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Online Journalism Training for Professional Journalists: Yes or No

Mindy McAdams is having an interesting conversation about the re-training of professional journalists for online publications, here.

The discussion concentrates on questions of whether employers should offer re-training for online journalists, and whether the production of online work is so basic that journalists should be able to teach themselves?

McAdams’ discussion is inspired by recent posts by Paul Conley who rejects the idea that employers are responsible for the re-training of (B2B) journalists for online publications. She says that Conley’s argument also applies to daily newspaper journalism.

Comment on BBC Citizen Journalism

Link to Charlie Beckett’s interesting comments on Peter Horrocks’ post about citizen journalism here

OhmyNews, journalism education and citizen journalism

OhmyNews has opened its own journalism school for citizen reporters.

The school offers classes for introductory and advanced levels of journalism.

Introductory classes include: writing, photojournalism and video newsgathering while advanced classes concentrate on interviewing.

For those wishing to pursue a career in journalism, the school offers an “[i]ntensive journalism prep-school” (see published article with photographs of facilites and location here).

Teaching staff are experienced in print, tv and radio and include citizen reporters from OhmyNews.

The school opened in November 2007.

Citizen journalism/user generated content at the BBC

Peter Horrocks provided insight into the BBC’s approach to user generated content in a speech at the Institute of Communications Studies in Leeds.

Horrocks has posted a transcript of his speech here.

2008

Welcome to The Dull Fig for 2008!

BBC: New Advertising and Subscriptions for International Users

BBC: New Advertising and Subscriptions for International Users

The BBC Trust has approved the launch of a new web platform funded by advertisers specifically for international users. There are two reasons for this change to the distribution of the BBC service. It has been a concern of the British public, for the longest time, that their licence fees fund the BBC while the rest of the international community enjoy the benefits of the public service at no cost. Further, it has now come to light that the BBC charter does not allow for the servicing of international users through the licence fee paid by British residents. Subsequently, in October 2007, the BBC trust approved an initiative to implement a new website called BBC.com that provides international users with two access points to BBC content: ad-supported and subscription supported services. Ad-supported access means that international users accessing the BBC will see advertisements—if users do not wish to see ads, then they will have the option to invest in a subscription which provides “ad-free” content.

It is anticipated that the advertisements at BBC.com will generate enough income to cover costs and achieve profits that can be used to further support the BBC’s journalism.

On the question of whether BBC.com will retain the same quality of product as that currently enjoyed around the globe, Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC Global News, said definitively that it would. BBC.com would carry the same public service journalism it currently provides. He assured BBC international users that the only difference will be the platform from which it is distributed—“a commercial platform” (Sambrook, 2007).

Two major difficulties that users have with commercially supported news platforms are the degree of intrusiveness and the loss of editorial independence. Sambrook says the BBC’s proposed advertising platform won’t be intrusive and that extensive efforts will be made to ensure editorial independence is protected and maintained.

The transition will begin in November, on high traffic pages. This will extend in December to the broader website.

UPDATE: The transition started Nov 5. The first advertisements are now visible on the main page.

UPDATE: There’s more here

Blogoz Conference 2007: Australia’s first

This map was generated by the Issue Crawler — a web mapping tool that shows interlinkages between blog sites on the world wide web. The map was generated by inserting the URL’s of the bloggers who attended Australia’s first Blogoz conference, held at the Creative Industries Precinct at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in September 2007, into the Issue Crawler. The Issue Crawler produced a map that shows not only those bloggers attending the conference, but many others who link with the conference bloggers.

The conference was organised by Peter Black, a lecturer with QUT’s Faculty of Law and owner and author of the blog Freedom to Differ.

Research update

I’m busily collecting data from all of my news sites. The beginning of the election campaign has been interesting. I’ve spent a lot of time at the You Decide 2007 site at news.com.au. I’ve even had my say on a couple of issues at Blogocracy.

I’ve also started to use Leximancer. My start with the software wasn’t great, I had a few difficulties which I’ve now resolved. The problems were due to an error I made with my files—not with the software. Now that I have things sorted (in other words, I know how to use it), things are looking very promising for the analyses that I need to do.

Jack Marx won’t miss blogging

An insightful interview with Jack Marx on G’day World here .

Jack’s Back Find more Jack here

Update: This post is a bit late since Marx returned to blogging after a very brief interlude during 2007. His blogging continues here.

My interest in Jack Marx was to find out how he felt about blogging for mainstream media, which is exactly what he explained in his interview with G’day World.