Will their efforts to realign their businesses start to bear fruit? Peter Sands looks at the priorities for the year ahead and solicits the views of senior regional executives.”
Investigating whether it’s worth investing time in LinkedIn (aka Help, please…)
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I’ve been involved in interviewing for some journalists jobs recently, and I noticed that while some CVs will state the applicant’s Twitter, and occasionally their blog, hardly any referenced a LinkedIn profile.
More interestingly, during social media role interviews, LinkedIn was mentioned by just a handful of people as a potentially useful tool.
Twitter and Facebook, of course, were top of the pile, with Pinterest, Instagram, Vine and Google+ cropping up (Google+ interests me – I don’t find it compelling, but it is engaging. When I remember to post there…)
So, LinkedIn. Do any newsrooms do it well? What are the opportunities for users? I thought I might test the water with a poll, and so I dusted off my Ask500people.com login to find that the site was moribund. Which is a real shame – I liked it for when I needed plenty of responses, but they didn’t necessarily have to be local to my new patch.
Anyway, I tried easypolls.com instead, just because it came up first on a search for ‘free, embed, poll’ as I didn’t need anything as fancy as SurveyMonkey.
So, if you have two moments to spare, tell me why you use LinkedIn, and help me work out whether it’s a network or the digital equivalent of a business card – something most of us have to promote ourselves, but don’t tend to use that much. If you really want to tell me more than clicking a button allows, you can always post a comment. I’m going to pop this link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, and see which sends most traffic to the blog and where most (if any) comments, likes, shares or comments happen, and then update this post with my findings.
Thanks for helping with the research!
More interestingly, during social media role interviews, LinkedIn was mentioned by just a handful of people as a potentially useful tool.
Twitter and Facebook, of course, were top of the pile, with Pinterest, Instagram, Vine and Google+ cropping up (Google+ interests me – I don’t find it compelling, but it is engaging. When I remember to post there…)
So, LinkedIn. Do any newsrooms do it well? What are the opportunities for users? I thought I might test the water with a poll, and so I dusted off my Ask500people.com login to find that the site was moribund. Which is a real shame – I liked it for when I needed plenty of responses, but they didn’t necessarily have to be local to my new patch.
Anyway, I tried easypolls.com instead, just because it came up first on a search for ‘free, embed, poll’ as I didn’t need anything as fancy as SurveyMonkey.
So, if you have two moments to spare, tell me why you use LinkedIn, and help me work out whether it’s a network or the digital equivalent of a business card – something most of us have to promote ourselves, but don’t tend to use that much. If you really want to tell me more than clicking a button allows, you can always post a comment. I’m going to pop this link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, and see which sends most traffic to the blog and where most (if any) comments, likes, shares or comments happen, and then update this post with my findings.
Thanks for helping with the research!
Related articles
This week, I’ve been reading… (weekly)
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5 tools to boost your Instagram campaigns
Does exactly what it says on the tin. Useful for any social media journalists looking to incorporate more uses for Instagram in their field. I also like the Backspaces app.
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Smartwatches and the digital future of news | Journalism.co.uk
The words “wearable tech” will soon become wearisome to my ears I think, but for now I’m learning as much as I can about it, and this piece from J.co.uk is a useful addition to the sum of knowledge.
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A Running List of What We Know the NSA Can Do. So Far. – WNYC
I really like this as an approach to a story – the ‘what we know’ approach invites readers to consider ‘what we don’t know’ and to add to the sum of information contained here. I don’t know if you call this journalism or open curation of data, or whether the two are more or less the same thing. But it’s very interesting, and something I plan to try and introduce more of in my new role .
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Macro Social Sites Are Just A Part Of The Digital Puzzle
Additionally, unless you want to sell out and go for high-bounce traffic from low-value, disinterested users macro social sites probably won’t send you the highest volume (let alone quality) traffic anyway. Build connections and community with smart, niche and passionate audiences. You’ll win every time
This week, I’ve been reading… (weekly)
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Bafta nominations 2014 – liveblog | Film | theguardian.com
fair play to the Guardian for attempting to liveblog a BAFTA list, which appeared to be speed-rapped. And fair play for holding up hands and saying ‘we were a bit pants’. Sometimes you try things and they work, sometimes they don’t. “It’s impossible to liveblog two people reading a list. Apologies. We will have a full list of nominations on the site shortly, along with a gallery of the key nominees and Peter Bradshaw’s reaction.”
This week, I’ve been reading… (weekly)
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If you love something, set it free: a lesson for old media | Outsider/Insider
“I have no doubt that the higher-ups at every major media organization would say, if asked what their mission is, that they want to deliver the news, inform the public, uncover important stories and of course (for many) make a profit while doing so. If that were really true though, there wouldn’t be an apparent need to tightly control all aspects of that mission. If you love something, in other words, you have to set it free. I hope it’s a lesson old media can learn before they become totally obsolete.”
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Ezra Klein and the problem with top-down control | Media Nation
This commentary was published earlier at the Nieman Journalism Lab. What should a 21st-century news organization look like?
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“We examined some of 2013’s most successful tweets, measured in terms of clickthroughs and retweets, to see what connects with these readers and where our investment of editorial effort really paid off (the data comes from SocialFlow, whose system the Times uses to manage some of its major Twitter accounts). We also looked at some of our strategies and tactics to encourage a variety of types of reader engagement with our journalism using Twitter.”
This week, I’ve been reading… (weekly)
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How BuzzFeed mastered social sharing to become a media giant for a new era (Wired UK)
The Buzzfeed story is a good read, although the tone is a sometimes little starry eyed. Perhaps the journalist was hoping to defect. Anyway, I found this an interesting read, particularly the move into hard news reporting.
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f there is a science to BuzzFeed’s content strategy, it is built on obsessive measurement
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Facebook News Feed Redesign Changes Struggle to Court Users – Mike Isaac – Social – AllThingsD
“Most people think of Facebook in a similar way: It’s a place to share photos of your kids. It’s a way to keep up with friends and family members. It’s a place to share a funny, viral story or LOLcat picture you’ve stumbled upon on the Web. This is not how Facebook thinks of Facebook. In Mark Zuckerberg’s mind, Facebook should be “the best personalized newspaper in the world.” He wants a design-and-content mix that plays up a wide array of “high-quality” stories and photos. The gap between these two Facebooks — the one its managers want to see, and the one its users like using today — is starting to become visible. “
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New data show where Facebook has (and hasn’t) made the shift to mobile – Quartz
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Twitter / ScottFilmCritic: If you only see one frog who …
I love this. No matter how smart you think you’re being, Twitter will be smarter.
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Slideshare presentation by James Whatley, a dude who absolutely knows what he’s talking about. And – of course – one of the Big Things for 2014 is disposable social.
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Teenagers say goodbye to Facebook and hello to messenger apps | Technology | The Observer
“”I only use WhatsApp to communicate and send pics these days,” said Natalie West, a twentysomething financial sales associate in London. In the last few years she has used Facebook less and less because she doesn’t want “the whole world to know” what she’s doing. When people set up events and get-togethers on Facebook, West and her boyfriend tend to reply on WhatsApp instead because “it’s more personal”. For similar reasons, some 78% of teenagers and young people use mobile messengers to plan a meet-up with friends, according to research advisory firm mobileYouth.”
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Young people don’t do journalism. Oh yes they do but not your model
This made me think about a number of assumptions I have, but mostly I’ve bookmarked it because of Q’s multiple responses in the comments. He says: “The young have become creative online. Some feel in the traditional system, a lot of stories created by that traditional media was negative and stereotypical. With, no or very little good news. So, with the aid of the internet they have created an alternative, and can now be in control of their own stories and imaging, and get that to their own audiences. They can also now decide the balance or weighting of a story with a good or bad light, and the checks or control on them is via the social platforms they are serving. If the audience doesn?t like the content, it takes seconds for the content creators to be notified and contested. Of course within all of this there are online haters sitting behind keyboards that hate anything posted online. However, now the content creators are also the audience or very close to them this once again leads them to feel that they don?t need the support of traditional media, which has misshaped and wrongly defined them in the past. Also, one has to question the fact, why very few young people even read the traditional media and their journalistic stories? … If… they see media created by social platforms they respect by content creators they trust, and their friends reinforce that on social media, they will engage in conversation and might even SHARE the good news to others.” (He also tells a story about a conversation with a Guardian journalist about gangs that a) made me cringe and b) made me look at the whole way UK media report on gangs in a different way.
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The cup and the knife: the reality of caring for someone with dementia
” In the end my dad died of dementia, but also because dying was the easiest way to treat him.” An honest and upsetting account of watching a loved one disintegrate through illness. One of the best pieces of writing I’ve read for a long time.
Headlines and Deadlines 
