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Editor Not Ready to Write an Ending
While his possible successors are dinner-party fodder, Robert Silvers says he has no plans to step down from The New York Review of Books. Read more
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How to Write a ‘Lives’ Essay
The New York Times Magazine’s editors offer advice and suggestions for submissions.
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NYT joins Mozilla and Knight Foundation to open innovation in news
The New York Times and three other leading global news organizations are joining “Knight-Mozilla OpenNews,” a partnership aimed at driving open source innovation in news. The announcement will be made at SXSW on Saturday, alongside a series of exhibits showcasing how Mozilla and other open source projects are leading innovation in news, in areas like real-time visualizations, augmented video, data-journalism and HTML5 web tools. Read more
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Comment: Turkey’s Jailed Journalists
Quick: What country jails the most journalists?
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If you guessed China, you were close, but no cigar. Twenty-seven reporters are in prison there, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York. If you guessed Iran, you’re getting warmer—forty-two in prison there—but you’re still off.
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POSTSCRIPT: MARIE COLVIN, 1956-2012
For decades, she has been a ubiquitous presence in the war zones of the world and her reports in the Times were admired in the close-knit world of foreign correspondents for their scrupulous and straightforward eloquence. On the telephone from Homs, Colvin told Anderson that the death of the child was an emblem of the overall “reality” of what was happening in Homs.
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How journalists use iPhones to create award-winning short films
Just about any documentary shot with a film crew and expensive equipment can make waves, but when you film award-worthy material solely on a mobile phone, that’s a feat.
Winners of the non-fiction category of the Original iPhone Film Festival prove journalists don’t need much to tell great stories.
These budding filmmakers used a variety of techniques to address the limitations of the hand-held, low-cost equipment.
First place winner Michael Guhil of the Philippines had never used an iPhone to film a story, much less for a non-fiction piece of work. Using the self-described “mobile studio in his pocket,” he tackled a real issue with a phone that wasn’t even his. Read More
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Why journalists need to link
Jonathan Stray has a great essay up at Nieman Lab entitled “Why link out? Four journalistic purposes of the noble hyperlink”. I basically agree with all of it; links are wonderful things, and the more of them that we see in news stories — especially if they’re external rather than internal links — the better.
It’s very easy to agree that if a story refers to some other story or document, and if that other story or document is online, then it should be hyperlinked. Read More
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How the Arab Spring has transformed journalism
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: When what was expected to be a small protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square became massive and nationwide, journalists inside and outside Egypt were unprepared.
“No one anticipated January 25th,” said former director general of the Al Jazeera news network Wadah Khanfar at a February 24 talk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on how social media used during protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square have permanently changed the journalism industry.
“Al Jazeera was overwhelmed,” Khanfar said. “We had maybe three to four correspondents on the ground. There was no way we could cover a movement that size.”
But, even as former President Hosni Mubarak threw journalists out of the country, a rich amount of material from the street began coming in over the Internet via Facebook and Twitter. Much of it, most of it—photos, videos, tweeted accounts—began to hit the Internet in almost real-time from participants, said Mohamed Nanabhay, head of Al Jazeera English Online, also on the forum’s panel.
Al Jazeera editors initially worried about how to authenticate the visual and verbal accounts suddenly pouring in, but decided the importance of the story in the face of their limited resources justified airing such citizen reports. Read More
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How to: submit a Freedom of Information request
When journalists are submitting Freedom of Information (FOI) requests they will often be keen to get a response as soon as possible, so it is key for the reporter to ensure their request is as good as it can be to avoid any delays.
This guide brings together advice from two journalists with extensive experience in requesting data under the FOI Act, as well as an FOI officer who will offer some pointers from the perspective of the person handling the request.
First let’s remind ourselves of the legislation. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 has been in force since 2005, and in a nutshell sets out the “general right of access to information held by public authorities”.
The Act goes into detail about the rights of the individual, and the requirements of public authorities when it comes to the requested disclosure of information, as well as the 23 exemptions which can mean disclosure being refused. There is also a helpful FAQ on the Act on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.
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The alternative to your journalism CV
The journalism jobs market is still difficult and likely to stay that way for some time. What that means is every time you apply for a job, you’re competing against a large number of people.
You’ve been to university, got a journalism qualification of some kind and done some work placements. The problem: so has everyone else.
The common solution is to spend more time tweaking the CV: adding new things, rearranging the layout, sticking it on LinkedIn. But this is a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem.
Everyone else has a CV, but not everyone has the initiative to see the new publishing opportunities in front of us all, and to start something. Launching an online magazine, for example, and building a small, loyal community around great content. Or running a series of talks or events, or making that documentary. Read more
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College of Journalism Blog – A new BBC social media strategy for England
When it comes to journalists enjoying a close relationship with listeners, viewers and readers, it’s hard to beat local media.
Tell a story well, or badly, and you’ll soon hear direct from your audience – whether you’re out walking the same patch tomorrow or just standing in the chip shop queue.
So it’s not surprising that our teams in BBC English Regions have been embracing the immediacy and connectedness of social networking for some time – from Look North on Facebook and Dean Jackson’s The Beat on Twitter, to newsgathering experiments like BBC London’s award-winning deployment of Crowdmap during 2010′s Tube strikes.
But until now there’s never been a unified document for BBC staff bringing together these activities and our plans to push them forward. … Read More
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