The Multimedia Journalist

Week 10 Entry

Mark Glaser views the future local newsroom with one overriding goal, to “serve the public by collaborating with them and delivering the news they want on the platform of their choice.”

The beginning stages of this concept are already appearing in newsrooms in the US and UK. The Sydney Morning Herald is also adapting its newsroom to deliver news in a variety of forms to suit audience needs.

Some consumers may want news on their mobile phone, others like to print it out and read. Generation Y likes to receive their news via video and podcasts. And there is an increasing amount of audience generated content.

The future newsroom will incorporate each of these forms of delivering news. It is also more than likely that even more forms of news delivery will be created as technology continues to develop.

My main concern for the future newsroom is the redundancy of the trained journalist. Journalists will become a less required species as web developers and search engine experts are required to manage the various online formats of news.

Where will this leave a trained journalist? It is great for a journalist to become a multimedia journalist, but it seems inevitable that user-generated content and technology will supersede journalists.

Related links: 

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/07/open_source_reportinghow_would.html 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n88upMU4Hc

Soundslides would become more common place in the newsromm of the future: http://blogs.roanoke.com/vtshooting/soundslides/soundslide1/gallery.html

A guide for journalists to survive and thrive: http://www.kcnn.org/resources/journalism_20/

Week 9 Entry

David Dunkley Gyimah’s viewmagazine.tv site is an informing site for journalists and students wanting to learn more about the developments of video journalism.

As soon as the webpage loads there is video footage of Dunkley Gyimah in a dusty lane in a third world country explaining how he is going to set up his video camera to get footage for a story.

You can’t click on one headline without it linking to a video content attachment to the article. The article is a summary of the video footage. The only disadvantage is the loading time of video content. I have a broadband Internet connection and it took two or three minutes to load some large video content.

The fantastic thing about this site is that more and more people are wanting to be involved so there is never a shortage of high profile people to interview in order to place new content on the site. Dunkley Gyimah is also involved in training other UK networks in using video content on their websites.

Throughout the site the video footage of interviews and conferences that Dunkley Gyimah has conducted provides an enthusiasm for video journalism that is contagious. As a journalism student the content and his enthusiasm is inspiring.

Related links:

http://www.viewmagazine.tv.

Week 8 Entry

Stomp (Straits Times online mobile and print) was launched by Singapore Press Holdings in June 2006. Within six months it was attracting 300, 000 visitors which is remarkable considering that Singapore has a population of about 4.4 million.

Stomp is a unique site where the features of user-generated content, citizen journalism, blogging and myspace are rolled into one to connect people in an online community. Its success and popularity can probably be attributed to the fact that young users can do all of the above on the one site.

By November 2006 Stomp was receiving 100 photographs a day from users. Almost all of these are published online, and the better ones are also used in Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) newspapers. Citizens contribute 80 to 85 percent of Stomp’s content.

Three or four newsworthy photographs are received each day. The photographs and emails are allowing SPH to publish stories that otherwise wouldn’t be heard about. This is having a huge impact on the gatekeepers of the community who are being forced to take action on issues that are brought into the public sphere by user-generated content published by SPH.

Related links:

www.stomp.com.sg

www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/08/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_so_1.html

Week 7 Entry

Online journalism has developed dramatically over the past ten years. It is now possible for audiences to generate news via blogs, wikis, podcasts and video logs. Not to mention contributing to newspaper content by sending in photos and recounts of events that the mainstream media is yet to cover.

Blogging and audience generated content was first seen in 1995 when Craig Newmark created Craigslist, a community advertising and forum site. Since then there has been the introduction of blogging, the launch of OhmyNews in South Korea in 2000 and Wikipedia in January 2001.

All these forms of generating news have introduced the notion of audience-generated content taking hold of the mainstream media. In a world where technology is constantly improving it is important for newspapers and broadcast news services to keep up with the change in coverage trends.

Journalism is going through arguably its biggest changes since the emergence of broadcast journalism as the dominant media. The emergence of online journalism as the dominant form of journalism is casting aspersions as to where the future of journalism is headed. With our future audiences being of generation Y news companies need to stay in tune with the increased need for online journalism.

Related links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjSNXFRiegg