Camden Market Fire, Citizen Journalism, Google and the way that news spreads

We received a phonecall from a friend at around 21.00 to ask if we could smell smoke, because Camden Market was on fire. We couldn't smell anything or see anything out of the window so I went to Google and typed in 'Camden Market Fire.'

The top Natural Search result for 'Camden Market Fire' is not from the BBC or Sky News though - it is from the Jerusalem Post!

At first I didn't realise the link was for an international publisher. I saw the headline 'Major fire breaks out at London's famous Camden Market' and clicked on it. Via Google, a news publisher from over 2000 miles away told me what was happening less than a mile from my home. This shows how important good SEO strategy should be for news publishers!

As this was so close I decided to go and look for myself. I assumed the role of Citizen Reporter and went to take photos of the Camden Market Fire. Most of the area around the Camden Market Fire was sealed off, so I took some photos and came home. As I was leaving I saw professional photographers running towards the scene and since leaving a news helicopter has started circling - Sky News now has a continuous broadcast.

I have uploaded my photos to Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/nickburcher) and to my Facebook profile. I will now post this article and will also add it to Digg and Reddit. (Since starting to type this my Flickr photos have had a number of views, I am interested to see how much traffic they will generate - have I beaten the professionals?)

9 Great Examples of Newspapers using digital opportunities to boost their online audiences

The model of choice for newspapers online was subscription. Users would pay a monthly / yearly fee to be able to access premium content, archives etc. This model was followed by the Financial Times, New York Times and many others. However, this model is being abandoned by the majority of its previous advocates.

The advertising money that can be gained from increased traffic outweighs the money that can be generated from the subscription model. Removing subscription walls also allows Search Engine spiders to index a wider range of editorial (again increasing traffic) and having a free to access news site give greater scope for creative advertising solutions.

Newspapers online are also using other digital channels to boost readership and here are 8 great examples of newspapers embracing new digital opportunities:

1) New York Times on Facebook - one of the first to start a Fan page on Facebook and one of the few users to do anything useful with it! The NYT posts stories (and allows them to be easily shared), posts photos / videos and encourages discussion groups around topical themes.
http://www.facebook.com/nytimes

2) New York Times on Twitter - one of the most followed Twitter profiles is run by the New York Times. This is not RSS, it involves a member of staff posting a headline and a link to a story they think people will find interesting. (Various other news organisations also follow this model - CNN on Twitter, Mashable on Twitter etc)
http://twitter.com/nytimes

3) Wisconsin State Journal - at 11am each day website users are given the chance to vote for one of 5 different stories. The winning 'Readers choice' story is then run on the front page of the newspaper the following day.
http://www.madison.com/wsj

4) Telegraph TV - the new multi-media Telegraph is now producing some high quality video under the banner of Telegraph TV. Running through a Brightcove channel the Telegraph host ITN supplied (Telegraph badged) news through their site in conjunction with Telegraph produced content such as Business TV and the Fantasy Football show. All content can be streamed from the Telegraph website or downloaded as podcast / mobisode. An interesting development from an 'established' newspaper and one that properly demonstrates how media channels are converging.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/popup/ttv/tvnewsnow.jhtml

5) The Guardian podcasts remain popular but the most significant development has been 'Comment is free.' The Guardian were one of the first newspaper sites to encourage reader feedback through news blogs and a vast network of staff blogs and user comment now falls under the 'Comment is Free' banner. This has been one of the driving forces behind the online growth of the Guardian and helps keep content alive long after originally posted.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/index.html

6) Axel Springer 'Avastar' Second Life newspaper - if people are to spend a long time in a Second Life virtual world, it stands to reason that they would like more information about it while they are there. Last year Reuters set up an HQ and installed a journalist ('Adam Reuters') to write about SL economics, but Axel Springer's idea is far simpler - give users an up to date, in-world, virtual newspaper! Available to download from the internet and through self-service boxes and street vendors inside Second Life. Whilst circulation may not be particularly large, this initiative has generated significant PR for the Axel Springer group.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/nov/07/newmedia.pressandpublishing

7) Sun mobile - the Sun newspaper has been promoting it's mobile offering for over a year and looks to be in a good position to take advantage of the forthcoming growth in mobile. The Sun bought the mobile rights to the Premiership and whilst mobile screen-size has made it difficult to watch football highlights, the ability to integrate video highlights into Sun mobile games is very interesting. The Sun are pushing a range of initiatives from mobile bingo to mobile news and mobile gaming. The strapline on the Sun's advertising is now 'Paper - Online - Mobile' and this is definitely a publisher to watch.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/mobile

8) Aftonbladet diet club (Aftonbladet viktklubb) - in 2005 traditional Norwegian newspaper publisher Schibsted made 35% of it's revenue online. This raised eyebrows at publishers across the world and led many to accelerate the development of their digital portfolios. Schibsted had experimented in many areas across Scandinavia - classified in Finland, a Search engine to rival Google and notably a diet club through the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. Whilst others were struggling to monetise news content, Aftonbladet quickly realised that people would pay to be part of a diet and fitness club. The literal translation is 'weight club' and it is still running strongly today.
http://viktklubb.aftonbladet.se/cm/2.10/2.112

9) Sweden's Dagens Nyheter launches world's first 'newspaper telephone'
Sweden's Dagens Nyheter newspaper has launched a mobile phone that offers subscribers free access to its website. They aim to give readers access to Dagens Nyheter content on the move. Dagens Nyheter readers apply for a Nokia 6120 through the Dagens Nyheter website and sign up to a monthly subscription of 199 kroner (around £15 per month). Aswell as a being a standard mobile package, the phone has a DN button that allows immediate and free access to the Dagens Nyheter website. Handset manufacturers having been moving closer to content (Nokia Music etc), this is an interesting example of a content provider moving closer to handset manufature / distribution.

Feel free to leave other examples - I'm sure I can extend this list to '10 great examples of how newspapers are growing their online audience!'

Citizen Criticism - the rise of celebrity commenters like DaShiv and a nice touch from Technorati founder David Sifry!

People like Lily Allen and Tila Tequila became famous after promoting themselves online. Both of them used Myspace and created personal networks of hundreds of thousands of ‘friends.’ They were then able to promote their products (CDs, TV shows etc) to this captive audience and take advantage of the opportunities this offered.

The notion of becoming famous through personally publishing music / video / blogs online is an appealing one for many - though only a small percentage of people have the capacity / time / inclination to follow this through.

Nowadays though it is not just about people breaking through after publishing original content online. A new cultural phenomenon can be seen in the US - the rise of the 'celebrity commenter!' Rather than running their own blog / Myspace profile etc these people are spending their time leaving comments on other peoples blogs and pages. These people are gaining cult status just through having an opinion on somebody elses work!

The most well known commenter is probably ‘DaShiv’ - over 13,000 comments! He mainly comments through MetaFilter (http://www.metafilter.com/user/3502) and also posts photos to Flickr here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dashiv). Great work and a man in demand at the moment after his recent appearance in the New York Times!

Various other people have gained attention through widespread commenting and a nice example is David Sifry, founder of blog tracker Technorati. Mr Sifry practices what he preaches and tries to post as many blog comments as he can especially if they mention him or Technorati - I would feel honoured if he commented here!

Nick Burcher writes: “This is another example of how the internet empowers people in the Web 2.0 world. People are gaining fame not through producing original work, but through having opinions on what other people have done. Citizen Criticism is here!"

Blogging for the Environment - Oct 15th, Blog Action Day

I have just signed up for the below and will write something around Green advertising on 15th October. Think this could be very powerful if every person signed up contributes and a good demonstration of how the internet can be used to join people together!

From Blogger:

October 15, a week from today, is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is the environment. If you have a blog and want to join in, all you have to do is use that day to post something related to the environment, in whatever way, shape, or form you prefer. You can pick an environmental issue that has meaning for you and let us know why it's important. Organize a beach or neighborhood cleanup and tell us about it. If you're into fiction writing, give us a story with an environmental theme. Have a podcast, videoblog, or photoblog? Join the fun! The idea here is to have a mass effect on public awareness by sharing as many ideas in as many ways as possible.

If you're game for participating, go register your blog with the 7,000+ other blogs (with 5 million readers!) that are already signed up. Also, see the Blog Action Day blog for more on how bloggers can change the world.

Top ranked web stories to power new Sky News show

On 2nd October Sky News are to launch a new show, where story selection is based on the most popular online stories of the day. The show will run Tues-Fri every week for half an hour from 1930 and featured items will be taken from the Sky News site and from the wider net.

Nick Burcher writes: “News ranking sites like Digg have been very popular and the OhMyNews idea of user feedback determining the relative importance of stories is not new. CurrentTV have experimented with brief bulletins based around Google News, but this is the first time a mainstream news channel has based a primetime news programme around popularity of online stories – it will be interesting to see how this compares to traditional bulletins!”

Link to Sky News information on this show is here:

Sky News

Link to a previous blog post about OhMyNews is here:

Previous blog post on OhMyNews

Link to an article I wrote for NMA magazine about OhMyNews is here:
Link to NMA article

The invisible web is becoming visible - thank to projects like BBC Memoryshare!

Today's internet is dominated by 'now'. Facebook status updates (Nick is......), Twitter asking 'What Are You Doing?' - everything is about now or the future. It is therefore about time that someone looked backwards and made it easy to upload old pictures and stories to the web - to date it has been a difficult task and normally involved having to build a personal website.

Blog software tends to allow the earliest date for a post to be 1970, unsuitable for recreating historic diaries or dating old photos (witness my struggles with http://www.hmsbattler.com/). I use Flickr to post photos (www.flickr.com/photos/hmsbattler), but Flickr is not really suitable for recreating a diary and the notes that I have to go with them - to date a blog program has been the best thing (though not ideal as I'm sure you will agree!)

Nick Burcher writes: "The user generated BBC Memoryshare project (reported in NMA on 6th Sep) is an interesting development as it will encourage users to upload previously inaccessible information into the public domain, enabling it to be viewed and searched online." There is common agreement that only a small percentage of human knowledge is available on the internet and moves to grow the amount of information online should be welcomed - after last years review it's good to see the BBC pioneering in this area. This is a massive project, will be promoted across the BBC networks and will hopefully bring a good deal of hidden information into the public domain. It will also become a valuable programme resource.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/memoryshare/

The development of Memoryshare reflects a growing trend where developers are creating applications that will help turn the ‘invisible web’ (the bank of human knowledge that currently can’t be publicly accessed from the internet) into the ‘visible web’. Eg thanks to Web 2.0 programs video clips are being brought to life by You Tube and Facebook tagging is helping to resurrect old photos. Memoryshare will prompt people to look further back and will hopefully prevent information being lost to the course of time.

The Memoryshare announcement comes in the same week that the London Transport museum are publishing their archives of 5,000 historic posters onto the internet – publishing historical information could become the next big thing!


http://www.ltmcollection.org/posters/index.html

Paxman - not in the mood for Newsnight User Generated Content......

A new Newsnight feature called Oh My Newsnight was introduced earlier this year. In introducing it Jeremy Paxman could hardly hide his disdain and stated how pleased he was that the producer was seeking to turn Newsnight from a serious news program into a version of 'Animals do the funniest things!' (This feature didn't really take off and was binned the following day!)

I have just found the clip on YouTube and thought it should be shared. Enjoy!

The essential rise of citizen journalism

NMA ran a feature on OhMyNews.com. Oh My News has led the way in User Generated Content and many traditional publishers are trying to incorporate elements of the OhMyNews model into their products. Think this is a great example of new ideas influencing traditional publishing and I wrote to NMA with this view:

http://www.nma.co.uk/liChannelID/1/Articles/29766/Letters+The+essential+rise+of+citizen+journalism+.html

"It was great to see a full page dedicated to Ohmynews in your recent issue (NMA 05.10.06). One of Zed's predictions for 2006 was the rise of 'citizen reporters' and we cited Ohmynews.com as a leading example of how traditional publishers need to be more responsive to, and interactive with, their readers. Ohmynews was started as an alternative to government controlled newspapers and now has thousands of people contributing articles everyday. It has had massive influence in the region including being the driving force behind the election of a more progressive government.

The deal with the International Herald Tribune will undoubtedly give Ohmynews a wider forum, but the multi-media offerings of traditional publishers are also now developing at pace. In 2005 Norwegian newspaper publisher Schibsted derived 35% of its operating profits from online and, while there's a way to go before they reach anything like this sort of figure, UK publishers are developing quickly. The Daily Telegraph is soon to move to its multi-media news room, the BBC continues to get hundreds of pictures a day sent to yourpics@bbc.co.uk and The Guardian has written over 2m words on blogs in the past five years.

Primarily through Ohmynews, South Korean's learned how they could influence the news. Similarly, UK consumers are quickly becoming more aware of how they can contribute to the news agenda and media owners are learning how to react. After 7/7, video footage from a mobile phone led the News at Ten and the BBC received around 1,000 emails with photo attachments.

The spread of citizen reporting is another example of how Web 2.0 is giving the web a wider audience and encouraging traditional publishers to develop their multi-media offerings. The public consume media brands and aren't worried whether they're reading The Times newspaper, The Times website or listening to a Times podcast. As the on/ offline divide continues to blur this is more evidence of the importance of a multi-media, multi-channel approach to media planning/buying.

Nick Burcher, buying director, Zed"