Zombie Journalism

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: websites

Recommended reading: Investigative social media, new ideas and tools

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On November 24, 2010

In Recommended Links, Social Media, TBD

Sorry it’s been so long, but it’s been crazy busy as TBD’s preparing for the holidays and other events. This’ll be a quick one, just a few links I’ve been reading of late. Have a happy Thanksgiving, folks.

Social media roundup

  • How Investigative Journalism Is Prospering in the Age of Social Media – Great ideas from several resources gathered by Vadim Lavrusik at Mashable on how to use social media in investigative reporting and newsroom projects. Includes tips on Crowdmap, Storify, Twitter crowdsourcing, data searches and more. A great post to pass on to the social media haters in your newsroom.
  • RockMelt: The User Manual– If you don’t know about Rockmelt or want to know more on how to use the new social browser, here’s a great guide from the NY Times.
  • 6 innovative uses of Tumblr by newsrooms – The big media companies are only now getting into Tumblr, but there’s a lot of possibilities out there for it.
  • Engaging Facebook fans with clever, conversational updates – Great ideas from Web Up the Newsroom for writing interesting status updates on a media outlet’s Facebook page to drive traffic to content and drive discussion online.
  • In this disturbing bit from FishbowlDC, a Washington Post editor says “crediting the original source of a scoop isn’t “a requirement or even important” because “all news originates from somewhere” and “unless one is taking someone else’s work without attribution (that is, plagiarizing it) any news story should stand on its own and speaks for itself as an original piece of work.” Hm.
  • How News Organizations Are Generating Revenue From Social Media – Another great Mashable rundown of the top ways online media is generating revenue using social media and more to hit new audiences.

On the TBD Front

Data mining information from Twitter

By

On June 21, 2010

In Twitter

It’s downright amazing what you can find out from Twitter’s formidable search engine. Here’s just some of what you can do with Twitter’s publicly available feeds:

• See what’s happening on your beat: Basic, but no less awesome. Follow the Twitter feeds of any agencies, officials and other contacts on your beat.

• Find people on the scene or read reactions to events: Twitter has an excellent built-in search engine that allows you to search by keywords, location, date and more. It’s a gold mine to the journo who takes the time to search correctly.

More: Even if you aren’t searching for a particular topic, a Twitter search is a great way to do a fishing expedition for events (try searching for crash, fire, hurt, etc.). Also be sure to try common misspellings in the keyword search.

• Search for someone at a particular place: Use the Twitter search with Foursquare or Gowalla to find an eyewitness in a particular location at the time news occurred. Search for the name of the location or keyword with added operators for 4sq or gowal.la. Like this.

• See what topics are trending nationally and locally: Your home page on Twitter will show you what’s trending right now either network wide or by your location. Also check out Trendsmap (using data from another great site, What The Trend). For instance, check out this local trendsmap data to see what topics keep coming to the top of Twitter in the DC area right now.

• See tweets on a map: Check out Bing’s Twitter and Foursquare maps to see searchable tweets and check-ins on a map. For a new map, go to bing.com/maps/explore and select the map app you want.

• Watch real-time reaction: Twitterfall is a great site for watching developing reactions and trends. Watch one of the trending topics or search for keywords to see them “fall” in as they’re tweeted.

• Get a photo from the scene: There are lots of sites that allow you to search Twitter photos, but plugging twitpic OR yfrog OR flickr OR tweetphoto (plus a location or keyword) into Twitter Search will also turn up a lot of pictures. See one you’d like to use? Be sure to ask.

The sites here are just the tip of the iceberg – there are thousands more apps out there using this network to display useful trends and info.

Related Info:

Need to Know Twitter Tips for Journalists (6/4/10)

Excellent recommended post on the subject from Web Up The Newsroom.

Journalism and the Interwebs: A Reading Guide

By

On December 11, 2009

In Recommended Links, Surviving

I read a lot of industry blogs and they generally all boil down to two topics: complaining about the Internet (or complaining about people complaining about the Internet) and lamenting the future of news.  It makes it all a little tough to keep up with what actual issues we’ve settled this year and what’s still out there to be figured out.

Thankfully, the Nieman Lab Blog took the time to assemble what dominated discussion regarding the future of news this year and takes a look at what will likely be hot topics next year as the industry continues to reel and (hopefully) evolve.  Most notably, next year seems to be heading in a direction of looking beyond the industry itself to what the affects the changes in the industry will (or should) have on journalism education, politics and public policy.

And in the second camp of journalism industry blog posts, Paul Bradshaw reviews all of the complaints news folks have had against The Internets over the years in one fell swoop. From hating on Google to opposing blogs and user-provided news, he offers something of a summation of just how depressing some news execs can be when it comes to that which they don’t understand.

Don’t make promises about UGC you can’t keep

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On November 18, 2009

In Industry News & Notes

It may be old news to media law nerds like me, but the ongoing case of Barnes v. Yahoo has revealed a potential minefield of legal trouble for media websites of all sizes in something as simple as a broken promise.

Dont make promises!

Don't make promises!

As most every media person knows, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 grants immunity from liability to service providers (including media sites) for user-generated content, even if it is defamatory. The Barnes case re-asserted that protection, but it also revealed a possible loophole in that immunity that can occur if you promise to remove content – and don’t follow through.

The case, in short:

It started with a bad breakup. Cecilia Barnes’ ex-boyfriend put personal info and lewd photos of her in a Yahoo profile soliciting for sex. She tried to contact Yahoo to get the defamatory profile removed and eventually got through to a person who said they’d take care of it. They didn’t.

And it was there that the loophole appeared. Aside from the issue of defamation in relation to the content of the profile, Barnes’ suit has a claim for breach of contract from Yahoo for not taking down the profile as promised.

While U.S. contract law typically requires evidence of a contract, there’s a judicial doctrine known as “promissory estoppel” that makes a promise like that at Yahoo a contract.

[promissory estoppel] allows courts to find an enforceable contract absent consideration where a claimant can prove the following: 1) a promise was made, 2) the promisor, as a reasonable person, should have foreseen that the promise would induce the conduct of the type which occurred, and 3) the claimant actually relied on the promise resulting in a substantial change in his or her position.

So, that broken promise, essentially, is the contract that was broken – and thus, a whole other Pandora’s box is opened.

The lesson for you? If you have comments or other kinds of user-submitted content on your website or blog and someone calls to complain about something in that content, whatever you do – don’t make any promises to remove it if you don’t want legal responsibility for it.

I know from experience on these kind of calls that you want to say you’ll take care of it right away, but don’t. Say you’ll look into it. Tell everyone in your newsroom to say the same.

And finally, for the love of God, don’t put up profiles of your ex-girlfriends on Yahoo – prank calls are far less problematic.

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