Nieman Reports: available online since 1998

Now in its 60th year, Nieman Reports serves a unique role in the community of journalism publications. Journalists write stories out of experiences they've had in covering events and issues, and they write about newsroom issues common in the craft. Issues since 1998 are available here.

J. D. Lasica: website

I have come across J.D. Lasica's website and I warmly recommend it. He is one of the world's leading authorities on social media and the revolution in user-created media. A writer, strategist, blogger and consultant, he is the co-founder and head of Ourmedia.org, president of the Social Media Group and a partner in Outhink, a company that enables social media and distributed video production. Especially worth checking out is a collection of his articles.

JournalismJobs.com: looking for a job in journalism?

JournalismJobs.com was founded in August 1998 by Dan Rohn, a former copy editor and writer with The Washington Post and editor with America Online. JournalismJobs.com is the largest and most-visited resource for journalism jobs, and receives between 2.5 to 3 million page views a month.

IFJ Research Report: The Changing Nature of Work

If you are interested in changing the nature of work in media in convergent environment, you would appreciate Interenational Federeation of Journalists research report: The Changing Nature of Work from 2006. It is a global survey and case study of atypical work in media industry conducted by people such as
Emma Walters, Christopher Warren and Mike Dobbie. It is worth checking it out ...

Alexa.com

Alexa - the Web Information Company is a subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a website that provides information on web traffic to other websites. There is a lot of controversy over how representative Alexa's user base is of typical Internet behavior. Namely, Alexa ranks sites based on visits from users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from integrated sidebars in Mozilla and Netscape. In addition to their own statusbar extension, Sparky (released July 2007), there are several third-party extensions for Mozilla Firefox.

Alexa is an useful tool to start your research of a particular site, however, the stats (i.e. reach, rank, page views) of the site you are interested in are focused only globally. You cannot get answer to the question for instance: what is a reach of 24ur.com in Slovenia. That is a shame ... Try it out.

Jay Rosen: "People who were formerly known as the audience"

This is a short interview with Jay Rosen. He presents some of his reflections on journalism and media in convergent media environment. Enjoy ...

Jay Rosen and PressThink

In 2003 Jay Rosen, associate professor at NYU, a respected scholar and author of the book What are Journalists For? (1999, sample chapter), started a blog titled PressThink: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine, the blog is about journalism and its ordeals. Two years later the blog won Reporters Without Borders Freedom Blog Award. It is worth checking it out ... A few sentences from the introduction to warm you up: "We need to keep the press from being absorbed into The Media. This means keeping the word press, which is antiquated. But included under its modern umbrella should be all who do the serious work in journalism, regardless of the technology used. The people who will invent the next press in America - and who are doing it now online - continue an experiment at least 250 years old."

E-interview: practice of irresponsible journalists

In journalistic reporting theory e-interview or interview conducted via e-mail is regarded as an example of irresposible journalism that neglects several ground canons of normative journalism. Moreover, questions are risen if e-interview is an interview in traditional sense - it lacks the primary dialogue, time for interviewee's responses is longer, doubt that the responder is not the interviewee, to name just a few. However, it has an advance (in the eyes of lazy journalists) - typing the transcript is not a practice.

The last example of e-interview that went wrong happend this weekend in Croatia. On Saturday editor of daily Jutranji list Davor Butković published an interview with Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader. Prime minister's PR office later that day reported that Sanader did not communicate with that journalist in the last couple of days and that the interview is a lie. Butković responded that he conducted an interview via e-mail and that probably something went wrong. On Sunday Jutranji list's competitor Vecernji list reported that the questions to the prime minister were answer by a 23-year-old, who called Vecernji list and said that he pulled a joke on Butković sending him a SMS for New Year's as Ivo Sanader and then just responding to Butković's proposal for an interview two months later.

Despite the fact that the Internet and the Web brought mechanisms changing news production process. On the basis of above example the "new" technological environment is not a priori positive or negative, but it seems that it accelerates deepening the crisis of the journalistic profession in the context of institutionalisation of journalism as part of political, economic and cultural system.

Microjournalism?

Journalists are increasingly finding new ways to use Twitter. The microblogging application is now used by some online journalists in the American campaign trail. Cyberjournalist.net points out John Dickerson, who worked for years at Time magazine, and has moved from print to online articles to blog entries to text messages no longer than 140 characters, or about two sentences. “One of the things we are supposed to do as journalists is take people where they can’t go,” he said in an interview for the New York Times. “It is much more authentic, because it really is from inside the room.” Is "microjournalism" another example of convergent journalism and maybe a future form of providing breaking news?

News + Games = Newsgaming.com

In online news industry interactive graphics have become a viable way to explain reported events and contextualize issues, while several game developers, explains Deuze (2007: 152-153), produce games that reflect "real" events using elements of journalistic practice to (in)form their design. Such example is Newsgaming.com where you can play games related to New York and Madrid terrorist attacks. At this Uruguay-based game studio (Powerful Robot) they use the word newsgaming "for describing a genre that is currently emerging: videogames based on news events. Traditionally, videogames have focused on fantasy rather than reality, but we believe that they can be a great tool for better understanding our world. Since newsgaming is so new, it has to find a voice of its own. Therefore, most of our games will be in part experimental".

Reference:
Deuze, Marc (2007): Media Work in a Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bill Gates's Children and Computers

A year ago Reuters reported that Bill Gates limits access to compter and internet to his daughter and son. Read about it on The Inquirer. This fact spots an interesting light on the issue of children and digital divide - one of the issues of Wednesday's meeting.