this headline was crowdsourced

It’s not you…

benbryant — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:47:15 +0000

After a dismal 4 posts, I’m putting this blog on hold. I need to drop all my side projects to focus on my job at Buzz Magazine, my main blog Carbon Negative Wales, and my freelance theatre criticism for various media outlets. So this is an indefinite hiatus. It was fun while it lasted. Who knows – maybe in a few years…?

Reality, only realer

benbryant — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:13:03 +0000

Online Journalism Blog posted this about augmented reality and the impact it could have on journalism on Wednesday:

If you can wave a smartphone in front of the Niagara Falls to get stats about the popular destination, why not point it in the general direction of a location of interest and generate a digital screen of the latest news from the region in question? It would be nice to see publications invest in providing local, breaking news through applications downloaded on smartphones, for instance. This would also allow national publications to “localize” themselves. Some radio stations already do this by providing news and traffic updates based on the location of a user’s handheld device.

It would be great to be able to wave your iphone over the immediate area you’re in and get hyperlocal stats and news on your surroundings. The post also points out that many augmented reality apps are based on social sites, where you’re looking at lots of user generated content. It’s good to see what critics have to say but, as listings and What’s On sites have already discovered, users place a lot of trust in crowdsourced opinions: the more sources, it seems, the better. Post author Karthika Muthukumaraswamy also makes some interesting points about potential ad revenues and context.

YourCardiff launches & Guardian beatblogger announced

benbryant — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:14:33 +0000

In a double win for local news this week, the Guardian announced its Cardiff beatblogger as Helen Waldram as WalesOnline launched its local communities site YourCardiff. Immediate results weren’t hugely exciting: the Guardian’s Cardiff news site is nowhere to be found (we can presume they’ll be launching some kind of blog soon), while YourCardiff is still rather skeletal and apparently suffering from a few technical problems (I can’t click on my area in the Areas tab, for instance, because it reels off the bottom of the page). Still, bloggers have started posting updates and there’s a healthy selection of links and photos to give it that warm, fuzzy community feeling, along with intriguing tabs Schools and Datastore.

While the two are currently lacking content, they’re both at the cutting edge of hyperlocal journalism, and it’ll be interesting to see how they source content from their communities over the next few weeks.

Ed Walker is the YourCardiff online communities editor, and among the bloggers you can find John Rostron (Swn organiser) and Benny Austwick (notoriously prolific tweeter and blogger),

FIRST!

benbryant — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:48:24 +0000

Hello world. It’s me again, with a blog that consists largely of my musings on the biggest problem facing journalists today: how the hell are we going to make any money?

Or, more pertinently, how are we going to make enough money to provide quality journalism?

This is a question that’s particularly important to me, given that I’m trying to make a career of it (and the odds are stacked against me somewhat). But it’s relevant to everyone else, too, for reasons that I will hammer home over the next few months.

So I’ll be talking about social media, new tools for journalists, fresh challenges for journalists, and the rapidly evolving face of journalism.

Hello world!

benbryant — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:30:26 +0000

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!