The fruits of my semester-long labour (see illustration left) in this course (Online Journalism in DCU) are now available for all to see on the page above called Final project. Read it, comment on it, do what you will. I will not take criticism but I may take money…

A technical innovation, on this very website, proves in yet another way how the internet is shaping journalism. If you look to your right you (should) see a little map of the world decorated with red dots.

Now all of those dots represent people(s), in those areas of the world, who have seen this blog. Whether or not they were wowed and impressed by the content remains to be seen but they were here. Now, knowing this I can see that, through whatever searches or links, people from the US but mostly Ireland have stumbled upon this corner of the web.

If I were commercially minded then I could intentionally begin posting stories tailored to the areas from which people are logging on and hope that this would result in higher numbers of visits and, through this, advertising could become an option.

It is almost like reverse news customisation. You don’t have to do anything, I’ll just do area appropriate news to you.

Ah the good ol’ Examiner, or Irish Examiner as its referred to round these parts. Analysing the website with regard to the addition of participatory journalism features will be like asking a trusted old friend if he might need some plastic surgery. Its both innapropriate and frankly, quite insulting.

But this is the way online media is going and change they must. The website itself is highly restrictive on interactivity of any kind and seems to abhor the thought of mere citizens contributing to its news agenda or content.

There is no linking, no facility for readers to post comments, and no section which encourages reader’s to submit their pictures or other types of media. Its almost as if there is an “if you don’t work for us, we don’t want it” attitude in play.

Areas where there is the potential for participatory or citizen journalism are everywhere throughout the website. Things which could be considered would be forums for readers to discuss issues raised on th website’s news section, an area where readers can upload images, or videos or stories, or the facility whereby readers could access a page catering for their locality and edit the page in a similar fashion to wikipedia.

NowPublic is a citizen journalism site which dedicates itself to news on a global level. The question as to whether or not it is ‘proper’ journalism is interesting in that the featured stories on the homepage are listed as the top five crowd powered stories of the past 24 hours yet they are hardly news at all.

There is, further down the page, lists of news by section which is more along the lines of proper news and there is a ‘local’ section which gives news according to your location. This works as proper journalism yet the content isn’t always as ‘newsy’ as one might expect.

There is a danger that, on this website in particular, people are simply prioritising the gossipy or celebrity stories and for a website that purports itself to be a news site this is misleading.

It doesn’t seem that this site adds to the news in any particular fashion if someone is simply accessing the site for headlines. They can be found on this site but only if you go digging.

The AUSC Annenberg Online Journalism Review is an interesting website in that it focuses on the media and the actions and performance of online media outlets.

Take, for example, a piece about the latest  debate between Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The traditional media were accused and most specifically ABC who hosted the debate, of asking easy questions and indulging in gossip and trivialities.

In this discussion of the media, there is a poll which asks the question; who is providing better coverage of the race for democratic nomination, Newspaper and Television of Online Outlets? At the moment, online is winning by a cleear margin. This highlights the benefits of the interactivity provided by online journalism.

It provides an arena to question the media through media-related mediums and to offer the opportunity for people to have a say through voting and commenting on what they think is important.

The French are at it too. It seems that every country from Korea to the U.S., and now France have some sort of online outlet for the aspiring citizen journalists they house in their towns and cities.

French website Citizenside aims to:

CitizenSide aims at creating the world’s largest amateur and/or independent reporters community with a commercial goal, thanks to an easy to use and transparent system, and a commission rate much more important than traditional agencies.

Whether there is something lost in translation here or not I am unsure but I thought the whole drive behind citizen journalism was that its value system was pure and incorruptible as it had no ties to a commercial imperative?

Again, if a journalist is being paid or receiving some type of financial renumeration then are they not simply a journalist? Or is a journalist both a journalist and a citizen journalist? What is the distinction?

Back to this website, however, and regardless of their aspirations it is clear by the stories which feature on the front page that this website is still at an amateur level.

There is a story from February on the home page and the headlines section hasn’t been updated in a week. Also, the stories that do feature are predominantly French and concern demonstrations by students and other French school related incidents. At a guess One could assume that Citizenside’s writership is made up of French school-children.

Yet more on citizen journalism and user generated content. A community platform website, Kluster, has announced plans to launch a daily online newspaper with the content generated solely by users.

Crowdsourcing or whatever you choose to call it is almost infectious and this new development from Kluster shows the potential for the medium. Those who contribute also receive a share of the ad revenue generated by the paper. This is dependent on the amount of “watts” the writer invests in the story, “watts” are the currency of the website.

This idea of writer’s or citizen journalists receiving renumeration for their work is interesting. Other sites such as Helium also do this. Obviously this is an encouragement factor to increase the level (and hopefully standard) of content online but does it go against the principles of citizen journalism?

If these people are being paid are they not simply journalists?

A website which has decided to test out the inevitable rise of citizen journalism is Newassignment. This website which, ironically enough, was born of a blog post, aims to establish the merits of open-source journalism in collaboration with various news partners.

Newassignment sets out its stall and declares that it wants to:

“Spark innovation in “open platform” journalism, distributed reporting and what’s now called crowdsourcing. These are forms made possible by the Web and by the falling costs for large numbers of people to locate each other, share information, and collaborate across distance.”

It does this in collaboration with online news providers such as Wired, The Huffington Post and ESPN.com. The creator of the website, Jay Rosen, is attempting to see how well a hybrid of amateur and professionalism journalism works through various experiments.

Ding ding! Its the battle of the websites. The Washington Post versus Aljazeera. The rules are simple folks, this fight will be won or lost on advertising.

First to the blue corner, The washington Post. The home page, upon first appraisal is relatively advertisement free. There are no banner ads and the headlines section is unobstructed. There is a big advertisement on the right hand side of the page but it is relatively ‘quiet’ in that there are no flashing lights or other bells and whistles. Also, this ad is for the upmarket Mariott Hotels group. Whether this is indicative of the market The Post attracts or a reason why the ad refrains from tacky tactics is irrelevant. As pages go, this is dominated by news and editorial content.

As one scrolls down the page there is a surprising lack of advertising. Once one gets to the very bottom there is a small ad on the right hand side but doesn’t seem to be more than that. There is, however, a list of ‘Featured Advertiser links’. There are no images or graphics associated with this list but it is laid out in a similar fashion to the other lists surrounding it. There is also a small panel, on the same side of the page, which has links to travel articles on the website and next to this is a link for Budget Travel.

Now to the red corner, home of Aljazeera. This home page has a huge banner ad across the verytop of the page, a search bar underneath and then another banner ad of roughly the same size. Along with these two rather large advertisements there is an imposing ad running down the right hand side of the page, similar to the Post. Also similar to the Post, it is mostly editorial content for the rest of the page until the end where it is interrupted by another banner ad.

PROMINENCE OF ADS

With regard to the prominence of the ads then Aljazeera wins, hands down. the huge banner ads are imposing and rather loud. They break up the news section of the page in an unhelpful way and imply a reliance, ont the part of the website, on advertising revenue. The Washington Post, in contrast, declines to place advertising at the top of its page and prefers to use the right hand side of the page. This, in a way, frames the news section and almost makes it more accesible. The advertising further down the Post page is not obvious and could be seen as less intrusive as the advertising on Aljazeera’s page.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN ADS AND EDITORIAL

The distinction on the Post page is relatively clear for the ad down the right hand side of the page. Its a colourful ad whereas all the other content is headlines. As one scrolls down, however, there is less of a distinction. The ad for Budget Travel looks like it could be content about certain destinations and it is in a panel with actual articles on the website about similar destinations. The list of featured Advertiser links could just as easily be a list of related stories and the links themselves are written like headlines.

Aljazeera, on the other hand, have these huge imposing banner ads which, although they compromise the news ethis of the page, couldn’t be confused with editorial content. Granted the position of these is intrusive and they look rather garish, but there is a clear distinction between them and the content of the website.

THE VERDICT

The Washington Post aims to maintain the quality of its product by not placing tacky or expressive ads on its page. They do, however, attempt to minimalise the impact of the advertising by dressing it up as editorial content. Visitors to the Aljazeera site do not run the risk of inadvertantly clicking on ads thinking they are editorial content but must put up with the compromised look of the page.

In trying to give a clean, clear news home page, The Post fails to distinguish clearly between content and  advertising thereby failing the reader. Aljazeera, by detracting from the visual appeal of their page, show the reader clearly what is advertising and what is news content.

WINNER (by virtue of ethical knockout): Aljazeera

ITN has harnessed the global appeal and potential of video sharing site, Youtube. They have launched their news channel on the website and promise to deliver “breaking news videos” to the masses.

They are also a music news channel to accompany their showbiz channel launched last october. As reported on Journalism.co.uk, Nicholas Wheeler of ITN said:

“With such an appetite for professional video content on YouTube we’re excited to expand the breadth of our content with these two new services and delighted that YouTube see the value of such content on their platform,”

I’m sure they are. This highlights the value of quick, accesible news bulletins for people to consume when they want as opposedd to traditional forms of media and news delivery.

The channel provides news in a purely visual format with no commentary on the videos save for the comments people can post at the end of the video.

This will also open doors to the convergence of citizen journalism with traditional journalism as people with their cameras and camera phones will, in theory, be able to post their own news bulletin videos for an audience.