Report on User-Generated Content (UGC) in TV and Online News

Another interesting report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism: AMATEUR FOOTAGE: A GLOBAL STUDY OF USER-GENERATED CONTENT IN TV AND ONLINE-NEWS OUTPUT is by Claire Wardle, Sam Dubberley, and Pete Brown. 

This Phase 1 Report (April 2014) represents research that has been split into quantitative and qualitative phases with this report focusing largely on the former.  I couldn't find a timetable for when we might expect Phase II, which will focus on interviews with over 60 journalists and editors, but I'll keep an eye out for it.

Conclusions from the Executive Summary:

1) UGC is used by news organizations daily, but only when other content is not available to tell the story.

2) News organizations are poor and inconsistent in labeling content as UGC and crediting the individual who captured the content.

Our data showed more similarities than differences across television and Web output, with troubling practices across both platforms. The best use of UGC was online, mostly because the Web provides opportunities for integrating UGC into news output like live blogs and topic pages.

Post-Industrial Journalism

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School has just published a 122-page report called Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present. It's divided into sections on the Transformation of American Journalism (Introduction), Journalists, Institutions, Ecosystems, and Tectonic Shifts (Conclusion). The report is authored by C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell, and Clay Shirky. 

From "Methods Used in This Report:"

More an essay than a piece of testable scholarship, we nonetheless drew on a variety of methods while formulating our analysis, recommendations and conclusions. Primarily, the research was based in qualitative interviews, conducted both one-on-one, on location, over email or telephone, and at the offices of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. A significant amount of data was gathered at a closed-door conference at the journalism school on April 17-18, 2012, that involved 21 people.

For the most part, however, this essay draws on the industry experience and previous scholarship of its authors. It attempts to combine more traditional academic theory with current developments in the worlds of journalism and digital media–always a fraught task. To the degree we have succeeded, we hope that the report is neither superficial to those coming to it as scholars, nor overly dense to working journalists who may work their way through its pages.

Ultimately, we believe that this report should also serve as a call to further, more traditional academic research. Many of its conclusions can be tested through a variety of methods and with a variety of goals in mind. Insofar as the authors each work at different schools of journalism in New York City, and insofar as each is engaged in a different aspect of scholarly production for their respective home institutions, the future for ‘useful journalism research’ would appear bright. Ultimately, the conclusions and provocations of this essay will rise or fall based on changes within journalism itself.

McSweeney's Broadside Valentine to Print Journalism

Leave it to Dave Eggers at McSweeney's to try to save print journalism (well, DON'T leave it to him, but appreciate his efforts). In the publisher's own words:

Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly will be a one-time only, Sunday-edition-sized newspaper—the San Francisco Panorama. It'll have news and sports and arts coverage, and comics (sixteen pages of glorious, full-color comics, from Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides) and a magazine and a weekend guide, and will basically be an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we can get in there. Expect journalism from Andrew Sean Greer, fiction from George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, dispatches from Afghanistan, and much, much more.

The folks at McSweeny's believe that if newspaper were better, more exciting reads, they wouldn't be so strapped for readers. Comments blogger Zach Dundas explains from a recent conversation with McSweeny's publisher Oscar Villalon, "papers need to realize that there are higher, better uses for their tactile, large-format pages than reprinting three-day-old David Brooks columns or intern-written high-school sports gamers. Though you wouldn’t know it to survey the abandoned-looking metal box on the average American city street corner, it is possible to design, shoot, write and edit a forward-thinking newspaper. Witness Mario Garcia’s recent redesign of Germany’s Handelsblatt, or any of Jacek Utko’s striking Eastern European dailies."

I've ordered a copy for Annenberg (for the holidays?). Along these same lines (items to sit down with over a latte between end of year paper writing or grading)... The Onion's Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, and Moral Rectitude from America's Finest News Source is also on order.

January update: It came in and it's fabulous!

Journalism Blogs

Here's list of top Journalism blogs from a new Journalism blog, Journalism Journeyman, on the scene. Of course all the sites that are included on the list are promoting this blog, including yours truly.

Special Issues Roundup

A few journals to cross my desk with themed issues, all available as e-journals on library homepage:

Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism (Volume 37, Number 2). Scholars, educators, and activists contribute to this special issue on Media Literacy in a journal that is always in the media vanguard.

Journalism (Volume 10, Number 5, October 2009) is devoted to Newswork, the work that journalists, i.e. newsworkers do in a time when 'journalists are expected to do more with less time, fewer resources, and fewer colleagues" to quote issue editors Mark Deuze and Timothy Majoribanks.

Continuing the theme of newswork, the Fall 2009 Nieman Reports (Volume 63, Number 3) is devoted to social media, Let's Talk: Journalism and Social Media, with articles on the role of blogs, tweets, Facebook, etc. in today's news business.

Communication Research Trends (Volume 28, Number 3, 2009) features the topic, Children's Rights and the Media, guest edited by Katharine Heintz. The issue includes an extensive bibliography of resources on the topic.

Citizen Journalism E-Resources

Searcher Magazine does a series on user-generated content and this month's installment is on citizen journalism. As author Nicholas Tomaiuolo points out, CitJ, is also referred to as open source, grassroots, networked or distributed journalism, so you have a compliment of key words to keep in mind if you're searching this trend in databases. The full article is available at the ASC Library (see me) but Information Today (publisher) provides a handy list of the urls appearing in the article at its website.

These URLs appear in the article: UCONTENT: CITIZEN JOURNALISM by Nicholas Tomaiuolo Instruction Librarian, Central Connecticut State University Searcher, the Magazine for Database Professionals Vol. 17, No. 9 • October 2009

http://fort-greene.blogs.nytimes.com http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com/ http://timespeople.nytimes.com/home http://online.wsj.com/community http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree http://www.reddit.com/ http://digg.com/ http://www.topix.com/ http://www.newsvine.com/ http://www.courant.com/community/ http://www.kcnn.org/citmedia_sites REFERENCES http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/ 06/23/gps.social.media.iran.cnn?iref=videosearch http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/ digital-downloads/broadband/e3i71cdc4be5311379d1ed5a4d5aa4437b0 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/07/ 060807fa_fact1?currentPage=all http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/04/when-i-hear- the-term-citizen-journalist-i-reach-for-my-pistol-the-blogging-rage/ http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/discover-interview/andrew-keen http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/printable_special_chapter.htm http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/ may/31/pressandpublishing.business http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/16/iran.twitter.facebook/ index.html?iref=newssearch#cnnSTCVideo http://twitter.com/EthanZ/status/2333139296 CITIZEN JOURNALISM IS THE MAIN SOURCE OF CONTENT http://www.allvoices.com/ http://www.cjreport.com/ http://globalvoicesonline.org/ http://www.nowpublic.com/ http://english.ohmynews.com/ http://www.yourarlington.com/ U-CONTENT COMPONENTS OF LARGER NEWS SITES http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/default.stm http://www.cbseyemobile.com/ http://www.ireport.com/ http://ureport.foxnews.com/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6639760 http://fort-greene.blogs.nytimes.com/ http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com/ http://www.newsvine.com/ http://news.yahoo.com/you-witness-news SITES WITH A LOCAL FOCUS THAT ACCEPT CONTENT SUBMISSIONS FROM USERS http://www.chitowndailynews.org/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/citizen-journalism http://www.courant.com/community/ http://www.minnpost.com/ http://www.newwest.net/ LEGACY NEWS SITES WITH MARGINAL USER INTERACTION http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree http://online.wsj.com/community http://timespeople.nytimes.com/ CITIZEN AGGREGATION SITES http://digg.com/ http://www.reddit.com/ http://www.topix.com/ THE REST OF THE STORY http://news.google.com/archivesearch/advanced_search http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2006