Good article on using Audacity

In a previous post, I mentioned Audacity as a tool to create Pod Casts. It’s a piece of Open Source software designed to process sound recordings. NewsForge has an article about how to use Audacity and get the best of out of it.

The article is meant for the Linux community but will be very useful for anyone recording sound such as Pod Casting for news reports etc

Sections covered include; Get familiar with the Compressor, Clean up with the Envelope tool and Amplify to set a new ceiling

Link to article, found via Audio Activism

Posted by Bob Toovey on 22 May 2006
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LA PD joins the blogosphere

It’s not just the general public who feel they get misrepresented by the press. It seems the Los Angeles Policed Department have felt the same too. Therefore they have started their own blog to make sure they do not suffer from unfair reporting.

Amongst a growing number of organisations using weblogs, the LA PD is using its site to issue public relations messages and statements to counter critical reporting in the press.

Here is a quote from an article from Journlism.co.uk

Chief William J. Bratton joined a lieutenant and other staff at America's third largest police force to begin writing the blog last week.

I see the blog, which is first and foremost a department blog, as an opportunity to communicate with the public and educate them about what we are doing at the LAPD," Mr Bratton told the LA Times. "But I also see it as an opportunity for me to respond to those issues where I feel the department is being misrepresented."

The welcome message from Chief William J. Bratton states that “Our online journal is an interactive tool that we use to deliver real-time, unfiltered information.”

I would question the ability to provide unfiltered information but I applaud them for at least trying.

The comments on the welcome message are largely positive though a few do take the opportunity to complain about policing policy and certain failures to uphold the law.  How the LA PD respond to comments will show just how open they are and if they really are prepared to listen to their community.

Posted by Bob Toovey on 18 May 2006
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Dealing with plagiarism

One of the least discussed subjects regarding websites is plagiarism. That is having your content copied on another website with you being credited or linked to. Many believe there is nothing you can do but there is a website that is attempting to deal with it.

Plagiarism Today is one mans attempt and dealing with this subject. It started when his own work was being copied and he has created a website detailing his experiences and lots of info on how you can deal with it as well.

There is an interview with the creator of the site on the Performacing website (a very useful website with some good blogging and analytic software).

It is well worth a visit to read up on this as many Citizen Journalists are going to have to face this at some point or other.

Posted by Bob Toovey on 10 May 2006
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The BBC's creative future

The British Broadcasting Corporation unveiled their new plans to totally reinvent their way of dealing with ‘consumers’ through the Internet. It is one ambitious plan. If it all goes well, every other company that deals with consumer generated content is going have to take a long hard look at what they have done and go back to the drawing board!

The BBC won praise (and website visitors) for their efforts in embracing the Internet. The website currently receives over 3.5 million page views per day and also there are plans to offer banners for non-UK visitors.

The new ‘blueprint’ has been called ‘Creative Future’ and looks to deliver more to audiences in the way of richer content to the on-demand world

“The plans build on opportunities created by new and emerging digital technologies and confront the challenges of seismic shifts in public expectations, lifestyle and behaviours and on building new relationships with audiences and individual households.”

The BBC set 10 teams to explore what the world maybe like in 2012 and to find out what audiences want and need.

Key recommendations include...

• Relaunching the BBC's website to include more personalisation, richer audio-visual and user generated content
• Create a new teen brand delivered via existing broadband, TV and radio services, including a new long-running drama and comedy, factual and music content
• Create easy access points for audiences via broadband portals around key content areas like Sport, Music, Knowledge Building, Health and Science
• Start commissioning more 360 degree cross-platform content
• Shift energy and resource into continuous news on TV, radio, broadband and mobile, making News 24 the centre of the TV offering, moving talent to it and breaking stories on it
• Improve the quality of Sports and Entertainment journalism and appoint a specialist Sports Editor
• Create one single, pan-platform BBC Music Strategy and develop big events like this Autumn's first BBC Electric Proms as well as more personalisation enabling people to create the equivalent of their own radio station
• Take entertainment seriously, learn from the world of video games and experiment with commissioning for new platforms
• In Drama – create fewer titles with longer runs, find creative space for outstanding writers and cherish the programmes audience love best like EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City
• In Comedy – improve the creative pipeline across all platforms, pilot more shows, find new talent and build the big hits for BBC ONE
• Give sharper age targets to the CBeebies and CBBC brands and integrate all children's content – including online and radio - under these brands
• Pilot a Knowledge Building online project called Eyewitness – History enabling people to record and share their memories and experiences of any day over the last 100 years

Of the most interest is the way the BBC plans to deal with News...

“Shift energy and resource into continuous news on TV, radio, broadband and mobile, making News 24 the centre of the TV offering, moving talent to it and breaking stories on it”

Will we see members of the public reporting on news stories and getting some kind of credit? Or will there be a system where the public deliver leads to stories for journalists and reports to follow up on? With that many services there is going to be a need for more input. The BBC has had criticism in the past regarding bias in reporting. Could citizen reporting help deal with this? Certainly it will help with accuracy and with issues of trust as well.

On Journalism, the key recommendation made by the team…

“A new pan platform journalism strategy, including mobile devices, is already underway, putting 24/7 news on the web, broadband, TV and radio at its heart for unfolding stories as well as analysis….”

The BBC plans to “…be more responsive, collaborative and to build deeper relationships with them around fantastic quality content." I hope this includes feed back ‘blog style’ to news reports giving their reports what News bloggers and Citizen Journalism sites are already enjoying. That is the community effort to improve accuracy, develop trust and allowing others to decided what is important. The community must lead and not large media corporations.

It seems the BBC has been listening and watching and taking notes. Can’t wait to see what happens!

The full report from the BBC can be found here

Posted by Bob Toovey on 09 May 2006
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The Nokia Citizen Journalism Awards

The Press and Gazette, the magazine dedicated to UK journalism that brings you the British Press Awards and Regional Press Awards, is presenting for the first time the Nokia Citizen Journalism award. It's aim is to recognise the best efforts in citizen journalist or "witness contributor" (a term I have not heard of before!) weather in writing, photography or video. The prizes, not surprisingly are the lastest Nokia N series mobiles phones.

Link to the Award website

Link to Press and Gazette

There is also a download page on the award site that includes, "Reporters Guide to Citizen Journalism PDF download" (direct link to PDF file)

Posted by Bob Toovey on 05 May 2006
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More on the unrest from Nepalese bloggers

The problems in Nepal continue and there is much reporting in the media. It is certainly being covered by the British media in some detail. We have already mentioned a CJ site here but there is now another bog posting pictures of the unrest.

http://phalano.com/ is posting pictures almost every day so far, latest picture featured is from “Nationwide general strike day 18”.

Following the link from there to http://www.bloggersnepal.com/ shows a posting for 24 April 2006,

Breaking News: King Gyanendra reinstates House of Representatives

April 24th, 2006

[Update: Jubilant crowds have gathered at a number of places in Kathmandu even in the middle of the night.]

Watch the video here

There are some more good quality photos to see as well.

Posted by Bob Toovey on 24 April 2006
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Fake news conning viewers

The public have an expectation that the news they see on screen is being reported truthfully and fairly. Not totally unreasonable in my own humble opinion. But can you still trust the broadcaster when the news item you have just watched was created by a public relations company and was transmitted to you in its' entirety without any modification by the broadcasters themselves?

I have found a report dated 6^th April 2006, on the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) website describing how ‘fake’ news items have been broadcast as real news.

The CMD documented, over a 10 month period, television newsrooms use of 36 video news releases (VNR), a tiny sample of the thousands created each year.

VNRs are news segments that come pre-packaged, ready to use, normally free to the TV stations which are easily slipped into the newscast. Information provided with each VNR describes who the client is, but most of the time the actual broadcast itself lacks this information. Without ‘disclosure’ of who is behind the segment within the broadcast how would you know that it was ‘bought and paid for’ by the very subjects of the report?

“…CMD identified 77 television stations, from those in the largest to the smallest markets that aired these VNRs or related satellite media tours (SMTs) in 98 separate instances, without disclosure to viewers. Collectively, these 77 stations reach more than half of the U.S. population. The VNRs and SMTs whose broadcast CMD documented were produced by three broadcast PR firms for 49 different clients, including General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One. In each case, these 77 television stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients' messages with independently-gathered footage or basic journalistic research. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR in its' entirety.”

The VNR was broadcast in its' entirety, anyone watching the news with those VNR’s inserted would not know they were watching an advert.

Other facts from the report include…

• KOKH-25 in Oklahoma City, OK, a FOX station owned by Sinclair, aired six of the VNRs tracked by CMD, making it this report's top repeat offender. Consistently, KOKH-25 failed to provide any disclosure to news audiences. The station also aired five of the six VNRs in their entirety, and kept the publicist's original narration each time.
• In three instances, TV stations not only aired entire VNRs without disclosure, but had local anchors and reporters read directly from the script prepared by the broadcast PR firm. KTVI-2 in St. Louis, MO, had their anchor introduce, and their reporter re-voice, a VNR produced for Masterfoods and 1-800 Flowers, following the script nearly verbatim. WBFS-33 in Miami, FL, did the same with a VNR produced for the "professional services firm" Towers Perrin. And Ohio News Network did likewise with a VNR produced for Siemens.
• WSJV-28 in South Bend, IN, introduced a VNR produced for General Motors as being from "FOX's Andrew Schmertz," implying that Schmertz was a reporter for the local station or the FOX network. In reality, he is a publicist at the largest U.S. broadcast PR firm, Medialink Worldwide. Another Medialink publicist, Kate Brookes, was presented as an on-air reporter by four TV stations airing a VNR produced for Siemens.
• Two stations whose previous use of government VNRs was documented by the New York Times, WCIA-3 in Champaign, IL, and WHBQ-13 in Memphis, TN, also aired VNRs tracked by CMD. The March 2005 Times article reported that WHBQ's vice president for news "could not explain how his station came to broadcast" a State Department VNR, while WCIA's news director said that Agriculture Department VNRs "meet our journalistic standards."

The report also goes on to state…

“More than three-quarters of U.S. adults rely on local TV news, and more than 70 percent turn to network TV or cable news on a daily or near-daily basis, according to a January 2006 Harris Poll. The quality and integrity of television reporting thus significantly impacts the public's ability to evaluate everything from consumer products to medical services to government policies.”

So I guess we understand now why Citizen Journalism blogging will succeed. Because it’s better? Well yes, but in my own opinion, once the trust has been lost people will look for other sources of news and what better place than the Internet?

Posted by Bob Toovey on 15 April 2006
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The reality of Nepals unrest

The new unrest in Nepal is making the headlines as seen on the BBC website. As we recently review here, Nepals first CJ website is also covering the news with a mix of web feeds and written reports.

There is a lot of activity and many reports to read. Though some of the text is unreadable (possibly due to foreign language characters) the pictures are hard hitting and I should think would not get published anywhere else.

To see the reality of whats happening over in Nepal take a look at http://www.merosansar.info/

Posted by Bob Toovey on 10 April 2006
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RSS feed now coming via FeedBurner

As you may of seen we have now added some new cool buttons to help you deal with the RSS feed from CitizenPress. RSS is now coming via FeedBurner to make it all easier (for the site and subscribers).

 If anyone is currently using the old RSS address direct from this site, please can you change to use the FeedBurner address!

 Then new RSS address is here

Posted by Bob Toovey on 10 April 2006
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Quebecor experiments with Citizen Journalism

There is an article published on CCN Matthews website about Quebecor Media. It seems they are trying out experiments with user created content, dipping their toes in to the ‘Citizen Journalism’ waters so to speak. Here is a quick snip...

“Like most major media organizations, Quebecor has analysed the wave of changes affecting the media. The public has rapidly adopted the use of new, additional channels for news and information but also appreciates traditional journalistic values - honesty, balance, and tenacity.

Quebecor intends to solicit content from citizen journalists using "phone cams" and other digital technologies. The operation also will seek feedback from Web site visitors, readers and viewers to make adjustments to the model in the months ahead.”

The company is based in Canada and is one huge corporation, combining commercial printing, cable TV and internet, Newspapers (daily, regional, alternative), leisure and entertainment, new media (websites etc) and business telecommunication.

Looks like another big corporate has realised the strength of news submitted by their own readers!

Posted by Bob Toovey on 28 March 2006
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