Kill the Cliche

A cool site, still in its infancy stages I reckon, since it only has 164 news media cliches so far ... so do add some!! (another site highlighted by the AFP blog)

Replacing professional filters with social ones

Gleaned this from the AFP Mediawatch blog - it's an article in The New York Times analysing the way in which American youths are processing information. Seems forward emails, blogs, facebook groups etc are the way to go to share information. I believe the term is "viral", though strangely enough, the reporter here doesn't use the term ...

March 27, 2008
Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On
By BRIAN STELTER

Senator Barack Obama’s videotaped response to President Bush’s final State of the Union address — almost five minutes of Mr. Obama’s talking directly to the camera — elicited little attention from newspaper and television reporters in January.

But on the medium it was made for, the Internet, the video caught fire. Quickly after it was posted on YouTube, it appeared on the video-sharing site’s most popular list and Google’s most blogged list. It has been viewed more than 1.3 million times, been linked by more than 500 blogs and distributed widely on social networking sites like Facebook.

It is not news that young politically minded viewers are turning to alternative sources like YouTube, Facebook and late-night comedy shows like The Daily Show. But that is only the beginning of how they process information.

According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one. READ MORE

Live blogging

One of the ways that traditional media have been trying to contact with their online audiences is through live blogging. The most recent one, sort of anyway, is that of Annabel Crabb's blogging of the 2020 summit in Canberra. I'm not sure if it's that successful - I think maybe the initial blog could have been updated with timestamps instead of just Crabb responding to comments, but that could be more because of the limitations of the blogging system that the Herald uses rather than anything else.

That said, one of the comments cited the Twitter site as one way for summit attendees to mobile blog. Interestingly, it hasn't been used at all. Maybe Twitter has't really taken off in popularity in Australia? Or are people at the summit not really tech-savvy?

I think one of the most successful live blogging ventures is that of sports blogging. It's a bit like live football commentary on the radio - you can't see it, so you've gotta go your updates somewhere else. I think it's telling that when the Guardian Unlimited has minute-by-minute commentary on Premier League matches in England, the page is one of the most read on the site. Of course, online readers have to refresh the site to read the latest updates, but assuming that the Guardian's stats of the Top 5 (as shown on the site) are that of unique visitors and not page impressions, then that's a pretty mean feat. That's also credit to some very very witty commentary by the Guardian's footy scribes.

The BBC also has good live "reporter's diary" style blogs that allow readers to follow say the US elections, or a summit etc. The current "diary" is the Pope's US tour.

I'm sorry if my examples are very anglo-centric. They are just the initial sites I can think of. Are there other good ones that you can suggest??

Illustrators ... to broadcasters

One of my favourite illustrators that's now doing animations is Peter Nicholson of The Australian. You can check out his recent animations at The Australian's website or a full archive of all his work at his personal site.

The Sydney Morning Herald's illustrator Rocco Fazzari has ventured into claymation. I believe his first offering last year was one about Labor's Peter Garrett. I'm hunting around for his latest production ...

So you want to shoot something ...

Here's a link to some multimedia sites that introduces one to capturing video for an online or broadcast audience:

DIY Film School
Bakersfield.com photography
Make Internet TV
BBC's Good Shooting Guide
8 ways to shoot video like a pro
Izzyvideo: video podcasts on how to shoot video
WebVideoShow

Coverage of world news on US media

Saw this video on the "From the Frontline" blog. Worth a watch. What I wonder after watching it is - if there is interest in international news coverage, as the video suggests, why aren't the news networks covering it? Is it that it's just become too expensive and it's better to use the wire agencies? Is it because news organisations have been bought up by other companies who think foreign coverage is a luxury not worth having? What are the sources of the problems??

Another media blog to visit

This one's from Mohamed Nanabhay, the Head of New Media at the AlJazeera Network.