Category archives: Journalism

On which vs that and who vs whom

At one time I worked as a newspaper sub-editor. The job’s occupational hazards included getting involved in conversations about the correctness of certain kinds of punctuation, the usage of which vs that and who vs whom, and devilish subjects like the subjunctive mood and whether or not ‘internet’ should take a capital I. Those conversations are mercifully …

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We sell the antidote to information overload: The Economist

The Economist’s Tom Standage spoke to Joseph Lichterman at Nieman Lab recently about the newspaper’s digital strategy and “the limit of a model based on advertising”. I was struck by the clarity of purpose expressed in these paragraphs: We sell the antidote to information overload — we sell a finite, finishable, very tightly curated bundle …

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Let’s bring UX design to the news experience

I read a great post by Jared Spool this morning on ‘The curse of a mobile strategy’. The killer pull-out quote for me is this one: The problem with a mobile strategy is it’s about the medium of delivery, not what is being delivered. It focuses on the technology questions. Do we build a native app or a web-based …

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Rental house prices & Antarctica mission: visual stories online

I’m enjoying the work coming out of the NZ Herald’s data ‘department’ (not sure it’s big enough to warrant that description but I like the sound of it). This week Harkanwal Singh, the Data Editor, has published an interactive map of New Zealand showing changes in rental prices for houses since 2001, and 2006. It’s fascinating …

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Top-watched online videos in 2013: comedy, educational, and how-tos

One in four US adult internet users has uploaded a video online, according to the Online Video 2013 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. One in five has posted a video that they created themselves. The top-watched categories are Comedy, Educational and How-to videos, followed by Music. Forty one per cent of …

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‘Readers with more mobile devices stay subscribed longer’

A couple of interesting notes in Sarah Marshall’s journalism.co.uk coverage of the 2013  Mobile Media Strategies conference in London. She quotes Chris Duncan, customer sales director at News UK, which owns The Sun and The Times. He said: 67 per cent of sales completed on mobile devices, with a 50:50 split between those signing up …

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We’re loving video on our phones: NZ mobile use in 2013

Some catch-up reading on mobile and tablet use in New Zealand in 2013. Mobile devices now account for more than a third of TVNZ’s Ondemand service video streams | StopPress Mobile devices now account for more than a third of TVNZ’s Ondemand service video streams and are a key part of the growth in video …

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“What is written is more important than who writes it”

In case you missed it, The Economist explained recently why it doesn’t use author bylines on stories. One reason is that stories are often written co-operatively and edited heavily, “the work ofThe Economist‘s hive mind, rather than of a single author”. The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is …

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