07 Oct 08 Home page ugliness

I know the Las Vegas Sun gets all sort of accolades for its multimedia. I think I’ve even sung its praises once or thrice. But honestly, what is going on with the home page?

A huge smattering of links above the virtual fold sitting right next to an often flashing, seizure-inducing ad does not a pleasant page make. Am I alone here?

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Tags: online journalism, Web sites

16 Jun 08 Online Journalism Review to cease publication

Yup, the OJR is going to stop the publication of it’s Web site. From Robert Niles in the final post:

This is the final post at OJR. After a decade, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication has decided to cease publication of the website. The archives will remain online, but there will be no new articles.

One of OJR’s goals over the years has been to help mid-career journalists make a successful transition from other media to online reporting and production. I’m pleased to say that USC Annenberg will continue to provide support in that area, through the Knight Digital Media Center. I encourage OJR readers to click over to the KDMC website and its blogs, if you are not already a regular reader there.

The decision to close OJR means that I have left the University of Southern California. But I am not going offline. I will continue to write, daily, about new media and journalism at my new website, SensibleTalk.com. I hope that many of you will click over and visit me there.

That’s a shame, I really liked OJR. Niles and his cohorts posed some interesting questions and had some great discussions on their site. I also liked the network and group feel of the site. It made you feel like you were a part of something.

But, the show must go on, as the cliché goes. Thankfully Niles will continue to blog on his own site so we online journalism geeks won’t be without his wise words and inquiries.

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Tags: journalism, new media, online journalism

25 May 08 Headlines matter even online

So, did the girl in intensive care shoot the mom? She’s a fighter!

Guilty paper shall remain nameless.

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Tags: headlines, online journalism

06 May 08 NY Times puts out the call for help on Myanmar cyclone disaster

With the death toll in Myanmar rising following the cyclone that devastated the area, the NY Times used its blog, ‘The Lede’, to put out the call for help covering the disaster. They asked for first-hand accounts, photos and even have a submission form for video.

Twelve hours later they had vivid descriptions of the devastation and pictures to accentuate those descriptions. Below is an account from Henry Webb, a lawyer from the U.S. that teaches in Vietnam:

About 3 a.m., when we were about 40 or 50 miles outside of Yangon, we started seeing the first trees and signs that had been blown down. (I did not sleep during the taxi ride — the Spanish couple slept off and on and I was afraid that if I went to sleep the driver might fall asleep as well — despite the fact that he was chugging Red Bull and coffee throughout the night.)

It took about two hours to cover those remaining 40 or 50 miles to the airport, and it was only in those last two hours — between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. — that we began to appreciate the amount of devastation wrought by the cyclone. There were long stretches where nearly every tree along both sides of the road had been blown down, split into, uprooted, etc.

Almost all of the billboards were shredded, and most other signs had been either torn apart or blown down, and I saw several street signs — like stop signs or yield signs (the writing was in Burmese script so I don’t know what they actually said) — that had literally had their metal poles bent in half by the force of the winds. Many streetlights were also blown down. Many of the buildings had been damaged, and there was wind-blown debris everywhere.

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This is the sort of “open-source” journalism that I think is going to push online content into the future. On the smaller scale news organizations could cover everything from city council meetings to softball games in the same manner, by allowing citizens to watch, report and file small pieces about what they see.

The eroding of the sense of community newspapers are supposed to build could perhaps be saved by again allowing citizens to be a part of the news process. No longer should they feel they are just being fed the news but that they are contributing to the overall process of distributing the news and spreading information.

This doesn’t meant that journalists have to feel like they are obsolete or that citizens are going to take over their paper. It simply means that by allowing the people to have an avenue to contribute then we have more eyes and ears on the streets. We still act as the filterers, the organizers and the distributors of the news.

We’ll have to wait and see how the NY Times and other organizations continue to cover this story and what they do with the content they get.

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Tags: nytimes, online journalism, social networking

01 May 08 Today is RSS awareness day

You know the geek demographic is taking over when they are starting to make holidays out of Web technologies. I for one welcome our new geeky overlords and look forward to toiling away in their underground server rooms. But I digress.

According to Daniel Scocco over at Daily Blog Tips today is indeed RSS Awareness Day. So if you or your newsroom are totally clueless about this RSS thing, what better day than today to hold a quick boot camp or primer on one of the most useful and simple Web technologies available.

Don’t feel like explaining it all, just send this video from RSSDay.org around to your team (it’s a little hokey but it gets the point across):

Then have them read Shawn Smith’s post from yesterday and they’ll be all set. Create a Feedburner account for your news organization, burn some feeds and start syndicating. With the final assimilation of Feedburner by Google it is no doubt going to become a more robust and useful tool over the next few months.

So there you have it, spread the word!

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Tags: new media, online journalism, Web2.0

01 May 08 The tale of the Cougar Ace, the perfect storm

The Cougar Ace was a car transport ship that was en route from Japan to Vancouver, British Columbia, Tacoma, Washington, and Port Hueneme, California, with a cargo of 4,812 Mazda vehicles. On the way a malfunction caused ballast water to dump out and the ship listed 60 degrees putting both crew and cargo in danger.

Since the story was first reported it has been followed by journalists of all stripes. The entire tale, from the initial accident to the salvaging of the ship to the final fate of the close to 5,000 vehicles, is a multi-layered and fascinating story.

Wired contributor Joshua Davis wrote a brilliant story that focused on the salvaging effort of the Cougar Ace. His vibrant descriptions and literary format make the salvage team, a rogues gallery of hardened characters that makes the hardened seaman of ‘The Deadliest Catch’ look like a bunch of Long Johns Silver employees, come to life. Take the time to read it, it’s worth it.

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Tags: article, online journalism, wired

29 Apr 08 Online feature: Las Vegas Sun, ‘Bomb Demonstration’

I’ve been incredibly impressed with the online presence of the Las Vegas Sun. There’s something about the site that just breathes and feels welcoming. One area where they are shining is their multimedia offerings. Like I mentioned in a post yesterday, they include a multimedia link as an integral part of their navigation.

There it is, right there at the top just screaming ‘Click Me!’

One of the pieces they ran recently was a video piece bomb testing and demonstration held by the Las Vegas Fire Department in the Nevada desert. What I liked most about this was that when you go to the video it is large and in your face with excellent quality. It’s big, loud and begs you to ‘Watch me!’ (Yes, I’ve managed to anthropomorphize Web pages, back off!)

Too often sites have their videos squashed into a tiny box along with the story. While many do offer a full-screen option, sometimes a near full-screen view as the default would better serve the piece. They way I see it, your organization paid the reporter or reporters to check out the story, film it and then paid your video team to edit and package the video. Why not play it up as much as you can? You’re paying these people for their hard work, show it off! The Las Vegas Sun is doing an excellent job of that.

The second thing I liked was that the Sun offers the video in a downloadable, MP4 format, in both iPod sizes and even in 720p HD. The effort may not see worth it now, but if people start downloading your site’s videos, sharing them and then word gets around that you offer these things on your site, the traffic will follow.

As an aside, I don’t know how much the complicated ownership structure the Sun has with the Las Vegas Review-Journal has to do with it (which I’m sure it does), but their site is refreshingly lite in ads. This may be a bad thing for them eventually in an increasingly revenue-centric model, but for now, it’s great.

I could go on and on about the Sun’s site, but I’ll let you decide. Check it out, they are a great example of design meeting journalism in a great way.

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Tags: multimedia, new media, online journalism

29 Apr 08 Dissecting the NYTimes.com with design director Khoi Vinh

Despite what Craig Ferguson says, the NYTimes is still leading the charge in many areas of journalism, most notably in the online world. The Times has been continually improving their online user experience and things seem to have really moved ahead since they took down their pay wall, something that all newspapers should do right now.

The NY Times is running week long, Talk to the Newsroom segment with Khoi Vinh, design director of NYTimes.com. What’s great about the interaction is that the questions are reader questions and not bland interviewer questions. It’s really a great chance to look behind the curtain and see what’s really going on in Oz.

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Tags: new media, online journalism, technology

28 Apr 08 Where’s the multimedia tab?

In perusing several newspaper Web sites I noticed an oddity. Many sites, though I won’t mention any names, did not have a ‘multimedia/interactive/data” tab as part of their navigation. For most of them it was shoved halfway down the page, sometimes even several scrolls below the main content. This is a travesty at this stage in the game.

Even if your site doesn’t have much in the way of interactive online content, you should already be paving the way for that content in the future. Whether it be audio slideshows, video or even just picture galleries, readers should have a direct link along with all of the major sections or channels of your site to get there.

Putting it anywhere else on the site buries the content and takes the eyes away from one of the largest traffic pullers of any site. Multimedia content is an integral part of any news Web site and deserves equal billing next the news, sports, entertainment and business.

Oh, and horizontal navigation is the way to go. For more information as to why, check out Poynter’s ‘Eyetracking the News.’

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Tags: multimedia, online journalism, web design

24 Apr 08 Facebook chat makes FB even more useful for journalists

You may or may not have noticed that social networking site Facebook recently launched its online, real-time chat service. The beauty of it is, much like Gmail chat, it is integrated into your Facebook front end with nothing to install and no changes to make. You can disable it, but it’s an opt-out feature rather than an opt-in.

Your “buddy list” is populated by your friends as they sign in and out of Facebook. You send them messages just like a third-party chatting client and they respond. Easy as cake (though it is a lie).

What can this do for (online) journalists?

While not having a drastic effect, it does open yet another door for quickly sourcing or touching base with anyone on your friends list. If you want to forgo a Twitter message or e-mail, spotting one of your friends, or sources, on Facebook can be a quick way to grab their attention. With the plethora of chatting clients and different services people have, there may be people on your friends list that aren’t on any of your chatting buddy lists (and who you may not want there either). This could serve to keep you connected without having to make a full-time buddy connection.

The real functionality will be if Facebook integrates a chat room function where people can either chat within groups, events or organizations without actually being friends with the other members. Or, being able to set up temporary, ad-hoc, password-protected and invite-only chat rooms for quick and secure Facebook “conference calls”. That would really make the chatting a robust and useful connection tool for anyone, but for journalists especially.

This of course would open the doors to all of the chat room problems of the old days such as trolls, spammers and guerrilla marketers. I’m sure the Facebook developers could find a way around that though, they’re a smart bunch.

Facebook chat, yay or nay?

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Tags: online journalism, social networking, technology

16 Apr 08 Robert Niles: ‘There is no such thing as “off the record” anymore.’

So says Online Journalism Review editor Robert Niles. Niles says this in the wake of the huge stink made over Barack Obama’s comments at a recent gathering where journalists were not allowed.

Huffington Post writer Mayhill Flower was there, she recorded what Obama said and the rest is very recent history. What’s funny is that the bigger story is what Obama said, which wasn’t that big of a deal, but that he was in a venue that was supposed to be forbidden to journalists.

Why?

He’s a presidential candidate, a potential leader of the free world. Every place he speaks and every word he says is in the public interest. Speaking to an exclusive group of rich fund raisers isn’t the best way to shake that ‘elitist’ stigma, but I digress. We’re talking about journalism here. Says Niles:

With so many people publishing to blogs, Facebook pages and discussion boards, any professional news reporter who agrees to respect an “off the record” request at a meeting is committing an act of unilateral professional disarmament. I say… bag that. Don’t tell organizers that you’re a reporter. You’re a citizen, too. Get in, and report on what you see, just like any other citizen would.

In fact, the Obama incident provides a compelling argument why news reporters ought to contribute to political campaigns, to buy themselves access to more events that they can cover.

I agree. In the blogger/online journalist/grassroots journalism age, nothing is “off the record” for those in the public eye. Politicians, lawmakers and even celebrities need to know, we are the media and we are watching.

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Tags: news, online journalism

16 Apr 08 Online Feature round up: Virginia Tech Edition

One year ago Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded many more at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. Today news outlets are remembering the fallen students and presenting features related to the massacre and what can be done to perhaps prevent something like this from happening again. Here’s a quick round up of some of the online features that I saw and that stood out.

• One Year Later (Roanoke Times) - Though I commend them for making good use of a simple blog format, the inconsistency of the embedded video players and some other elements make it seem a little disjointed. I do like the navigation tabs, however when I tried to click on the ‘Interactives‘ tab, I got a Drupal error. It works now, but there are only two items promoted with only text links. Their memorials map is great looking: large, easy to navigate and contains pictures. Why not play it up more with a large thumbnail? Likewise with the video portraits feature. For the time spent on those they are criminally under-promoted.
  
• Remembering Virgina Tech (CNN) - CNN basically pulled together all of their stories and video regarding the incident into one story gallery. Since CNN has the resources naturally they have more multimedia than you can shake a stick at. I do, however, really like the gun legislation Flash map. I do think that news organizations need to stop being reluctant to promote outbound links to local media sites. I’m sure local media in each of those states had a story or two about the legislation or about guns CNN could have linked to in order to add some context. Why not do it?
• Virginia Tech, Still Healing (Washington Post) - Similar to the CNN feature, though I think they have a lot more content. The problem, it’s a bit buried. If you go to the story linked on the front page, it takes you to today’s story. If you weren’t curious enough, or paying attention, you might miss their entire package. You have to click the ‘Full Coverage’ link to get to the interactive features, victim profiles and multimedia. They should have made their main package link a little more obvious. Bonus to WaPo for including some UGC content. Oh, and WaPo still hides behind a registration wall, use BugMeNot to get by.
• Virginia Tech Shootings (Richmond Times-Dispatch) - A good example of how not to do an online feature. First, they have no overall title or headline, just ‘Virginia Tech Shootings.’ This doesn’t instill confidence in me that they put a lot of effort into it. Second, they constrained themselves to the size limits of their ad space. They limited themselves to the 665px content block in the middle. Not only that, they contained story links in a confusing and floating scrolling box next to the video. The entire thing looks very rushed. Moving down the page there is a block of links that, due to their design, look like Google ads. Their interactive memorial is nice, but is so small and under promoted that some readers might miss it.
• Virginia Tech Multimedia Gallery (Virginia-Pilot) - Again, more of a multimedia gallery than a full feature. The vertical navigation, going from slideshows to audio to video and then finally the interactive feature, is a bad idea. Like the whole ‘above the fold’ thing, people get bored scrolling. I know they want their newest content up top, but they could have done two columns or something. The interactive map should be a lot higher. The Pilot also linked to the Associated Press’ ‘Virginia Tech: One Year Later‘ feature. Of course the AP made a good showing. Audio slideshow, timeline and victim stories, all housed in a single, self-contained interactive feature. Most impressive.
• Va. Tech more secure a year after massacre (USA Today) - The McPaper also didn’t package everything together into one feature, but linked to their coverage on today’s story. This is fine, my only problem with this, however, is that the links to their photos, videos and interactive features are more than halfway down the page. Also, their ‘Remembering and moving forward’ video feature is a big, about 300px box, but the link is actually just the tiny, 20×20 ‘GO’ button. People might miss it and mistake it for a mere memorial ad or something, which would be a shame because the video feature is good.

Naturally, those aren’t all of the V-Tech features out there today. These are just the ones I saw. See any others that stand out? Send a link.

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Tags: features, news, online journalism

13 Apr 08 NPAA Best of Photojournalism 2008 Web winners

The National Press Photographers Association has announced its winners for the Best of Photojournalism contest. The winners in the online categories were quite impressive this year. Steve Myers over at Poynter weighs in on some of the notables and trends.

Here are some that I liked a lot:

• Soul of Athens - First Place, Best Use of Web and Best Multimedia Package, The Athens News
• One School’s Struggle: Fixing D.C.’s Schools - First Place, Best Audio Slideshow, The Washington Post
• Hotel Poverty - First Place, Best Feature Slideshow (INDE), Shane Bauer
• Firsts and Goals - First Place, Best Sports Slideshow (UNDE), Palm Beach Post
• Our Hidden Poor - Second Place, Feature Audio Slideshow, The Chicago Tribune
• Getting the Boot - First Place, Best Feature Video, Lexington-Herald Leader

I really liked the video on this last one so I included it. It’s short and simple, but it easily gets the point across. Along with a story, talking about the video system, cost, etc., this makes a nice complete little feature package. As an aside, that system would not go over well at the University of Central Florida. Cars would be getting towed left and right.

Check out all of the winners at the NPAA site.

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Tags: journalism, media, online journalism

13 Apr 08 Online features round up

I think this will be something of a feature I want to do once or twice a week. Just a quick round up of the current online feature or breaking news stories using some sort of online-exclusive component. This could be anything; a flash piece, audio, video, graphic or even clever use of photos.

• Catholic Views, Catholic Voices (NY Times) - A piece that uses Flash and audio interviews to get Catholic views and opinions on the even of the Pope’s U.S. visit. I’ve been impressed with the NY Times’ use of audio and would be curious to see what sort of ROI they get on their pieces (meaning hire me please.)
• Al Jaffee Fold-ins, Past and Present (NY Times) - This was is a few weeks old actually but I felt the need to mention it. A clever use of Flash that let’s readers go through about a dozen of MAD Magazines famous fold-ins by artist Al Jaffee. This went along with a larger profile of the 80-year-old artist.
• Deaths in Iraq (USA Today) - This is a very intensive database/Flash piece that that I imagine USA Today has been consistently updating. It’s not only searchable, but each block represents a soldier and when you rollover them with your cursor, an information block pops up for that particular soldier. I’d be curious to know how diligently they track down the photos and other detail not released by the military and what the update process is. Probably not much different, but far more complicated, than our own homicide map at The Orlando Sentinel.
• What’s Old is New at the Newseum (USA Today) - The USA Today interactive team must have been working overtime. This is an interactive graphical walk-through of the Newseum that opened in Washington D.C. The buttons detail each floor with small information boxes. But, if you’re feeling lazy, you can just click on the video tour instead.
• Another country by Scott Strazzante (Chicago Tribune) - Tribune photographer Scott Strazzante chronicled the life and death of a farm near Lockport, Ill. They used a Flash slide show to do side-by-side comparison photos spanning seven years. I liked the idea but It feels like it was released prematurely (despite being seven years worth of photos). They should have had a audio component, perhaps some of the people narrating aspects of life on the farm, playing over the photos. Flipping through them in silence is a little creepy.  The navigation could have used some work too. Not being able to skip ahead multiple photos is a bit of a chore.  Last nit pick, if there is a feature story that goes along with the photo story, it should be linked somewhere on this page for continuity. They are great photos however.

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Tags: news, online journalism, Sunday, technology