As geolocation apps and features continue to be developed, they're bringing a new dimension to the relevancy and immediacy of information. Some news organizations are now beginning to see their potential and act on it.
Earlier this week, Canada's free daily, Metro News, announced a partnership with Foursquare, an application that lets mobile users tell their friends where they are. It also has a built-in gaming feature that lets people earn "badges" for traveling to new places with different people.
Under the partnership, which is just one example of how geolocation features are bringing about new possibilities for media outlets, Metro will add its location-specific editorial content to the Foursquare service.
Those who follow Metro on Foursquare will get alerts when they are near specific locations. So if Metro has reviewed a restaurant that a Metro Foursquare follower is near, the follower will get a tip about the place and a link to the review, a Metro News release said. ...
The discussions in many newsrooms about social media often focus on whether or not it is appropriate for journalists to have a presence in social networks. Yet there is far more to interacting with social media than participating in networks.
A recent study by Cision, a provider of newsroom software for the public relations industry, and Don Bates of The George Washington University Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations, sheds some light on how journalists use social media and what they think of it as a news resource.
I am watching with interest the rise in the number of journalists with the title of social media editor (or something similar) within news organizations. This signals how seriously media outlets are taking social media, thinking about it strategically and incorporating it into workflows and overall output.
In recent weeks, I have had the chance to interact with several folks with such titles. Getting to know them and what they are dealing with and thinking about has been fascinating. In the weeks and months ahead, I will try to share some of that here and in my workshops.
I used to watch the crowds in airport lounges when I traveled, studying how people read newspapers. Even with circulation declining, you could see people reading newspapers intently. Especially after 9/11, people would have plenty of time to read while waiting for flights, and newsstands stocked a variety of papers to choose from.
Look around an airport lounge now. You'll see more people looking at their phones than holding newspapers.
When I see people in the airport lounge, I know time is only accelerating with each tap of their thumbs.
My concern over this acceleration pushed me last month to call for news companies to pursue a mobile-first strategy. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen asked me to "describe what a 'mobile first' newsroom would do differently." That's what I'm trying to do here, start the difficult but important job of answering the question: How do we need to work differently (not just in the newsroom, Jay) to command the attention of those people reading and tapping small screens?
With two weeks left in an unexpectedly late deadline, the 2010 Knight News Challenge is still looking for a few (thousand) good ideas to help save journalism.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, sponsor of the 5-year contest which awards up to $5 million a year for innovative news and information projects, surprised many earlier this fall by postponing the 2010 competition's cut-off date only days ahead of the original October 15 deadline.
The two-month delay, until Dec. 15, raised obvious questions within the journalism community. More than 2,300 proposals were submitted for the 2009 competition, the third year of the Challenge. Were there fewer submissions or fewer good submissions this year leading organizers to have to extend the entry period?
"No," according to Gary Kebbel, journalism program officer for Knight. At the time the deadline was extended, entries "were running way ahead of where we were the year before," he said.
So why was it extended and has the extension made a difference?...
While the Post isn't officially talking about individuals affected, I've confirmed that Travis Fox, winner of more awards than I want to list in this space, and Pierre Kattar, who has also won his fair share of awards, lost their jobs at The Washington Post.
This isn't the first time a well-known multimedia figure has seen his job changed or eliminated. Just over a year ago, Colin Mulvany, who helped train many of the newspaper folks doing video today, was moved from multimedia editor to a daily news photographer at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash.
Of those laid off last week from the Associated Press, as many as five may be multimedia editors.
