It’s not that I’m pessimistic about the future for good journalists. Quite the opposite, in fact. Journalism isn’t dying; it’s just in a period of extreme volatility. And in any time of volatility, there’s huge room for opportunity. But you’re not going to learn how to exploit it in a stuffy classroom taught by people who got there by working at newspapers.

In a nod to the times Multimedia Journalism students from UT Austin’s School of Journalism are live blogging the event throughout the weekend.

As the Symposium is still going here are some of the most interesting points raised.

In this video James Moroney III, publisher and CEO of The Dallas Morning News talks about the challenges for ‘legacy’ media moving online.

In a challenging and provocative keynote speech Steven Kydd of Demand Media discussed the controversy of their first year in business.

We’re not trying to create full-time jobs, we’re trying to give freelancers a great opportunity for content production. If you ask any of our writers, they all have very different reasons for why Demand works for them.

Researchers Robert Bergland, Lisa Crawford, Sarah Noe, David Hon conducted an interesting, although unfinished, study of interactivity which shows that online newspapers in the UK are leading the way in new media production.

On the face of it this is sound advice, journalists need to understand how to create content that can be properly indexed by Google – why produce content that cannot be found.

But the AP guide and SEO are not utterly different. Google’s, or any other search engine’s, SEO guidlines are simply require online publishers to describe data as fully as possibility. And it is often very simple – eg use long link text to increase the users ability to identify page links, don’t open pages in new windows (this confuses page readers and search engines) and always use ‘alt text’ to describe images (so Google image search can find it)

One of the many criticisms of online news is its lack of serendipity.

The argument is simple but important, in newspapers of old (the ones on paper) editors had control over the placement and prioritisation of articles and images. The more important they felt the story was the more prominent its place on the page. Obvious as it may see editors had a more important role than that- they had the power to educate readers by combining different stories on the same page.

Online that power does not exist. While editors could include selected content on the homepage encouraging users to read articles they might otherwise have not became (speaking as a web developer) more of a site design challenge than editorial one.
But few people regularly read the homepage. Search engines direct users to articles independently of the rest of the paper. Readers become editors searching for and choosing content that they agree with on platforms they approve of. In this system reader’s view and opinions are not so much challenged but reinforced.

Google News has offered customisation based on personal preferences and web history for some time. Google’s reach, however powerful, was limited to the placement and order of content on its news search site.

With “Open Graph” Facebook wants to customise the web according to user’s profiles. What this will mean for news media who sign up for the site is the ability to customise content according to readers Facebook profiles.

A visitor to CNN or The New York Times who’s Facebook content mentions sports will be served with sports content rather than editorially chosen content. Editors further loose their ability to challenge the reader. To quote Lord Reith;

He who prides himself on giving what he thinks the public wants is often creating a fictitious demand for low standards which he will then satisfy.

The challenge for online news is to decide if it wants to educate, entertain or inform.

Google, as you would expect, is particularly adapt at using new media to tell stories online. While this blurres the line between PR and journalism Google’s use of new media demonstrates just how an average story can be told in a different way.

This is perhaps a perfect example of new media journalism by Google – In an update to the company’s own website Google has used Google Maps to detail the number of requests it has received from governments for the removal of information from data stored on its servers.

In a posting accompanying the website Google says “Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products.”

Of the 10 requests made by the Irish government Google says it complied with about 50% of them although the website does not provide more information about what information the government asked be removed.

Ireland is one of 44 countries, including China, Russia, Turkey, listed on the Google site who requested the removal of data.

The Brazilian government who made the most number of requests at 291 of which 82.5% were fully of partially complied with.

Germany made the highest number of removal requests of any European state at 188. The company complied with 94.1% of the German requests of which the majority the majority, 109, were court mandated.

The United States government made 123 removal requests of which 80.5% were successful.

While this might be a good example of new media telling a fairly standard story in an interesting way it also illustrates the difficulties fuzzy line between PR and journalism.

With a mix of informal language, citizen journalist as well as staff reporter content live blog are created in a similar way to a Twitter account. The page is updated through the day with numerous short updates on a specific topic, often with rich media embedded.

Last week’s eruption of the volcano under Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland saw RTE, The Guardian, BBC News and The New York Times report the eruption’s aftermath in this “live article” format.

The challenge with news blogs and live articles come from the mailable nature of online content. Live articles can be seen as a ‘twitterisation’ of news media. It places reporters and media organisations in difficult situations- users want real-time information (look at the response to the death of Michael Jackson) but verifying such information is difficult to do at speed. While this is an issue for 24 news stations it becomes a greater issue for blogs as content remains online as long as its publisher exists.

Some 77% of TV newsrooms have a Twitter account while 36% us it “constantly.” Only 13% say they do not use social media at all.

Papper: Radio News Does not Make Use of Social Media from Poynter Institute on Vimeo.

According to Mr Anderson

The internet is not like trying to drink from a firehose but rather like trying to drink from Niagara Falls. For any media professional trying to remain up to speed on digital content trends, it is often overwhelming. I’ve had to develop a lot of methods and constantly change the tools I use to manage this torrent of information. I’ve mentioned Popurls before as an easy one-stop shop to follow internet buzz, and once registered you can personalise the site to show your favourite digital content sites first.

But this does not mean that it always get it right.

In 2007 a Reuters photojournalist, Namir Noor-Eldeen, was killed in Iraq after being fired upon by a U.S. helicopter gunship. The photojournalists were among at least eight people killed in the same incident.

According to The Pentagon the military personnel mistook the journalists’ cameras for weapons and opened fire believing them to be ‘insurgents.’

This week the website WikiLeaks released a video that they claimed to have obtained from sources inside The Pentagon. The video shows the point-of-view of the camera mounted on the helicopter gun. It also shows the conversation between the military personnel on the aircraft and back at their Military Command HQ.

The video shows the gunship fire on the group of men, circle them and then fire again anyone still walking.

In The Guardian’s account of the video its article contains only one link. This is to the Wikileaks page http://collateralmurder.com/.

From a technical perspective (and from a search engine’s perspective) such a link in the body copy of a web document is read as a ‘recommendation’ by this site to the Wikileaks site. Therefore in this instance The Guardian is not only reporting the Wikileaks site but is actively recommending it as an authoritative site (there are very simply way to link to an external site without providing such a ‘recommendation’).

So are there implications to linking to other sites?

I’m not saying that The Guardian should not link to external content, it definitely should, but does new media praxis raise new ethical questions.

In this article there are three parties involved, WikiLeaks, Reuters and The Pentagon. I believe that liking to one of these.

I would make the argument that when a writer/blogger links to an article or document that are telling their readers that in order to understand full what I am saying you also need to understand this other important content.

In this case the reader would also need to understand The Pentagon’s and Reuters positions to fully understand the story. Of course free will plays a role in the online environment, users could if they wished search these sources on Google but if the journalist/blogger takes it upon themselves to provide this additional information should they not do so as fully and as transparently as possible?