1. Multimedia
Journalism
Applications & Arguments
Speed, mobility, and News 2.0:
digital dilemmas in journalism

2. News 2.0
 News 2.0
 Mobile
 Interactive
 Applications
 What can we do
with multimedia?
 Arguments
 What should we do with multimedia?
 Political economy of News 2.0
 Social, cultural, ethical, legal issues

3. The changing newsroom
The analogue newsroom is now a museum piece.
Not only has the gender balance and dress code changed significantly, the
language and practices of the old newsroom are as dead as the Dodo.
Copy is no longer „spiked‟; the „morgue‟ is now a Google away and individual
workstations have replaced the long backbench where the old-fashioned
sub-editors used to work.
The convergence newsroom is a totally different beast.

4. The newsroom of now
Wheels in motion
As more news organisations develop their
newsroom models to deal with
convergence, the traditional long room shape
with desks in rows has been replaced by the
true hub style.
•Editorial functions are managed from the
hub
•Editors and senior staff operate as a team
•Reporters are assigned workspaces
according to their function
•Writers are together
•Video producers and reporters must have
a quiet and sound-proof space for editing
•Voice booths and interview studios are
clustered along the outside walls
•Access to studios must be efficient both
electronically and physically
•All content is stored on a central server

5. Multimedia = Multi-discipline
Who’s who in the digital zoo?
These are some of the new job
descriptions that are emerging
in the integrated newsroom:
•Multimedia Producer
•Video Editor
•Database Developer
•Software Developer
•Flash Journalist
•Design Technologist

6. Mobility & Speed
 24 hour news cycle
 Need to be first on-the-scene
 First with the news
 Multiple sources
 57 channels and nothing on
 When too much news is barely enough
 Trust / Credibility / Ethics
 Citizen journalism, eye-witness accounts

7. News as conversation
 News 2.0
 More commercial channels include audience
feedback (good, bad, ugly)
 More independent channels
+ social media
 Blogs
 Twitter
 Facebook
 No longer just an audience

8. Applications
 Multimedia journalism – screen-based
 Image-rich, slideshows, video
 Quick turn-around
 Editing is important
 Smaller, lighter, faster
 HD quality for not much money
 Close to the action
 Adapted to smart phones
 Easy to share

9. New news needs new methods
 Social media is a channel for distribution, but also
news selection, news gathering and news research
 Key applications to consider and integrate
 Facebook
 iGoogle or similar browser/home page application
 Twitter and various „tweetdeck‟ applications
 Location-based services

10. Mobile Applications
 Good video smart phone
 Digital HD + expansion card
 Smart phone editing app
 Link clips, embed audio, add titles
 Video-streaming app
 Live upload and streaming
 Share to social media
 Liveblogging
 Keyboard app or notepad

11. Professional Applications
 News 2.0:
 the newsroom never sleeps
 Live crosses – camera-to-webstream
 Backpack journalism
 Field editing with Final Cut etc
 Rapid deployment
 Difficult circumstances
 upskilling/
 de-skilling/
 re-skilling?

12. Digital story-telling
As that world becomes more
connected through the Internet,
the importance of learning to use
digital tools to share your ideas,
your vision, your stories
becomes all the more critical.
Miguel Ghulin –
Around the corner blog
 Uses multi-media resources
 Text
 Video
 Audio
 Slideshows
 Flash

13. User-generated news-like content
 UGNC takes many different forms
 Accidental journalist
 Eye-witness
 Recording events as they unfold
 Aftermath reporting
 Political purposes
 Activist use of social media
 Citizen Journalism
 Commercial Propaganda
 Advertorial
 Viral marketing
 Stunts

14. SohaibAlthar has become an unlikely folk hero since his tweets
about this event were discovered. Overnight, he has gained
45000 followers and been added to over 300+ lists.
He‟s received calls and emails from all over the world to give
his account of what happened in Abbottabad.
Althar provided an invaluable insight on an international event
just by using Twitter like 200 million users do every day.

15. Arguments
 Definitions of what a journalist is are contested
 Profile of journalists working in news industry is changing
 Types of jobs for journalists are changing
 Is UGNC and “the people we used to call the
audience” undermining the credibility and power of
the mainstream media?

16. Are we all journalists?

17. Citizen Journalist
 A conscious link between
citizenship and journalistic sense-making
 Activist-journalist
 Advocacy journalism
 Mass movement media
 Organised
 Seemingly disorganised
 Spontaneous – not journalism?

18. Techno-legal time-gap
 What we can do – tools are available
to surveill and store and
recover digital data
 What is regulated
 What is sanctioned by the law

19. The Ethico-legal Paradox
 All the grey areas
 Online privacy and invasions of privacy
 BSA / Press Council / Privacy Commission
 Ongoing discussion about regulation and self-regulation
 Issues of territorial and global jurisdiction
 Defamation / Contempt of court / Copyright

22. The Herald on Sunday wanted to speak directly with Sperling. We
found her through Facebook - and anyone using the website should
be aware of how we did it.
Picture editor Chris Marriner obtained access to her Facebook page
through one of Sperling's online "friends". Facebook's privacy
function allow users to leapfrog through people's social networks.
This gave us access to her online musings, updates on life and
photographs of her family.
David Fisher, Herald on Sunday http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid= 10668011

23. Three months ago, when controversial financier Mark Hotchin
vanished to Hawaii, all media were desperate to find his holiday
home.
A photograph was posted on Facebook from someone who
visited Hotchin. It didn't show much - the view from the house, a
pool in the foreground and the headland across the bay.
Photographer Jason Dorday pulled up satellite images from
Google Earth and crawled the coastline until he found the
headland that matched. That identified the beach - and a trawl of
mansions advertised for rent on that coast included photographs
showing the same distinctive pool.
David Fisher, Herald on Sunday
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=
10668011

25. News 2.0
 the news industry is seen to be failing our
democratic ideals
 journalists are low on international surveys of people
we trust
 the professional ethos of journalism is under threat
from UGC
 the commodity form of news is no longer providing
the profits it once did

26. News navigator
 a navigator‟s most important role is to facilitate a
discussion about the news
 a navigator has to be a talented reporter, analyst,
convener and multimedia “super-journo.”

27. Ethics is still important
 Learn more about privacy. You can find a lot of
information about people online, especially via social
networking sites, but think carefully about the
consequences.
 And bear in mind that it cuts both ways, if you do not
do it carefully, your online research could
compromise your sources.

28. Now more than ever, we need professional journalists
to help distinguish the wheat of reliable news and
credible opinion from the chaff of information, rumor
and propaganda that clogs the Internet, and to help
create the next-generation vehicles for online
journalism.
Doug Millison, The journalist of tomorrow, 1999