Works with NPR: National Public Radio.

Their audience has grown because more and more people are driving and getting caught in traffic. With nothing to do in the car, they tune into NPR.

Use images in radio journalism by painting it in your head. Online, we need pictures that speak for themselves.

Arts, entertainment, and feature stories use video the most. News stories have  a way of going on then off the news grid. Arts, entertainment, music stories tend to stick around and receive clicks/hits even weeks after.

“You wanna be good at everything. You wanna cover the story so that everyone comes to you. So the big questions is, what part of the story is our audience coming to view and what parts have they seen from other sources?”

Don’t cover the events, just the implications. – Matt Thompson, NPR

4 uses for Foursquare for journalists

Foursquare is primarily for letting your friends know where you are and figuring out where they are. Its basically a location-based social networking game. Secondarily, it’s for collecting points, prize “badges,” and eventually, coupons, for going about your everyday business.

I have been using foursquare for just over 3 weeks now and it is addicting. Every time I visit a new place, I am eager to check-into the establishment on my mobile phone using the foursquare application. In just 21 days out I have 141 check-ins and 11 badges!

Finding contacts

• After checking into an establishment on foursquare, I am alerted if any of my friends are also checked into the same place as me. It’s also great when friends are looking to meet up for lunch. They can see where I am eating at and join me or stop in to say hello.

Tips

• Users can add ‘tips’ to locations – a feature which is currently underused but has potential for leads as well as. Now when you enter a restaurant you have never been to before and ask the server what tastes the best, you can get another answer other than, “everything tastes great”.

Distribution

• This new feature to foursquare will greatly increase it’s marketability. Foursquare has already signed deals with Metro in Canada, Bravo TV and the FT. The potential is obvious: content directly relevant to your location. The big issue for Foursquare is whether it can achieve the scale that most publishers need. Award discounts and promotions to users would frequently shop or check in to the establishment.

• Work at a small local newspaper, either weekly or daily, to get the experience and advice from people who have been doing the things you want to do.
• Now-a-days with media, media companies want to hire people that can do the job of 5 other people.
• If your not going to change, you are going to be left behind. Do it all, don’t limit yourself.
• Do not rely on media. Love it, but don’t count on it.
• Computer, camera, microphone, ready to work hard.
• Most frustrating thing by the time you get a camera it is basically outdated.

This post from my tech blog called, Online Journalism, talks about the five prediction for journalism in the next 25 years.

We constantly talk about newspapers fading away in our class discussions, but we have a tendency to cast the future as an exaggerated present.

Prediction 1: People will still be predicting the death of newspapers

Prediction 2: Prices will head in opposite directions

Prediction 3: Journalism will be more like a musician’s career than a job-for-life

Prediction 4: There will be no single media industry

Prediction 5: Online journalism will become more specialised – and more predictable

These are some big predictions for journalism. One of the most intriguing to me is #1, newspapers fading away. I agree with the blog statement that newspapers will be around even 25 years from now. Its not a profitable business but there are so many other benefits beyond the revenue from advertising and cover price. People will still enjoying seeing their picture of the front of a newspaper, the second page or even the third page. I’d say it is more exciting than seeing your picture on a website. Everyone is online these days, big deal.

Is investigative journalism still alive today even with our current technological advances in social media?

Investigative journalism can be described in many ways: “uncovering the hidden”; “expensive”; “difficult”; “requiring dedication”; “has impact”; “holding power to account”

The hidden

• So does journalism become investigative when that newness involves uncovering the hidden?

I would argue that it is anything that our audience couldn’t see before – it could be a victim’s story, a buried report, 250,000 cables accessible to 2.5 million people, or even information that is publicly available but has not been connected before.

A journalist that is able to uncover the hidden and provide his target audience with a breaking news story is subject to individual perception.

Narrative and authority

• it takes an established media outlet to get official reaction

But this does not mean we need journalists – it means that we need publishers and broadcasters. There is a difference.

Demystification

• If we can swallow our pride long enough to stop debating the membership requirements of who and what can be in ‘our club’ – whether that’s investigative journalism, watchdog journalism, or just ‘journalism’, we might just have time to help those students – and those who can’t afford to be students, or indeed journalists – do it better.