Neil Arun didn’t want to miss a rare but risky opportunity to embed with an Iraqi police unit, hunting members of al Qaeda. But his employers -- responsible for Neil’s security -- weren’t happy. This film by Richard Pendry nvestigates how a frontline journalist balances risk and reward.
Where journalists have greatness thrust upon them
Martin Stabe
A UK-centric look at new media and online journalism
Updated: 3 hours 54 min ago
Research notes: A completely arbitrary list of takeaways from two unconferences
5 February 2012 - 9:00pmMatt Waite on the trouble with finding budding journalist-developers: "I think the problem with finding these students starts with reward structures. Students are told from even before they walk on campus that being a journalist means Being a Good Writ...
SearchEngineLand: Pages With Too Many Ads "Above The Fold" Now Penalized By Google’s "Page Layout" Algorithm
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"Google has announced that it will penalize sites with pages that are top-heavy with ads ... The change — called the “page layout algorithm” — takes direct aim at any site with pages where content is buried under tons of ads."
yelvington.com: What newsrooms should learn from Kodak
5 February 2012 - 9:00pmSteve Yelvington: "So Kodak, the company that invented amateur photography in the 19th century and invented digital photography in the 20th, is on the ropes. There are obvious lessons for newspapers and newsrooms. Here are a few of them...."
Nieman Journalism Lab: The newsonomics of the long goodbye: Kodak’s, Sears’, and newspapers’
5 February 2012 - 9:00pmKen Doctor: on digitally disrupted companies' "long goodbye": "data shows 44 percent less newsprint usage (and about 75-80 percent of all newsprint usage is attributed to newspapers) over the past four years, according to The Reel Time Report. ... I’...
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: ABC responds to CSG industry complaint – Coal Seam Gas: By The Numbers
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) lodged an official complaint about the ABC's website, Coal Seam Gas: By The Numbers. Following is the ABC's public response to that complaint. ..."
Sydney Morning Herald: New form of journalism must adhere to old rules
5 February 2012 - 9:00pmPollster Mark Textor: "Too often, data journalists suddenly pretend to be experts. But a journalist is a not a mathematician or statistician. With data journalism that is exactly what they pretend to be. They imagine they are something way beyond the p...
Guardian: Riot theory is relative
5 February 2012 - 9:00pmPhilip Meyer: "After personal computers with user-friendly software became common, using a computer wasn't such a big deal. But the term CAR, for computer-assisted reporting, is still used today to describe what I prefer to think of as the application ...
How Vogue monetizes old content | Felix Salmon
5 February 2012 - 9:00pmFelix Salmon: "[Vogues'] archive will cost you $1,575 per year, but the price point makes sense to me. The value here is in the index: even if you had a full archive of Vogue back-issues sitting on your bookshelf (something many fashion-industry profes...
New York: The Cut: Vogue’s New Archive Site Costs $1,575 for a Yearly Subscription
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"Vogue's much-hyped archive website goes live today, and as promised, it contains every single page from every issue dating back to the magazine's American debut in 1892. According to Vogue's press release, the site is searchable by decade, brand, desi...
Europa Press Releases: Digital Agenda: Turning government data into gold
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"The [European Commission's Open Data Strategy for Europe is] to lift performance EU-wide is three-fold: firstly the Commission will lead by example, opening its vaults of information to the public for free through a new data portal. Secondly, a level ...
Financial Times: Statistics chief’s warning over misuse of figures
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"Ministers, officials and journalists need to be on their guard when misusing statistics after [Andrew Dilnot,] the new chairman of the UK Statistics Authority warned he would name and shame offenders. ... Speaking to MPs on Tuesday, he cited a calcula...
The Verge: Drone Journalism Lab takes reporting to the sky
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Journalism and Mass Communications is starting a lab to educate students on what it sees as one of the new frontiers for newsgathering and reporting: drone journalism. The lab will look at the ethical, l...
dataist: Interactive: The 100 richest people in Finland
5 February 2012 - 9:00pmJens Finnäs: "Every year in the beginning of [November] the [Finnish] tax records from last year are published. In other words: you get to know who made the most money. Every year the Finnish media outlets do a very conventional presentation of this m...
The Other Sociologist: “69 Billion Friendships” on Facebook – How Sociology Can Make This Meaningful
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"Facebook’s research tells us about the links between a large sub-group of humanity – but it doesn’t say anything about what these connections mean."
Facebook: Most Shared Articles on Facebook in 2011
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"We recently looked at the most shared articles in the US on Facebook over the past year. The stories range from cute to thought provoking and represent the type of news people have been sharing and discovering with friends in 2011."
currybetdotnet: “Hacking the rendition flights” – Stephen Grey at Hacks/Hackers London
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"[The] problem wasn’t so much collecting the data in order to analyse it, but getting the data cleaned up and into a format that made it ready to be analysed. He also made the point that you should pick your story and then get the data to support it,...
New York Times: Estée Lauder Heir’s Tax Strategies Typify Advantages for Wealthy
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"An examination of public documents involving [Ronald S.] Lauder’s companies, investments and charities offers a glimpse of the wide array of legal options for the world’s wealthiest citizens to avoid taxes both at home and abroad."
The Guardian: FoI act has ‘hamstrung’ government
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"Britain's top civil servant said. Sir Gus O'Donnell told the Commons public administration select committee that [the Freedom of Information Act] had stymied full and frank discussion of options by ministers and others in government."
New York Times: Drone Journalism Arrives
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"[A] Polish firm called RoboKopter scored something of a coup last week when it demonstrated that its miniature flying drone was capable of recording spectacular aerial views of a chaotic protest in Warsaw. ... [But it] seems worth noting that even tho...
Economist: Online newspapers in India: Papering over the cracks
5 February 2012 - 9:00pm"The strength of India's print press is, however, in part down to the weakness of its online offerings. This is hardly surprising. For all the country's vaunted IT prowess, only 6.9% of Indians regularly surf the web. Apart from a smattering of web-exc...
