Soundslides assignment

Here is my Soundslides assignment. I just realized a mistake was made and the first and last picture are the same.

http://hosting.soundslides.com/qlq26

Storify assignment

I decided to my Storify assignment on one of the most discussed events this past weekend. The 2013 Iron Bowl was a popular topic on lips everywhere, but was mostly a very popular trending topic in the United States. The football game is already being regarded as one of the best in the history of the sport. It will be remembered and watched by fans for the next century.

One of the difficulties I faced was finding relevant tweets. The topic trended on Twitter for a long time and there were hundreds of thousands of tweets to choose from.

Aside from that, I really like the way Storify made it easy to put a story together. Adding elements from different sources is a breeze and help make the story multi-dimensional by blending different medias. It is definitely a tool I will use again.

 

https://storify.com/WilliamRoy/auburn-wins-2013-iron-bowl/preview

JS Timeline

Maple Spring timeline

http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0Ajuwm_6tRA8qdHdqeXRHUlppaDhkN1ZNck90c1prSUE&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&maptype=TERRAIN&lang=en&height=650

CartoDB assignment

Native plants and size in km2 of Canadian Parks

http://cdb.io/1byX4Nq

Excel assignment

1. Total crimes

2. Setting the formula

3. Applying the formula to all columns

4. Sorting in order

Are news agencies going too far?

Quoting Kelly McBride, Katherine Lewis writes in the article Social media ethics for journalists: part 1, the dilemma that “social media is the biggest thing in journalism right now (…) you absolutely have to use social media as part of your reporting toolkit. It’s a great way to be in conversation with your audiences about the marketplace of ideas.” Social media has, in recent years, completely shook the industry. Lewis points to a study by George Washington University that found that 89 percent of journalists had blogs and more than half were on social networks. Naturally, newsrooms have adapted to the trend and have begun setting social media guidelines for their employees. But are some newsrooms going to far in controlling their journalists’ actions on the Internet?

On his blog, Steve Buttry harshly criticizes the Washington Post’s social media handbook for showing a lack of trust toward its employees. “The best guideline you could give journalists using social media would be to encourage good judgment. Give good journalists 600-plus words of warnings and you pretty much are telling them you don’t trust their judgment,” he writes. He continues by saying that media agencies should strive to be more transparent, and that unnecessary and over-the-top rulebooks like the one written by the Washington Post go against that principle through an “outdated culture of control”.

The Associated Press included in their social media handbook that their reporters must not “scoop the wire”. Mathew Ingram writes in his article Memo to AP: Twitter is the newswire now that “if Twitter is beating the wire then maybe the wire should speed up. And how can you expect your reporters not to post comments about what is happening to them during such an event? That’s the whole point of Twitter in the first place.” Journalism is such a competitive field and what is more rewarding for a reporter than being the first to break a story? I think this kind of rule goes to far by trying to control something that goes against the very essence of the job.

I think the kind of handbook on social media news agencies should be asking their employees to follow is in the style of Reuters’. The short handbook recognizes and encourages their reporters to use social media as a tool while being fully aware of the risks involved. The handbook provides simple guidelines such as rules on attribution, fairness and the importance of fact-checking before sharing information via social networks. The handbook is clear and transparent on its purpose: “Our wish is for people to benefit safely from social networks, not to muzzle anyone. Journalists are people too, with all the rights of citizens (…). One of the distinguishing features of Reuters is the trust invested in the judgment of its journalists – and we will continue to look to our journalists to use their common sense in dealing with these new challenges.”

The popularity of social network and their importance as digital tools for journalists will undoubtedly continue to grow in the years to come. It will be interesting to see what road news agencies will take in preventing Internet mishaps from happening. Controlling journalists’ opinions and thoughts would be going too far in trying to solve the issue – a more cooperative handbook like Reuters is the best solution in helping reporters use social media safely.

Photoshop intro

Why Blogging is Essential for Aspiring Journalists

Blogging has become an important part in most journalist’s lives. It is an easy and accessible way of reaching anybody with an Internet connection. Journalists argue that blogging is the most important skill to acquire during their training. In fact, in 2008, 95% of the top 100 newspapers in the United States had reporters that blogged.

Sue Greenwood, who specializes in web-based and entrepreneurial journalism, thinks that blogging is essential to a journalist’s training. She explains how blogging is the best way for journalism students to learn about targeting the correct audience.  “I use blogging to demonstrate being responsible for your audience; how to find, enthral, and grow your audience,” she writes. “In the four years I’ve been using blogging as a teaching tool, I haven’t found a more effective way to show would-be journalists that the point of writing a story (or making a video) is that someone who cares about the subject will read it.”

In the same vein, Adam Westbrook explains in his blog that journalism students have no reason to not get involved in blogging. Getting used to writing about a specific subject, he says, can really help boost a student’s career by giving them visibility and expertise that will help find a job right after journalism school. “It takes at least 18 months of awesome content to really build a following and reputation so use your student time to do that,” he writes.

Martin Bryant echoes these thoughts in his blog about the importance of blogging for aspiring journalists. Quoting Paul Bradshaw, Professor at Birmingham University, he writes: “I think students entering the marketplace who have never run their own news website are at an increasing disadvantage. Pretty much every employer I talk to says that they would ask serious questions about why an applicant was not already doing their journalism on some sort of online platform. There’s also a new opportunity for students to build assets – a URL, a network, a reputation – that employers will be looking for.”

Blogging, he continues, is really about self-made experience. By quoting fellow blogger Joseph Stashko, Bryant explains in his blog how maintaining a website can be as efficient as working as an intern in a local newspaper. It “allows you to do arguably more than you’d ever do in a newspaper office because you can be more experimental and have a free choice about what you cover. It also gives you a sense about what people care about on a local level – something that may not be important to you might be a burning community issue, so it teaches you basic news values.”

Finally, blogging helps give young journalists a reputation. This reputation creates credibility that leads to more job opportunities after journalism school. It helps aspiring reporters develop a network of contacts and gives them skills and tools that will be valuable in the future. Blogger Michael Poh explains how maintaining a personal website helps practice different aspects of written journalism such as clarity, objectivity and fact checking.

3 Blogs for Journalism Students to Follow

1. Advancing the story is a blog that provides tips and tricks about multimedia and journalism.

2. Craig Silverman’s is a journalist from Montreal who maintains a blog that discusses news and media in general.

3. This blog maintained by the New York Times provides daily quizzes with 5 questions about current events.