YouTube to help citizen journalists with dedicated channel

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YouTube has launched a new channel – The YouTube Reporters’ Center (yep Center, American’s are more important than us, everybody knows that).

The channel aims to take advantage of its unique position in terms of user content when it comes to world events. The current situation in Iran has highlighted its importance in terms of showcasing first-hand events – particularly with the tragic case of Neda Agha-Soltan whose death was captured on video and posted onto YouTube.

The channel’s aim is to improve the citizen journalism currently on show on YouTube. There are plenty of instructional videos from the experts such as learning how to prepare for an interview with CBS’ Katie Couric, tips on how to be an investigative reporter from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward or how to report on a humanitarian crisis from Nick Kristof of the New York Times.

The service sounds like a great idea for budding journalists or just ordinary folk who are interested in reporting on news-worthy events in their community. As usual with Google the timing is spot on as well.

(via Google Blog)

Evening Standard fails in its meagre attempts to understand Twitter

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Ah, the Evening Standard, that bastion of dead-tree media. The paper has written an article about Twitter – go read it now, I’ll wait. Back? Okay. There are so many things wrong with the article, but I’ll pick three out for special consideration.

Firstly, the assumption that Twitter is just another social network. It’s not. It’s not about pictures, poking or friends lists. Instead, it’s about microblogging – pushing out short updates that say what’s going on in your life.

Secondly, Nick Curtis says that Twitter messages are limited to 160 characters. He’s wrong. It’s 140. C’mon Nick, the simplest of fact checks would have spotted that one.

Lastly, and relatedly, the utter lack of effort that went into researching the article. Here’s Nick’s Twitter account – @NickCurtis. Looks like he’s made a real effort there.

BBC to revamp news and sport websites

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BBC Journalism has announced that it’s given the News and Sport websites a new look, with phase one of the revamp launching next week.

Pushing its multimedia offerings more strongly, the new websites will include higher profile promotion of the new embedded video service, more emphasis placed on breaking news and live events, wider page designs, and “more ambitious use of pictures”, whatever that means…