AAN Association of Alternative Newsmedia

The Media Oxpecker: July 20, 2012

july 20, 2012 03:08 pm

Some links for a somber Friday afternoon.

Newsosaur Alan Mutter says that most "future of journalism" conferences fail because they don't include the right people. Four key groups that are often missing? Consumers, technologists, marketers, and investors.

A new report by the Pew Research Center says that when news breaks, people check YouTube for videos:
Videos about natural disasters such as the March 2011 earthquake/tsunami in Japan and political upheaval such as the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East were most popular. After the Japanese tsunami, one of the most-watched clips was video taken by a closed-circuit camera at Sendai airport which was then posted by many news organizations.

How do you verify the authenticity of online content? Here's the checklist Storyful has developed to validate videos and images.

Is the new dateline policy at the San Jose Mercury News fair or foul? Editor Dave Butler explains:
Our intent is not to deceive people. We’re not going to put a dateline on something that suggests we’re in Moscow when we’re not. On the other hand, putting a Cupertino dateline on Apple stories makes sense. Do we physically have to be in Cupertino every time? No.
Here's Mathew Ingram on Twitter, Reddit and the newsroom of the future.

What is one of the best performing mobile ad types?
Duh. Phone numbers. When you’re interested in a product or service and can call in a single click and connect at the point you had interest – it’s a win for both customer and merchant.
How mobile is transforming local marketing.

While local ad dollars are moving online, most of the money is bypassing news websites in favor of sites like Groupon, Craigslist, and Autotrader.com.

Local small business owners say that changes to Google Places have made their listings and reviews disappear.

And finally, some of the internet's best and brightest women writers share their thoughts how writing on the internet has changed them:
The Internet hasn't given me a thick skin, because I already had one. I think women are better suited to dealing with commenters than men because we have the experience of having been eighth grade girls. No troll in the comments will ever have as intimate an understanding of all your insecurities as your teenage best friends, so the trolls have no idea what scabs to pick. Men seem more wounded by mean comments, and they expect you to be, too, saying stuff like, "I can't believe the comments on your post! They're so personal!" And then you look and it's like someone calling you "a feminazi with bad hair." And you think, Are you kidding? I have great hair.