More than a quarter of people, 27.8 percent, say they get news from social media. Among that group, 59.5 percent say they’re using Facebook as a news source. Among the big news stories over the past year that broke on social media were the death of Osama bin Laden, Newt Gingrich’s Presidential candidacy, and the protests in Egypt.
via Infographic Shows How Social Media is Being Used as a News Source – PRNewser.
The majority of technology journalists are even less equipped. Many have no engineering background. They’ve never built anything like the things they write about. Or, if they were once engineers, they haven’t written a line of code or soldered a circuit in years. In a fast-moving industry, professional engineers get left behind the state of the art all the time. How can journalists without any engineering expertise possibly hope to keep up? ….
via What’s wrong with technology journalism | Multimedia Journalism.
Over the past hundred years, researchers have reached a surprising degree of consensus about the predictable stages of creative thinking. It was Betty Edwards who first pointed out to me that the stages move back and forth between right and left hemisphere dominance:
1. Saturation: Once the problem or creative challenge has been defined, the next stage of creativity is a left hemisphere activity that paradoxically requires absorbing one’s self in what’s already known. Any creative breakthrough inevitably rests on the shoulders of all that came before it. For a painter, that might mean studying the masters. For me, it involves reading widely and deeply, and then sorting, evaluating, organizing, outlining, and prioritizing.
2. Incubation: The second stage of creativity begins when we walk away from a problem, typically because our left hemisphere can’t seem to solve it. Incubation involves mulling over information, often unconsciously. Intense exercise can be a great way to shift into right hemisphere in order to access new ideas and solutions. After writing for 90 minutes, for example, the best thing I can do to jog my brain, is take a run.
3. Illumination: Ah-ha moments – spontaneous, intuitive, unbidden – characterize the third stage of creativity. Where are you when you get your best ideas? I’m guessing it’s not when you’re sitting at your desk, or consciously trying to think creatively. Rather it’s when you’ve given your left hemisphere a rest, and you’re doing something else, whether it’s exercising, taking a shower, driving or even sleeping.
4. Verification: In the final stage of creativity, the left hemisphere reasserts its dominance. This stage is about challenging and testing the creative breakthrough you’ve had. Scientists do this in a laboratory. Painters do it on a canvas. Writers do it by translating a vision into words.
via How to Think Creatively – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review.
Over time, nearly every major tech news publisher has asked us a variant of “Why do you always post them and not us?” or “Why did you pick them over us for that story when we posted first?” So it’s probably time to address this issue in a general way. If you don’t write tech news for a living, be thankful that you can skip the following post. For the rest of you, my apologies, now please get comfortable and read on.
via Revealed: Why Techmeme links to them instead of you! – Techmeme News.
I wrote these 25 commandments as a panic response 15 or more years ago to an invitation to do some media training for a group of Elsevier editors. I began compiling them because I had just asked myself what was the most important thing to remember about writing a story, and the answer came back loud and clear: “To make somebody read it.”
Plenty of newspapers and other mainstream media entities are happy to use social tools like Twitter and Facebook to promote their content, host comments on their news stories in order to build traffic, and otherwise try and take advantage of the web. But while some are making strides in actually connecting with their readers — including Forbes magazine, which just launched a new “social news” design — few are taking the steps they need to in order to really engage with their readers. That’s partly because they don’t really know what to do, according to Joy Mayer, who just finished a Reynolds Journalism Institute fellowship looking at media engagement and has released a practical guide for newsrooms.
via Memo to newspapers: The future of media is a two-way street — Tech News and Analysis.
Guardian News and Media bosses today told journalists that digital is now their main priority – ahead of the print edition.
The historic shift will see The Guardian become a “digital-first” organisation, staff were told today, meaning that investment and effort is to be focused on digital rather than print.
Digital currently contributes around £35m to £40m a year out of Guardian News and Media’s £221m turnover (2009/2010 figures).
Press Gazette understands that GNM wants to double that contribution in the next five years. Last year GNM made an operating loss of £37.8m.
Print currently contributes the majority of GNM’s income, but sales have been declining sharply: last month circulation of The Guardian dropped 12.5 per cent year on year to 262,937 whereas The Observer was down 13.9 per cent to 293,053.
Today’s announcement underlines the fact that GNM sees that decline as inexorable – whereas digital revenue and readership is growing. In April, Guardian.co.uk attracted 2.4m unique users a day according to ABC, up 31 per cent year on year.
In briefings to staff today, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said GNM would “move beyond the newspaper, shifting focus, effort and investment towards digital, because that is our future”.
While print is said to remain “critical” to GNM, the new strategy will see more investment in digital intiatives, such as the new US operation and mobile.
Today’s announcement underlines The Guardian’s commitment to an “open” journalism model, which sees the newspaper networked and linked with the rest of the web. And it means that its journalism will remain free to read online.
It means the print edition will include less ‘news’ and more analysis.
Rusbridger said: “Every newspaper is on a journey into some kind of digital future. That doesn’t mean getting out of print, but it does require a greater focus of attention, imagination and resource on the various forms that digital future is likely to take.
“The Guardian has consistently led the way on digital innovation and is currently showing year on year growth of 40 per cent [in audience]. We are expanding into America and continuing to pioneer what we call open journalism – editorial content which is collaborative, linked into and networked with the rest of the web.
“We will also be changing the printed Monday to Friday newspaper to take account of changing patterns of readership and advertising. Half our readers now read the paper in the evening: they get their breaking news from our website or on mobile…
“By becoming a digital-first organisation we’re taking the next natural step, one which we believe all newspapers will eventually have to take.”
GMG chief executive Andrew Miller said GNM planned to move to a “direct model” – meaning more emphasis on subscribers when it comes to the print edition.
He said that resources would be moved from print and reinvested in digital growth areas, and that there would also be investment in new brand marketing.
Miller said: “The opportunities presented by the growth of digital media are immense. The Guardian’s journalism has never been more widely read. However, the same forces driving opportunity in digital are creating challenges for newspaper publishers across the developed world, including GNM.
“Circulation and advertising revenues in print continue to fall throughout the sector as readers and advertisers embrace new technologies and digital platforms, and this is not a trend that’s about to go into reverse.
“We are going to become a digital-first organisation, and are at the beginning of a process of transformation to achieve that. The quality of our journalism, our long-term outlook, the assets in GMG’s portfolio, our unique ownership structure, our progressive approach to digital media and our fantastic people mean we can do this from a position of strength.
“Innovation of this kind is in the best traditions of the Scott Trust and will help us to fulfil our mission of securing the independence of the Guardian in perpetuity.”
via Guardian says digital – not print – now its priority – Press Gazette.
The English language edition of Google News aggregates stories from 5,000+ sources and this list includes both traditional news sites as well as blogs. Some of press release distribution websites, PRWeb for example, is also indexed in Google News as as a source.
Newspaper map is a free webapp that helps you find over 10,000 of the world’s online newspapers, and in many cases get to their Google translations in one click.
The site may be especially useful if you want to get a local take on what’s happening in a particular place. You can search by place or address, as well as newspaper name. Another usage scenario is finding more news sources in your chosen language, since you can also filter the newspapers by language.
The map visualization of all these newspapers is pretty astounding too (and may be useful for academic research). The developers are continuing to add new papers, and say they have pretty much full coverage in over a dozen countries, including Sweden, Spain, France, Austria, Israel, and others.
via newspaper map | 10000+ online newspapers in the world, translate with one click.