As the war in Afghanistan enters its final chapter, Sean Smith's brutal, uncompromising film from the Helmand frontline shows the horrific chaos of a stalemate that is taking its toll in blood
Where journalists have greatness thrust upon them
Martin Stabe
A UK-centric look at new media and online journalism
Updated: 4 hours 33 sec ago
Slate: How to take a leak: unsolicited advice for Julian Assange of WikiLeaks
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmJack Shafer: "Could [Wikileaks' Julian] Assange have milked the material to better effect? I think so."
FT.com: News Corp looks at unit for tablet devices
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"News Corp is nearing a decision on whether to start a news organisation to provide content for a subscription application on digital tablet devices such as Apple’s iPad, according to people close to the plans. ... News Corp is making “an honest attempt” at transforming journalism, one person close to the plans said. Separately, a long-awaited subscription news aggregation service, called Project Alesia internally, is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter with content from the New York Post, Dow Jones and a variety of external news partners, people briefed on the plans said."
FolioMag.com: The iPad is Great But Remember—It’s Apple’s Way or the Highway
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"A source told FOLIO: that Sports Illustrated was forced to withdraw its subscription model for an iPad app, even though the magazine felt like it was following similar models of the Wall Street Journal and Wired by allowing print subscribers to access the iPad version free this year, with new readers buying the content a month at a time. Apple is said to have forced SI to change the offer to single copy purchase."
AllThingsD: Time Inc. Frustrated by Apple Over iPad Subscription Issue
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"Time Inc. executives 'have been going nuts,' trying to figure out how to get Apple to approve a subscription plan. One of the more desperate suggestions, which apparently didn’t get traction: Pulling the publisher’s apps out of the iTunes store altogether."
Wolfstar: Q&A with Lucia Adams, Web Development Editor, The Times
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmLucia Adams: "The new Times site has given us an opportunity to focus on our core readers – this allows us to form a greater connection with them and means that we can focus on delivering the world class journalism The Times is known for. As a news provider, if your main aim is to attract higher and higher ‘traffic’, you end up having to create content that attracts search traffic. Chasing those stories didn’t feel like a good fit with what our core audience wants and values of our brand."
guardian.co.uk: Can live-blogs and Twitter take court reporting into the 21st century?
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmSiobhain Butterworth: "There is something rather quaint about journalists in the 21st century using pens and notebooks to record what goes on in court hearings when the tools of the trade now include laptops, mobiles, BlackBerrys and other digital paraphernalia. Why not use them in court? In fact, why not report live from the courtroom? The obvious answer is that judges won't let you."
HMG Your Freedom: Abolish the ban on recording court proceedings
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmAlistair Kelman: "Currently under Section 9 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 it is illegal to tape record court proceedings. This topic was addressed by Ms Heather Brooke in a feature article in today's Times newspaper where she makes out the case very eloquently. As a barrister and expert witness I too have encountered similar problems in the UK courts and believe that no is the time for this Government to abolish the ban."
London Review of Books: Diary
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmFrom a 2008 LRB article by Leah Price: "Journalism degrees in Britain still include a speedwriting test; the persistence of a requirement dropped in many other countries can be explained either by the peculiarities of British libel law (shorthand notes are admissible in journalists’ defence) or by the prohibition on the use of sound recording in court. But the distinction that emerged a century ago between mechanical devices (forbidden) and human scribes (permitted) is beginning to blur."
Heather Brooke: Court secrecy
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"The rhetoric of the English legal system is that justice must be seen to be done so why are the public forbidden – under threat of jail – from recording a verbatim account of proceedings? Not only that, rules are so opaque and obscure that court reporters struggle to report cases with any degree of accuracy or depth. And that is when there is a reporter in court, which these days is a rarity – there used to be 25 reporters covering national courts for the Press Association; by 2009 there were only four. ... The simple answer is to allow tape recorders for all: no party is disadvantaged and an ‘official’ recording is there for checking."
Press Gazette Editor’s Blog: The paywall debate: At the Financial Times there is no debate, it works
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"Figures released by the Financial Times yesterday revealed that it now has 149,000 paying digital subscribers. That’s nearly double the UK paid-for sale of the print edition. ... The beauty of the FT’s system is that it keeps reminding casual readers it is there by remaining part of the web ecosystem while forcing those who become devoted readers to cough up some money."
Guardian: Wikileaks’ Afghanistan war logs: how our datajournalism operation worked
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"The data came to us as a huge excel file – over 92,201 rows of data, some with nothing in at all or were the result of poor formatting. Anything over 60,000 rows or so brings excel down in dramatic fashion – saving takes a painfully long period of time (tip number one – turn automatic saving off in preferences…). It doesn't help reporters trying to trawl through the data for stories and it's too big to run meaningful reports on. Fortunately, after COINS, huge datasets hold no fear for us. ..."
paidContent:UK: Behind BBC Trust’s Apps Decision: Paid Apps Are Screwed Anyway
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"A market assessment commissioned by the BBC Trust to help it decide whether the BBC should release smartphone apps came to a view many will find surprising: that the paid apps goldrush will be extinguished by the mobile web in a few short years."
The Atlantic: WikiLeaks May Have Just Changed the Media, Too
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"This story -- and the organization behind it -- is obviously singular. It's being described as one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history. (Though it's worth noting that the value of the information is not totally clear yet.) But it also fits into a broader trend. Traditional media organizations are increasingly reaching out to different kinds of smaller outfits for help compiling data and conducting investigations."
New Media Age: UK consumers unlikely to pay for content, says research
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"UK consumers are less willing to pay for digital content than others around the world, according to research from KPMG. Brits are, however, more willing to accept targeted advertising on computers and mobile devices and share our personal profile data."
Guardian: Afghanistan war logs: Story behind biggest leak in intelligence history
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"Behind today's revelations lie two distinct stories: first, of the Pentagon's attempts to trace the leaks with painful results for one young soldier; and second, a unique collaboration between the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel magazine in Germany to sift the huge trove of data for material of public interest and to distribute globally this secret record of the world's most powerful nation at war."
iPhone app: Food Hygiene
30 July 2010 - 9:04pm"Check out before you fork out! Now over 130,000 official local authority food hygiene inspection ratings from England and Northern Ireland as published on www.scoresonthedoors.org.uk. But with this app it enables you to get them on the move, find those around you, gives you directions and phone numbers."
Malcolm Coles: iDosing: spot the difference between the Sun’s and the Mail’s stories
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmMalcolm Coles shows how the Mail and Sun rehashed a local TV news story from the Oklahoma.
CNN.com: News sites reining in nasty user comments
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmUS news sites are reigning in anonymous user comments. Some interesting examples, including the paper that requires a credit card payment to confirm identity.
GigaOm: Rupert’s Paywall is Meant to Keep People In, Not Out
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmMathew Ingram: "For many newspapers, the main driving force for instituting a paywall is to keep print readers from migrating away from buying the physical product (which still generates the majority of advertising revenue at most newspapers) to reading for free online, where their eyeballs are worth less than they would be in print. Think of it as eyeball arbitrage."
George Brock Blog: Taking a (little) brick out of the paywall
30 July 2010 - 9:04pmGeorge Brock: "The Times ... now operates what I call an 'extreme paywall': the charge applies to everything except the front page. Behind the barrier sit millions of fragments of information, ranging from the important to the specialist to the insignificant. ... A system that locks in so many items of such different value ... without being able to distinguish between them can’t work in the long run."
