Amy Webb didn’t have to look far for an example of how Spark Camp, an "un-conference" she helps organize, pulls disparate people together for an informal exchange of ideas and problem solving. Co-hosted by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americasand the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, Spark Camp attracted an impressive variety of talented people to spend three days in January — in Austin — to ruminate on the crossroads of data and online journalism.
For the third time in the past year, the Associated Press (AP) has updated its social media guidelines, this time to deal with correcting erroneous tweets and deleting tweets, as well as proper procedure for designating a re-tweet, according to a press release from the news agency.
After Canadian Twitter users defied a decades-old ban by tweeting last year's election results before polls had closed throughout the country, the government announced Friday, Jan. 13 -- via Twitter, no less -- the repeal of the section of the Canada Elections Act that prohibits the broadcast or transmission of election results before all ballots have been cast, reported the Huffington Post Canada.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security regularly monitors dozens of websites, including Facebook, Twitter, WikiLeaks, YouTube, and even the New York Times Lede Blog, Global Voices Online, and the Blog del Narco, in order to "collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture," reported Reuters on Thursday, Jan. 11.
One-third of U.S. owners of smartphones or tablet computers said they had downloaded news apps in the previous 30 days, according to newly released results from a Nielson survey. Still, news apps came in fifth, behind games, maps/navigation, music, and social networking apps.
One year after the Jan. 8 shooting in Arizona that prompted NPR and other media outlets to incorrectly report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had been killed, Poynter looks back at how so many journalists got it wrong. Poynter even named the false reports of Giffords' death the worst error of 2011.
Brazilian television broadcaster Rede TV! broke its contract with journalist Rita Lisauskas on Jan. 5, 2012 for "revealing proprietary information about the channel," according to the column Zapping in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. In December 2011, the anchor for the television news magazine "Rede TV! News" was suspended after she complained on her Facebook page about late salary payments at the broadcaster, reported the newspaper O Jornal.
The Dominican online newspaper Diario Digital RD denounced a cyber attack against its Google and Twitter accounts, Facebook profile, and damage to its subscription database, reported the publication on its website.
Campaign trail coverage of the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday, Jan. 3, is in full swing. By the end of December, the campaign was the most-covered story in U.S. media for the fifth time in seven weeks, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
At the start of 2012, media organizations and news sites are looking back at the top stories of 2011 (see this CNN list for a good run-down), suggesting new year's resolutions for newsrooms, and even offering a few trends that will "reshape digital news in 2012," as Poynter did.