New Media Unit

OJR interviews Calvin Tang, co-founder of Newsvine, about the status of "Daily Me" applications and how his site is using technology to involve readers more intimately with the news.

An old article talking about the future of news personalization

DailyMe is changing the way news is read and delivered with its advanced personalized news experience that meets the needs of modern-day consumers by combining the best of journalism, technology, and community.

A definition and defense of blogging and citizen journalism.

Google News is also doing a lot of thinking about the best ways to personalize news content for its users. The product currently makes use of two main types of customization, Rohe notes: the explicit and the implicit. Explicit personalization is the kind Google News emphasized in last year's redesign, the kind that asks users to tell Google their interests so their news results can be appropriately tailored. But you don't always know what you like. So, starting this April, signed-in Google News users in the U.S. began seeing stories in their "News for You" feeds that were based not on their stated preferences, but on their behavior: their news-related web historie

This article addresses the audience element of journalism.  Facebook and other social media sites help journalists connect and reach their audiences a lot easier.

Twitter and Facebook have been conduits of information throughout the protests in the Arab world. But that news has been atomized, second by second accounts coming from hundreds of unknown sources. Into that relentless stream has stepped NPR's Andy Carvin, who's become a one-stop clearinghouse of news by vetting sources and trying to verify individual tweets. Carvin explains how Twitter's political utility has also created a new kind of journalism

A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country. Although media experts said Wednesday that the ruling would have little effect on the definition of journalism, it casts a shadow on those who work in nontraditional media since it highlights the lack of case law that could protect them and the fact that current state shield laws for journalists are not covering recent developments in online media. "My advice to bloggers operating in the state of Oregon is lobby to get your shield law improved so bloggers are covered," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "But do not expect the shield law to provide you a defense in a libel case where you want to rely on an anonymous source for that information."

Consumption of news, information and entertainment has radically changed since 2000. Lee Rainie, the Director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, presented the latest data and trends today at the Newhouse School's M.O.B. ("Monetizing Online Business") Conference. Here is his presentation, packed with interesting details.

Explore the emerging realms of digital territory where news and information reside-or will soon.

New kid on the block MainStreetConnect, launched in March, has set-up nine sites and is growing rapidly. The company will assemble teams of local journalists to run the sites as franchises, creating a network of independent sites. 

In China, the Internet enjoys relatively greater freedom than other media. Even so, three of the articles I posted on my blog vanished without notice.'

The global media market is dominated by roughly nine or ten transnational corporations: General Electric, AT&T/Liberty Media, Disney, Time Warner, Sony, News Corporation, Viacom, Seagram and Bertelsmann. However, with the advent of social media and blogging, the role of the citizen journalist is becoming more valuable than ever. He has the opportunity to present a unique perspective - to breathe fresh air into a society herded by mainstream media.

More and more news sites have been using Storify to capture reaction and highlight interesting discussions taking place on social networks. And journalism educators have also started using it - to create multimedia course content, organize handouts and teach students how to curate social media. The tool, which lets users pull together content from various social networks to tell stories, is a one-stop Web publishing shop for even the most technophobic educator.

We've still got another month left of 2011 and already Facebook has supplied a list of the 40 articles shared the most on the site this year. Probing for common themes in these stories might offer marketers some insights into the kinds of messages that Facebook users tend to relay the most: human interest stories prevail over all other topics. And the old journalism school teaching about babies and pets on newspaper covers producing the most sales seems to have a parallel on social media, since articles concerning these two topics seem to get shared more than others.

Stephen Colbert weighs in on CNN's recent decision to lay off 50 employees - "nobody important, just editors and photojournalists" - by praising CNN's use of iReporters, its name for citizen journalists. "Why buy the cow when you can have it shakily videotape its own milk for free?" Colbert asked. He then has one of his "Me Reporters" run down the day's headlines, which he reads from the front page of a USA Today still in a newspaper box. || Related: CNN's redesigned iReport will look more like a social network than a news site

CNN (this is a few months ago) laid off 50 employees, mainly editors and photojournalists because CNN's new iReporters (or citizen journalists) make up for these people who are professionals and are getting paid. iReporters do not get paid or... anything at all really. Colbert seems upset by the new trend of citizen journalism.

Twitter is looking back on the most "remarkable" stories that surfaced this year involving a single Tweet and how it affected the lives of its users. The December edition of Stories.twitter.com - which debuted in November and is updated once a month - features a collection of the company's top ten favorite Twitter stories of the year. From a NBA player inviting his Twitter followers to play flag football to the man who live-tweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, here is a look at the site's "Year in Stories" tribute.

An AP poll of U.S. editors and broadcast news directors ranks the top stories of the year. The list, based on 247 responses, shows the difference between newsroom leaders' editorial judgment and people's reading interests. Four of the stories picked by editors weren't among the top 10 lists of user searches on Google, Yahoo or Bing. Here are the editors' picks for the year's top stories:

In 2012, social media-based reporting will continue to reach new heights. We saw it in 2011 with folks like Andy Carvin (@acarvin), Anthony DeRosa (@antderosa) and Matthew Keys (@ProducerMatthew). For coverage of the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement and a myriad of other news events, we turned to the Twitter feeds of these and others to find out the latest. They were, almost without exception, faster than news websites and even the wire services. But 2012 will bring even more opportunities for having a tweet-first, report second mentality. It's radically different from the way that news organizations have traditionally operated, and many discourage the practice

This is an article about a prediction that 2012 will be a year where journalism is dominated by social media, mostly twitter, which could lead to a revolution for journalism in the world.  

CNN iReporters were there for the big stories in 2011, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street.

With little original news reporting surfacing on this Web site, 'perhaps an important lesson learned is that tools don't make a tradesman.'