Citizen Media Watch

During Januari and Februari this year, I did some teaching at Fojo, the Institute for Further Education of Journalists. I talked about online journalism and how to make good SEO for an article, at the web journalist seminar for Belarusian journalists and students from the University of journalism in Minsk. Some weeks later I managed the web design seminar for Belarusian independent media.

When teaching at the Project Belarus I met journalists working under different economical and technical conditions. Independent media are more depending on Internet especially if their necessary ration of paper for printing the newspaper is drawn back – for some reason.

But since the broadband is not always that broad and the freedom of speech comes with a price, the online solution is not always an affordable option as it would be in Europe.

Each course was five days long with a follow up, a couple of weeks later in Minsk/Vilnius. I managed the web design course, Jonas Söderström, inUse, is managing the other four.

Fojo is aiming for:

• To build up a high quality of journalism characterized by professionalism, integrity and interaction with the audience.
• To enhance the capacity of media to report on important national issues such as poverty alleviation, the fight against corruption, grassroots democracy and civil rights perspectives.
• To promote openness and democracy of media trough improved capacity of Belarusian journalists.

On the Fojo web site you’ll also find an on line guide to Belarus.

Ola Henriksson at svd.se

I brought some of my material for the lectures on film. Made some clips in Stockholm, before going to Fojo in Kalmar. Have a look at Ola Henriksson, developement editor at svd.se talking about their SEO work. I am sorry, it is only in Swedish. But here’s a quick translation and summary:

Ola Henriksson has been working at svd.se for about ten years, as a web editor, news editor in chief and now as one of the two developement editors of the editorial office. He is project managing the technical needs, questions and projects for svd.se.

During the second half of 2008 they started a SEO project. They had several reasons to do that. The traffic of visitor is important for the site. The site has 650 000–700 000 unique visitors per week. Newspapers have similar material. The competition is hard. Every paper is aming for being fast/first and they have pretty much the same news. It is necessary to attract new visitors to the site.

SEO is also important because readers are using Google and other search engines to find the information they want to read. There for it is important to use relevant key words, to be able to be at the top of the search result on Google.
– To get clicks you simply have to be at the top, at least at the first search page, Ola says.

When they started this project at svd.se, they put together a group of colleagues that looked in to this subject. They made a list containing 50 things that they had to carry through to be able to get more visitors from the search engine to the site.

A consultant agency helped svd.se to carry this through and to follow up on the results. The made few and small changes to increase the relevance for the search engines.

They did put this project through this autumn 2008. They have done several different things, some of them are: looking in to the in- and outgoing links, adding meta descriptions to the sections on the online newspaper, looking over the headers for the articles – there can be a huge difference between a journalistic header and a search engine friendly header.

They are not done with this project yet. There are still working with the search engine  optimization.

The journalists at svd.se are not forced to write a describing header, for the search engine, but that is something that they would like them to do.

They are also looking in to keywords. It is also making relevance for ranking at the search engines. The keywords will be put in together with the article as it is published. Ola is mentioning New York Times as an example. They are using keywords in the topics index.

– There are lots of things that can and should be done. We think it is important because the search engines are important becuase there are lots of in traffic from these kinds of sites. This project has increased the visitors traffic with ten percent, Ola Henriksson says.

Twitter is becoming the one stop place for relevant reading these days, especially since I’m way behind with my Google Reader feeds. Today’s most retweeted post, and a required read, must be Clay Shirky’s long and insightful look at past media revolutions and the one we’re going through right now, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.
There’s also a thought-provoking follow-up from Cathy Davidson, asking:

So for the sake of argument, let’s reverse the question: is there something to be gained by the end of newspapers as we know them in this historical moment?

Today Thomas Mattsson was appointed editor-in-chief of Expressen, the 2nd largest tabloid/evening paper in Sweden. Great news, as Mattsson has made a name for himself being web2.0 friendly, listening to people and using social media to connect with his users/readers. Very exciting, and a very good choice.
Second great news is the response from the largest tabloid/evening paper Aftonbladet’s editor-in-chief, Jan Helin. He immediately reached out a hand to Mattsson, suggesting a collaboration on the campaign to free Dawit Isaak, Swedish-Eritrean journalist imprisoned in Eritrea since 2001. Mattsson agreed to work together on this.

The two rivalling tabloids joining forces is interesting in itself, though it’s not the first time it’s happened. Campaigns in the past has made them join forces.
What’s really exciting is how this exchange took place, and where - on Twitter, where anyone could and did see and comment on the initiative. A lot of retweets tonight. Having two social/citizen media friendly editors in chief at the two main tabloids promises an interesting time ahead. Looking forward to seeing where this development will lead.

Jan Helin on Twitter
Thomas Mattsson on Twitter

Update: More collaboration across publishing house borders, through Twitter - read this post from Publishing 2.0: Networked link journalism: A revolution quitely begins in Washington State

I’m reading Ellyn Angelotti’s summary of the discussions during the recent Journalism That Matters conference, wishing I had been there. It is written in an optimistic tone, and the focus is on journalistic entrepreneurship.

Several journalists said they wonder if their news organizations are still too dependent on their old business models to create innovative journalism. Chris Peck, editor of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., responded that if they feel that way, they should strike out on their own.

In a time when layoffs are plentyful - atleast in the States, but the economic crisis might mean we’ll have our share here in Sweden too - maybe this is the way to go for some of the people that find themselves outside of traditional media. The big media companies here in Sweden seem to be preparing for a model with fewer employees and more temporary hired workers, if Aftonbladet/Minimedia’s new temp agency is anything to go by. We’ve seen independent journalists starting blogs that has become successful enough to relaunch their careers, such as Niklas Svensson’s (et al) Politikerbloggen, now part of TV4. And of course blogging is also an entry point into journalism for people without academic training but with a passion for their subject and the talent of writing interesting stuff.

One of my great sources of inspiration about citizen media and the future of journalism, Dan Gillmor, is now running the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, another sign that independent journalistic innovators are needed in the future media landscape.
I’m certainly hoping recently laid off journalists can find the enthusiasm and inspiration to take this step. We need more journalists involved in the innovation online.

Well, back to Angelotti and the Journalism That Matters conference. She points to a set of interviews made by Jackie Hai, a student at the University of Massachusetts. She’s asked a number of the participants what they think is the role of the journalist in this new network of information and community of readers. It’s well worth checking out.

Also read Jackie’s blog post “Journalists: It’s time to be the phoenix”. Good stuff.

Now everyone can take part of the online journalistic training and resources the BBC has available to its journalists. The BBC blog dot life announces a virtual college of journalism:

“One of the most important things that we need to think about and do is teach journalism to the next generation and to the new leaders within journalism,” said the BBC’s Kevin Marsh, at the DNA 2009 conferenceT in Brussels.

Every aspect of online training that is currently available to 7,500 BBC journalists will be open to the public.

I’ve read a number of posts lately about the education of the public into citizen journalists and educated readers. What do you think, is this the right way to go?

Citizen journalism photo agency Scoopt has shut down. Getty Images, which purchased the site two years back, are letting it go.

In an interview in the British Journal of Photography, PJP, Getty spokesperson Alison Crombie explains that they want to focus on their core editorial business.
- People are now more visually educated, there is more awareness that they can interact directly with the media. Every time something significant happens, you will see the BBC or Sky ask for people’s photos and videos, she says.

The need for dedicated citizen journalism agencies is declining as citizens become more knowledgeable on how to reach out and get their stuff to mainstream media - and get the earnings from it. The rise of social media has to a large extent meant that they have played out their part.
Even Scoopt’s founder Kyle MacRae now think the concept is doomed.
- A smarter model is sucking in hot images from wherever they happen to be posted and shared, whether that’s Flickr or TwitPic or anywhere else, he says to BJP.

(via journalism.co.uk)

All the winners of the Great Blog Award 2009.

Yesterday evening, as we talked about in our bambusing from the event, the Great Blog Award (”Stora Bloggpriset”) gala was held at Nalen in Stockholm. It’s a new award instituted by Aftonbladet and Bloggportalen (owned by Aftonbladet, so basically it’s an Aftonbladet award).

Talking about the FRA blog quake last summer and how bloggers had a better coverage than mainstream media, aftonbladet.se’s editor-in-chief Kalle Jungkvist explains his thoughts about the blogosphere and why it’s interesting from a mainstream media perspective.
- Historically, journalists have acted as a megaphone. Now we’re facing a new challenge, where we meet active citizens who challenge us, critisize us, comment on us and often, in many issues, know more than we do. That’s a good reason to institute an award for the best of the best of them.
- We are in a phase of learning, Aftonbladet’s editor-in-chief Jan Helin says. We’ll still be in the business of telling the many what few know, but in the future that’s only the start of the discussion. Reporters need to keep working on a story, together with the readers, and they are to a large extent the blogosphere.

The award was given in seven different categories, and a panel of 100 bloggers helped nominate five candidates in each category. Working closely with bloggers ensured that the award was well received in the blogosphere, though I found out that the organizers had been a little nervous about that. The Aftonbladet.se crew at Nalen, where the ceremony took place, were very happy with the outcome though. The room was crowded, and though not everyone agreed the best blogs had won, everyone seemed to think the whole arrangement was a good idea.

Here’s the full list of winners. For all nominations, check out Stora Bloggpriset’s blog.

Entertainment & Culture: Bokhora
Politics & Society: Opassande
Lifestyle: Husmusen
Gadgets & Technology: Moderskeppet
Everyday life: Tonårsmorsa
Sports & Leisure: Marcus Birro
Fashion: Style by Kling

Bokhora, Husmusen and two editors in chief.

Apart from the categories, a special honorary award for great journalistic achievements was presented. The winner, chosen by the editors-in-chief, was StoppaFRAlagen.nu, a site which had the function as the hub for the anti-FRA law initiatives last summer as well as for articles in general about the proposed law.
- It’s a very complex law, it’s hard to get an overview. A mix of competences is needed, and the blogosphere has a unique position to provide them, said Mikael Nilsson, who started the site together with Anna Peterson.

Anna Peterson and Mikael Nilsson from StoppaFRAlagen.nu, the honorary award winners.

Our Stora Bloggpriset set on Flickr. 62 photos from the event.

Bloggy is the new microblogging site of choice for Swedes. In a short time the site has gained about 3 000 users and continues to grow.
- I was thinking: Can I do this better?, says Jonas Lejon, the man behind the service, to Citizen Media Watch.

In Sweden Jaiku has to a large extent been the microblog of choice. But with frequent downtimes, no new features for a long time and Google’s recent announcement that they’re turning it into an open source project, people were ready for an alternative.
In steps Jonas Lejon, an entrepreneur who’s behind several blog-related services in Sweden, who puts together Bloggy, a microblogging service in Swedish. He gets enthusiastic cheers, good feedback, and he responds. More than that, he responds quickly, adds new features, tweaks them, and does in a few months what Jaiku with all its Google backup hasn’t done in years.

When he announced a function for importing all your Jaiku contacts into Bloggy, there was no holding back the migration anymore. Over the weekend my mailbox has been flooded with friends requests from Bloggy users who have imported their contacts.
While it’s a bit sad to let Jaiku go, Bloggy is clearly where the action’s at for the Swedish microblogosphere at the moment. One of the great features is that you can easily follow and update both Jaiku and Twitter from within Bloggy, so you’re not really missing much, even if Bloggy still lacks support for channels. It has adopted many of Jaiku’s features, but it is a bit more like a community than a pure microblogging service.
I asked Jonas Lejon what made him develop the service.
- I was using Pownce, Twitter and Jaiku and I was tired of em all. I was thinking: Can I do this better? So i started developing Bloggy 8 months ago and implemented all the functions I liked from the other microblogging platforms, he says.
How come you decided to do Bloggy in Swedish?
- I think that the English language still feels uncomfortable for many Swedes and that providing a service in Swedish makes it more friendly. “By Swedes for Swedes”.

So far, we haven’t seen how it performs under heavy load. Monday provided one challenge with Thomas Mattsson at Expressen writing about it and giving it lots of space on their front page.

Also Bloggy was mentioned in Dagens Nyheter the other day.
There were a couple of downtimes Monday, but Jonas Lejon assures those problems are now taken care of.
- I’m working very close to our datacenters and they are helping me out with upgrading the server all the time when I reach the limits and I’m fixing performance bugs all the time and now it seems that all problems are gone.
You deserve praise for the way you handle feedback quickly and keep on improving the features. You seem to be online on Bloggy 24/7. Do you ever sleep? : )
- Thanks! I’ve been working a lot the last few days but I’m trying to take some offline time now and then and relax.

About 90 internet entrepreneurs gathered at 24 hour business camp. The task was to create a web/mobile based service, during 24 hours. Starting Thursday at noon, ending Friday at noon.

Team Eric Wahlforss (co-founder Sound Cloud), Henric Berggren (Sound Cloud), and David Kjelkerud, student at KTH, worked on an application they call listentoblogs.com.

Henrik Berggren was truly enthusiastic yesterday when he told CMW about the way it works:

– It is a really simple site where bloggers come and blogreaders come, not to read their favourite blogs, but to listen to them.

The idea is that you should be able to read, record and upload your or any blog at listentoblogs.com, and subscribe to it as a podcast straight to your mp3 player.

– We are supporting all big open formats. This is possible because we have built it on top of an awesome platform called Sound Cloud and App Engine. It is a glue between this kind of cloud-based services.

The listentoblogs.com team: Berggren, Kjelkerud, Wahlforss.

24hbc took place at Hasseludden Yasuragi, about 20 min drive from Stockholm.

The guy behind 24hbc is Ted Valentin, a Swedish entrepreneur, who has created stuff like: sushikartan (The Sushi Map), Wifikartan (The Wifi Map), Minkarta (My Map) and… Sites that maps different kinds of services and/or places.

- 24hbc is the place to try things out. The focus is to get things done. Not to be afraid to fail, Ted says.

The atmosphere at 24hbc is a mix of hard work, playing around and hanging out.

Erik Starck, one of the participants, said:

– It is like the punk movment all over.

The Swedish TV channel TV4 reported from the event early this morning. On Nyhetsmorgon (only in Swedish).

Twingly expands its search engine with a brand new microblog search tool. They’ve been working on it for six months and today it was released.
In the Twingly blog, they write:

When we last summer started to see the microblogging-hype we felt that a search dedicated to microblogs would be a quite natural development for us. We like Twitter Search and been using it a lot, especially at conferences and when news like Mumbai were having the best news source at Twitter. But because we used Jaiku ourselves it wasn’t what we needed in many cases.

Microblogging services covered by Twingly’s search engine are: Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Pownce (which is dead, but a six month archive remains searchable), Swedish Bloggy.se and the German Bleeper.de.
They will keep adding new services, and aim to cover all microblogging services out there.