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Posts Tagged New media
Neuroscience and Infotainment
Posted by Kate Nacy in New Media, Science Journalism on June 18, 2010
How neurological elements of arousal play into news
According to Jack Fuller, author of What is Happening to News? The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism, we can count indefinitely on fear and sex to attract the eye.
While professionally trained journalists are taught to steer clear of leaning heavily on the appeals of raw emotion in reporting, audiences still seem to fall for them. Stories steeped in lust and gore and swine/bird/marmot flu are the champions of media attention. Apparently, we’re suckers for a good old fashioned emotional bombshell. And there’s a neurological explanation.
An emotionally aroused brain is drawn to things that are emotionally charged, and the environment of perpetual information we all exist in leaves us consistently aroused. Read the rest of this entry »
News Across Media Platforms
We know the differences between YouTube and the Financial Times are voluminous.
And yes, we’ve also learned that people are doing more with YouTube than searching for videos of spastic housecats swinging from ceiling fans. But what’s behind these differences between social media and the traditional press? And what exchanges take place among various news mediums, old and new? In a recent study, “How Blogs and Social Media Agents Relate and Differ from the Traditional Press,” the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism gathered a year of data on the top news stories discussed and linked to Read the rest of this entry »
Will Google Save Journalism?
Posted by Stephan Russ-Mohl in New Media on June 2, 2010
Die Furche, May 27, 2010
Newsjunkies surfing the blogospere are occasionally surprised by the amount of attention certain blog postings achieve.
For example, a recent article published by American journalist James Fallows in The Atlantic Monthly was circulated with vigor by media experts concerned with the future of journalism. The article’s popularity may have spawned from the fact that it runs counter to common predictions on the subject. Concerning U.S. journalism, for many years one tragedy followed another. Thousands of journalists lost their jobs, and today many newsrooms are mere torsos of their former selves. Read the rest of this entry »
What Happened to Headlines?
Posted by Kate Nacy in New Media, Quality Management on May 21, 2010
Has online news perverted the wit of headline writing?
David Carr, who writes “The Media Equation” for the New York Times wonders the same. In a world of search engine optimization, are we trading the classy snap of old school headlines for cheap name-dropping and keywords? Carr reminds us of the New York Post classic, “Headless Body in Topless Bar” in making his case. Seen anything that good lately? Didn’t think so. According to Carr, “the need to attract attention from computer-generated algorithms sometimes makes the headlines seem like a machine thought them up as well.”
For more on headlines, see the Media Equation.
Online Journalism: How to Live Well and Make Money
Posted by Natascha Fioretti in Media Effects, New Media on May 21, 2010
Adrian Michaels, Group Foreign Editor with the Telegraph Media Group, discusses winning strategies behind the printed press and the Web.
Profitable English daily the Telegraph boasts 40 million readers a month and has a free-access Web site continually investing in conversation and interaction with its readers. In fact, the Telegraph has a highly advanced blog where 40 full-time workers including both journalists and editors contribute. To give just one example, the section devoted to the May 6th general election offers everything: debates with readers, social networks, comments, videos, sophisticated infographics, Read the rest of this entry »
The New Journalism? Investigative and Digital
Posted by Natascha Fioretti in New Media on May 18, 2010
Paul Steiger, Wall Street Journal icon and now editor-in-chief of Pulitzer-winning news site ProPublica, discusses the changing face of journalism.
Paul Steiger has dedicated much of his life to print journalism. The sixty-eight-year-old journalist worked as managing editor of the Wall Street Journal from 1991 to 2007, a period during which the business-oriented daily was awarded 16 Pulitzer prizes. Today, he’s editor-in-chief of ProPublica, a New York based investigative reporting nonprofit operating on an annual budget of $10 million.
ProPublica produces journalistic content in true American style: comprehensive, meticulous, transparent and with the public’s interest at the forefront. Yet not on paper as tradition would have it, but rather on the Web. More precisely, on www.propublica.org, where investigative reports are published and shared with not only readers, but with other media outlets which may access them for free. Read the rest of this entry »
Move Over, Tea Party
Canada’s Pirate Party receives official status.
Take a seat, Tea Partiers. There’s a new batch of troublemakers taking names. On April 12th, the Pirate Party of Canada – a party whose platform includes securing the downloading of movies, music and other media for noncommercial purposes – was granted official party status. Aside from promoting what is now “illegal” downloading, the Pirates also intend to curtail government surveillance of the Internet. The central argument is this: With regard to current copyright law, if it criminalizes an act nearly everyone commits, Read the rest of this entry »
Reality TV at the Times
Posted by Kate Nacy in New Media, Newsroom Management on April 12, 2010
TimesCast captures newsroom missteps.
Last month the New York Times launched TimesCast, a daily video produced during morning meetings in the newsroom. The mini program summarizes major stories and includes interviews with the staff, offering readers a peek at the paper’s inner workings. The idea was to jump on the technology train in order to showcase the Times‘ journalism, taking a unique stab at transparency. As anyone could guess, “uncut” newsroom footage is a stretch from the cool, polished reporting the Times is known best for. Several recent incidents – heated Tweets, sensitive discourse, fumbled facts – highlight the difficulties in introducing less-forgiving, real-time platforms for newsgathering.
Read more from NYT’s pubic editor Clark Hoyt at nytimes.com.
Media Accountability in Romania
Posted by Tina Bettels in Ethics, New Media, Regional Studies on April 7, 2010
Interview with Mihai Coman of the University of Bucharest’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Q: Are there successful examples of media accountability in Romania?
It depends on perspective. On an institutional level there are a few examples one could call successful. There is a code of ethics in Romania that has been accepted and implemented by all journalistic associations. Now there is also an ombudsman in public television. From a social, sociological perspective we have to ask ourselves who controls the journalistic profession. There is a constant struggle between top and low-level journalists, between media owners and journalists, between politicians and journalists – they all want to control the field. We are involved in the process of transformation in Romania. We believed that the transition to capitalism would occur quickly, however we discovered that such a change takes Read the rest of this entry »
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Bad Marks for Citizen Journalists
Posted by Susanne Fengler in New Media, Quality Management on July 15, 2010
Concerning interactivity, “old” forms of media function better than their reputations suggest, while new media like blogs and social networks have a lot of catching up to do in the quality department. This consensus came as the result of several international studies presented in Singapore at the world congress of the International Communication Association (ICA). Read the rest of this entry »
Citizen Blogs, Citizen Journalists, Commentary Functions, Daily Newspapers, Interactivity, Letters to the Editor, New media, Political Blogging, Political Discourse, Singapore, Traditional Media. International Communication Association
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