Recently in Multimedia Journalism Category

AMERICAN journalists have recently launched a project called "beatblog ging." It involves at least 13 media organizations covering different beats , like science, technology, gaming and music, among others. This experiment inv olves reporters building their own "social networks" around their beats. It wil l use blogs as means to create this network. David Cohn of Wired's Li stening Post and a participant in this project, writes:

This experiment is taking place in 13 news rooms across the country . Each will be tackling the project from a different angle and as a result, the will come across unique obstacles.

This blog will collect lessons and mistakes they learn along the wa y. That will include methods they use to redefine their relationship with sourc es and new tools they implement to construct new forms of communication. The ho pe is that by the end of this project, other reporters can learn from what we'v e done and begin beat blogging themselves. While the 13 reporters who are highlighted directly to the right of this post a re at center stage of this blog, we will also find and interview leading thinke rs and journalists who are already out there doing this type of reporting on th eir own and tool makers who can offer us insight into how their web application s can benefit journalism by creating new online communities.

Jay Rosen explains that beatblogging is a simple experiment that hopes to test a simple idea: "Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better j ob if there was a 'live' social network connected to the beat, made up of peopl e who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat t o be better." Cohn and Rosen's idea involves tapping the network of sources beat repoters col lect over the years. Personally, this idea is not new. As the proponents of thi s project say, beat reporters had been doing some form of "crowd sourcing" as t hey write stories. But they hope to take this to the next level, wherein source s, reporters, and the community at large can all contribute to and collaborate on the writing of the news. It's a radical shift in the idea of doing journalis m since the news agenda could be dictated by no less than the people these repo rters write about. Let's keep a close watch on how this experiment will turn out. Good luck, guys.

FITTINGLY enough, newspaper and media publishing association Ifra covered Digital Trend Day in Amsterdam vi a a nifty m ultiblog. Ifra held the event in cooperation with INMA. Check out videos and downloads from the event.

WOULDN'T it be ironic if the alternative media represented by blogging/citizen journalism would just end up replicating some of the shortcomings of mainstream media? This was the warning sounded by the editor of the BBC Co llege of Journalism while talking about political journalism and blogging. Here's an excerpt from the Journalism.co.uk entry:

Speaking on a panel, at London's F rontline club last week to mark World Press Freedom Day, Kevin Marsh said t hat blogging was not a panacea for political journalism. "What is really worrying is the speed with which the political bloggers in the US and here have replicated the faults of political journalism," he said. "Political blogging in the States, more or less, is characterised as being a ru nning commentary on the failings of mainstream political journalism.

REMEMBER the days when news websites relied on to morrow's paper for stories? Today, the roles have been reversed with online cou nterparts providing more content to newspapers. Recently American newspaper Bos tonNow has decided to publish blogs submitted to its website. Th e idea is not new. Still, it is a noteworthy effort that hopes to "connect the community to the readers." Excerpt:

While most newspapers are trying to st ake bigger claims online, one new publication is pulling material off the Inter net to be printed in ink.

John Wilpers, editor in chief of Bosto nNow, a free weekday daily introduced last month, said he wanted to fill the pa per with items that local bloggers submitted to the BostonNow Web site. Last week, editors began culling posts and running excerpts next to articles from reporters and newswires. The blog items, which appear in gray boxes, are still relatively few, but Mr. Wilpers said he thought the feature would grow. Mr. Wilpers, who previously edited two other free commuter newspapers, Metro Boston and The Washington Examiner, said he wanted t o address what he believed was the news industryâs biggest problem: an inabilit y to connect with the communities it covers.

SEE what happens when someone ghost writes your blog entries for you? CBS anchor Katie Couric is reportedly shocked by an entry that appeared on the Katie Couric's Notebook portion of the official Couric & Co. blog on CBS. Couric has a dmitted that she does not pen some of the entries on her blog. In this case, the blog entry, a video and text essay, was reportedly penned by one of the producers, who has been fired after it turned out that the blog post plagiarized a Jeffrey Zaslow column piece on The Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt from the Boston Herald article:

Earlier this week, CB S News executives fired a producer after one of Couricâs blog entries turned ou t to be a Wall Street Journal ripoff. While itâs presented as Couricâs own, pro ducers are behind many of her blog entries. "Blogs are a whole new realm of new media. If youâre going to commit to doing a blog, the readersâ view is that itâs yours,â said Peter Morrissey, an associat e professor of public relations at Boston University. Even though some high-pro file people with blogs have ghostwriters, they need to provide "adequate oversi ght," he said.

CBS issued an Editor's Note on April 4 regarding the blog entry:

Correction: The April 4 Notebook was based on a "Moving On" column by Jeffrey Zaslow that ran in The Wall Street Journal on March 15 with the head line, "Of the Places You'll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?" Much of the material in the Notebook came from Mr. Zaslow, and we should have acknowledged that at the top of our piece. We offer our sincere apologies for the omission.< /blockquote>

HERE'S a provoking question posed by an article on Guardian Unlimited. This question is a result of an observation Robert Niles, the editor of the Onl ine Journalism Review, which found that journalists often see bloggers "feeding " off the work of newspapers and magazines since they just serve as a "global e cho chamber." Here's an excerpt:

Are bloggers parasites? That's the question of the day in the navel -gazing world of the blogosphere. Robert Niles, the editor of the Online Journa lism Review, recently decried what he sees as a tendency by journalists to char acterise blogs as "a 'parasitic' medium" that feeds off the work of traditional newspapers and magazines. He calls the charge "a poorly informed insult of man y hard-working Web publishers who are doing fresh, informative and original wor k."

Maybe so, but Niles's protestations notwithstanding, blogs are larg ely parasitic. Yes, a handful of bloggers do original reporting, usually on hig hly specialised topics, but most simply react to the news of the day. The blogo sphere, as others have pointed out, acts as a kind of global echo chamber. An i dea gets swatted around like a ping-pong ball for a few hours until a fresh one takes its place. But is that really so bad? I used to think of blogging's reactive nature as a f law in the medium. I've changed my mind, though. I've come to believe that bein g a literary parasite is no bad thing. I'd argue, in fact, that parasitism is b logging's most distinctive and probably its most valuable feature.

THANKS to Jim Caro of Bl ogbastic! for blogging about the soft launch of the INQUIRE R.net Blogs service. Here's an excerpt from Jim's post:

In the Philippines, the Philippine Daily Inquirer rec ently had a soft launch of its blogsite with Joey Alarilla trying the waters. So hereâs one media outfit trying to test the untr ied waters of newspaper blogging in the Philippine scene. One Philippine Media institution which first tried blogging was the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, which has its own institutional blog. Its pool of writers also blog personally alon g with other journalists all over the country.

What I like in the move of the Inquirer.net is they are going the B BC way with their approach to media convergence. Readers will notice that they are trying to integrate video, podcast among others. As Erwin Oliva, anothe r PDI reporter, blogged, readers want to interact with t he newsâreason I think that thereâs a declining popularity of radio in the Philippines. So, I think newspaper blogging is paving the way to the wide acceptance of new media in the Philippines.

Thanks again, Jim. Just to clarify, though, it's INQUIRER.net which launched th e blogs, not the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Erwin Oliva and I work for INQU IRER.net, not PDI :) I know, sometimes it can get confusing, heh. We're a sepa rate company from the print newspaper; Inquirer Interactive Inc. is a wholly-ow ned subsidiary and is the online arm of the Inquirer Group of Publications.