You’re working on an exclusive story for tonight and the Web and social media team wants a piece of it, hours before air. Should you share? If you thought that question had been laid to rest years ago, think again. In some newsrooms, the answer still is, “It depends.” Brandon Mercer, news director at KTXL …
Continue reading ‘When and where to break exclusive news’ »
ProPublica has put up a new graphic that shows at a glance where members of Congress stand on gun rights and gun control. Using the now-standard red and blue tints to indicate party affiliation, Republican or Democrat, the graphic shows the NRA’s ratings for both Senate and House members, NRA contributions to each member, and …
Continue reading ‘Simple, interactive graphic on gun control’ »
If you’re working in television, you already know this –local television stations are no longer just in the business of TV. But RTDNA researcher Bob Papper has the statistics to back it up. Speaking at the Excellence in Journalism conference in Ft. Lauderdale, Papper reported that 75% of local TV stations provide content to places …
Continue reading ‘Social media and new skills needed in local TV’ »
The Webby Awards are out and the top news sites probably won’t surprise anyone. Selected by members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, here’s the full list of nominees and overall winners in the news category. The Daily Beast — Webby Award Winner BBC News website – People’s Choice Winner Huffington Post …
Continue reading ‘Best of the online news sites’ »
Let’s start with the basics: What is SEO? Search engine optimization (SEO) can be defined as the process of improving the amount and quality of traffic from a search engine to a particular story or website. Daniel Petty of the Denver Post told a packed house at the SPJ/ONA JournCamp in Phoenix that most Web …
Continue reading ‘The journalist’s guide to driving traffic through SEO’ »
Television news promotes itself better than any other form of journalism. TV stations routinely set aside valuable airtime to advertise stories set to appear on upcoming newscasts. Now, though, the most effective promotions may be airing on cellphones. “I believe the value of a tease on mobile is much more valuable than a video …
Continue reading ‘Promoting the news goes mobile’ »
You might think that this is yet another rant on how technology is putting pressure on journalists to publish more quickly and pushing what’s published out to more people, more easily than ever before. But two things happened this week that made me think that we can’t do enough to remind journalists that accuracy has …
Continue reading ‘Accuracy in Journalism: Before and After’ »
What are the skills most often used by online journalists? Topping the list in a recently published survey was…drum roll, please… writing or editing scripts. Yes, in a poll of 49 online journalists, researchers Ryan Thornburg and Ying Roselyn Du asked practitioners to rank their daily duties from a list of 26 possibilities. Here are …
Continue reading ‘Top 10 skills for online journalists’ »
Investigative journalism is the stuff that awards and big-time careers are made of — and it’s a passion for journalist Lynn Walsh. Walsh is an investigative producer at WPTV in West Palm Beach, Fla. “I really like being able to provide people with answers that they don’t have the time or the patience to uncover themselves,” …
Continue reading ‘Tools to do investigative journalism’ »
For years, Soundslides has set the standard for audio slide shows, but it’s certainly not the only option. Andrew Lih, who teaches at USC, says he’s been using Final Cut Pro (FCP) to teach student journalists the same principles. He recently posted the following on the Facebook page for educators in the Online News Association: …
Continue reading ‘Audio slide shows with Final Cut Pro’ »