Wiki Journalism

We never view sites like Wikipedia as journalism but it can be used as a tool to convey information as it becomes available.  Obviously, Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information and it is easy to come across information that is completely wrong, opinionated or downright ridiculous.

Mindy McAdams argues that Wiki pages can be used to produce journalism and those who participate in this form of information conveyance say that they when events occur they can do very little for victims only get accurate information out there.

An article in the NY Times says that Wiki journalism has many advantages over mainstream journalism.

The BBC apparently uses internal password protected wikis in order to collaborate information but seemingly the problem with open wikis, according to Haiwatha Bray of the Boston Globe is that, ‘”Old-school reference books hire expert scholars to write their articles, and employ skilled editors to check and double-check their work. Wikipedia’s articles are written by anyone who fancies himself an expert.”

Wiki journalism was utilised properly for events like the Virginia Tech Shooting.

Are bloggers journalists?

In this video, he says that bloggers write out of extreme interest for a topic and that this results in a different style.  Bloggers, in his opinion, blog because they really want to do it.  Does that mean that journalists have no passion for their work and are producing content that they do not care about?  According to him, they only do it because they get paid to do it.  This seems ridiculous in the sense that journalists can specialise in areas like sport or music and be very passionate about their subject.  While they may face writing on topics they don’t particularly have a great interest in, good journalists would have a passion for news and informing people.If people only wrote about what they are truly passionate about there would be a huge void in news coverage of certain topics and people would only read what truly interested.  The general public would ignore so much of they consider irrelevant or unimportant.  This is not what the media want to do.

He carries on to comment on how journalists can convey information wrong and innacurately but are bloggers really immune to mistakes?  He says that he is one person and he is himself but this suggests that he places himself in the story and by saying that he is opinionated suggests that his work may not be the most objective.  Does this constitute journalism?  It is a different form of journalism.  From all he says, it can be concluded that blogs are perfect for comment and do stand as journalists.  I feel that blogs are for comment and there is a fine line between what it mean to be a blogger and a journalist.  From experience, blogs are more for personal experience and not serious engagement with hard news.

ProPublica

Former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, Peter Stieger, has set up ProPublica which is, in its own words, ‘an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.‘

Funding for the organisation comes from outside sources with the main one being the SandlerFoundation.  This offers up a new economic model for newsrooms which will find themselves inevitably moving to the internet where the profits of a traditional newspaper is affected.

The aims of this newsroom are quiet different to others in the sense that they produce stories that they see as important in terms of the weak fighting the strong.  They also want to highlight how the strong can manipulate the weaker.  The stories they produce are often about one persons court case against a company of governmental policies which will negatively or positively affect the ordinary Joe Soap.

Impact and distribution is vital for the survival of any news organisation and they manner is which ProPublica will operate is extraordinary.  They offer stories exclusively to newspaper, free of charge.

Fox news, however, cast doubt on the wholesomeness of ProPublica suggesting they are not politically neutral right from the founders.

A new news source?

Recently, the College View published a front page story regarding trouble with security in the student bar. A newsworthy story that would interest a great deal of the student population deserved this position in the paper.

However, what makes this story interesting, from an online journalism point of view, is that its source is from an online discussion forum.  It is vital to take note of the dates on both images:  The College View article was published on March 22nd while the boards post was dated the 3rd.

Is the internet becoming a source of news stories? Before the rise of forums like boards.ie journalists had to search a little harder for stories like this. Threads like the one above suggest that journalists no longer need to directly know of smaller personal cases but can read about them so long as those involved post them online.

Boards.ie is almost like a news source at the best of time anyway with people posting about upcoming college events and such. As is the nature of a forum, the discussion is often lively and vibrant which acts almost as a tradition print newspapers comments page.

If one wanted to broaden it away from just this particular thread and subsequent article, boards also has classified ads and bargain hunting thread which act like advertising. It has a personals section which acts as an agony aunt and regional discussions which, with a stretch of the imagination, could represent regional stories or even regional newspapers.

With health and technology section, boards.ie is becoming a forums that caters for everyone and since it is more often than not the first port of call for many students, it may well replace publications like campus magazine. If the site was taken as a reputable news source, it managed to have the names of all elections candidates before any other campus publication. This is a fine example of how quick the internet is in getting the news out there fast.

21st century news for the 21st century.

When people consider the idea of online news they firstly think of the movement of traditional newspaper online and using the medium of the internet to tell their story.  It goes without saying really that the internet is fast paced and technology is advancing right before us.  One website is dedicated solely to this type of news.  21st Century is dedicated to news in the world of technology, science, space, robotics and everything that falls in between.  This is innovative in the sense that it is using 21st century technology to tell of 21st century news.  With one section dedicated to cars, it is a port of call for anyone interested in the advancements made to the automobile!

Spinspotter: Spotting the spin in online journalism.

Considering there is no real viable way to monitor the quality of online news it can often be biased, inaccurate and sometimes downright ridiculous.

Seattle based organisation SpinSpotter last year launched a program which allowed the consumer to highlight pieces in articles that they deem to be bad journalism. The idea was launched on the back of the fact that many people simply do not trust the media and in particular the online media. Based on the rules followed by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, the service is still only confined to text but it may pave the way for improving standards in online journalism.

Wonder will the Weekly World News be called up!

The Social Networking Era: Self Indulgent?

A recent study has shown that people are now using social networking sites like a trophy to how many friends they can accumulate. As these sites, like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace, are connecting people in a way like never before there seems to be somewhat of a competition to see how many ‘friends’ you can collect. The phenomenon is referred to as ‘Myspace whoring.’

The average number of friends across profiles seems to about 150 but some extend into thousands. However, when questioned about this people said that they would only consider a small portion of these as actual friends. This begs the question is the internet bringing back the social aspect of sitting alone in front of a screen but also questions whether people are still being seen as themselves instead of as a number.

A quick Google search turned up a blog result that explained a virus that can be sent in order to make 1 million friends on Myspace. It was started as a joke be Samy Kamkar who designed the virus in a way that if someone viewed his profile it would automatically add him as a friend and place the words ‘Samy is my hero’ somewhere in the profile. Is it self indulgent or just plainly sad?

In a Times article, Will Reader of Sheffield Hallam University said: ‘It does upset some people. They start by feeling good that they appear to have made a new friend only to find out that they are simply being added to a list. They’re not wanted for themselves; they’re wanted to extend a list.’

If the idea of having staggering amounts of friends on your social networking profile, tutorial videos are readily available demonstrating how this can be done.  The sites are meant to bring people together but this seems to be really taking it  a new level.

Local online news: Self Serving?

When I read this headline in the Clare Courier I couldn’t help but blush at the attempt to localise news.  In what is intended to be a local spin turns out to be nothing short of embarrassing for the reader.

This paper is both in print and online.  It is free in both instances.  When a headline like that appears I have to question the reasoning and rationale behind such a openly self-centred statement.  While it is vital for news to be relevant, I think that the shooting in the North is relevant enough to everyone in the country.  The angle from which this story was written takes away from the actual news instead leaving the details until paragraph three.

Death of the print media

It seems that newspapers have a very limited life due to the growth of online news. Online news has so many advantages over the traditional newspaper which will be dealt with in a future post. Up to now, the internet was seen as the less profitable medium by which to convey the news but it seems Google has seen an opening. An article written by Owen Thomas on Gawker entitled Here’s Hoping Google Does Kill The Newspapers outlines Google plan to place adverts on Google News. This brings in the question if newspaper should change their economic model in order to compete with the internet. Perhaps a pay-per-view system or subscription service would be plausible.

The site electricvenom.com suggests that the print media is dying by its own hand. Are journalists spending too much time writing about the demise of print instead of trying to do anything about? It can easily be argued that newspapers have not at all tried to advance and move with the times.