journalism Archives - Page 2 of 8

How blogging benefits media organizations

This is a sidebar to Blogs and journalism need each other, which appeared in the Fall 2003 edition of Harvard University’s Nieman Reports. What benefits do blogs bring to journalism? Several. Pushing the envelope. Weblogs are helping to expand the boundaries of experimental forms of transaction journalism. Freelance journalist Christopher Allbritton, a former reporter for The Associated Press, asked his Weblog readers to finance a trip to Iraq at the outbreak of hostilities there. Some 320 people donated $14,334 and helped him launch Back-to-Iraq.com, and then served as his editors during three weeks of dispatches during which he broke news on the fall of Tikrit and highlighted the Balkan-style ethnic tensions between Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen and Assyrians. [See Allbritton’s story

Blogs and journalism need each other

The transparency of blogging has contributed to news organizations becoming more accessible and interactive This article appeared in the Fall 2003 edition of Harvard University’s Nieman Reports. The article was accompanied by a sidebar, How blogging benefits media organizations. Suggest to an old-school journalist that blogs have anything to do with journalism and you’ll be met with howls of derision. Amateur bloggers typically have no editorial oversight, no training in the craft, and no respect for the news media’s rules and standards. Does the free-for-all renegade publishing form known as blogging really have anything to do with journalism? Well, yes. Consider: * During the peace demonstrations in February, Lisa Rein took to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland, camcorder

What is participatory journalism?

A roundup of the different flavors of this new journalism form This article appeared Aug. 6, 2003, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Participatory journalism is a slippery creature. Everyone knows what audience participation means, but when does that translate into journalism? Alas, there’s no simple answer. In a segment on PBS’s NewsHour website last April that asked, “Is blogging journalism?” Joan Connell, an executive producer at MSNBC.com, suggested that independent bloggers aren’t journalists because no editor comes between the author and reader. “I would submit that (the newsroom) editing function really is the factor that makes it journalism,” she said. (Bloggers disagreed.)

Participatory journalism puts the reader in the driver’s seat

New forms of journalism let citizens become partners in the news By J.D. Lasica Online Journalism Review Over the past few years, the outlines of a new form of journalism have begun to emerge. Call it participatory journalism or one of its kindred names — open-source journalism, personal media, grassroots reporting — but everyone from individuals to online newspapers has begun to take notice. “It’s about readers participating in the editorial process, and it’s long overdue,” says Dan Gillmor, a blogger and technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, who is writing a book on the subject called “Making the News.” “People at the edges of the network are getting a chance to become more involved in traditional journalism

Personal video journalism hits the Net

A camera, firewire, Internet connection and some gumption are all you need to Webcast By J.D. Lasica Online Journalism Review By night, Raven — the name everyone uses for 47-year-old Harold Kionka — works as a janitor, mopping the floors and cleaning the grease traps in TGIFriday’s in Daytona Beach, Fla. By day, he operates almost single-handedly a 24-hour Internet TV station, serving as owner, station manager, producer and on-air personality. Daytonabeach-live brings live coverage of events in the Florida resort town to as many as 17,000 viewers a day. Raven and a handful of others are at the vanguard of a new breed of journalism: personal broadcasting. Using equipment that is now relatively inexpensive and simple to use, these

Portraying the graphic face of war

Photojournalists bring home the human dimension from the front lines By J.D. Lasica Online Journalism Review Visualize for a moment the defining images of World War II, Vietnam, the Gulf War. Photojournalists were there, serving as eyewitnesses to history and bringing home the harsh reality that war is about suffering, destruction and the death of innocents — not simply an abstract political conflict in faraway lands. Just as WWII belonged to the wire services, Vietnam to Life magazine and the Gulf War to CNN, the placement of news photographers with advanced digital equipment on the front lines of the conflict in Iraq suggest that photojournalists will again play a key role in shaping the public’s understanding of war. This time

When bloggers practice journalism

Journalists & bloggers discuss what’s ahead for the expanding media ecosystem The following exchange took place Sept. 17, 2002, at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and appeared a week later in OJR. Note: I’ve left original terms like “webloggers” intact, even though the language now seems outdated. By J.D. Lasica Online Journalism Review When do webloggers practice journalism? What do informed amateurs and niche experts bring to the media ecosystem? Should journalists blog? And should they rely on weblogs as news sources? Should bloggers and those in traditional media engage in a dance of fear and loathing, or do both sides stand to gain from the other? Should blogging be taught in journalism classes? Those were some of

Layoffs.com: A look at the state of the online news Industry

I was interviewed by PBS’s Online NewsHour in 1999 and again in 2001 after the dotcom crash. The latter exchange is below. J.D. Lasica is a new media columnist for the Online Journalism Review, a Web-based journal produced at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He recently published a four-part story on the state of online publishing. The following are his responses to questions posed by PBS’s Online NewsHour. Two years ago, you said the Internet was becoming the place people turned to in order to get a richer news experience. Is that still the case? Not long ago I read a study that found the typical user spends a total of seven seconds on

CNN Memo to Staff

CNN Newsgathering President Eason Jordan’s memo to CNN staff: To: CNN colleagues From: Eason Jordan The CNN News Group will undergo a radical transformation in the weeks ahead as we strive to make our great news organization better than ever, heightening CNN’s competitive edge. I am an outspoken advocate of revolutionary change within CNN and am the architect of many of the initiatives we are implementing across the News Group, especially in Newsgathering. In this note I provide details of the coming Newsgathering changes and explain why I believe these innovations are not only desirable but essential.

2000 election coverage from the wired right

Peer-to-peer and conservative news sites offer counterbalance to mainstream media This column appeared Nov. 21, 2000, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. With the political crisis over the presidential election heating up, what’s a conservative true believer to do? Turn off the left-wing mainstream media, fire up the PC and head to a news site of the political right. That, at any rate, is what an increasing number of Americans are doing, as conservatives complain that the traditional media are laying the groundwork for Democrat Al Gore to “steal” the presidency, with the help of the Florida Supreme Court. Community news sites like FreeRepublic.com and conservative news sites like NewsMax.com and WorldNetDaily.com, which earned