First success in a new form of investigative journalism

Help Me investigate, a trial of a platform for crowdsourcing investigative journalism, based in the UK’s West Midlands has had its first investigation published. I have previously blogged about this exciting project and it’s interesting to see some results.
Given my recent discussion about journalists and not-for-profits funding journalism and the major news organisations reaping the rewards, [...]

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Journalism models of the future

My students would chastise me. I have broken the golden rule of good blogging behaviour – I haven’t posted regularly. It has been the start of the semester and I have been frantic, however, that is no excuse so I am back with some interesting food for thought.
Two things have got me thinking about the [...]

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Quick and cheap ways to be online proficient

The following is an abbreviated version of a presentation that I gave to Victorian Country Press Association.
Let’s stop thinking about it as newspaper versus online presence and start thinking about how you can use an online presence to widen your community catchment (for want of a better phrase). To do this it is all about [...]

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Why blog?

This is a question I get asked fairly regularly from students and from journalists in online/ multimedia training sessions. I have always thought that it is pretty obvious, but apparently not. So here are just a few reasons:
For indviduals

It is a great way to show a potential editor that a) you can write and b) [...]

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5 top tips for online writing

I have been busy getting ready for next semester and thought I would share my top 5 tips for online writing.  I think the fundamentals for good writing apply to online, just as they do for any other media, but there a few points worth reiterating and a few more worth considering.

Short and direct: Reading [...]

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Start reading Chris Anderson’s Free

Because it’s free… the whole point of his argument really. Yes that’s right the Messiah of online business models has a new book and it is available for free online (to read or embed – see embedded book below). My Twitter was alive with people sending the link and Paul Bradshaw (always with his finger [...]

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Newspapers must use their assets in the online revolution

I am slowing working my way through my Bloglines account to catch up on the reading I missed while I was away and I found (as always) some interesting points made by Mindy McAdams.
Mindy interviewed photo editors and multimedia producers at four US newspapers about what skills are most needed in newsrooms and found that [...]

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