How to stop your audience from feeling used

August 9th, 2008 • Journalism, Media

The virtuous circle from Digitaldickinson on Vimeo.

I spent two days last month discussing the future of journalism at the University of Central Lancashire with a group with representatives of all corners of the UK media scene. Fascinating two days, not least for the wealth of disagreement (no bad thing).

It’ll come as zero surprise to know that the way in which journalists deal with an audience that can instantly react (and even begin steering the news agenda) swallowed much of the 48 hours.

One of their esteemed tutors, Andy Dickinson, has just posted The Virtuous Circle depicting his version of how it should work.

Telegraph redesigns, a tab at a time

August 3rd, 2008 • Design, Internet, Journalism

Once upon a time, I made magazines. When we wanted to change that magazine, we would gather three, four or five of our shiniest brains, stick them in a room for a period with a half-decent brief, and out would pop a fresh magazine - better organised, more contemporary, and all-new.

This morning, I opened Firefox to be greeted by an all-new Telegraph.co.uk. ‘Cept it isn’t. Oh, the home page is new alright: a much better organised affair, with none of the ‘You, boy at the back - can you describe the logic behind this page?’ that haunted the DT of old. Very nice, if short on novelty.

But then you start clicking, and realise that this is what my chums in the digital media world would describe as a ‘phased delivery’. Read more »

Wordpress for iPhone hits the Store

July 22nd, 2008 • Media, Mobile

The theory is that the new iPhone 3G is not a converged mobile at all, but the world’s first truly personal computer.

And here’s some evidence that this is true - my first post using the brand new Wordpress App.

It took under 30 seconds to set up. And if you can see this, it works.

Is your next car a skin job?

June 10th, 2008 • Journalism, Life

BBC News refresh: air’s in

March 31st, 2008 • Design, Internet
Tags: Design, Web

Open Firefox this morning, and an old friend shows a new face. The Beeb revamp sparked a fair flurry of debate among colleagues: one camp decided that it was too conservative, while the other concluded that Aunty had shown the maturity you’d expect.

I sit in the latter camp. The design has shifted to the centre of your browser, and also widened to a 1024 width from its long-established 800. But to my eyes, those apparently major moves are invisible. The real beauty is in the care shown around the text: while the old BBC News home was a masterpiece of efficiency, the newcomer is the work of someone who respects words.

Every line has exactly the right amount of space to put the emphasis on the story instead of the design. You simply absorb the news, without fussy artifacts throwing up noise. The only flaw I could find was below the fold: the centre column’s ‘Around the World’ group of links badly needs someone to put more definition to those crossheads. Other than that, she’s a beaut.

BBC News: old dog to learn new tricks

March 26th, 2008 • Design, Journalism, Media
Tags: bbc

Something momentous will happen next week - the BBC will revamp its News site. Alright, so it’s hardly in the same league as the collapse of capitalism, but look at it this way - BBC News is my home page, the thing that greets me every time I launch my browser.

It’s so much a part of my life that I’ve been given to Victor Meldrew-ish outbursts when they make the slightest change (remember when they introduced those God-awful drop-downs for ‘Video and Audio News’? I grumbled to anyone dumb enough to listen to me for a week).

I know every pixel of the home page’s real estate - the ‘wacky’ Also In The News feature centre right, the sports headline just beneath it, the speed-scan block of blue headlines top right. I can see the damn thing with my eyes closed.

But why worry? The BBC can afford some of the best pixel-pushers on the planet, and can organise user testing sessions that would make lesser companies gulp. P’raps it’s because I cannot wrap my mind around the new BBC.co.uk home page, which has the sniff of tricksiness about it.

Or maybe I should just accept that I’m becoming offensively conservative, and shut the hell up.

Google News elevates ‘right to reply’

March 24th, 2008 • Google, Journalism

A few months back, Google caused a heap of stink by offering subjects of stories ‘featured’ on Google News a right of reply. Various traditional news sources threw a minor fit, pointing to the fact that Google didn’t actually generate any news in the first place.

Until a few days ago, the apparent invisibility of comments from story subjects made the Google move somewhat toothless - Old Media had, it seemed, caused a fuss over nothing. But Google is nothing if not dogged, and lo and behold News has begun to feature links showing all recent replies for the good folk featured in ‘its’ stories. This one’ll run and run.

What’s so wrong with context, love and understanding?

March 21st, 2008 • Journalism, Social

There’s now a well-established universe of A-List bloggers. Among the millions of us sharing our mundane adventures, these people are the elite, the pivot around which the blogosphere rotates.

But far from evolving from enthusiastic semi-amateurs into a formidable new journalistic force, this elite may be turning inward. Cyndy Aleo-Carreirra over at Profy.com argues that they the more they argue among themselves, the more traffic it drives:

It’s making me miss the old days of a longer news cycle and a wider focus in what’s considered news, because I’d much rather read about the 89-year-old in Malaysia using the web for her political campaign than the latest blogger slapfest.

I’ll confess to reading many of those A-List posts every day through Google Reader. Much of it is inward, in-the-know debate among a Chosen Few on the west coast of America. If you work in the internet business (or have a web obsession that has gone way too far), it’s fascinating stuff.

But it’s a mile removed from the dream of a new form of open publishing challenging the mainstream establishment. ‘Slapfest’ says it all: at times, the debate among the few turns into the clown interval at the Big Top, complete with buckets of water and half-sawn chair legs. That’s a massive generalisation, of course - the likes of Irving Wladawsky-Berger couldn’t be further removed from Comedy Hour if they tried, and provide fascinating insights into the world around them. But too much of the new journalism is more akin to family feuding.

Media 2.0 = Snowballs

January 19th, 2008 • Internet, Media, Video
Tags: Music, Video

According to Yahoo’s VP of Video and Media Applications, the revolution has already happened. Ian Rodgers reckons the only option left for the music and video business is in ‘leveraging the scale of the web’. Read more »

CoverItLive: blogging goes real time

January 14th, 2008 • Best sites, Media

God knows how many people will use it, but huge credit to the Einsteins behind CoverItLive.

Sign up for an account (which is free, by the way), and you have instant access to a turbo-charged blogging tool that blurs the line between blog and instant messaging.

All you do is add a line of code to your site that embeds the CoverItLive console into your page. Read more »