Tip: Investigative story ideas
August 29, 2003
Find out about a great list of links to the latest, greatest investigative stories, updated daily…
Blogging the Video Music Awards
August 28, 2003
MTV correspondents have been writing a Weblog leading up to tonight’s Video Music Awards. “What are the MTV News correspondents doing today? What are they thinking about as the MTV Video Music Awards draw near? Is anyone nervous? Crabby? Excited? Planning to never set foot on an elevator again? Read (the) correspondents’ diaries and find out …
ESPN.com: “Blood on the Rings”
August 27, 2003
Great work: Very few online journalism awards have been given for sports reporting, but ESPN.com’s “Blood on the Rings” series was well deserving of the 2002 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting (Affiliated). The series on the torture of Iraqi athletes and other allegations of abuse at the Iraqi Olympic Committee headquarters includes first-person accounts by former Iraqi soccer, volleyball and weightlifting athletes; audio and video galleries; a chat session with Uday Hussein’s former body double; and an ESPN.com poll on the issues.”
Read more great online enterprise work in the Great Work Gallery…
AP to become ‘electronic AP’
August 27, 2003
Tom Curley, the new president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press, says he wants to transform the Associated Press for the electronic age, referring to the company as “eAP” or “the electronic AP.”
Curley said AP’s news operations — from print to broadcast to broadband — would be merged into a single unit that could deliver a multimedia product. “We see eAP as a giant leap forward,” he said.
“We are transforming the AP from a wire service, which we’ve been for 150 years … to an interactive database and news network that connects us, and not just connects us technically, but more importantly connects our common business and journalistic goals,” he told the annual meeting of the New York Newspaper Publishers Association.
TV reporter blogs live from courtroom
August 27, 2003
Here’s a great use of blogging to cover an ongoing news story: KFOR.com (in Oklahoma City) KFOR television reporter Sarah Stewart has been blogging a high-profile murder trial for KFOR.com. KFOR Internet content editor Michael Gunstanson tells Steve Outing that Stewart has been spending days in the courtroom with a laptop and cell-phone connection to the Internet — sending in reports at least once an hour.
Photographers immersed in a digital world
August 27, 2003
“In the last two years, the lives of the photo staff at The Dallas Morning News have changed dramatically as we made the switch to digital photography. We are now totally digital,” writes photographer Ken Geiger. “Our prize-winning staff of 32 photographers shoots more than a million photographs a year. Think about the computer horsepower and disk space it takes to edit and store those photos.
“Not too long ago in my career, I had to take along black plastic sheeting and duct tape on out-of-town assignments so I could turn a hotel bathroom into a darkroom for film processing. Back then I would have advised you that the best way to wash the chemicals off film was to place it, while still on the spool, in the toilet and flush 10 times (three times minimum if you were on a tight deadline).”
CNN.com launches e-mail alerts
August 26, 2003
CNN.com has launched a new free feature, “Your E-mail Alerts,” which allows you to create personal alerts to receive an e-mail notification if a story containing a keyword is published on any CNN site, including CNNmoney.com and SI.com. You can set up to 30 alerts and customize when you receive them.
Related columns:
Google’s news alerts
Topic-tracking e-mail alerts
Flashback: Space shuttle coverage
August 26, 2003
Space shuttle investigators will release their final report on what caused the crash of Columbia on Feb. 1. Here’s a look back at how news sites handled the crash. Nearly every major site blew out the top of their site, devoting the top screen — or more — to the story. Several chose layouts they rarely use, to create additional dramatic impact. CyberJournalist.net put together a gallery of cover snapshots from a sampling of sites and analyzed the effectiveness of their approach. Continue reading…
Building a Better Web Site for Kids
August 26, 2003
SPECIAL FEATURE: Building a Web site for kids has its own list of problems and pitfalls, and all the tools available for use can make the task a bit daunting. In this CyberJournalist.net special feature, Famin Ahmed has talked to the experts and put together writing and design guidelines to creating a great kids’ Web site.
Great news sites for kids
August 26, 2003
Some of the best news sites on the Web are designed specifically for children. Because they are trying to grab youngsters who may not be regular news readers, the sites go out of their way to make their sites dynamic and interactive — emphasizing features like polls, trivia and reader contributions. News sites oriented toward adults can learn a lot from these kids sites.
Here are some of the best news sites for kids:
• Yahooligans! News.com
• Scholastic News Zone
• WeeklyReader.com
• Time for Kids
• CBBC Newsround
• KidsPost.com
•
ABCNEWS4Kids (no longer updated sadly)
Related CyberJournalist.net feature: How to build better Web sites for kids