Ajash

This week, I read Stephen Quinn’s article, “Straits Times online, multimedia and print”.

It went into detail about an online site called “Stomp” where citizen journalism thrives. People can send in their pictures via MMS straight off their mobile phones and report on what is happening in their image.

Above is a sample video that people can send in to Stomp.com.sg.

What was so inspiring about the viewpoint of the article, were the positives this kind of journalism encompassed. By taking a photo of a long queue of people waiting outside a hospital in the early hours of the morning and being published in a newspaper, action was taken and people now had access to inside the hospital before it actually opened.

This is a benefit of citizen journalism I hope I have represented in my previous blogs. Having the ability to be able to “Tell YOUR story” and get your image across allows the big companies and Government to take action and listen to the little people.

Stomp.com.sg is aimed at a young, hip audience. The website is attractive and colorful. Visitors are encouraged to “Talkback” about any issue they post.  Accessing the website today, topics included, “Timing for a 5km Jog?”, “Guys would you go out with a bald girl?” and “My view on outsourcing  jobs in the IT sector”. Diverse as anything, being able to get your views out there not only boost your confidence, but can make a difference on the world.

There are no boundaries when it comes to citizen journalism.

Deputy Editor Felix Soh says, “We look for fresh ideas because you have to break rules when it comes to multimedia storytelling”.

*Resources used: Stephen Quinn, ‘Straits Times online, multimedia and print’. Images taken from stomp.com.sg.

Whether you have an assignment due, do not understand a word, or want to know more about a topic, Wikipedia.org has the answer. It is an online encyclopaedia that allows anyone to contribute ‘facts’ to a story.

Journalists need to be extremely careful when taking facts seen on Wikipedia as gospel. Without an authorisation check of the material being posted on Wikipedia, inaccuracies as well as blatant lies can surface.

Below is a poll taken from http://technologizer.com/ about how trustworthy Wikipedia is viewed by its audience:

Another tool to sink your journalistic teeth into is ‘Skype’. Amy Gahran says in her article, “Skype: Why Every Journo Should Use It,” that interviews go extremely smoothly in that it is free for both parties. Also encouraging is the quality and reliability of the software. There is no need to worry about writing down notes and getting waterlogged

Hadley Leggett, author of, ‘Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text,’ says, “Text from questionable sources starts out with a bright orange background, while text from trusted authors gets a lighter shade. As more people view and edit the new text, it gradually gains more “trust” and turns from orange to white.”

If available, this initiative would no doubt provide benefits to those journalists who are sceptical about taking material from Wikpedia and add extra information from a community, rather than one individual source.

• Sources taken from http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=155339
• “Week 7 Reading; More Tools” by S Quinn
• Wikipedia.org

Using tools just got easier, online, that is. Instantaneous technology has allowed people to communicate via the world wide web with a click of ‘Post’. The iPhone, Twitter, Facebook and Google Alerts are all examples of ‘tools’ that help search, report and view material as it happens. For a journalist, these are vital advancements in technology that must be harnessed to not only stay in touch with news as it happens, but also to be able to report it first on the scene.

An iPhone means quick access to news as it happens

How to Create a Google Alert provides a beneficial video of how to create a Google alert as well as search for one.

Twitter is another example that allows direct online contact between peers. UK singer Lily Allen uses her Twitter account to give clues to her fans as to where they can find tickets to her concerts.

Free now, pay later?

In an article by Wired editor Chris Anderson, it is stated that, “As much as we complain about how expensive things are getting, we’re surrounded by forces that are making them cheaper.”

In the global financial crisis, companies try tactics to lure potential customers in. Anderson is spot on when he states, “When Wal-Mart charges $15 for a new hit DVD, it’s a loss leader. The company is offering the DVD below cost to lure you into the store, where it hopes to sell you a washing machine at a profit.”

These marketing tricks lure the potential customer in with low prices and hope to sting you with another sale. And why wouldn’t they? Using this analaogy with the internet being a competitive market, sites who wish to charge users for accessing their content aknowledge that they need to be offering “something more”. Anybody can access Google and type in the weather for today, news results and celebrity haircuts, so who would pay for content they can recieve for free?

Rupert Murdoch bites back with the agrument of  ‘Quality Journalism’, stating that “Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting”. (You can view the article here: http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/08/murdoch-to-start-charge-for-online-news-content.html. By giving the public a little snippet for free and then making them pay for the content, he is adopting this century-old concept by ideas man King Gillette, whom Anderson credits for his marketing genius.

Murdoch argues that people will pay for ‘Quality’ journalism. If they don’t, the material will suffer.

*Both images taken from Google images.

After reading, “User Generated content and the changing news cycle” by S Quinn and D Quinn-Allan, I immediately thought of all the blogs that I access weekly. I think that it’s a great concept for everyday individuals to be able to quickly post up a photo or a statement about what they have just seen. As a nineteen year old female, the usual blogging sites I visit are: http://www.chictopia.com/ (This website allows anyone to be a photographer and snap up photos of their unique outfits and post descriptions about their lives and clothes in a blog), http://mamamia.com.au/and http://www.perezhilton.com/.

I think there’s a journalistic difference between a reporter going out to find stories as oppose to someone coming across an event that has just happened and reporting it. The latter option is appealing because the actual writer was there, unprepared having done no research for it. It makes it more exciting.

The last couple of years have definitely shown an emergence of people using their mobile phones to take pictures and videos of events happening right before their eyes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9ygYqj4rVM This video shows a citizen’s first hand account of a tsunami in Indonesia. Reiterating the notion of Quinn’s article, I believe the news cycle is definitely changing and will continue to develop even more with adaptions in technology.

With convergence already etched in my mind from studying ALJ101 Contemporary Journalism, this weeks reading, “Why and how convergence is emerging” by Stephen Quinn didn’t surprise me.

A good example is from an interaction I had with my Mum on the day Heath Ledger died. Mum had heard about his death on the radio and after hearing this, I searched Google, just to clarify. Sure enough, it was already on the internet and as I logged into Facebook, all the status updates were “OMG R.I.P HEATH LEDGER!”.

Gone are the days were we rely on tomorrow’s newspaper to alert us. I think with the good comes the bad. Even though we get to hear the news quicker, journalists are under more pressure to find stories FAST, which can lead to ill researched blunders in order to hunt for that story first- Remember the Pauline Hanson photos sold to the media by an “ex-boyfriend” that turned out NOT to be her?

Blunders like this reiterate how important is to use material that is legitimate, and to tread with with caution!