Literary journalism: The not-so-bad repo...

This is a guest post from my current work experience placement Georgina Stokes. Georgina is studying media and communications at Nottingham Trent University and has a great style of writing. You can follow Georgina on Twitter too. Literary journalism: The not-so-bad reporting style? Georgina Stokes While studying journalism in Canada last year, I was taught to report news in an almost bullet point fashion, with one sentence per paragraph and minimalist details. Sure, description was encouraged, but only enough to paint a general picture within the audiences’ minds....

Live blog with Matt Eltringham from the ...

Matt Eltringham is here at Sheffield University to talk to the Web MAs about how the BBC use social media. He starts by telling the group about his role at the BBC. Only half the UGC hub was up and running on July 7th 2005. They received 10-15,000 emails from all over London telling the BBC what was happening. They didn’t have the capacity to deal with all the information, but looking back they had credible information about every single bomb that morning. Users spend on average: 1 minute/day on the BBC 11 minutes/day on Facebook Social media strategy social...

Video news on the web: Is it just the sa...

My colleague at the University of Sheffield Marie Kinsey sent me a link to a video by University of British Columbia journalism student Daniel Hallen. The piece has been nominated for a Canadian Online Publishing Award. Chickens to roost in Vancouver backyards There’s no denying it’s a good piece of journalism – but is it web video? In Marie’s words: “Look how closely it follows broadcast conventions.” I subscribe to the web rule that ‘simple is best’ and show the web students this video on pocket-sized journalism (from the...

Web journalism vs. blogging...

Hi! I’m Adrienne, a work experience student from the University of Sheffield. Christine teaches us Web Journalism MA students about writing for the web, and she asked me to write a bit about what I’ve learned. The first thing I’ve learned is that although a huge and growing number of people get their news primarily online, most I’ve spoken to don’t have a clear idea of what “web journalism” actually is. When I tell people what course I’m doing, I generally get a reaction along the lines of, “So, is that, like,...