The iPad 2 brings better content creation for journalists
There is much hullabaloo in the media about the iPad 2, following a significant period of speculation about new features. We now know that, yes, it is thinner and lighter by way of 0.34-inches deep and 1.33 lbs, and its for sure faster since Apple rebuilt it around a new chip the company invented, called A5. And, it’s the same price.
The real interest for journalists, though, is what the iPad 2’s additional bells and whistles can provide them in the field, in potentially replacing the laptop. Damon Kiesow at Poynter looks into this very question, noting that the major pluses are its content creation tools, including two cameras, iMovie, and Garage Band. Kiesow argues that of all the upgrades the cameras are the most essential: the rear-facing camera is capable of capturing 720p video at 30 frames-per-second. When used in still image mode it offers a 5x digital zoom. The front camera is of VGA quality, and is intended largely for video chat.
What the Egyptian Revolution Taught Al Jazeera About Digital
from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow
To charge or not to charge: the ongoing dilemma
The debate is still the same: whether newspapers should offer readers free content online or ask for payment. That was the theme of the conference “Paywall Strategies 2011” held in London on February 24, which concluded that, although there are a lot of simple things in life, developing a paid content model – no matter from which angle you look at it – is not one of them.
“Digital feudalism:” bloggers want their recognition
“Facebook isn’t going away, neither is Twitter, nor Tumblr. No offense to Tumblr but in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have any of these platforms. In a perfect world everyone would have their own piece of the web that they own entirely”.
It’s 2011 … and there is still gender disparity in journalism?!
“We know women write. We know women read.”
By no means news in itself, this is a worthy, if blatantly self-evident, starting point to attempt to understand–as VIDA does in its statistical analysis of gender disparity in journalism—why it’s now 2011 and there is still a gaping lack of women in the upper editorial ranks of such estimable publications as The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, and The Atlantic, as further explored by Elissa Strauss on her blog The Sisterhood as featured on Forward weekly newspaper.
According to VIDA’s study, as corroborated by Strauss, to follow is a breakdown of gender representation in bylines at the aforementioned publications for 2010:
New French study on media habits
“The French are more and more «médiavores» and the traditional media are still competing and withstanding the inexorable wave of new media,” commented Le Figaro, referring to the annual study «Media in life» carried out by Médiamétrie.
Will the New York Times see a drop in traffic with its meter wall?
In a press release today, the New York Times indicated that its much-awaited pay meter is on the horizon. The Guardian quotes Arthur Sulzberger as saying he does not expect a drop in web traffic as a result of the change.
Social media at the Independent: how it uses the Facebook “like” button to create niche feeds
Developing “social media strategies” – creating the position of social media editor, for example, and trying to enforce their presence on social networks – is something that many news organisations have recently started to do. In a very short amount of time, with the speed that characterizes new technologies, just any approach to social media is not enough. It needs to be the right one.
Rodney King: 20 years of citizen photojournalism
Dan Gillmor’s essay, “Rodney King and the Rise of the Citizen Photojournalist,” looks at the history that led up to the watershed moment, 20 years ago, when the King beating was recorded with a personal video camera, and what’s happened since then:
Newsweek’s new design to focus on women?
After long, quiet speculation on its redesign, Tina Brown’s first issue of Newsweek comes out this week, reports Poynter. Brown is the publication’s first-ever female editor. The issue has been heavily anticipated since the merger of online news site The Daily Beast and Newsweek earlier last year.
Media accountability in the US
A media accountability system (MAS) is any nongovernmental way that encourages media organizations and journalists to respect the ethical rules set by the profession. As defined by the Reynolds Journalism Institute‘s MAS page, all MAS aim at improving news media, but they are extremely diverse: codes of conduct; ombudsmen and media-oriented nongovernmental organizations.