Media Interactive

Just a quickie today before I get down to the deep, dark work of deadlines. Feels like I have a million to do, and no time to do it. I like to think my lack of organisation will work well in my future profession - I can't do any work for anything until the pressure is on. I need a tight deadline, so journalism should suit me down to the ground.

Anyway, our groups media interactive topic has changed from the daunting subject of 'gun crime' to 'Speedway'. Personally, Im quite pleased with the change as filming videos for gun crime was never going to be particularly easy - especialy if you enjoy your life as I do. We will be focusing on the Birmingham Brummies who conviently race at the Perry Barr dog track. In my opinion, they could do with a name change though.

We've not really organised roles yet, although we do have some interesting ideas. For the flash background, we were discussing having a view of a motorbike's handlebars, with different backgrounds that the user could 'ride' to, representing 'videos', 'audio' etc... To give you an idea it should look something like this:



But better...obviously!

For videos, we have a number of possibilties. Neil and I know this lad, who shall remain nameless for the time being, who races Speedway to a high level. He is a bit of an up and coming star, and whilst he doesn't race for the brummies, he is a local lad, Walsall born and bred, and does race for a professional team. We plan to do an interview with him, interjecting his dialogue with footbage of him in action. We also plan to get video footage from inside Perry Barr stadium, although we have not discussed any details.

On the audio front, I am considering taking photo's of the Speedway for my Editorial Photography assignement (deadlines, deadlines!) so these could kill two birds with one stone. We discussed the possibility of a 'beginners guide to Speedway', which could combine my images with audio to produce a high-quality audio slideshow. With all these ideas in tow, I feel that we have the potential to produce a good quality interactive.

Wow, no wonder my girlfriend always looks so happy if this is what I consider a quickie...!

The power of blogging...

I feel like a corner has been turned on this blogging lark. Despite having so far recieved only 40 odd hits (although the new hit counter has only been up about a week and therefore has missed most of my posting craze), a post of mine has travelled far and wide across the internet, reaching people from across the globe.

A post of mine was picked by one of my lecturers, Paul Bradshaw, who wrote about it on his blog. His take on the hilariously bad video attracted a great deal of attention from fellow bloggers, prompting comment numbers that my humble site can only dream about. For those who wonder why he did not credit me, I asked him not to, as I have a working relationship with the company involved.

As Bradshaw himself notes, people are now blogging about this video as far away as Hungary and Australia. Meanwhile, comments have been flying around, meaning even more people are being linked to it. Lucas,writing on WordBlog comments: "That was painful to watch. The good news is probably none of their readers did." Unfortunately for the Reading Evening Post he was wrong. I did.

So when I started writing this blog and thought nobody was watching, I was wrong. Whilst my hit count remains dormant, at least my posts are actually proving a success, albeit for other peoples blogs!

How to be an online journalist

Instead of just writing about how I found my latest article I thought that I would actually show you. In my first attempt at vlogging, observe:



And before you ask, yes, the fantastic music is royalty free!

N.B. As Journalism students, we are permitted to use Corbis images provided that we take into consideration the costs of their use in a professional context.

How not to do a vlog!

Nice idea Dave but I can't see your series winning any sports awards in the foreseeable future.

Its not often I make a link so prominent but this is one that just has to be watched, if only to educate the vloggers out there:

Watch it if you dare

Need I say more?

And that was after thirteen attempts...are you brave enough to watch the first attempt?

Must have been a slow news day.

UPDATE: Paul Bradshaw has used my video on his blog and it's proving pretty popular. Take a look.

Reading Evening Post storms online

Having worked for the Reading Evening Post for almost an entire week now, I have not failed to notice the vast improvement in it's website since my placement at the company in March 2006. They seem to be waking up to the potential of online journalism, and have placed a much greater emphasis on interactivity. I was particularly impressed with the way in which they have utilised comments into each story, with some articles recieving well over double figures. Not only are the website encouraging healthy debate about the town, and tapping into their crucial market of middle-class workers who read from their desk, but they are incorporating the website's good work into the newspaper itself.

A double page spread has been dedicated to reader views and comments has been set up in the popular newspaper. Comments from the stories are used, as well as letters, debates and images sent in by readers, to form a 'viewpoint' section. This shows the website and publication working closer together, which can only be a good thing with the technological changes that are threatening the industry somewhat. It is about time too, with the site attracting almost 700,000 page impressions a month. And that information is 9 months old, with the figures only likely to have increased since.

However, not all is well with the website. An admirable Community Blogs section has been set up, but embarassingly does not seem to work, at least not on my Internet Explorer window. They could do worse than follow the fine example set by the Birmingham Mail Blog, which despite getting few comments is setting an early standard in newspaper blogs.

Similar inadequacies can be found in the Post's message board. This ugly, plain layout is not winning any fans amongst it's readership, with very few users. In fact, there is only one real discussion amongst it, and even that petered out a long time ago. A solution would be to try and create something similar to the pioneering Birmingham Mail, whose forums attract far greater interactivity. They even became the source for a story that I scooped the newspaper itself for!

The site has no doubt improved since I last worked there, but the webmaster must not stop there. The internet is the future for newspapers, and the Reading Evening Post still has a lot of work to do to maximise its potential.

Work Placement

Easter is upon us and Im spending my week working for the wonderful Reading Evening Post. Iv only been there for one day so far and it wasn't exactly the most thrilling, as I wasn't really given that much to do and it's kinda hard to find your own stories when you havn't been to the town for months and you don't get given a password to the wonderful world of the web until after lunch. Still, at least I was able to catch up on the nationals - I must have read almost every copy cover to cover this morning!

That said, I did manage to contribute a number of stories today. Quite a few were just nibs and most of them weren't particularly exciting. However, I did manage to get a international scoop on Guinea Pig day at a local vets! Im working on a story about flight paths over Reading, apparently the planes from Heathrow are flying very low these days so hopefully that will amount to something. I don't want to say too much though...you never know who could be watching, especially as it hasn't been published yet.

One thing that disappointed me was that I didn't get out of the office today. When I worked at the Wokingham Times I was out almost every day - at inquests, court cases, vox pops and the like. Today I spent the day inside, working off the phone. I realise that this is the way of the journalism world these days, but I still fancied a trip out in the sunshine!

When I thought about it though, this is actually a practice that I tend to do myself when writing for UCE News site. If you were to watch me writing stories for the site, chances are you would see me lying in my bed at stupid o'clock in the morning researching things from websites and wondering whether 3am is too late to call somebody for a quote (unless they live in Australia it is). I like to think Im catering for our "foreign market".

I tried to adapt some of my Online Journalism skills to finding stories (when I finally got internet access!) but so far Im hitting blanks with my Technorati blog searches. Il keep trying tomorow.

Anyways, as I'll have Journalism on the brain this week, chances are you'll be reading more about my life this week. Hopefully some of my stories will be posted on their website so that I can show you all links and you can smile politely.

Bon Soir

New Website Procedure

So the ballgame has changed a little bit. New editor Azeem is in charge of our stories now and, as such, they don't go straight onto the site when you submit them. Now they have to be approved first, and this means that the site is only updates when Az goes on. I can understand this in the terms that the top story is now the most important one, and not the latest one which could be boring as the hills, but surely now, no new stories will appear for hours and then a few at once. This will surely mean that some get overlooked by our audience. I think that new stories need to go straight onto the site, and be edited later. They could be put in the slots underneath the top story and surely this would improve the site?

UPDATE: The procedure has been changed slightly. Now only the top story is chosen by the editor, with the three slots below it available for latest stories. Much better, in my opinion.