Posts tagged tips and tricks

Is Huffington Post Reinventing the Liveblog?

Via Simon Owens at Nieman Journalism Lab:

A few days ago, I clicked on a link to an Associated Press article published at the Huffington Post and reporting on a new AP poll that found widespread support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Like hundreds of other news outlets, HuffPo subscribes to the AP and runs its articles to supplement the original content the AOL-owned company produces on its own.

A curious thing happened when I finished the article, however: I didn’t stop reading.

At the bottom of the piece, I came across a liveblog that published up-to-the minute news on the protests. The posts were a mixture of links, block quotes, reprinted tweets, and even small original news nuggets being reported by HuffPo journalists on the ground. All together, I probably spent an extra 20 minutes on the site than I would have otherwise. I began clicking around and found that HuffPo had embedded this same liveblog at the bottom of nearly every article concerning Occupy Wall Street.

Read through for the nuts and bolts of what HuffPo is doing, why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it.

Interesting is Nico Pitney, Executive Editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, observing how they identified three types of readers — the news browsers who just want the article overview, the junkies who want the immediate (liveblog) update, and the newsies who want both — and how they’re trying to satisfy each.

The Proofreading Primer

Patrick LaForge, New York Times’ editor of news presentation, offers today’s best in Freshest Advices.

In a memo to the paper’s editors and reporters, he offers “proofreading tips culled from years of journalism tip sheets.”

• Break your mind-set: Read the copy out loud. Read it silently, one word at a time. Read it backward and focus on the spelling of words. Print a copy. Preview it in a different application. Change the format or the screen resolution. Justify or unjustify the type. Take a break and return to it with fresh eyes.
• Use spelling checkers but don’t trust them. In particular, be aware of homophone confusion: complement and compliment, accept and except, effect and affect, oversees and overseas.
• Memorize frequently misspelled and misused words. Here’s a list: http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html.
• Beware of contractions and apostrophes: their and they’re, its and it’s, your and you’re.
• After reading for content and spelling, proofread separately for punctuation.
• Beware of doubled words at the end and start of a line. A doubled “that” will often slip right by if you let it.
• Double-check proper names and claims of distinction (first, best, oldest, tallest, etc.).
• Double-check little words that are often interchanged: or, of; it, is.
• Check all the numbers, especially any reference to millions, billions or trillions. Do the math. Do the math again.
• Set aside a regular time to review stylebook and usage rules. This includes backfield editors and reporters. If you don’t want someone to change your story on style grounds (and perhaps introduce an error), learn the basics and follow them.
• Be aware of dates and days of the week, especially in advance copy or copy that has been held. Be aware of references to next month/last month around the time the month is changing.
• Make a personal checklist of the things you tend to miss. Use it on every story.
• Have someone else, preferably a copy editor, read behind you.

Last of all, think of our readers — and care what they think of us.

H/T: Regret The Error.

Can You Crowdsource Journalism with Amazon's Mechanical Turk

File this one under clever.

San Francisco journalists Jim Giles and MacGregor Campbell have teamed up with Carnegie Mellon’s Niki Kittur, an assistant professor in human-computer interaction, to see if they can “create a high-quality piece that could run in a reputable news magazine or newspaper” by crowdsourcing reporting through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and synching tasks through computer algorithms.

…We’re going to assign this job to the workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an outsourcing website. We want the workers on MTurk to do the reporting, writing, editing and fact-checking — all the parts of the editorial process.

They readily admit the experiment could go up in flames but check out their progress on My Boss is a Robot.

We’re excited — if wary — to follow their results.

Crowdfunding Photojournalism

While more and more crowdfunding platforms are appearing, BBC picture editor Phil Coomes reviews Emphas.is, a site specifically set up to fund photojournalists.

What sets it apart from other crowd funding sites? Karim was keen to make the point that they are not inventing something new. As can be seen crowd funding is working for many people, including a number of serious photojournalists who are established names, including Larry Towell who raised the $12,000 needed to fund a trip to Afghanistan.

What Emphas.is does is to bring it all into one place and to focus solely on photojournalism and by doing so offers everyone a chance to get the best possible backing.

Photographers will be able to submit proposals for projects and stories they wish to cover, along with a proposed budget. These ideas will then be studied by a group of reviewers who will critically assess each idea, and only those they feel can succeed will then be promoted on the site and start to seek funding.

The photographers work will be presented to the reviewers anonymously and online. They won’t know who else is looking at the work so can’t discuss it, this should ensure a fair and open process. Those deemed to be sound proposals will go on the site and hopefully attract backing.