These are my links for May 8th through June 5th:

• OUP Dictionary Team monitors Twitterer’s tweets - Ahh. Metamediajournalism. Apparently " A recent study out of Harvard confirms Twitter is all vanity" erm. Yes. and….
• The Birmingham Mail’s Gareth Barry letter: why so late on the web? - A lot of praise for Birmingham Post editor Steve Dyson for engaging with Jo in the comments on this subject. What it does is give the most open example I've seen in a while of the judgment calls needed around a 'web as well' strategy
• Obama speech: An analysis - The BBC try adding analysis to the speech. I think this works well but it would be better with an option to comment/engage with each one as well
• Tips and thoughts for journalists from Bloomberg’s former multimedia editor - Last week (Thursday May 28) Bloomberg’s former multimedia editor, Abhik Sen, spoke to journalism students at City University on a range of topics. Some good points. I especcially like - think flavour not facts. But I'm not sure I agree that the telegraph story is as good an exemplar as he would like.
• How open are your lines of communication? - Alison Gow lays a challenge down - of sorts. "I'd love reporters to spend a week where none of their stories were featured in the newspaper - they would only be able to get their information out online, via a blog, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, a wiki - hell, they could even arrange a meeting at a local cafe and talk to people - anything but the printed page. I think it would be an eye-opener for everyone involved"
• Help Me Investigate: Paul Bradshaw on Crowdsourcing Investigative Reporting - Ryan Sholin talks to Paul about his new website helpmeinvestigate
• What hyperinterest Web pages would look like - A follow up to a previous post with more flesh on the bones
• Mass audience for news is dead - "Imagine a news Web site that’s a portal to everything people used to read in newspapers plus a bunch of things that newspapers were never able to provide. A cool idea, I think, but first it requires newspapers to embrace two provocative ideas:

  1. The mass audience is dead.
  2. The product of newspaper Web sites is not news."

  Lots to ponder here but, for me, the real point to mull over is number 2. Should we be asking if a newspaper website be about news

• Increase in UK online display advertising activity - "Online display advertising activity in the UK has increased year-on-year despite the current economic climates, figures from Nielsen Online for the first quarter of 2009 are suggesting."
• Journalists are ‘egomaniacs’, so pay walls won’t work - More interesting to me, in this round up of a recent conference is the view of Alan Murray from the WSJ that "the mix of classic training and new multimedia is not conducive to great reporting". Some interesting tidbits in this.
• Blog Archive Help Me Investigate and game mechanics - Paul Bradshaw reveals that his new venture- helpmeinvestigate - -is really all just a game. A serious game.
• Why Can’t PR Do Digital? - OK it's aimed at PR people but isn't getting out in to your community and pushing the value of journalism a little about PR too?
• 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization - A cracking round up of all kinds of visualization goodness
• Why Twitter may never sell - A great article about why Twitter may never sell itself to a Google or Microsoft.A lesson for newspapers?: "If you don’t want to be a platform, I don’t know what you should be aspiring to be."
• The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave - I'm still not quite sure what it does but it sounds like plenty of people are ready to load it with tests as soon as it appears
• Topsy - A website that searches Twitter. If you search for a term the results will be tweets that contain your search term and a little bubble that tells you how many other people tweeted that term or a link. A neat way to find people tweeting about a subject but it needs a bit of playing with to get the vibe of it
• Three ways to become a good Documentary Journalist - Making the case for a different type of journalism and documentary Kurt Lancaster crits Jigar Mehta's piece in the NYT "It’s not breaking-news, a political analysis, nor a unraveling of a crisis, but there are three reasons why I think this is a strong piece, reflecting three elements of strong documentary journalism"
• Wikipedia bans Church of Scientology - “The bottom line is that whoever acquires Twitter will in essence take possession of an army of millions (soon to be tens of millions) of humans who are actively, accurately, and enthusiastically meta-tagging pages.”
• Whoever aquires twitter… - “The bottom line is that whoever acquires Twitter will in essence take possession of an army of millions (soon to be tens of millions) of humans who are actively, accurately, and enthusiastically meta-tagging pages.” - great qote
• Four observations about charging for news that are often overlooked Nieman Journalism Lab - An essential addition to the paywall debate. Seward's last point is particularly good - "Even if pay walls are the future of newspapers, they aren’t the future of news." Think about what you are 'saving' here
• Social media success doesn’t start with ROI - David Meerman Scott makes some good points about ROI in this post from David Spark. No answers to what should replace it but that doesnt make the comments any less valid.
• Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference? - A nice article on the differences between pages and groups. As more newspapers get turfed off their profiles this could be useful
• Subscriptions Only Work "Selling Weird Porn," Says Arianna Huffington - The huffster makes a good point but if people want news like people want porn they why not!
• Publishing an online newswire - A nice little post about the ways to use Publish2. The comments are equally as good for ideas
• So Long Sections? - Essentially this article is talking about the joys of the semantic web as it would apply to a more familiar concept 'sections'
• The convicts in the News - The reality of website journalism in France reported at Le Monde "The logic is to be the first to upload information to be tracked by Google. "Most of us were inexperienced and had no school of journalism," she recalls. If we wanted to make a phone call to verify the information, let us do. But that was not what we wanted. The most important was to work at full speed. " It does loose a little in translation but interesting stuff
• ITV’s CRR should be updated, says OFT - "The Office of Fair Trading has today advised the Competition Commission to consider updating CRR, the mechanism that protects advertisers from ITV1 abusing its dominant position in the UK TV ad market." This seems like a good idea and a really, really bad idea in equal measure. On the one hand you give back ITV the opportunity to generate more revenue but you introduce a scary president for online video ads no?
• Audio reporting tool Audioboo experiments with paid-for account for ITV | Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog - I don't know why but I hold a special place for audioBoo. I suppose it was the first web2.0 kind of app that I witnessed created, grow and develop(purley online you understand I had nothing to do with building it) that I used and thought this is an instant 'yes' for journos and the media. Now the 'how do they make money on this' question gets answered - "This Saturday ITV.com is planning to use the tool as part of its FA Cup Final coverage: fans using the Audioboo iPhone app will be able to submit their audio reactions to the site." Great stuff. This years coveritlive goes network!
• So Much For Twitter’s Trending Topics To Indicate Breaking News - Robin Wauters bemoans the missed chance we have with Twitter's trending topics "We already know Twitter can be quite the source for breaking news, but critics have in the past correctly pointed out that one should be aware of the fact that the mob isn’t always right, and unverified claims on the micro-sharing service - often from a single user or even a single message - can quickly lead to false or incomplete stories circulating rapidly and viciously until the dust settles and the truth surfaces." I see the point but as for the use for breaking news it just illustrates the need to be part of it, building your own networks rather than simply skimming trending topics. But I think the point about the users of twitter taking a bit more care is well made. Use it or lose it some may say.
• 20 Free Buzz Monitoring Tools - A list of free tools to track the social media chatter
• Professor Todd Gitlin’s Keynote speech on journalism - "What I do know is that journalism is too important to be left to those business interests. Leaving it to the myopic, inept, greedy, unlucky, and floundering managers of the nation’s newspapers to rescue journalism on their own would be like leaving it to the investment wizards at the American International Group (AIG), Citibank, and Goldman Sachs, to create a workable, just global credit system on the strength of their good will, their hard-earned knowledge, and their fidelity to the public good. " 'nuff said
• Semantic technology gains publishing foothold - Well, one technology in particular -OpenCalais. What is it? It's" a Thomson Reuters project to improve electronic publishing by adding computer-readable labels to content, has attracted the attention of several media publishing organizations, including CNET. " One of number of semantic technologies around this article is one of many that makes me think this was a good move by Reuters
• The golden age of data journalism - Mr Anderson asks what we need to do to get a UK version of all this open gov goodness happening elsewhere in the world "We probably don't need to tell readers of the Datablog that it's the golden age of data journalism, but we'll give you some ammunition for the next time you have to convince data sceptics. "
• Headlines and Deadlines: The end may be nigh but you don’t have to keep telling me… - If you run in to Alison Gow then have a chat - she's a planet brain on this digital stuff - but she offers some advice for topics to avoid I'm very interested in what people have to say about the future of news - whether they think the newspaper industry has a future or not - but I'm just not engaged by people wanting to drone on about, for example, the Journalists bad, Bloggers good debate.
• The Life and Times of A Twitter Link - A marketers view in some respects but interesting none the less. "The moral of the story is that twitter is like any social event you've ever attended. You can't expect the person you've just met to know what you told someone in a previous conversation. So get involved, have fun and make connections with your consumers."
• Where to Stalk Journalists on Twitter - A nice post that does exactly what it says on the tin. A round up sites that list journalists and journo orgs on twtter
• GonzoCamp report: An emerging role for journalism when mixed with technology - Some simple but interesting ideas from GonzoCamp. A lot of semantic thinking but I especially like the “nutrition label for your journalism” idea of whose-news.com
• Twitter poses risks for papers - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com - It's certainly an attractive idea - that twitter ups the risks of leaks from the newsroom. The basis of the argument? that "Technologies never brag about what they don't do; they're too busy wowing us with their tricks to admit to their failings." Of course the reality is that things like twitter claim nothing of the sort. The users do. It is always down to the user to control their use and if journos are leaking then it says everything about the culture they sweat in than the platform they use to express their frustration
• An view on the Future of Journalism from oz - It's a union view so there is the usual bashing of "bedroom bloggers" but the video intro is interesting and the report, some interesting insights. Given that these guys did a world tour to get the best insights it would be an interesting read for anyone.
• Digital Inclusion, Social Capital and Digital Barn Raising - Digital Engagement - A great roundup of ideas and projects to help grow hyperlocal and grass-routes community projects "As someone said, we are very good at talking about these issues, and maybe piloting … but not at taking entrepreneurial action and scaling up. I certainly remember similar discussions 10-12 years ago when I think that there were in fact more local online communities in the first flush of enthusiasm for the Net." Some interesting stuff here.
• Confessions of a former online producer - Interesting 'essay' musing on the practice and future of newspapers and local journalism "Unless local users conscientiously seek and support local substantive journalism with money, real local news will continue to be spotty at best, barely afloat in a sea of nearly-naked celebs."
• Why journalists deserve low pay | csmonitor.com - Shameless (or should that be sinful) linkbait for the Christian science monitor that is generating a lot of linking. "Journalism must innovate and create new means of gathering, processing, and distributing information so it provides content and services that readers, listeners, and viewers cannot receive elsewhere. And these must provide sufficient value so audiences and users are willing to pay a reasonable price. " Shame they don't allow the debate on comments - that would add value
• TimePress - Put Your Blog Posts in a Time Line with this WordPress plugin - This plugin could be a really interesting addition to a newspapers kit if using wordpress blogs. Perhaps a dedicated sports blog that could track to a timeline of the teams performance over the year. It also includes twitter integration.
• When the Times Wire crackles » Nieman Journalism Lab - Zachary M. Seward uses google reader and an earlier version of the Timeswire to track the NYTimes' publishing cycle. Interesting
• Times Wire - The New York Times - I like the way the user can chose the streams. Nothing radical you may think but how many newspaper sites have you seen with a single page of tens of RSS feeds. This might be a less daunting option.
• Newspapers: There is No Magic Bullet - "There is no magic bullet. In fact, most of the bullets just listed are of the dumb-dumb variety (as opposed to dum-dum, nitpickers). They reflect the thinking of executives and journalists who don't really understand the business of journalism, the reality of the new Internet-driven world, or what consumers are looking for these days."
• Roy Greenslade: How council-run newspaper journalists defend their jobs | Media | guardian.co.uk - The news that council papers have NUJ type journos working for them gives Greenslade food for thought. He's been clear on his thoughts about council newspapers "But I have not given any thought to the journalists who produce the material for such publications. You have to admit: they do have a point." I think this is a pretty shoddy admission. Perhaps it was convenient to assume it was all PR bunnies. Or maybe this fuss was about protecting jobs and not journalism or democracy?
• In defence of council-run papers - A letter from 14 NUJ members An obvious but overlooked facet of the council newspapers are evil debate - they employ proper journalists and pay a decent wage. But FleetStreetBlues lays down a challenge - "Now let's hope the East End Life team use that same fire and passion when covering the next Tower Hamlets council meeting. Remember, it's not the council bosses who pay your wages. It's the taxpayers.
• Facebook Remains Stubbornly Proud Of Position On Holocaust Denial - Not being a regular facebook user I have missed this storm over their stance on 'free speech' - "Facebook is apparently done talking about Holocaust denial for now. A couple of groups that got more out of hand than the rest were taken down, but the company’s policy of permitting the groups on the site remains. " Michaels point is that there is free speech and then things that are just plain wrong. A hard logic to sustain even if the gut says it's right. A difficult topic but a principle that would trouble anyone moderating forums and comments as we all find our own level as to what is an acceptable level of free speech in a community.
• Three ideas to make newspaper pay walls work - "Newspaper publishers need to get round the table and launch their own PayPal. It’s the only way it can work. I should be able to use the same account for every single newspaper on the planet. Or, at the very least, in the UK. But really, the planet. A PayPal for newspapers would be a revolution. It means I can keep track of what I’m reading, and spending, and not have to worry about signing in to 30 different sites."
• Guido’s Plan to Save the Indy - Guy Fawkes’ blog - Uber politico blogger Guido Fawkes suggest a way to save the Indie. "The Indy should therefore enthusiastically embrace the socially liberal Notting Hill Cameroons, in all their weed tolerating, groovy green glory. Become the modernised news brand that Cameroons are not embarrassed to be supported by…"
• Murdoch’s Secret Plan to Charge for Content - "According to a knowledgeable source, the team is said to be “looking at hardware” to deliver the content in a “user-friendly way”—a prospect that will surely catch the attention of the developers of Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader."
• Non-For-Profit Isn’t A Business Model For Newspapers - "the reason why they have a decent shot at surviving isn’t because of that philanthropic support—it’s because of their entrepreneurial spirit and lean cost structure, two things most newspaper companies are lacking." It's the mindset not the money that is important.

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I know, I know I said I had closed down the blog (apart from the results of the video survey. Which are still coming by the way) but I though the blog was the best place to plant a flag for this.

Myself and long term partner in crime Paul Egglestone (@digitaldocs) had a chat with some of the good folks from the BBC College of Journalism last week about their plans for a conference around the much vexed subject of the Future of Journalism that would be based in the North West. Why the north west? Well the obvious answer is Media City but they also wanted to get the debate out of London and around the country.

That sounded like something to be involved with. After all the stuff that we have been doing with Meld and other projects this was our kind of gig.  So along with colleagues at UCLan we are working with the beeb to try and sort something else out.

The working title for the conference is Open

The idea is to run something around the back end of this year. I guess that would make it Open09 if you like.

The general consensus was that this needed to be as open an agenda as possible - hence the name. So I’ve been asking around as to the subject areas that people thought might be interesting to go at and make it as near an un-conference as dammit.

I fired a quick tweet out last week to see what people would want to to talk about and got these replies.

Can’t guarantee the ashes to ashes one would make a panel - although the future of journalism chaired by Gene Hunt would be a cracker.

Of course any conference with the BBC is going to have to give some time over to asking the BBC just what their plans are in this future of journalism. But this is also a great platform to get some good speakers and industry people to jaw with.  It could be paywalls, micropayments, new technologies; whatever takes your fancy.

So these are early stages but I’m going to keep asking- who and what would you like to see at a conference on journalism and its future in the NW?

Leave a comment or tweet at @digidickinson

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These are my links for April 22nd through May 8th:

• Digital Inclusion: The Evidence — Digital Engagement - A cracking presentation with a huge range of stats on digital inclusion - are we really talking to all our audience when we go online?
• Teaching Online Journalism » Multimedia journalism teaching: 10 things I learned - Mindy has some great ideas and isnights based on her experiences of teaching multimedia this year
• NewBizNews: Hyperlocal « BuzzMachine - "For the New Business Models for News Project at CUNY a key model we want to build is hyperlocal. " More from Cuny and Jarvis on possible models for the future of journalism
• The "Future of Journalism” heard - Not the place you'd expect a round up of the "Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet hearing on the "Future of Journalism," (a great site none the less) but a nice selection of links that would be of interest to all, not just the US.
• New hyperlocal sites for towns without newspapers - Big(ish) newspaper group stake claim on web shock. "In every town, there will already be a person who writes match reports for football games, businesses who like to talk about their work, churches who host events every week. We want to co-ordinate that activity. " Interesting move by AND but time will tell if it's really hyperlocal or more of the same. The phrase "We want to co-ordinate that activity" doesnt make me confident for the former.
• NewBizNews: Metro « BuzzMachine - "This is the third of three strategies for a sustainable future of news that we’ll be working on at the CUNY New Business Models for News Project It’s the most complex and the most important: What can fill the void when (I used to say if) a metro paper dies? "
• David Simon, Creator of Acclaimed HBO Series "The Wire": As Profit Motive Guts Newspapers, Communities Lose Out - A full transcript of Simon's evidence gives a more rounded view of his take on the issues than a lot of the blog talk gave him credit for. I still can't buy the contradition of relaxing anti-trust and 'it was the shareholders that did it' but this is the source stuff - so you cam make your own mind up.
• David Simon: Dead-Wrong Dinosaur - Gawker do a bit of a job on Wire creator David Simon and his apparently anti-blog sentiment "Simon told the Senate Commerce Committee today bloggers don't go to city council meetings, or know what the hell is going on if they do — a clichéd, out of touch refrain common among newspapermen who can't be bothered to do any reporting on the assertion." It's a shame Simon chose bloggers as his lever to try and force congress to 'save newspapers'. A bit like bankers blaming bank customers. Good ammo but wrong target David.
• News Corp Q1 results: Ad plunge at newspapers prompts Murdoch online rethink - Lots of interesting things off the back of Murdochs comments, for example, "He suggested that one of News Corp's main newspaper assets, for example The Sun or Australia's The Daily Telegraph could start charging for online access within a year or so." But I also like the throw away statement about audience, facebook and revenue. Why would be interested in audience unless they bring ad revenue!
• @Google - @Twitter To Start Indexing Links For Search - Santosh Jayaram, Twitter’s new VP of Operations has been speaking at some conference/panel thing. According to Techcrunch, " The most interesting thing is that Twitter Search will soon begin crawling the links that people tweet out and indexing them. This immediately takes Twitter Search, which is still a very basic service, to the next level." I agree. Twitter is fast becoming my new source of interesting stuff and this kind of search will really open things up
• MediaShift Idea Lab . Journalism’s 3.0 Business Model(s) - Dan Glimour gives over space on Media Shift to Jeremy Pennycook, a graduate student, and an interesting take on the state of the industry " This isn't a knockout punch, no deus-ex-machima to save us, but this is probably closer to reality. It isn't glamorous and it isn't easy, but from the ashes of legacy media, new journalists can arise and rebuild a more agile, vibrant, and diverse industry with the same core values and goals."
• FIPP 09: Charging for content or e-commerce - how will mags make money? - Roberto Civita joins the GMG's Carolyn McCall in gently introducing the mag industry to the concept of this new fangled online thing and the vexing issue of paywalls. This stuff has to be embraced - "Civita was adamant that magazines will continue and that the industry shouldn’t get hung up on what platform this happens on (”I really don’t think it makes any difference if we’re talking about paper or the new e-papers”) - it’s the quality of the product that matters"
• When a reporter opens his multimedia toolbox - A google translation of an interview with French Multimedia journo Antonin Sabot.
• Ridiculous or Radical? Idea #1: Stop making video - "I know it’s heresy to say it. But are we wasting time concentrating on video journalism?" I say no but agree that it has to have its place.
• YouTube River Diverted Into The Google Social Ocean As Well - You could link Youtube and google together "but starting today, if you sign up for a new YouTube account, you automatically get a Google account to go with it." Might be a less frustrating way to sign up for a google id!
• Top 10 Tools of the Social Media Swiss Army Knife - "social media is essentially a Swiss Army knife. And a Roman legion of social media experts can't tell you more about social media than a simple Swiss Army knife can. Social media is a tool."
• Emily Bell on The Future of Journalism - "Emily's topic was Journalism Ten Years From Now - a massively contentious topic as advertising revenues and print circulations plummet, editorial staffs shrink, new digital and social media platforms spring up everywhere and knowledgeable amateurs with blogs provide an increasing number of alternative, authoritative information sources."
• Find journalism links to share on Twitter - How do you find links to share with your followers on Twitter? If your followers are interested in journalism, Kevin Sablan has one easy way.
• Seth’s Blog: Thinking about business models - A business model is the architecture of a business or project. It has four elements:

  1. What compelling reason exists for people to give you money? (or votes or donations)
  2. How do you acquire what you're selling for less than it costs to sell it?
  3. What structural insulation do you have from relentless commoditization and a price war?
  4. How will strangers find out about the business and decide to become customers?

  Seth Godin thinks about how the four fit together and which elements are important for new media

• A confab with Matt Thompson: Noodling the future of context - Matt Thompson is a 2008-2009 Donald W. Reynolds Fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute and his work and input in to a recent think tank debate in Washington DC generated some interesting points on dealing with news "in context".
• Does Anyone Trust the Media? - eMarketer - People around the world do trust the media, but to varying degrees. Thanks to @markmedia for the pointer to this study of 'trust' in the media around the world. The use of the definition "online news" concerns me a little as that could include newspaper websites. But it makes for interesting contrasts
• My 21 Tips for Starting a Successful Blog | The Wardman Wire - Darren Rowse at Problogger has posted about things that potential bloggers (”Pre-Bloggers”) need to think about. This article is Matt Wardman's response to this article and top 21 points for pre-bloggers to think about. Very interesting it is to.
• Online first journalism - "It’s time for some short-takes: stuff I find interesting around the blogosphere for journalist bloggers" A nice round up of blogging jouno related stuff.
• Gimmick or utility? News connections - Mindy has mixed feelings about the Washington Post's cute Evri widgets "I feel divided about these. On the one hand, they are fun to play with. They make me curious, and I click on them. On the other hand, I don’t think I have ever clicked one of the story links below the graphic — which would seem to be the reason the graphic exists."
• 7 Harsh Truths about running online communities - "The ultimate harsh truth is that your users will be talking about your website, services and products, whether you want them to or not. The only question is whether you want to engage in that discussion."
• 3Rs of Blogging - Redirect, Reuse, Recycle - "In today’s world, we pay a lot of attention toward ways to minimize waste of any kind. The 3 Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle) have become rallying cries for those hoping to maximize our use of limited resources. " A great article about making the most of missing and underperfomring blog posts. There is also a promise of, what looks like, a great new wordpress plugin to help
• World’s Best Headlines: BBC News - Jakob Nielsen likes the BBC headlines "Precise communication in a handful of words? The editors at BBC News achieve it every day, offering remarkable headline usability"
• The value of a newsletter - Craig McGinty says that "If there is one thing I stress to any website owner big or small it is the importance of offering a newsletter service." and he has a graph to prove it. Well thought out support for the value of newsletters from Craig.
• 85 Resources to Pass the Time During Your Next Furlough - Another mega list of resources to wade through. Why not do 2 a day towards your five-a-day of web upskilling
• Town halls hit back in council newspapers row - Don't blame us for your problems say council leaders. When it comes to the council run newspapers are killing regional newspapers fight they say that "Councils do not operate their own publications to jeopardise the future of the local paper. As the LGA's research shows, most magazines are only distributed a handful of times a year and are not significant competitors for advertising revenue.
• Social Bites - Like Sound Bites But Different - I missed this, but I like the idea. Not sure making tweets so structured is something to sweat over but the concepts and motivation are spot on

  "A social bite is a short piece of text to describe an article, post or idea which is easy to understand and easy to distribute through viral networks. A social bite must still carry the post’s message and goal but in a way that quickly impacts with users in essence"

• Jeff Jarvis: Advice for specialist journalists - Adam picks up a post from Jo Geary with video of "Jeff Jarvis - associate professor at City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, Guardian columnist and author of Buzzmachine.com - speaking at SXSWi 09."
  Jeff suggests that journalists need to establish personal connections to an audience in order to survive the current industry turmoil.
• Journalists must change thinking to change industry | Save the Media - “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein. When I read this Einstein quote (which was posted in an office at my kids’ elementary school), I thought: Wow! Einstein could have said this today about the newspaper industry.
• TV3.0 Journalism and political challenges of TV in the digital age - A (google)translated version of a German academic paper on internet TV and USG
• Yet another ‘why journalists should use Twitter’ post - It may be 'yet another' but Alison always brings something extra to the table - "So, while the Twitter canon is extensive enough without me adding to it, I thought I'd lay out why I think journalists should use Twitter. Just in case my J-student needs some extra ammo…"
• graphic designr » Creating graphics with Google Docs - This short, easy how - to on the way you can create interactive graphics using google docs is one of a number of short intros to core technical skills for journalists
• The Mainstream Adoption Curve - A nice graphic that illustrates the way that the new, fast becomes the old
• Five things a ‘complete journalist’ should know today - "a quick list of 5 basic tech skills that college journalists should possess to enhance their chances for career success"
• How to turn online social networking into real-life relationships - "The following tips for expanding your network and contacts in a digital environment will help you translate those online connections into lasting real-world relationships."
• FLYP : A multimedia magazine - behind the scenes - Flyp has some presentation problems - the page VS. multimedia screen paradigm needs work - but the content is good and this article puts some flesh on the people behind it.
• High Time We Set the Record Straight on Newspaper ‘Myths’ - "Let's set the record straight: Newspapers still enjoy considerable readership and deliver strong results for advertisers. More Americans read printed newspapers than watch the Super Bowl. More Americans read printed newspapers than own dogs. Newspapers and their Web sites reach a larger audience than ever before." Yes, all god points but it's still not an excuse to rest on your laurels
• Video Viewing Exceeds E-mail Use, Nielsen Reports - Can this be true! "Visitors to video sites now exceeds users of Web-based e-mail, according to a report released today by The Nielsen Company. The study reports on monthly unique visits to various Web sites and online applications. "
• 64 Things Every Geek Should Know - LaptopLogic.com - Lots of (what to most will be) uber geek stuff. Like how to bypass website blocking - "What is a horrific situation for an average computer user is a simple irritation for an everyday geek. To bypass a website block/filter, simply enter that websites IP address in instead of the actual site address. "
• New Voices: New Voices Invests in Eight Hyperlocal News Sites - "Eight hyperlocal community media projects from across the United States have been selected as this year’s New Voices grant winners. Each will receive up to $25,000 in start-up funding over the next two years."..and man, won't they be closely watched
• Multimedia toolkit: 55 sites you should know about - A great resource
• Introducing The Long News - "[T]he idea behind The Long News: to try to identify news stories whose significance seems likely to grow, rather than diminish, over time."
• The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging … And When To Use Each One - An interesting presentation on the types of blogging with some 'values' attached to each
• The OJB guide to open news APIs - part 1: Guardian, NYT and Daylife - "In the first of a series, Peter Clark, founder of Broadersheet, takes a look at three of the leading APIs for people looking to build news-based web projects and mashups."
• Twitter Quickstart Guide - "…don’t know quite how to get started with this Twitter thingy, this post is for you. (It’s also for anyone else who wants to get into the warm, scented waters of Twitter, but hasn’t; or those who have signed up but are not yet fully addicted. You know who you are…)"

  A nice intro

• Proof that council papers are competing with local press - "the net effect, of course, is to undermine the commercial local media still further, reducing income from advertising and causing sales to fall."

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These are my links for April 14th through April 22nd:

• The blurring of journalist career paths - What journalists need to do (and how they need to think) in this new digital economy
• Some SXSW-inspired thoughts about online communities, affinity, and the rules of engagement. - I've been thinking a lot about the idea of friends, followers and the like. I'm pondering how affinity, as a concept, ties these things together and whether getting people in the media to buy the concept is a way of getting better community relations. So this post from a while back pushed the right buttons for me. Esspecially the idea that "the end game is the connection, not the transaction."
• Mandelson puts the brakes on newspaper distribution - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic - "The business secretary, Peter Mandelson, ruled yesterday that publishers will no longer be obliged to supply newsagents who order their papers." I don't know why but this really smells of a really, really bad idea. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised that Mandelson is courting the big companies.
• Newspaper websites need to improve their readability - "Most newspaper websites are doing a bad design job in making their stories readable." A cracking post on the good and bad of online page design by Malcolm Coles
• Ten Ways To Improve Your Multimedia Production Right Now - A great post with great tips.
• Appreciating the inverted pyramid - "The inverted pyramid, it runs out, isn’t the devil’s spawn after all. It’s just another tool for storytelling and one that I think editors and reporters may need to spend a little more time exploring." Very true.
• Former local journalist in new online venture - News of a local journo setting up a local news site. What caught my eye was (apart from a journo setting up on their own) was the comments about avoiding badmouthing your ex-employer. I agree. You're never going to compete. A competitive collaboration is a better bet
• The DeOnté Rawlings Shooting (washingtonpost.com) - Agreat interactive from the washington post
• "Introducing Information Architecture at The Guardian" - Martin Belam posts his notes from - "'Introducing Information Architecture at The Guardian', which explained a bit about my role there and how the site is structured." Great stuff and who'd have know there was a wookipedia
• Why journalists should learn to code (and why some shouldn’t bother) - "Both sides have valid arguments: learning basic HTML, CSS or other programming languages helps journalists create their own online content and understand the parameters of technical journalism. On the other hand, refusing to learn coding may be more than just stubbornness or old media thinking. " I agree that knowing some html is a good skill. Is it coding? No, I don't think so. Maybe we need to claim it as Online shorthand. Can you tag at more than 100 tags a minute?
• Newspapers continue to talk a bad game… - Dan Thornton gets brain ache trying to understand the confused message coming from newspapers and the broader industry as they try and react to digital - "Lumping together so many disaprate businesses into one homogeneous ‘newspapers’ group is always going to result in a bit of schizophrenia, but when you’re attempting to discuss an industry, it’s a bit unavoidable.
• Breaking news online: How two Pulitzer finalists used the web - A look at how the finalists for in the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news used the medium - very helpful stuff
• Journalists lessons from the movie "State of Play" - What we can learn about what journalism needs from the movies
• Analysis on 2009 SSND multimedia entries and winners - Some nice reflection on student winners of US Society of News design sponsored College News Design Contest
• PLEASE STAND BY: Indiana Jones and the Quest for Web Traffic: A true tale about the real cost of digital churnalism - "[T]alented journalists like Susan - with a decade of experience and a showreel the length of a Martin Scorsese film - are left sidelined and ever more frustrated by a desperate land grab to bring in exactly the same kind of stories as everyone else. Welcome to the future of new media journalism." Sad but true stories from the industry
• 10 Exceptional WordPress Hacks - 10 new and totally killer WordPress hacks to make your blog stand out from the crowd. As usual, we won’t just list the hacks alone. In each entry, you’ll find an explanation of the code as well as the kinds of problems that the hack solves.
• Overview of live video over the internet - "…there are many low-cost options available right now that should be putting pressure even on dedicated video conferencing businesses and services included in IPTV (Internet Protocol Television)"
• producing online video journalism - "breaking into online video journalism without breaking the bank."
• ‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers - Everyblock gets a look from the NYTimes “In many cities, the local blog scene is so rich and deep that even if a newspaper goes away, there would be still be plenty of stuff for us to publish,” said Mr. Holovaty of EveryBlock.
• Canada’s Community Newspapers - "Some of the fastest-growing ethnic communities in Canada—be they South Asian, Chinese, Hispanic or European—still prefer to get a little ink on their fingers while reading the news. Advertisers have started to clue in."
• The content cascade: How content will flow in digital news enterprises - "Rather than trying to redefine “the basic unit of news” — it used to be the story; is it now the fact, or the topic, the issue, or what? — and what that implies for the work of journalists, going forward it will be most useful to think about content as a cascade, as in a stream running down a rocky glen, always moving, dividing, uniting, filling pools here and there, constantly finding new niches to fill."
• Newspapers must grow their online news market share. Can they? - It’s very much a “fire, ready, aim” process
• Q&A: Canon helps usher in the video SLR era - "In an interview with CNET News, Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon's professional products marketing division talked about not just video, but also OLED displays, the arrival of rival full-frame SLRs from Sony and Nikon, changing flash card and file format standards, wireless networking, and more. "
• Newsplastic: Electronic ink + flexible screens + wireless - "But the possibilities [of e-paper] really start to hit home when you watch these YouTube videos of laboratory-stage e-reader technology. Note that the following video of Plastic Logic's flexible screen is almost 3 years old. "
• [Types of ]Online Video Ads: A Bag of Tricks - "Some of the formats are not much different from ads you might see on television; others harness the interactivity of the Internet to engage viewers."
• Local media ownership rules may be relaxed in quick-fix bill - "It is would be consistent that rather than have Digital Britain as a report it is turned into a white paper or bill of some sort. "A change in the competition regime for newspapers does not require legislative change, just a new interpretation by the Competition Commission and OFT of the definition of the scope of the marketplace," the newspaper industry insider added.
• Research: Going Web-Only Could Kill Your Newspaper | paidContent:UK - "With the economics of news forcing the likes of Seattle-PI and Christian Science Monitor to abandon print for the web, doubtless dozens of other publishers are mulling the same option. Not so fast - ditching the dead tree could lose publishers the bulk of their revenue and even a sizable chunk of their web traffic, say researchers from London’s City University."
• GunnMap 2 - great map builder
• Create your own infographic with a few clicks using GunnMap - GunnMap is an application that allows users to upload their own data, customize the colors and then download the resulting infographic. It seemed too good to be true, so I tested it out for II readers to find out if this could really be the answer for quick-and-easy graphics. Although it has it’s limitations, I have decided that GunnMap is definitely worth checking out.
• Beet.TV: Akamai Seeks Standardization of Video Players with Big Industry Initiative - "Akamai is working on an open source video player initiative with the IAB, Adobe and Microsoft and others to to develop standards. Tim says this is essential for advertising in videos and the growth of the industry. The industry group is called the Open Video Player Initiative."
• Former editor to study decline of regional newspapers - "Neil Fowler has been awarded the Guardian Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and will look at the post-war history of local press and more recent developments such as the impact of digital technology and the internet."
• Social media is good for you - "Does the rapid stream of news that constant digital connectedness brings us (via social networks and the likes of twitter) make us less compassionate? Does it mess with our moral compass?"
• Journalism Online: Part of the Web $2.0 Goldrush - Ken Doctor comes up with a good list of pros and cons for new start-up online journalism. Interesting stuff.
• What is Good Journalism? - Richard Sambrook finds a great presentation made up of quotes that try and answer the titular question.
• Why top-down syndication is broken - "Greg Elin of the Sunlight Foundation reacts to a presentation by the AP’s vice president and director of strategy Jim Kennedy on a “new model for news consumption,” given via teleconference to the room." Essentially this boils down to 'you have to let us play with you or your model is rubbish' with a detour in to share the process if you're not going to share the outcome.
• Herding Cats - "Best of luck to the latest effort to unite the newspaper industry. They'll soon learn that one of the penalties of being the rough draft of history is that you need to be able to learn from that history."
• Defending “rule-breaking” journalism - "One of my colleagues, for example, suggested that the post was irresponsible and that such rule-breaking is one of the reasons there is a “credibility gap” between bloggers and mainstream journalists."
• Avid Introduces VideoSpin 2.0 - Version 2.0 of avids free video editor. You'll need to pay to get the better codecs but even that is dirt cheap. Only for XP/Vista though
• Using Twitter to Publish Breaking News from the Field - "The resulting method uses e-mail as the interface for posting short headlines (which are actually Twitter messages, or "tweets") to the Web site. If you can send an e-mail, you can post breaking news."
• Using Data Visualization as a Reporting Tool Can Reveal Story’s Shape - "More and more, though, some reporters are using data visualization tools to find the story hidden in the data."
• Nielsen Says Online Video Usage Soars - Online video continues to expand — now up 40% versus the same levels a year ago.
• How to Build an Emmy-Winning Videojournalism Department - "It really boils down to making the right choices about what you spend time on. Yes, it is worth months of time to produce 50 video segments – count 'em! – commemorating the 50th anniversary of Motown Records. Crazy, yes, but worth it if you look at the hit count. Yes, it is worth sending a videographer out at 12:01 a.m. to do a clip of disgraced former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick leaving jail, knowing that everything associated with him goes off the charts. "
• Five predictions about US newspapers: Pt 3: There will still be print newspapers in 15 years - "Nothing sparks innovation like the threat of death."
• WSJ & the Kindle: Puzzling Relationship - "Could this Kindle story be an attempt by the Journal to nudge Amazon in a favorable business direction? The possibility is strong enough that I’m personally very skeptical about the WSJ article’s key claim. Either a more nuanced headline or stronger sourcing would have made this story less of an ethical gray area."
• Faster Future: Publishing possibilities now and beyond: Lego Man: Why the next web is about meta data, first - "It is what the semantic web seeks to achieve, taking us beyond the node-focused world of social networks and towards the meta data (connections) of the networked world. So we shift from focusing on social networks as some kind of goal towards a mission to enable our transformation into global digital social beings, constructed from and expressed as meta data across a silo-free web."
• 6 Blogs, 3 Cheat Sheets and 1 Degree | Megan Taylor: Web Journalist - I’ve been spending some more time looking at design elements on various blogs, how colors and typography and borders are used to make even a simple layout look amazing. I’ve also been collecting resources to keep in mind when working on Web sites.
• How the Ian Tomlinson G20 video spread The Guardian brand across the media - Martin Belam does a great round up of the way the G20 video from the Guardian made it round the media; online and off. Great examples and thoughtful conclusions. Essential stuff.
• Lego Man: Why the next web is about meta data, first - "It is what the semantic web seeks to achieve, taking us beyond the node-focused world of social networks and towards the meta data (connections) of the networked world."
• Cambridge news go head to head with the Nationals - The Cambridge news go head to head with the likes of the FT, Guardian and Crains for Most Significant Contribution to Future Newspaper Success - for their video content!
• The unstoppable rise of the citizen cameraman - "We've still to discover why a policeman knocked Tomlinson to the ground and why he died a few minutes later. If and when we do, it will be words and not pictures that tell us." Which completely ignores the fact that the two together are so powerful

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These are my links for March 23rd through April 13th:

• Print is still king - "The fact remains, of course, that not only is online revenue alone insufficient to sustain news operations, but the print operations of our larger newspapers, having lost most monopoly pricing power, are not sustainable either, recession or no recession."
• "If you love your content, set it free" ? - "systems that are institution or industry focused are the ones that will fail "
• Times embraces return of ‘citizen journalism’ - "The Washington Times' news gathering is about to become a whole lot bigger as the newspaper launches one full print page per day of news stories reported and written by average citizens in local communities. "
• Three easy features that add value to your site - Innovation in College Media suggests a crime map, trending topics and a calendar. Help, advice and a time per week is all very helpful
• Where’s best to distribute video clips? - Sarah Hartley "One thing’s for sure though - putting material into a variety of networks significantly increases overall views."
• Internet Usage Will Overtake Traditional TV In 2010 - "By 2010, Microsoft predicts that Europeans will spend an average of 14.2 per week on the Internet, while they will only sit in front of their TVs for 11.5 hours per week."
• Going solo online: The story of radio’s The Sound of Young America - "That’s not a model that will appeal to every laid-off journalist, to be sure. But it’s evidence that there is a way to go solo online, do high quality work, and make a living. "
• Local news is a lost cause on the major social news sites. - "No matter how much effort local bloggers and publishers pour into promoting their work on them, it's a lost cause. The audience there just doesn't care about local news unless its either a weird-news-of-the-day-type item or a big scandal a la Blagojevich. "
• Great journalism brings in an audience - "If there is any message for journalism in this it is that a combination of trusted news brand (one a fund manager from New York would send his video) and very good reporting will, as it has long done, bring in the audience."
• The Associated Press’ 11 Commandments Parody - Steve Garfield and a nice mickey-take of the current AP problems
• A formula for measuring news quality? - "It would also be useful if anyone is ever to attempt such a study as it would provide a tool that doesn’t hinge on personal subjectivity and therefore can be used by anyone who participates in the study. So what would go into such a metric?"
• Does Google Really Control The News? - "Google isn’t the only one who benefits from all those links. If you want to be known as an authoritative source of news, it is no longer good enough to simply proclaim yourself to be one."
• Vimeo is the" YouTube for artistes" - "The Web video site Vimeo goes after an audience tired of the poorly lit basement aesthetic." Nice article with some even nicer examples.
• Can the Statusphere Save Journalism? - "Content, and the reporters and journalists who produce it, must migrate to the individual attention dashboard in order to trigger a reaction that reverberates across the social graph and become gathering points for individual tribes." Ham fisted conclusion but the concept - especially the idea of the statusphere - is really seductive
• How Google Stole Control Over Content Distribution By Stealing Links - "What Google “steals” from every website isn’t the content — it’s the links. "It’s the links, stupid. And everyone gives Google their links to read — for free!!" This is why journalists need to understand what power there is in linking and being a trusted source of links
• Sound control for Canon 5D camera - "BeachTek is happy to announce their new DXA-5D XLR adapter that has been highly anticipated for the Canon 5D Mark II camera" - A box that fits on the bottom of your 5D so that you can plug in some serious mic technology
• On the future of Journalism and Journalists (translated version) - "The role of the journalist has changed only in that it has been refined."
• The Morton Plan - Charge and charge again (and the same online as you would in print) - "I call on all you publishers to decide individually (to ward off the antitrust folks) to charge for Internet access to your newspaper content: Offer your readers the choice of getting their paper online, with the advantages of expanded information and search capabilities, or in print for the same price. A modest premium would give them both. Charge advertisers the same for online or print space, based on print's current cost-per-thousand for advertising"
• Who the Hell Is Enrolling in Journalism School Right Now? - "But you’re not going to learn how to exploit it in a stuffy classroom taught by people who got there by working at newspapers." More from the 'school of life' arm of I'm right and don't need to actually check that what I write has any validity - unrelenting arse
• True/Slant: A new journalism model? - "True/Slant is the creation of a former AOL and Wall Street Journal journalist. It provides ad-supported pages to more than 60 "knowledge experts" and compels them to write regularly and interact with those who comment as part of their social network"
• AP Exec: “To the Untrained Eye it Looks Like We’re Stupid” - “To the untrained eye it looks like we’re stupid. But we’re looking forward to a totally new space, where we have to get ready to do things in a totally different way. We’re trying to be smart business people and we’re trying to stay in business.”
• Knight Digital Media Center: News Leadership 3.0 - "With a third of young people saying they get no news on a given day, two just-launched experiments are putting their content on a new Facebook application and using an “Action Team” model to engage young users."
• HuffPost Publishes Citizen Journalism Standards - "Dead ends are bad news on the Internet" - Good stuff via poynter
• Apple Mac Freeware. - Interesting mac freeware site
• Great free apps for multimedia journalists « - Adam Westbrook rounds up a great set of free MM resources
• Media Insiders Say Internet Hurts Journalism - "In a poll of prominent members of the national news media, nearly two-thirds say the Internet is hurting journalism more than it is helping."
• Learn to shoot video - Mindy McAdams does video in here multipart series of online skills
• Brightcove report shows spike in video activity at newspaper Web sites - "the struggling newspaper industry is creating more online video content in an effort to boost its Web-based audience"
• Online Video Surge May Be One Life Jacket for Sinking Newspapers - “We don’t see online video as the salvation for the print industry or print newspapers, but we see it as a positive indicator,”
• New Media Business Syllabus - A New Media Business course syllabus. Looks interesting.
• Choose the right medium for your message - There is never any concrete answer, but with the multimedia picker embedded below, you can at least have an idea of which technology will work best to showcase a story or idea.
• feednest - FeedNest.com lets you publish any RSS feed (and we mean any feed; yours, techcrunch, cnn, BBC, etc.) to your twitter account automatically posting each new item as they are published. Why would anyone want chocolate in their peanut butter, you ask??? Most people don't
• A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods - Very cool
• How To Build iPhone Apps - An online course from stanford. Available on itunes
• What the decline of regional journalism means for local democracy - Across the country, local newspapers are being cut to the bone or closed down. Is regional journalism doomed? And if it is, what does that mean for local democracy?
• NYTimes.com depicts recession using citizen journalist upload system - NYT readers can upload images using a system nicknamed Puffy.
• Journo suspended for refusing to do video without training - A journalist at the Glagsow Herald and Times group has been suspended after refusing to take a video camera out on a vox pop. The suprise is that it has taken this long to happen. More journos should do it
• BBC - The Knowledge Exchange Blog - The beeb set up a spot for publishing the findings of collaborative partnerships academics and the BBC funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and BBC Research & Development
• News International gets its own Huffington Post - News Ltd is set to launch The Punch, its biggest digital venture since it created news.com.au, according to Aussie media site Mumbrella
• A Twitter workshop for journalists - Mathew Ingram shares his slides from a twitter workshop
• Local papers are appalling, says Telegraph assistant editor - Justin Williams says “You cannot dress up your own dross or anybody else’s and pretend that it is anything other than dross."
• Publisher says no to regional press mergers - Actually an ex-publisher but no less valid points raised here.
• NUJ warns against relaxing rules on mergers of local media groups - The NUJ take on the UK newspaper merger suggestions as reported by the guardian
• Can newspapers turn innovation into hard cash? - More questions than answers but interesting questions none the less
• UK Newspaper alliance calls for merger process to be modernised - yeah, right. Because being bigger is really what will save them
• The transition to digital story telling. - Tracy Boyer's presentation - worth looking at.
• How-To: Search the Social Web - Ultimate Toolkit -
• The iPhone and news: interesting prospects ahead - Mario Garcia shows some iphone love
• Data Visualization Is Reinventing Online Storytelling - A nice round up of teh ideas and some great examples
• Brad Linder’s Zoom H4n review - Brad takes a look at the Zoom H4n handheld audio recorder.
• FT Newsroom 2009 changes - More meat on the bones of the FT's plans
• The FT newsroom in 2009 - The FT release a document outlining what they are going to do next in their newsroom I predict a lot of newspaper execs getting their assistants to download this.

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It’s been three years since I started this blog.  The first (on topic)  post was back in 2006 and it was a short post blogging Katie Couric’s move to NBC which prompted Newsweek to ponder if “the real action in TV news may be happening on the Web”

To say a lot has happened since then is, well an understatement to end all understatements and looking back over the posts it’s been great to see things develop and feel like, in some small and often bad tempered ways I have been able to be part of the debate.

Recently though life has got awful busy. I’m finding myself in front of a lot of journalists, training (which I don’t blog about as it’s chatham house rules when I work for others) and involved in a lot of exciting stuff including the recent infuze project. All of which is me trying to actively be a part of, rather than just talk about, where journalism is going and where (I think) it needs to be.

That’s put me on my back foot with my online presence. Getting in front of the blog to do anything other than echo what is already being said elsewhere is proving difficult and not being able to do so is proving very frustrating.

Equally frustrating, but a more recent issue,  is the quality of the debate. Not from my fellow bloggers in the jsphere where the debate is, if anything, so mature and rich in understanding and empathy that I’m at a loss to understand why people just aren’t doing this stuff. The problem is more with the lack of momentum it causes.

Whatever it is that’s causing it I think there are some bright, vibrant and essential voices out there and they are not only being ignored (unforgivable even in the current climate) but quite positively attacked by an old media rear-guard action that I thought we had lost around 2007.  A lot of the effort to make sense of where we are is being dismissed because “it has no answers”. I would say it’s a lack of understanding that got you here to start with so perhaps a bit of listening would do you no harm.

Maybe I’m  falling out of love with journalism at the moment. Perhaps when I read the morally outraged vitriol spouted about Jackie Smith’s husband and his porn films in a paper owned by and advertising films and content by the same ‘pornographers’ who made the films he watched I wonder just where quality journalism is. That quality journalism that the local media groups say they need to be given more freedom to protect by becoming even bigger versions of the monolithic media companies so poorly suited to the future media landscape. Maybe that’s what it is…

All of which hand wringing and gnashing of teeth leads me to the point of this post -  Andydickinson.net is going in to hold for the foreseeable future. I have the preliminary results of the video workload survey to get out but apart from that, to all intents and purposes the blog will close.

But before you cheer, I’m not going away.

Despite my current lack of taste for the blogging fight I’m fully intent in participating in the more dynamic conversation happening on and offline. Now is a time for doing - doing is what I do best. I have some other things I want to do as well and these will no doubt surface as (and if) they happen but blogging is moving off the agenda for a while.

So to all of those who comment and have commented, thank-you. Really, deeply, thank you. I’m hoping to comment more in return.

To all of those who have come this way via twitter, especially my recent glut of followers, sorry. I know what it’s like to turn up late and find the place closed. But hey I may still have something interesting to say.

The blog will come back and I can’t promise that I won’t post from time to time.  But for now I’m officially putting the shutters on the blog.

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