I may not be able to travel to Austin this year to attend international conferences about online journalism, but I can always track down the tweets of people who are there blogging. The Nieman Center produced an in-depth online story composed of tweets from the International Symposium on Online Journalism in April.
What’s so fascinating about an online journalism conference? The talks allow visitors to peek into the future of web-based media and see new developments that may be on the horizon. Reading the notes is like watching a TED talk – it’s a way to discover new ideas.
If you’re curious about this topic, I encourage you to read the full story. But here are some highlights which attracted my interest:
- Online, finding one’s niche is crucial because people subdivide based on their interests, values and views. (I’ve been working on rebranding this blog partly for that reason.)
- Marshall McLuhan said, “Every medium begins as a container for the old.” We can see this in the evolution of newspaper websites as they transition toward a digital model.
- It would be useful to create new models for in-depth journalism that are oriented toward online audiences.
- In Africa, mobile phone use and community media are catching on, especially with younger audiences.
- Newspapers are struggling to develop new business models and cross-pollinate their skills with technology expertise to increase their innovation.
- Data journalism is changing how people define journalism as a profession. Some people are moving from computer science into journalism.
- The LA Times is automating the production of some simple news stories.
- Students in one research study were blocking out environmental news from their lives because they felt powerless to change the situations.
These are just a few ideas which caught my attention. If you want more information, here’s the live video of the event.
Kat Friedrich 