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As many readers of this blog will have received a Kindle for Christmas I thought I should share my list of the free ebooks that I recommend stocking up on.
Starting with more general books, Mark Briggs‘s book Journalism 2.0 (PDF*) is now 4 years old but still provides a good overview of online journalism to have by your side. Mindy McAdams‘s 42-page Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency (PDF) adds some more on that front, and Adam Westbrook‘s Ideas on Digital Storytelling and Publishing (PDF) provides a larger focus on narrative, editing and other elements.
After the first version of this post, MA Online Journalism student Franzi Baehrle suggested this free book on DSLR Cinematography, as well as Adam Westbrook on multimedia production (PDF). And Guy Degen recommends the free ebook on news and documentary filmmaking from ImageJunkies.com.
A free ebook on blogging can be downloaded from Guardian Students when you register with the site, and Swedish Radio have produced this guide to Social Media for Journalists (in English).
The Society of Professional Journalists‘s Digital Media Handbook Part 1 (PDF) and Part 2 cover more multimedia, but also provide a pot-pourri of extra bits and pieces including computer assisted reporting (CAR).
For more on CAR, the first edition of Philip Meyer‘s classic The New Precision Journalism is available in full online, although you’ll have to download each chapter in Word format and email it to your Kindle for conversion. It’s worth it: 20 years on, his advice is still excellent.
You’ll also have to download each chapter of the Data Journalism Handbook separately, or you can pay for a single-download ebook or physical version.
For a walkthrough on using some data techniques in the health field, this ebook on reporting health gives some excellent advice. Although it uses US data which is rather more accessible and structured than in most other countries, the principles are illustrative for readers anywhere.
If you want to explore statistics or programming further, Think Stats (via Adrian Short) covers both. The Bastards Book of Regular Expressions is a useful introduction to more programming – it’s free if you choose a zero price, but you can also pay whatever you want.
On visualisation, here’s Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 from a book by Alberto Cairo (from a free course at the Knight Center).
On advanced search, Untangling The Web: A Guide to Internet Research is a whopping 643-page document released by the US National Security Agency following an FOIA request (thanks Neurobonkers). Sadly it’s scanned so you won’t be able to convert this to another format.
Jono Bacon‘s The Art of Community (PDF), comes in at over 360 pages and is a thorough exploration – told largely through his own experiences – of an area that too few journalists understand.
The Proven Path (PDF) by Richard Millington is a more concise overview by one of the field’s leading voices (via Jan Kampmann).
A useful complement to these is Yochai Benkler‘s landmark book on how networked individuals operate, The Wealth of Networks, which is available to download in full or part online from his page at Harvard University’s Berkman Center. And each chapter of Dan Gillmor’s We The Media is available in PDF format on O’Reilly’s site.
More recently, New Forms of Collaborative Innovation and Production on the Internet (PDF) is a free ebook from the University of Gottingen with a collection of chapters covering practices such as consumer co-creation, trust management in online communities, and “coordination and motivation of consumer contribution”.
Simply dealing with the flood of information and work deserves a book itself – and one free option is SmarterEveryday: Design Your Day - Adam Tinworth is among the contributors.
If you’re reporting on health issues – or ever expect to deal with a press release from a health company – Testing Treatments (PDF) is well worth a read, providing an insight into how medicines and treatments are tested, and popular misconceptions to avoid. It’s littered with examples from reporting on health in the media, and well written. And if you need persuading why you should care, read this post (all of it) by Dr Petra Boynton on what happens when journalists fail to scrutinise press releases from health companies.
More broadly on the subject of keeping your wits about you, Dan Gillmor‘s latest book on media literacy, Mediactive, is published under a Creative Commons licence as a PDF. And The American Copy Editors Society has published a 50-page ebook on attribution and plagiarism which includes social media and other emerging platforms.
Lawrence Lessig has written quite a few books about law and how it relates to the media when content becomes digitised, as well as code more generally. Most of his work is available online for free download, including The Future of Ideas (PDF), Code 2.0 (PDF), Remix, and Free Culture.
Matt Mason‘s book on how media culture is changed by “pirates” gives you a choice: you can download The Pirate’s Dilemma for whatever price you choose to pay, including nothing.
Mark Lee Hunter has written 2 great free ebooks which strip away the mystique that surrounds investigative journalism and persuades so many journalists that it’s something ‘other people do’.
The first, Story-Based Inquiry (PDF), is an extremely useful guide to organising and focusing an investigation, demonstrating that investigative journalism is more about being systematic than about meeting strangers in underground car parks.
The second, The Global Casebook (PDF), is brilliant: a collection of investigative journalism – but with added commentary by each journalist explaining their methods and techniques. Where Story-Based Inquiry provides an over-arching framework; The Global Casebook demonstrates how different approaches can work for different stories and contexts.
He’s also worked with Luuk Sengers to produce Nine Steps from Idea to Story (PDF), which puts the story-based method into step-by-step form.
For more tips on investigative journalism the Investigative Journalism Manual (you’ll have to download each chapter separately) provides guidance from an African perspective which still applies whatever country you practise journalism.
And if you’re particularly interested in corruption you may also want to download Paul Radu‘s 50-page ebook Follow The Money: A Digital Guide for Tracking Corruption (PDF).
The CPJ have also published the Journalist Security Guide, a free ebook for anyone who needs to protect sources or work in dangerous environments. Scroll down to the bottom to find links to PDF, Kindle, ePub and iPad versions.
That’s 17 18 so many books I’m losing count, but if you want to explore design or programming there are dozens more out there. In particular, How to Think Like a Computer Scientistis a HTML ebook, but the Kindle deals with HTML pages too. Also in HTML is Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers (more statistics), and Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design (h/t Jon Hickman).
Those are just the books that spring to mind or that I’ve previously bookmarked. Are there others I’ve missed?
*Some commenters have suggested I should point out that these are mostly PDFs, which some people don’t like. You can, however, convert a PDF to Kindle’s own mobi format by emailing it to your Kindle email address with ‘convert’ as the subject line (via Leonie in the comments). Christian Payne also recommends the free tool calibre for converting PDFs into the more Kindle-friendly .mobi and other formats.
Alternatively, if you change the orientation to landscape the original PDF can be read with formatting and images intact.
UPDATES [12 Jan 2012]: Now translated into Catalan by Alvaro Martinez. [20 Jan 2012]: Dan Gillmor’s We The Media added to make a round 20. [22 March 2012]: A book on DSLR, another on multimedia, and a third on news and documentary filmmaking added. [27 April 2012]: A book on security for journalists added. [29 April]: the Data Journalism Handbook added. [3 July 2012]: Mark Lee Hunter’s 3rd book added. [4 October 2012]: Adam Westbrook’s book on multimedia added. [5 February 2013]: ebooks on health data journalism and statistics added. [3 April 2013]: Guardian Students’ How to Blog ebook and The Bastards Book of Regular Expressions added. [2 May 2013]: book on plagiarism added. [10 May]: books on productivity and advanced search added. [2 June]: book on social media for journalists added, and Bayesian methods. [12 June]: book added on collaboration and innovation in online publishing.
As many readers of this blog will have received a Kindle for Christmas I thought I should share my list of the free ebooks that I recommend stocking up on.
Starting with more general books, Mark Briggs‘s book Journalism 2.0 (PDF*) is now 4 years old but still provides a good overview of online journalism to have by your side. Mindy McAdams‘s 42-page Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency (PDF) adds some more on that front, and Adam Westbrook‘s Ideas on Digital Storytelling and Publishing (PDF) provides a larger focus on narrative, editing and other elements.
After the first version of this post, MA Online Journalism student Franzi Baehrle suggested this free book on DSLR Cinematography, as well as Adam Westbrook on multimedia production (PDF). And Guy Degen recommends the free ebook on news and documentary filmmaking from ImageJunkies.com.
A free ebook on blogging can be downloaded from Guardian Students when you register with the site, and Swedish Radio have produced this guide to Social Media for Journalists (in English).
The Society of Professional Journalists‘s Digital Media Handbook Part 1 (PDF) and Part 2 cover more multimedia, but also provide a pot-pourri of extra bits and pieces including computer assisted reporting (CAR).
For more on CAR, the first edition of Philip Meyer‘s classic The New Precision Journalism is available in full online, although you’ll have to download each chapter in Word format and email it to your Kindle for conversion. It’s worth it: 20 years on, his advice is still excellent.
You’ll also have to download each chapter of the Data Journalism Handbook separately, or you can pay for a single-download ebook or physical version.
For a walkthrough on using some data techniques in the health field, this ebook on reporting health gives some excellent advice. Although it uses US data which is rather more accessible and structured than in most other countries, the principles are illustrative for readers anywhere.
If you want to explore statistics or programming further, Think Stats (via Adrian Short) covers both. The Bastards Book of Regular Expressions is a useful introduction to more programming – it’s free if you choose a zero price, but you can also pay whatever you want.
On visualisation, here’s Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 from a book by Alberto Cairo (from a free course at the Knight Center).
On advanced search, Untangling The Web: A Guide to Internet Research is a whopping 643-page document released by the US National Security Agency following an FOIA request (thanks Neurobonkers). Sadly it’s scanned so you won’t be able to convert this to another format.
Jono Bacon‘s The Art of Community (PDF), comes in at over 360 pages and is a thorough exploration – told largely through his own experiences – of an area that too few journalists understand.
The Proven Path (PDF) by Richard Millington is a more concise overview by one of the field’s leading voices (via Jan Kampmann).
A useful complement to these is Yochai Benkler‘s landmark book on how networked individuals operate, The Wealth of Networks, which is available to download in full or part online from his page at Harvard University’s Berkman Center. And each chapter of Dan Gillmor’s We The Media is available in PDF format on O’Reilly’s site.
More recently, New Forms of Collaborative Innovation and Production on the Internet (PDF) is a free ebook from the University of Gottingen with a collection of chapters covering practices such as consumer co-creation, trust management in online communities, and “coordination and motivation of consumer contribution”.
Simply dealing with the flood of information and work deserves a book itself – and one free option is SmarterEveryday: Design Your Day - Adam Tinworth is among the contributors.
If you’re reporting on health issues – or ever expect to deal with a press release from a health company – Testing Treatments (PDF) is well worth a read, providing an insight into how medicines and treatments are tested, and popular misconceptions to avoid. It’s littered with examples from reporting on health in the media, and well written. And if you need persuading why you should care, read this post (all of it) by Dr Petra Boynton on what happens when journalists fail to scrutinise press releases from health companies.
More broadly on the subject of keeping your wits about you, Dan Gillmor‘s latest book on media literacy, Mediactive, is published under a Creative Commons licence as a PDF. And The American Copy Editors Society has published a 50-page ebook on attribution and plagiarism which includes social media and other emerging platforms.
Lawrence Lessig has written quite a few books about law and how it relates to the media when content becomes digitised, as well as code more generally. Most of his work is available online for free download, including The Future of Ideas (PDF), Code 2.0 (PDF), Remix, and Free Culture.
Matt Mason‘s book on how media culture is changed by “pirates” gives you a choice: you can download The Pirate’s Dilemma for whatever price you choose to pay, including nothing.
Mark Lee Hunter has written 2 great free ebooks which strip away the mystique that surrounds investigative journalism and persuades so many journalists that it’s something ‘other people do’.
The first, Story-Based Inquiry (PDF), is an extremely useful guide to organising and focusing an investigation, demonstrating that investigative journalism is more about being systematic than about meeting strangers in underground car parks.
The second, The Global Casebook (PDF), is brilliant: a collection of investigative journalism – but with added commentary by each journalist explaining their methods and techniques. Where Story-Based Inquiry provides an over-arching framework; The Global Casebook demonstrates how different approaches can work for different stories and contexts.
He’s also worked with Luuk Sengers to produce Nine Steps from Idea to Story (PDF), which puts the story-based method into step-by-step form.
For more tips on investigative journalism the Investigative Journalism Manual (you’ll have to download each chapter separately) provides guidance from an African perspective which still applies whatever country you practise journalism.
And if you’re particularly interested in corruption you may also want to download Paul Radu‘s 50-page ebook Follow The Money: A Digital Guide for Tracking Corruption (PDF).
The CPJ have also published the Journalist Security Guide, a free ebook for anyone who needs to protect sources or work in dangerous environments. Scroll down to the bottom to find links to PDF, Kindle, ePub and iPad versions.
That’s 17 18 so many books I’m losing count, but if you want to explore design or programming there are dozens more out there. In particular, How to Think Like a Computer Scientistis a HTML ebook, but the Kindle deals with HTML pages too. Also in HTML is Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers (more statistics), and Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design (h/t Jon Hickman).
Those are just the books that spring to mind or that I’ve previously bookmarked. Are there others I’ve missed?
*Some commenters have suggested I should point out that these are mostly PDFs, which some people don’t like. You can, however, convert a PDF to Kindle’s own mobi format by emailing it to your Kindle email address with ‘convert’ as the subject line (via Leonie in the comments). Christian Payne also recommends the free tool calibre for converting PDFs into the more Kindle-friendly .mobi and other formats.
Alternatively, if you change the orientation to landscape the original PDF can be read with formatting and images intact.
UPDATES [12 Jan 2012]: Now translated into Catalan by Alvaro Martinez. [20 Jan 2012]: Dan Gillmor’s We The Media added to make a round 20. [22 March 2012]: A book on DSLR, another on multimedia, and a third on news and documentary filmmaking added. [27 April 2012]: A book on security for journalists added. [29 April]: the Data Journalism Handbook added. [3 July 2012]: Mark Lee Hunter’s 3rd book added. [4 October 2012]: Adam Westbrook’s book on multimedia added. [5 February 2013]: ebooks on health data journalism and statistics added. [3 April 2013]: Guardian Students’ How to Blog ebook and The Bastards Book of Regular Expressions added. [2 May 2013]: book on plagiarism added. [10 May]: books on productivity and advanced search added. [2 June]: book on social media for journalists added, and Bayesian methods. [12 June]: book added on collaboration and innovation in online publishing.
As many readers of this blog will have received a Kindle for Christmas I thought I should share my list of the free ebooks that I recommend stocking up on.
Starting with more general books, Mark Briggs‘s book Journalism 2.0 (PDF*) is now 4 years old but still provides a good overview of online journalism to have by your side. Mindy McAdams‘s 42-page Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency (PDF) adds some more on that front, and Adam Westbrook‘s Ideas on Digital Storytelling and Publishing (PDF) provides a larger focus on narrative, editing and other elements.
After the first version of this post, MA Online Journalism student Franzi Baehrle suggested this free book on DSLR Cinematography, as well as Adam Westbrook on multimedia production (PDF). And Guy Degen recommends the free ebook on news and documentary filmmaking from ImageJunkies.com.
A free ebook on blogging can be downloaded from Guardian Students when you register with the site, and Swedish Radio have produced this guide to Social Media for Journalists (in English).
The Society of Professional Journalists‘s Digital Media Handbook Part 1 (PDF) and Part 2 cover more multimedia, but also provide a pot-pourri of extra bits and pieces including computer assisted reporting (CAR).
For more on CAR, the first edition of Philip Meyer‘s classic The New Precision Journalism is available in full online, although you’ll have to download each chapter in Word format and email it to your Kindle for conversion. It’s worth it: 20 years on, his advice is still excellent.
You’ll also have to download each chapter of the Data Journalism Handbook separately, or you can pay for a single-download ebook or physical version.
For a walkthrough on using some data techniques in the health field, this ebook on reporting health gives some excellent advice. Although it uses US data which is rather more accessible and structured than in most other countries, the principles are illustrative for readers anywhere.
If you want to explore statistics or programming further, Think Stats (via Adrian Short) covers both. The Bastards Book of Regular Expressions is a useful introduction to more programming – it’s free if you choose a zero price, but you can also pay whatever you want.
On visualisation, here’s Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 from a book by Alberto Cairo (from a free course at the Knight Center).
On advanced search, Untangling The Web: A Guide to Internet Research is a whopping 643-page document released by the US National Security Agency following an FOIA request (thanks Neurobonkers). Sadly it’s scanned so you won’t be able to convert this to another format.
Jono Bacon‘s The Art of Community (PDF), comes in at over 360 pages and is a thorough exploration – told largely through his own experiences – of an area that too few journalists understand.
The Proven Path (PDF) by Richard Millington is a more concise overview by one of the field’s leading voices (via Jan Kampmann).
A useful complement to these is Yochai Benkler‘s landmark book on how networked individuals operate, The Wealth of Networks, which is available to download in full or part online from his page at Harvard University’s Berkman Center. And each chapter of Dan Gillmor’s We The Media is available in PDF format on O’Reilly’s site.
More recently, New Forms of Collaborative Innovation and Production on the Internet (PDF) is a free ebook from the University of Gottingen with a collection of chapters covering practices such as consumer co-creation, trust management in online communities, and “coordination and motivation of consumer contribution”.
Simply dealing with the flood of information and work deserves a book itself – and one free option is SmarterEveryday: Design Your Day - Adam Tinworth is among the contributors.
If you’re reporting on health issues – or ever expect to deal with a press release from a health company – Testing Treatments (PDF) is well worth a read, providing an insight into how medicines and treatments are tested, and popular misconceptions to avoid. It’s littered with examples from reporting on health in the media, and well written. And if you need persuading why you should care, read this post (all of it) by Dr Petra Boynton on what happens when journalists fail to scrutinise press releases from health companies.
More broadly on the subject of keeping your wits about you, Dan Gillmor‘s latest book on media literacy, Mediactive, is published under a Creative Commons licence as a PDF. And The American Copy Editors Society has published a 50-page ebook on attribution and plagiarism which includes social media and other emerging platforms.
Lawrence Lessig has written quite a few books about law and how it relates to the media when content becomes digitised, as well as code more generally. Most of his work is available online for free download, including The Future of Ideas (PDF), Code 2.0 (PDF), Remix, and Free Culture.
Matt Mason‘s book on how media culture is changed by “pirates” gives you a choice: you can download The Pirate’s Dilemma for whatever price you choose to pay, including nothing.
Mark Lee Hunter has written 2 great free ebooks which strip away the mystique that surrounds investigative journalism and persuades so many journalists that it’s something ‘other people do’.
The first, Story-Based Inquiry (PDF), is an extremely useful guide to organising and focusing an investigation, demonstrating that investigative journalism is more about being systematic than about meeting strangers in underground car parks.
The second, The Global Casebook (PDF), is brilliant: a collection of investigative journalism – but with added commentary by each journalist explaining their methods and techniques. Where Story-Based Inquiry provides an over-arching framework; The Global Casebook demonstrates how different approaches can work for different stories and contexts.
He’s also worked with Luuk Sengers to produce Nine Steps from Idea to Story (PDF), which puts the story-based method into step-by-step form.
For more tips on investigative journalism the Investigative Journalism Manual (you’ll have to download each chapter separately) provides guidance from an African perspective which still applies whatever country you practise journalism.
And if you’re particularly interested in corruption you may also want to download Paul Radu‘s 50-page ebook Follow The Money: A Digital Guide for Tracking Corruption (PDF).
The CPJ have also published the Journalist Security Guide, a free ebook for anyone who needs to protect sources or work in dangerous environments. Scroll down to the bottom to find links to PDF, Kindle, ePub and iPad versions.
That’s 17 18 so many books I’m losing count, but if you want to explore design or programming there are dozens more out there. In particular, How to Think Like a Computer Scientistis a HTML ebook, but the Kindle deals with HTML pages too. Also in HTML is Probabilistic Programming and Bayesian Methods for Hackers (more statistics), and Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design (h/t Jon Hickman).
Those are just the books that spring to mind or that I’ve previously bookmarked. Are there others I’ve missed?
*Some commenters have suggested I should point out that these are mostly PDFs, which some people don’t like. You can, however, convert a PDF to Kindle’s own mobi format by emailing it to your Kindle email address with ‘convert’ as the subject line (via Leonie in the comments). Christian Payne also recommends the free tool calibre for converting PDFs into the more Kindle-friendly .mobi and other formats.
Alternatively, if you change the orientation to landscape the original PDF can be read with formatting and images intact.
UPDATES [12 Jan 2012]: Now translated into Catalan by Alvaro Martinez. [20 Jan 2012]: Dan Gillmor’s We The Media added to make a round 20. [22 March 2012]: A book on DSLR, another on multimedia, and a third on news and documentary filmmaking added. [27 April 2012]: A book on security for journalists added. [29 April]: the Data Journalism Handbook added. [3 July 2012]: Mark Lee Hunter’s 3rd book added. [4 October 2012]: Adam Westbrook’s book on multimedia added. [5 February 2013]: ebooks on health data journalism and statistics added. [3 April 2013]: Guardian Students’ How to Blog ebook and The Bastards Book of Regular Expressions added. [2 May 2013]: book on plagiarism added. [10 May]: books on productivity and advanced search added. [2 June]: book on social media for journalists added, and Bayesian methods. [12 June]: book added on collaboration and innovation in online publishing.
ZDNet :: On January 6th reports of Symantec being hacked surfaced. The group of hackers behind the attack were from India. The hack got covered since the hackers claimed to have acces to Norton’s source code. Earlier today I came across scans of a set of documents that are internal communications between the Indian Military. The documents claim the existence of a system known as RINOA SUR.
[Manan Kakkar:] In exchange for mobile presence in India, RIM, Nokia and Apple have allegedly provided backdoor access for the Indian intelligence to spy on communication.
Continue to read Manan Kakkar, www.zdnet.com
Xinhuanet | English News :: Foxconn is not only the world's largest maker of computer components and employer of 1.2 million people. The company, which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, has recently been in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions. The Taiwanese technology giant, will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday. The currently 10,000 robots will be increased to 300,000 next year.
Time machine :: Foxconn has been in the news due to a series of suicides of workers at its Shenzhen/China plant - (here one of three videos available on YouTube; Engadget published a translated version of the original Chinese article, "The fate of generation of workers: Foxconn undercover", see link below):
Continue to read yan, news.xinhuanet.com
Original article about the Foxconn suicides in English Richard Lai, www.engadget.com
BGR :: With just two smartphone models available for sale, Apple took in two thirds of profits from smartphone sales in the second quarter among the top eight vendors in the world. The news comes following Strategy Analytics’ confirmation that Apple is also the world’s top smartphone vendor by volume. Four of the eight major smartphone vendors were profitable in the June quarter — Samsung, Apple, RIM and HTC — while Nokia, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson all reported losses.
Continue to read Zach Epstein, www.bgr.com
AllThingsD :: Nokia, the Finnish cellphone maker said that net sales in its core devices-and-services business dropped by -23% from the prior quarter and -20% from a year earlier. Smartphone revenue and unit sales saw an even steeper decline, with both down more than -30% from both the prior quarter and year-ago results.
[Stephen Elop, CEO Nokia] ... disappointing ...
Nokia's current "strategic transformation" includes "cutting prices in some areas, changing leadership on the sales side and accelerating its plans to cut costs." - I see. What about innovation?
Continue to read Ina Fried, allthingsd.com
Nokia :: Today Nokia and news network CNN have announced plans for an international agreement which will see Nokia providing rich mapping services to the network and CNN a new news app available in Nokia's Ovi Store. You may have already seen the first fruits of this collaboration when CNN used Nokia’s new 3D maps to show the route of the recent royal wedding procession in the UK.
Continue to read Jason, conversations.nokia.com
Smartphones are ushering in the next wave of news consumption. These devices present an exciting opportunity for the news media to go mobile, putting endless information and the possibility of engagement in the palm of every consumer's hand.
But what characterizes the new mobile news consumer? How does he or she interact with news? And how can that shape the still-forming mobile news medium? I've laid out several key characteristics of mobile news consumers below. News organizations need to keep these basic truths in mind when developing apps and mobile sites.
1. They are impulse users.
Smartphone owners actively seek out bits of news throughout the day. Whether they are at the office, in a crowded bar, or in the comfort of their own home, the impulsive user wants to quickly open an app or browser on their mobile phone and, within seconds, have up-to-the-minute news. While some users are willing to spend time on longer reads, the majority are still looking for the latest, bite-sized chunks of news.
2. They're demanding.
Mobile news consumers invested in their devices as well as their monthly phone and data plans. They have paid good money for up-to-the-minute access, and that's what they expect the news media to deliver. The emergence of this on-the-go, impulsive, and demanding user means mobile news applications and websites need to adopt clean interfaces and offer powerful search functionality. The demanding nature of mobile news consumers also helps explain the growing popularity of news aggregator apps like the Pulse News Reader. These aggregators pull together top stories from users' favorite sites and offer the option to read a clean text summary of the story or go to the original article. Considering the mobile users' need for speed, news aggregator apps save consumers not only the time it takes to visit each site separately, but also the time it takes to read full articles.
3. They consume and contribute.
The next step in mobile news will be less about consumption and more about contribution and collaboration. Smartphones give users the opportunity to post video, images, and text to the Internet in seconds. Mobile apps like Qik and CNN's iReport currently provide some of the most visible venues for mobile users to post news as it happens. Plus, citizen-documented news is appearing on blogs, social networking sites, and YouTube. The ability for anyone to report breaking news means news organizations need to evolve further, shifting from working for the news consumer to working with the news consumer.
4. They are on multiple platforms.
The lack of a cross-platform app strategy is a stumbling block for some news outlets. News outlets and app creators need to make certain their news apps are available on all major platforms. Android is still not a priority for many news outlets, despite the fact it has more than 300,000 new activations daily and has now overtaken rivals such as RIM and Apple in U.S. smartphone market share. Similarly, Nokia's Symbian platform must stay on app makers' radar, given its massive installed base and large international penetration, with more than 450 million active devices.
5. They don't mind a little push
Traditional news outlets like CNN have catered to the new expectations of smartphone users by integrating push notifications into their apps. When major breaking news hits, CNN can push the story to a user's home screen, regardless of whether the app is open. The key is to use the push feature wisely. Many smartphone users will uninstall your app if you push too often for the wrong reasons. This is a balancing act that news organizations must pay attention to.
Patrick Mork is chief marketing officer of GetJar, the world's largest open mobile platform. He heads the company's overall marketing, branding, content and communications strategy. Prior to joining GetJar, he was marketing director EMEA at glu, where he built up the company's marketing team and helped establish glu as one of the top 3 games publishers in Europe. A former marketer at PepsiCo, Patrick has worked in venture-backed start-ups in marketing, sales and general management for the past 10 years. He holds an MBA from INSEAD and a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University.
This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».
An Iranian journalist who is suing Nokia claims the phone company’s surveillance technology led Iranian authorities to him, according to reports.
Isa Saharkhiz, a journalist with xxx who has been in jail for more than a year, has been accused of taking part in anti-government rallies.
After fleeing the capital Tehran, Saharkhiz says he was found by authorities and imprisoned after briefly turning on his Nokia phone.
Reports ABC News:
In a recent statement to a European parliamentary committee on human rights, the phone carrier admitted it sold Iran the technology that allows authorities to track mobile phone users.
But the company says it is a standard feature for law enforcement.
It also acknowledges the technology has been used to suppress dissent and agrees that Nokia should have understood the human rights situation in Iran better.
Full story on ABC News at this link…
Further reporting by the Guardian at this link…Similar Posts:
A few months ago I was asked what sort of mobile phone I would recommend for a journalism student. Knowing how tight student budgets are, and that any choice should have as much of an eye on the future as on the present, I recommended getting an Android phone.
The reasoning went like this: iPhones are great at certain things, and currently benefit from a wider range of applications than other mobile phones. But the contracts are expensive, the battery life poor, and Apple’s closed system problematic, for reasons I’ll expand on in a moment.
Currently, BlackBerry smartphones (apparently you can’t say ‘BlackBerries’) and high-end Nokias are probably the most popular phones for journalists. Both have excellent battery life and BlackBerry smartphones (yes, it gets annoying after the first time) have a particular strength in the way their email works.
But these are also expensive, and Symbian (the operating system for most high end Nokias) does not have a long term future, while its replacement, Maemo, has yet to build a present.
Which brings us to Android – the ‘Google’ phone – and the most affordable option for the student journalist looking at a multiplatform future.
When I advised that student to get an Android phone, it was because I think that Android will seriously challenge iPhone both in terms of userbase (which is already happening) and app development.
Computerworld’s Jonny Evans (an “Apple Holic”) compares the situation to the struggle for the PC:
“[Apple's] insistence on a closed system means partnership deals aren’t open to it in the hardware space.
“So, where Android can deliver multiple devices for multiple niches at multiple price points to the market, Apple delivers a limited number of devices, hoping the quality of its software will make a difference. It seems to attract customers that way.
“As fellow blogger, Sharon Machlis, noted last week, the result of that strategy during the PC wars enabled Microsoft to seize monopoly-level market share on the desktop.
The same post, however, notes that “Apple’s key advantage against Android is its developer community”:
“Despite criticism of the way it curates its store, Apple does have an App Store that works, where 95 percent of apps are approved fast.
“This means developers already have a reliable and profitable route to market at 100 million iOS users – set to climb with the addition of at least 24 million more iPhone 4 users this year.
“Android developers may be able to develop more openly, but development is fragmented by the need to develop for multiple devices.”
Apple alienated parts of their community earlier this year when they released a new developer agreement. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Google provided a platform for a whole new community when it announced the launch of a tool that can only challenge Apple’s dominance: the App Inventor for Android:
“To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”
For the student journalist, this tool also offers an opportunity to experiment with mobile journalism and publishing in the same way that Blogger allowed you to experiment with online publishing and distribution, or Yahoo! Pipes allowed you to play with mashups (TechCrunch’s MG Siegler compares it with GeoCities). Tony Hirst has already written a series of posts exploring how the tool works (it’s currently in invite-only beta), which are worth bookmarking.
This tool seals the deal for me – it’s the difference between doing the job now and redefining it for the future.
But what do you think? What features do Android phones lack? What advantages do other phones hold?
For the record, I use an iPhone and an old N95. I use the N95 for phonecalls, texts and streaming video (because of its long battery life) and the iPhone for web browsing and apps – particularly RSS readers, Audioboo, editing blog posts and checking comments, Twitter, and email. Each handset is with a different operator, which gives me better 3G coverage options too. I also pay for an Android phone (a HTC Magic) in my household.
[Each week, our friend Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of the news business for the Lab.]
I know. You say, who could ever replace Larry King? But I remind you that Larry’s six ex-wives have already confronted that question.
Most of the speculation about a replacement has focused on a range of usual suspects, personalities from Katie Couric to Ryan Seacrest to Joy Behar to Piers Morgan — all around the question of who will be able to command a better audience than King, whose ratings have seen a steady decline. Indeed, his successor, who will take over the show in November, will probably come from that list, a month after the network plucked Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker to fill Campbell Brown’s spot.
Yet the changing economics of CNN’s basic business model prompt lots of questions about ways CNN could go — as well as offering print- and broadcast-based news companies some pointers on their own business model development.
Let’s recall that CNN is a tale of two modern stories. Its flagship cable news station has been flagging badly, having fallen to a #4 position in cable news behind Fox, MSNBC, and its own Headline News Network (HLN), tabloid TV without tabloid wit. CNN is cool and confused in an age of hot and pointed.
Online, though, CNN has built a formidable business. It ranks at or near the top of the top news sites, excels at user-gen news content and offers one of the few paid news apps.
It’s a tale of two business units going opposite directions.
Look at the revenue pie for CNN, and you discover more nuance. One-half of CNN’s roughly $500 million in revenue comes from what it calls business subscription fees — what cable companies pay it for carriage. Ten percent of its revenue is now coming from prime-time advertising; the same percentage from its digital businesses. Advertising outside prime time, international, and some syndication round out the revenue picture.
We can certainly see that CNN’s revenue model is much more diverse than newspaper or broadcast companies. That payment from cable systems for carriage — averaging about 50 cents per subscriber per month, according to recent accounts — makes a huge difference in a time of great advertising change.
We can also see that CNN is becoming more and more of a content company. It gets paid that half dollar a month from cable companies because its inclusion helps drive subscribers. Recently dropping the Associated Press, it’s moving increasingly into syndication, both video and text, and there the quality and breadth of content counts. As one of the first news companies to embrace multi-platform publishing (cable + desktop + mobile, long before others got that notion), it moved quickly to price its product for the iPhone, charging $1.99 and now ranking as the #2 news app in the iTunes store.
So content creation — and content creation that rebounds in digital waves, even if it starts from a cablecast — is more important to CNN every day. If it could come up with more programming that provided digital multipliers — smartphone and tablet users willing to pay for access, and advertisers joining them — then the Larry King replacement might be not just good TV, but good strategy.
What might that mean?
For instance, how could could CNN better leverage its substantial iReport operation, a user-generated innovation that is the gold standard for TV news. Viral user-gen video is a mainstay of the digital world. Or maybe it could create an America’s Best News Videos (is Bob Saget available?), riffing on the montages that Jon Stewart has made almost mainstream. Maybe it could go The View-like, aggregating characters whose comments and rants might generate great two-three minute digital products. Or, most likely, it could find a bolt-out-of-the-blue digital age personality, like Rachel Maddow, who may well front MSNBC’s first iPad app. As MSNBC’s Mark Marvel told AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka about its coming app, it will allow users to “engage with the host of that show.” Engagement with Rachel, yes; with Larry, no. With Katie, maybe.
Can CNN find a digital upgrade to the analog King?
The goals here would be to produce great digital content, not just ratings. Sure, TV has seen some pick-up of memorable interviews — think CBS’ Katie Couric and Sarah Palin, or more recently the half-million pageviews after-market that Maddow generated with her Rand Paul interview. That aftermarket, though, has been more of an afterthought. If revenue growth is in the digital content business, CNN, broadcasters, and all news producers must increasingly think at least digital rebound, if not digital first. As Stephen Covey legendarily said, “Begin with the end in mind.” A good habit for highly effective media companies to adopt.
What else might print news companies learn from the CNN model?
First, syndication. While the Chicago News Cooperative and Bay Citizen pioneer innovative content syndication models, both with the New York Times, and Financial Times’ direct licensing model breaks new ground, most newspaper companies have failed to find other new, lucrative markets for their content. Yes, they’ve made some money from enterprise and education licensing, but if their content is really that valuable, they should be able to find other companies (Comcast, NYT, regional businesses, and more) to pay them for it.
Second, the pay-per-subscriber model that has insulated CNN from the ravages of ad change is one news companies should ponder. CNN made itself an indispensable part of the cable mix. Is local/regional news content indispensable to any aggregators — AT&T, Verizon, Apple, Nokia, for instance — as they bundle technology and content? What would it take — in the kind and breadth of content (video?) produced — to get a monthly payment, especially in the mobile digital world to come?
Roy Greensland writes a good headline:
Would Murdoch have spent £650m on a print plant if the iPad had been around?
Well, his response will be YES.
But as Burda or Rusbidger, I am sure that they know that these are tha last huge printing presses that the buy.
Printing is not our business.
Vertical integration is not the right strategy.
Universities need buildings but they don’t own construction companies.
And the cars of Ford needed tires and many years ago owned big rubber plantations in Brazil.
Yes, the 10,000 km² of land of Fordlandia!
So are the new mobile digital tablets going to be the next BIG IDEA?
Yes.
But no media company needs to become an Apple, Microsoft, Samsung or Nokia…
We are not in the bottling business.
We are in the wine business.
Content matters.
Platforms, no.
Newsprint will survive.
Printing presses will survive…
But journalism will not need them like in the past.
More cheap, green and efficient digital platforms will be available in less than three years.
So cheap that media publishers will be more than happy to give these devices free to their subscribers.
When you see than in less than 10 days the photo application of The Guardian has generated 50,000 downloads, you know that the iPad and the digital tablet are here to stay.
If you read the news dispatch from EFE, the Spanish news agency, the sales of the iPad were lower than the iPhone ones.
Well this reporter and his editors must live in an imaginary world.
The buzz of the new iPad has been bigger and louder than any other Apple product ever.
Ask Microsoft.
Ask Google.
Ask Nokia.
Ask Nintendo.
Ask Sony.
They know better than the lousy EFE report.
A better and more factual account comes here:
“Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst, Gene Munster, originally projected first day iPad sales to between 250 to 300,000.
After spending some time at the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York City on Saturday morning, that number was increaded to between 600 to 700,000.
These numbers are based on 730 customers being counted at that particular store, and compares to 350 at the same location for the iPhone 3G S launch, and 540 for the iPhone 3G.”
The iPad and all the tablets… are the past.
The future is the rubber newspaper, the rubber magazine, the rubber iPad
This Nokia made of memory plastic can be molded to fit around a wrist and then can be heated to return to it’s original shape.
Flexible iPads.
This is the future.
"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
"Basically the price of a night on the town!"
"I'd love to help kickstart continued development! And 0 EUR/month really does make fiscal sense too... maybe I'll even get a shirt?" (there will be limited edition shirts for two and other goodies for each supporter as soon as we sold the 200)