AJR News Wrap: Drone Drama in Arkansas and the Growing Power of Video
AJR News Wrap
May 2, 2014


EDITOR’S NOTE: Links to selected media news from the past week.

 ‘I NEEDED THIS’: That’s what Tim Pool, head of live news at Vice Media, said about the app he launched this week called Taggly that stamps author credit on photos or videos.

Tim Pool and Drake Martinet of Vice News

Tim Pool and Drake Martinet

“With my photos I’m getting 50 to 100 retweets and there’s no way for anyone to know the photo was mine, I’m not getting credit for it and then it’s getting picked up and put on news websites and I’m thinking how do I get my website on there,” he told journalism.co.uk.

[At right, Vice News head of platform Drake Martinet poses for a selfie with Pool and posts it to Instagram using Taggly to credit the photograph, in the lower left-hand corner.]

NEWSROOM JOBS FOR HUNGRY PEOPLE AND GAMERS: Gawker Media posted a job ad saying that “a game developer might be who we need” to develop Gawker’s blogging platform. In other job news, Vox is hiring a story editor, which “is a job people only have in the movies,” Verge Managing Editor Nilay Patel tweeted. There are also free snacks at Vox, according to the job ad.

MASTERING SOCIAL JOURNALISM: CUNY is developing a master’s degree in social journalism, writes CUNY Graduate School of Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis in Medium. The proposed year-long program would include courses in journalism; “listening,” defined as interacting and learning from diverse communities; data; tools; and an “intense practicum serving a community of the student’s choice.”

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT VIDEO AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Grey Lady has “truly moved beyond words,” video general manager Rebecca Howard said at the Digital Content Newfronts, Capital New York reports. The Times is producing more than 430 videos every month and has trained 150 journalists to shoot smartphone videos, all as part of the Times digital growth strategy.

TORNADO DRONE FOOTAGE UNDER FEDERAL SCRUTINY: The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a journalist’s use of a drone to document a tornado’s aftermath in Arkansas, reports Mashable. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which first broke the story, said the agency “prohibits the commercial use of the devices, including for reporting.” The journalist, the Democrat-Gazette reported, used a small drone to obtain footage. He told the paper that aerial footage “gives a sense of perspective about how bad it is. And if people know how bad it is, people can help.”

VIRAL POSTS AND SPONSORED CONTENT AT THE ONION: The Onion has found a new way to mock other news organizations: Clickhole.com, which will parody viral content sites such as Upworthy and BuzzFeed. Slated to launch in June, it will feature listicles, slideshows and quizzes, including “Which pizza should I have for dinner tonight?,” the New York Business Journal reports. Also interesting: The Onion says it will run sponsored content alongside other content with “barely any distinction between them,” The Journal Reports. So that pizza quiz? It would be “presented by” Pizza Hut.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: Vox is pairing complete interview transcripts with more traditional stories, as Joshua Benton explains in Nieman Journalism Lab. Readers can click through the two different story forms, allowing testing of user interactions with each.

LOOK AT THOSE AWESOME CREATIVE JOURNOS IN THE U.S.: UK journalists need to up their game, argues journalism professor Richard Sambrook in The Guardian, pointing to vibrant discussions in the U.S. over whether reporters should code, as well as the startups blooming in the digital landscape here, including FiveThirtyEight and Vox. “If the UK is to continue to be recognised as a world leader in media – with key players in demand by global firms – it has to develop a cadre of graduates with the cross-disciplinary skills that are shaping the industry.”

THE $1 BILLION BUZZFEED: Last year, in looking for acquisitions, Disney considered buying BuzzFeed, The New York Times reported. However, the giant multinational corporation changed its mind when it saw the growing digital media website’s $1 billion price tag.  

This post includes contributions from Lisa Rossi, Adam Offitzer, Mike King, Kristin Musulin, Mary Clare Fischer, Sarah Siguenza and Jim Bach.

Comments

Leave a Comment