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Storyful recently launched a new Newswire to some of the biggest newsrooms around the world. Today, Chief of Product Adam Thomas (@datatheism) outlines what's new. Modern news is evolving. Journalists need to find news fast.
This is where the magic happens. Essential videos, images and embedded social media, all verified by Storyful’s journalists and augmented with context, dates, geodata, maps, local photographs, corroborating social media and – crucially – contact information for sources, so that journalists can follow up, cross-check and create their own unique angle.
The journey from Newswire to article (or TV segment, or online video package, or listicle, or …) is vastly improved, with the aim to be as frictionless as possible. Where available, every piece of media now has download, share and embed buttons. If a content creator has opted to license their content, you contact us for instant guidance on prices and usage....
Most surveys regarding cable news channels focus on ratings and the opinions of their viewers. However, a recent poll conducted by the Brookings and Public Religion Research Institute sought the views of all Americans toward all news sources in the nation.
A mere 5 percent of the respondents called the left-wing MSNBC cable channel their “most trusted” TV news outlet. On the other end of the spectrum, the Fox News Channel was named by 25 percent of the people surveyed, surprisingly more than the 23 percent who pointed to the “mainstream media” broadcast networks and the 21 percent who said they trust the Cable News Channel....
For a moment, let’s not focus on the delicious irony of Buzzfeed breaking the second biggest news about The New York Times this week. The site -- which many a Times staffer probably sniffs derisively at -- uploaded the paper-of-record’s entire 91-page “Innovation Report” that calls for de-emphasizing print in favor of a more sophisticated approach to digital. If you’re in digital, it’s even more intriguing than the news on Wednesday that executive editor Jill Abramson had been unceremoniously shown the door.
More than anything else, the report points to the Times’lackluster, scattershot approach to digital innovation, particularly in audience development, an imperative when so much content and readership comes from the act of sharing. In one of its many trenchant-but-obvious observations, it points out that “our digital content needs to travel on the backs of readers to find new readers.”...
Fox News and MSNBC have given the network an open field in which to run. This is what it's done instead.
...A review of CNN’s history shows that it never really matured. Despite the occasional bright spots — the first Gulf War, for example, when the network remained in Baghdad, against the wishes of President Bush — Turner’s baby never really outgrew that diet of “volcanoes, airplane crashes and riots.” It is fitting that the seminal, early events in CNN’s history were 18-month-old Jessica McClure’s fall down a well in Midland, Texas, and the Challenger disaster.
So, not much, save for perhaps the locations and ethnicities of the victims, has changed. This stasis strikes me as an abdication of responsibility. The first rule of any news organization should be to leave the reader, listener or viewer smarter and better informed than you found them. CNN, with all its resources, does not meet even this basic standard. And, by all accounts, they’re just fine with that. Viewers should not be.
The stripped-down, minimal approach to page design has its place -- but most of that time, that place isn't for news stories.
... For a prime recent example of the disconnect, check out NYT public editor Margaret Sullivan’s recent post on trend stories in general, and that monocle trend story in particular: Media watchers received the story like a Christmas present, tearing off the wrapping to get at the goods. The fun began on Twitter, after the story went online but well before its print publication. Dustin Gillard tweeted: “NYTimes does a trend piece on monocles. It is about as good/bad as it sounds.” (No one ever said the Internet was good at nuance; the wags ignored that the short piece was tucked inside the Styles section in its “Noted” column, treating it instead as if it were front-page screaming-headline news.)
But here’s the thing: on the internet (which, Sullivan admits, was for a long time the only place where you could read the story), the story wasn’t “tucked” anywhere. Instead, it looks like this...
Bill O’Reilly continues to be amazed at how much coverage the missing Flight 370 continues to get (three guesses who he was talking about), and told Charles Krauthammer Tuesday night that the missing plane has taken up so much coverage “it’s now corrupting the news biz” to the point where this satirical article isn’t too far off from the truth.
Krauthammer acknowledged the reasons why it clicks with people and gets ratings: it has “fantastic fictional elements,” mixing classic elements of a whodunit with David Copperfield-style disappearing acts, but he admitted it’s annoying how people are “terribly suffering” and the media is still treating all this like a game....
The New York Times has rolled out its largest website redesign in seven years, but readers familiar with the newspaper might feel like it’s a step back in time.There are no drastic changes. Gone are the blue headlines and the lengthy sidebar in favor of a grayer digital lady with more white space. But the site feels more like the New York Times than NYTimes.com....
Steve Hind: When readers are lured in and rewarded for their curiosity with good content, everyone wins. Sites like Buzzfeed use this to their advantage, and traditional media should take note..
.Last week the internet was treated to another great offering from Randall Munroe, author of the xkcd cartoon blog.
In it, Munroe re-imagined 20th century headlines if they were written to get more clicks. "This one weird mould kills all germs" could have applied to the discovery of penicillin in 1928. "You won't believe what these people did to the Berlin Wall" could have appeared in November 1989 for maximum effect.
His point, of course, was that the "clickbait-ification" of our news is cheapening it....
2013 essay excerpted from BU professor Chris Daly's book...
The word “crisis” often comes up when talking about journalism in the U.S. and throughout the world: Dropping ad revenue, falling circulation, failed efforts to retool old models to fit a changing media landscape. As the blogosphere and Twitter rise, more opinionated kinds of media coverage push back against the longstanding ideals of impartiality and objectivity, and even the once sacrosanct authority of mainstream journalism is called into question.
But as many journalists, authors and researchers have noted, U.S. journalism has been in transition since its birth, from early broadsides of the revolutionary era through the disruptive entries of radio, television and now the Internet. In his 2012 book, Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism, author and Boston University journalism professor Christopher B. Daly places the current state of journalism within its recent historical context. Below is an essay based on the book....
When the PBS website came under attack by hackers this weekend, the Newshour staff took to publishing its news transcripts and videos to Tumblr instead. A month earlier, a TV station in Tallahassee, Fla., posted videos and news on Facebook when technical difficulties disrupted its 11 p.m. newscast.
PBS Newshour is posting its stories on a Tumblr site.With so many publishing platforms and social networks available, there’s no reason for a news organization to go dark when its website is down. But it must have a good plan in advance.Here are the steps to take now to get ready....
You can easily make the argument that young journalists need to learn that online verbal diarrhea has consequences in a business where you're expected to maintain at least a modicum of objectivity and personal distance from the audience.... In case you’re unaware of Shea Allen’s story, up until a few days ago she was an investigative reporter in Huntsville, Alabama, probably doing her fair share of personally satisfying work but I guarantee suffering through all the various indignities that go along with being a reporter in Huntsville, Alabama. That ended, both the good and bad, as soon as she published a post to her personal blog called “Confessions of a Red-Headed Reporter,” which both laid out and ever-so-gently riffed on the real life of a small-market reporter. This was the result...
When it comes to political scandal, why is the media is so out of step with its audience?
Spitzer and Weiner, with their cohorts around the country, are a slap in the media's face. Scandals, after all, are largely media created. You can hardly have a scandal without the media treating it as scandal — Spitzer's and Weiner's being among the tastiest of recent years.
There's a vested interest here. The media is defending its own work. The easy rehabilitation of the badly behaved refutes, if not the facts, certainly much of the media's damnation.While the media has been the instrument of running the offenders out of office, the public wants them back....
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Our service offers all newspapers and magazines in the Netherlands on one website, and tries to reinvent the business model of journalism by making it incredibly easy to pay for separate articles. Users get €2,50 when they sign up and pay between €0,10 and €0,80 per article. When users click on an article, they automatically pay. And when they dislike what they read, they can instantly refund the article price.
Within Blendle, users can see what articles their friends or interesting curators (celebrities, journalists, politicians, radio DJ’s) have shared from the paid sections of today’s newspapers and magazines, and which articles are trending on the platform. The site also enables anyone to share articles from Holland’s best journalists on Facebook and Twitter. No more signing up with different paywalls for every newspaper....
A 96-page internal New York Times report, sent to top executives last month by a committee led by the publisher’s son and obtained by BuzzFeed, paints a dark picture of a newsroom struggling more dramatically than is immediately visible to adjust to the digital world, a newsroom that is hampered primarily by its own storied culture.
The Times report was finalized March 24 by a committee of digitally oriented staffers led by reporter A.G. Sulzberger. His father, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, fired Executive Editor Jill Abramson Tuesday, a decision that doesn’t appear immediately related to the paper’s digital weaknesses.
The report largely ignores legacy competitors and focuses on the new wave of digital companies, including First Look Media, Vox, Huffington Post, Business Insider, and BuzzFeed....
It's tough to be a local news anchor these days. Every accidental swear, interview flub and unexpected monkey slap lands on YouTube long before the credits roll.
While we may feel just a bit guilty at taking pleasure in news anchors' misfortunes, we can't say we're too sorry for laughing at these local-news mishaps.
April's best news bloopers saw humping bunnies, blood-curdling shrieks and an unfortunate incident involving barbecue sauce. They're not great for the folks in this video, but lots of fun for the rest of us.
Kara Swisher, outspoken tech journalist, has a lot on her mind....
And then there’s you, whose wife, Megan Smith, is a VP at Google. I don’t have her money. Any of it. Which, I know, is stupid—she has a lot. We split everything 50/50. I went out of my way not to take her money because I wanted to make a point: I take it seriously. I don’t write about Google except to insult the company. Someone actually said once that I’m in the camp for Google, so I sent them my pieces, and they said, “You must have problems in your marriage because you’re so mean to Google.” I was like, “I do not, but thank you so much.” They were like, “Seriously, you could be nicer; they are pretty fantastic,” and I was like, “Not to me. I think they’re pretty dangerous and thuggish.” I’ve always said that...
Pew's annual omnibus report finds that the transition to digital, and the influx of new money and new ideas, only represents a sliver of activity in the broader media.
In Pew Research Center’s latest State of the News Media report, just out, you get a glimpse of how the worlds of journalism and technology are continuing to merge and the impact that convergence has on the business and editorial prospects of media companies.
A majority of Americans now say they get news through a digital platform: 82 percent reported using a desktop or laptop, while 54 percent got news through mobile devices, according to Pew. Half of social media users share or repost news stories, while 46 percent discuss news on those sites. Audiences are also spending more time watching their screens: 63 percent of U.S. adults now watch online video, and of that, 36 percent watch news video.
At the same time, the companies that are helping to redefine digital news are expanding aggressively: Pew estimates that digital news operations, from the small hyperlocal shops up to the likes of ProPublica, The Huffington Post, and Vice have produced almost 5,000 full-time editorial jobs. Not enough to make up for a decade of losses in newspapers, but significant....
IT’S WELL KNOWN AMONG THE SMALL WORLD of people who pay attention to such things that the liberal-leaning reporters at The Wall Street Journal resent the conservative-leaning editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. What’s less well known—and about to break into the open, threatening the very fabric of the institution—is how deeply the liberal-leaning reporters at The New York Times resent the liberal-leaning editorial page of The New York Times.
The New York Observer has learned over the course of interviews with more than two-dozen current and former Times staffers that the situation has “reached the boiling point” in the words of one current Times reporter. Only two people interviewed for this story agreed to be identified, given the fears of retaliation by someone they criticize as petty and vindictive.
The blame here, in the eyes of most Times reporters to whom The Observer spoke, belongs to Andrew Rosenthal, who as editorial page editor leads both the paper’s opinion pages and opinion postings online, as well as overseeing the editorial board and the letters, columnists and op-ed departments. Mr. Rosenthal is accused of both tyranny and pettiness, by the majority of the Times staffers interviewed for this story. And the growing dissatisfaction with Mr. Rosenthal stems from a commitment to excellence that has lifted the rest of the Times, which is viewed by every staffer The Observer spoke to as rapidly and dramatically improving....
...If you’re applying a data-driven lens, as Jeff Sonderman highlighted at the Poynter Institute, you’ll need to ask a series of basic questions.“In every situation you face, there will be unique considerations about whether and how to publish a set of data,” he wrote. “Don’t assume data is inherently accurate, fair and objective. Don’t mistake your access to data or your right to publish it as a legitimate rationale for doing so. Think critically about the public good and potential harm, the context surrounding the data and its relevance to your other reporting. Then decide whether your data publishing is journalism.”...
David Carr’s weekly column for The New York Times carries an intriguing title: “The Media Equation.” With 430,000 Twitter followers, he’s a unique journalist exploring the world of media for the larger Times brand, with its 9.5 million followers. It’s similar to the 1,200 individually branded FORBES contributors — and staff reporters, too — who now write about specific business topics under our 96-year-old umbrella brand.
I love the rubric attached to David’s newspaper work. FORBES itself is trying to figure out the media equation in an era when anyone can publish anytime — no trucks, planes or satellites required. Our still-evolving solution disrupts century-old newsroom thinking and processes. It also breaks with tradition in how certain marketing messages are sold and integrated on our growing news platform....
This is what UPI's 100 years of journalistic excellence has pathetically come down to.... - 4 of its top stories are about misbehaving celebrities. The other is about whether a naked photo that went viral was staged. - 4 of its top stories are about naked people; 2 of its top stories contradict each other. And considering that the 5th story could have been fact-checked by just watching the video in question, that means UPI ran a story for hits without even watching the video. - 3 of the stories are not even about Miley Cyrus, they’re about celebrity reactions to her routine....
...Today, the delivery of news is not so defined. Website, social media and digital platforms have profoundly changed not only how we get our news, but also what news we are getting. The comment section of online news stories are often more popular, or at least more entertaining, than the actual news story. The ability to “like” and “share” news now allows others to instantaneously watch or read what we are following.
As the number of online and social media offerings grows, we are sadly seeing the demise of newspapers. In 2011, 152 American newspapers ceased operations. Rapidly declining advertising revenues continue to be the industry’s core problem as the majority of us seek our news online.
Now, plans are in place for significant changes for CNN.com and CNN digital platforms. The channel will launch a redesigned website (see screenshots here) and install a back-end system that its editorial producers can utilize. This comes after the recent merging of their digital and television newsrooms into one entity. With a new emphasis on their talent, CNN anchors, reporters and writers will become more prominent, enabling the sharing of content across platforms....
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing one commenter called it a “watershed moment for social media” – but not in a good way. “Legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on at least four innocent people, spread innumerable bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia,” wrote Ken Bensinger and Andrea Chang in the L.A. Times. In a similar post, Alan Mutter quipped that crowd reporting after the Boston Marathon went from critical mass to critical mess.
Recent events like Hurricane Sandy and the Boston marathon bombing have cast a harsh spotlight on the brave new world of breaking news and highlighted the critical need for better tools and techniques for verifying and making sense of the flood of information these events produce. This has all played into the ongoing debate about whether the Internet and new technology erode our standards and our trust in newsgathering....
On Friday, Fox News invited renowned religious scholar and prolific author Reza Aslan onto the air, ostensibly to discuss his latest book on Christianity, ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.’But instead, host Lauren Green launched into an Islamophobic attack on Aslan’s credentials and expressed incredulity that he, a self-professed Muslim, would be able to write about Christianity in a fair and honest way.Throughout the nearly 10 minute interview, Green inaccurately sought to portray Aslan as a religiously-motivated agitator with a hidden agenda out to discredit the very religion that he himself once practiced...
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![This Just In: Local News Bloopers Are Better Than Ever [VIDEO] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/AtBTnO2ge5lef2iKlcWu7jl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Has Storyful reinvented the newswire with the launch of its Newswire product? Time will tell.