Staccato41's Blog

Target audiences on youtube and online?

staccato41 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:50:04 +0000
There would be a view that world wide the people interacting with online media are of a very youthful demographic. This story gives an interesting and surprising report of the age profile of online video viewership. The article also goes on to show how one citizen journalist was able to use youtube viewer data to show people his target audiences to gain permition to video. This is an interesting insight into who is watching video online, but more interestingly, how important it is vital to come up with an online media model which can accurately moniter the viewers and can successfully target them.


Youtube’s online domination of video?
staccato41 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:43:48 +0000
If the online environment is the way forward, then media organisations are currently losing the battle for online viewership. Despite the attempts by media organisations, both print and televisual to allow users to access video content online youtube is still by far the most powerful acter when it comes to video online. Media organisations, particularly news organisations are struggling to gain users attension online compared to the wide range of content available on youtube. Here is a run down of recently released figures for video viewership online in the United States which shows youtube’s dominance.

         


Citizen journalists at risk?
staccato41 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:25:54 +0000
On a post by another student I came across a piculiar but also frightening story about a blogger who rose to fame when she was asked to blog about her experience during the London train bombings. Though this is a dramatic example, it shows how the citizen journalist can become exposed, where as a professional journalist employed by a large media organisation has certain protection and help to insure they do not run into legal trouble, or in this case, avoiding running into attempts by conspiracy groups to discredit  the work.

         


Instant twitter?
staccato41 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:19:19 +0000
Here on a post written by a fellow student there is an interesting observation about twitter.  It points out how twitter may be instant, but it may not have the depth of coverage that online news junky’s have come to expect. 140 characters is all the twitter messages allow for, but this may grow old very quickly. Twitter’s instant news may match its instant rise to popularity, but will the brevity of its 140 characters mirror the brevity of its popularity?

         


A view into the past?
staccato41 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:49:53 +0000
The age of multi-media websites has been here for a while, but it is interesting to think back on how we saw and interacted with the web not so long ago. 
Many media organisations such as the BBC and even the Irish Examiner have made text only websites and changable views to aid blind and visually impaired users as well as various internet users in navigating their page content. Ddifferent text only websites may give an interesting look into the past for us in this multi-media web age, while many sites still provide the “Classic” view of their website which gives a look into the past web ddessign. The test BBC display options page doesn’t go for quite the level of simplicity in its presentation as the the Irish Examiner text only site but none the less they do provide an interesting view. 

         


The mobile journalist tool kit
staccato41 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:49:11 +0000
<<Hereis a very interesting post from late 2007 detailing the Reuters mobile journalist tool kit. Some of the technology seems outdated already, however the functionality of the equipment mentioned seems reasonable as well as the portability of it. The tool kit was developed especially for mobile journalists. 


         


Keeping tabs on the modern journalist’s productivity
staccato41 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:41:47 +0000
The newspaper business has been trying to stream line and cut down on overheads in a very public fashion in the last 20 years or so, but here a blogger reports on an internal memmo sent by a newspaper requesting journalists to report on their days activities down to the smallist ddetail. This, according to the author of the memmo was to increase the productivity of journalists working in the paper.

Whether this blogger has reliable information or not is is one thing, but the post does throw up some interesting questions about the modern journalist.

30 years ago a newspaper editor sent out journalists physically to find story and could perhaps see their prodductivity more easily. However now with the amount of online work done, with remote journalists and with the advent of the Mojo or mobile journalist how will productivity be acounted for and is this crazy request by one editor a sign of a desparate industry trying to keep tabs on the supposedly overworked journalists that fuel the industry?


         


The art of writing for online media
staccato41 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:27:15 +0000
It is clear to most that conventional print media (newspapers and magazines) have not approached adapting their publications to the online environment in the best way possible. Here is a great article discussing how journalists need to adapt their articles from print media for the online environment and discussing the new art that is writing for the web. Some very interesting points are discussed and I think it is still reasonable to say that newspapers need to make a greater effort in making a print adition of the newspaper and an online adition of a newspaper that complement each other. Here on the Irish independent website you can see an example of a newspaper which I believe doesn't fully tackle making an interesting online version of the article. There are links in this article all leading to pages on the Irish Independent site which may or may not contain articles relevant to the one that you began reading or the link you clicked on. These links would serve to annoy potential readers more than aid the online experience. The article also does not allow readers comments, which means readers have no interaction with teh content/other readers/writer.


         


CNN on twitter
staccato41 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:13:10 +0000
Hereyou can read of how it is becoming increasingly impossible for large news organisations to ignore the popularity of breef news. CNNBRK which was an unofficial non CNN entity on twitter had gained so much popularity that CNN itself has decided to take over the its running. 
This shows that even the largest news organisations have to embrace the public’s thirst for twitter and other social network based arrivals.

         


Search engins defining the online news we consume?
staccato41 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:58:13 +0000
One often overlooked element to the online news environment is the news options on search engins. Sites like

Google

andYahoo

provide varying options for users looking to read news stories online. 

This allows users to brouze different stories across many different publications.

An interesting feature of google news is Google trends which gives internet users many different options to track popular news topics by region, by date and more.