Journalist Arriving on Facebook

On April 5th, Facebook announced a new Facebook page called "Journalist on Facebook" that is designed and dedicated to helping journalist use Facebook as a reporting tool.

Last fall Facebook announced a similar page called Facebook and Media. So, you think "Well, it's the same thing right?" Not exactly. Just as the title says the page Facebook for Media is geared towards just media.

On the other hand, Journalist on Facebook is all for and about the individual journalist. It's main existence is to help journalist use the power of Facebook for journalism.

It does this with Facebook-provided best practices and peer collaboration from a big community of journalism professionals.

It seems that Facebook took the time to make this page a worthwhile experience. They have polling and discussion options that will grow in activity, video interviews with top journalist, and even a registration tab to be notified of journalist meetups in local areas. They even give you a nice "Get Started" guide to help new journalist.

Now, it may be easy to assume journalist know how to use social media and if they're using Twitter they probably do, but this new way of using Facebook goes beyond Twitter and offers more opportunities for journalist in general.

This is just a great chance to learn from other journalist giving more innovation and great content to use. Journalist can promote their content, become even more independent, and accumulate their fan base.

In my opinion, this is just a win-win situation for everyone and especially for journalist. Some people believe that this is just Facebook finding a way to compete more with Twitter, but is that really a bad thing if they are?

What do you think? Is Facebook just doing this for competition? Can Facebook be a good resource for Journalist?

Photo Credit: iloubnan.info via Creative Commons

Read more...

Evolution of Journalism

It is no question that journalism has constantly been evolving ever since its beginning, mostly due to the creation of the internet.

Paul Bradshaw of the UK Press Gazette created a list of ten ways journalism has changed in just the past ten years alone. Here are a few of his findings:

1. Journalism evolved from a lecture to a conversation.
One change in journalism has been the increased involvement of the audience. Through the internet, audience members and viewers can now voice their opinion or comment on the works of journalists in a fast and easy way.

Before the internet, written letters were the only form of communication between the journalist and the reader. This form was very slow paced and often not affective.

2. Journalism led to the rise of the amateur.
Everyone became a newsreporter with the release of camcorders, mobile phone picture and video capabilities, blogs, and social networks. Often is the case where everyday, ordinary citizens capture live news rather than actual news reporters.

3. Really Simple Sindication
Before RSS, journalists had to constantly hunt through dozens of websites for updates. RSS now allows journalists to subscribe to dozens of news feeds that can be contained all in one central reader.

RSS also creates niche audiences, allowing readers to subscribe to specific newspaper sections or writers.

To check out the rest of Bradshaw's list, visit this link.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons

Read more...

Fox Reporter Argues With Religious Nut

In a recent news broadcast by Fox News, an interview got heated when a female news reporter got into an argument with a guest associated with the Westboro Baptist Church.

During the interview, the news reporter posed difficult questions to the Westboro representative. The questions were far from objective, and shed a bad light on the Westboro Baptist Church from the beginning.

Unlike most news reporters this journalist did not hide her opinions on the subject. This resulted in a heated debate between the two that presented strong opinions and bad language from the Westboro representative.

Watching this as someone that is strongly disgusted by what the Westboro Baptist Church does, I was all for what the interviewer was saying.

However, from a journalistic prospective, this was a very dangerous move on the reporter's part. Entering into a strongly worded argument and inserting personal opinion in a news broadcast is risky.

Although I applaud her for what she did, I hope she didn't lose her job over the incident.

Photo Credit: k763 on Flickr.com via Creative Commons

Read more...

The Right Cue

Creating a video blog can become challenging for many people based on how unnatural it feels. Fortunately, there is a new program that was recently created called CuePrompter.

The CuePrompter program is an online teleprompter that allows you to copy and paste your script into your computer. Once doing so, the Cueprompter takes over and allows you to feel like the television reporter you have always wanted to be.

The great thing about Cueprompter is that it gives more assistance to the user by letting you set your script and talking points. Doing so allows things to run smoother since it is on a teleprompter, rather than in essay format in a Word document.

Another beneficial aspect of the Cueprompter is that it allows you to control the speed of how fast the text scrolls across your screen. This can improve people’s speaking skills because it can help us slow down our pace if we speak too fast or speed up our pace if we speak too slow.

CuePrompter also allows you to pick the font, color and size. This will come in hand for those of you who have trouble seeing because it allows you to adjust it to your specific personal needs.

This program can also come into play for interviews, conference calls and any other situation that you need help speaking in front of people.

The best part about this is that it is free!

Photo Credit: Creativecommons

Read more...

Earn From Your Blog

Out of the tens of thousands of blogs out there, as a beginner, yours probably doesn't stand out among the most known ones. To make yours stand out there are a few things every blogger should know.

Online, there are thousands upon thousands of blogs with the same content. If you're wanting your blog to stand out, do not write about the same topics; it will probably just get lost in the flood of them. Here are some helpful tips to point you in the direction of succesful, money-earning blogging.

1. Quality and Focused Content is the biggest factor in which your blog is evaluated. Do not borrow commonly used articles/content and refer to other blogs or sites. Do borrow methods in which they use. This means styles or templates.

2. You must know what your end-used is searching for. They come to your blog for a reason, and what is it exactly? Most of the time, the best blogs are the personal ones rather than commercial. Personal ones can be more touching, like diaries or personal experiences.

3. Confidence is key. Your blog must provide confidence and hope to visitors so that you can turn them into loyal readers or subscribers in a short span of time.

4. Proof. Writing your blog like a commercial one without proof may upset your readers. Try to write your personal experience including some main aspects in the ways you adopted, the mistakes you committed, the sources you referred to, etc... This can increase your readers and even your page rank.

Unlike other blogs, personal blogs make readers believe that the blog is completely true and it is solely for them. Creating this feeling in the readers mind is not a simple task. But if you follow the tips above then you are already on your way to success.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons.

Read more...