New Media Unit

Saying that journalism is at a crossroads is a great understatement and certainly no secret to RTDNA members. For the pessimist, dwindling newspaper circulations, smaller TV audiences and thousands of lost jobs reinforce the idea that the traditional American media may be dying. But to the optimist, new media platforms and fresh developments in technology present boundless opportunities for growth with virtually endless chances to reach a growing, more demanding news audience. A common theme among all RTDNA members is that we want to know where journalism is going and, more importantly, we want to know how to get there. Archived webinar available here.

If traditional media was all about broadcasting - distributing a one-size-fits-all message to a wide audience, usually via a platform controlled by the media - new media is more about personalization and customization. In other words, the quest for a "Daily Me." But it's still unclear how exactly we're going to get there. Two new entrants - a service called Trove and an iPad app called News.me - have joined the horde of players who are trying to answer that question, and they have taken very different approaches.

Tumblr's "media evangelist" Mark Coatney recently announced the arrival of big names in the industry that have launched their own tumblelogs, including The Los Angeles Times, Al-Jazeera English and The Guardian. In the past year, more than 160 media organizations, as well as individual journalists, have started using Tumblr. So why has the media become so enamored with the micro-blogging platform?

A lot of major media is becoming involved in micro-blogging platforms such a tumblr. It's easy to use, very accessible, a visual medium, and already has a large following.

Jonathan Stray has opened a new conversation about measuring accuracy in news reports. Stray, who works at the Associated Press and blogs on the side, comes at the issue with a refreshingly analytical, data-driven perspective. His in-depth post, which I urge you to read, does a couple of things. It summarizes important research: There seems to be no escaping the conclusion that, according to the newsmakers, about half of all American newspaper stories contained a simple factual error in 2005. And this rate has held about steady since we started measuring it seven decades ago. And it offers some useful ideas: We could continuously sample a news source's output to produce ongoing accuracy estimates, and build social software to help the audience report and filter errors.

News sites are primarily dependent on casual users, most of whom enter from Google. That said, Facebook is one of the fastest growing traffic sources, while Twitter barely registers. These are some of the findings in the latest report from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which conducted an in-depth study of detailed audience statistics from the Nielsen Company. The study examines the top 25 news websites in popularity in the United States, delving deeply into four main areas of audience behavior: how users get to the top news sites; how long they stay during each visit; how deep they go into a site; and where they go when they leave.

As part of a "social media summit" this week, the BBC posted an overview of how its user-generated content desk handles reports from the field - verifying and curating them in much the same way that Andy Carvin of NPR has been doing for the past few months during the upheaval in the Middle East. As I've written before, there is a growing need for this kind of curation, but there is also the need to start looking at news as a process and not as a pristine, finished product.

News comments are broken. It was a popular topic of last night's Hacks/Hackers Seattle meetup and the driving notion behind one of the Knight-Mozilla News Challenge, which asks, "How can we reinvent online news discussions?". Alex Schmidt, a freelance reporter and producer working for NPR, Spot.Us and other outlets, has dealt with broken commenting first-hand, in a way that has negatively impacted her chances at future reporting for certain communities. This guest piece from her outlines some of those experiences and how they've affected the work she does.

A short video that describes how citizen and traditional journalism can work together.

This video is helpful because it explains the difference between traditional journalism and citizen journalism. It talks about the rising growth and popularity of citizen journalism. Showing how everyday people are becoming journalists and writing newsworthy stories.

A look at how Americans get their news in the digital era.

A couple of outreach efforts by ProPublica this week caught my eye as examples of how the Web can make journalism more open and effective - and reminders that both journalists and the public need much more of this. The first was a post on the ProPublica website Monday offering a "step by step guide" and searchable database for anyone tracing the influence of a nonprofit organization called ALEC that has proven highly effective in developing "model bills" for state legislatures. The second was a conference call Tuesday that drew about 140 people to hear about using ProPublica-built data and a news application for reporting on education access issues in local schools and districts. ProPublica published a national story based on the data, examining the relationship of poverty to educational access, along with a Facebook-integrated app for looking up and comparing schools and districts.

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.

The Tiziano Project provides community members in conflict, post-conflict, and underreported regions with the equipment, training and affiliations necessary to report their stories and improve their lives. We knew early on that we wanted to focus as much on the journalism component as the tools and have since developed an online Classroom filled with openly available training curricula and lesson plans to help easily infuse journalism into any project.

The Tiziano Project provides community members in conflict, post-conflict, and underreported regions with the equipment, training and affiliations necessary to report their stories and improve their lives.

this relates to Giving a voice to the voiceless because it allows the average citizen to document what they see... they are the ultimate textbook.

"The Associated Press is planning to introduce sponsored articles into the stream of news stories on its mobile apps and hosted websites. The rollout is expected in early 2014, with potential sponsorship deals centered around major events the AP is planning to cover, such as the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the Academy Awards. Several potential advertisers have been in talks with the AP, according to Jim Kennedy, senior VP-digital strategy and products at the AP, who declined to identify them. The move to sponsored content is part of a broader effort to open a new line of revenue at the AP, where just 2% of total revenue comes from advertising,

"So here's a list of journalism ventures worth watching closely, each for a different set of reasons. For now, I've left out all the ventures that are entering the media sphere from a tech background, like Twitter, LinkedIn, Flipboard, Zite and many more. Neither have I included the likes of The New York Times or The Guardian, assuming that everyone is watching them already."

"Sixteen percent of Twitter users "say they turn to Twitter frequently for breaking news," a poll by Associated Press and CNBC says. "That said, 44 percent of users do so at least some of the time." And yet far fewer Americans get news from Twitter (8 percent) than from Facebook (30 percent), separate analysis the Pew Research Center released Monday says. Forty-five percent of those who use Twitter to get news are 18-29 years old - more than the 30 percent of Twitter users overall who are in that demographic, Pew previously reported. Both organizations found a similar number of Americans use the service - one in five, CNBC-AP finds, 16 percent, Pew says."

"21 percent of Facebook users and 18 percent of Twitter users tell the Pew Research Journalism Project they get news "often" from print newspapers. The organization continues to look at how social media users get news."

"Amid an ever-increasing number of options, we identify five of the most useful smartphone apps for mobile reporters. We also hear from journalists and app creators about how these apps are being used in the field."

"No wonder media experts gravitate to Twitter. It's arguably where news breaks and it's a wonderful real-time tool for reporting. Here are a few more ideas for getting the most out of your tweets - part of a series of graphics with tips for storytellers."