Breaking News Online: New Media Journalism Epitomized

Wow.

I didn’t even know what FriendFeed was before I discovered BNO. According to its Web site,  BNO News is a “new international news agency targeting breaking and developing stories to a global audience.” Michael van Poppel, a 19-year-old who lives in the Netherlands, created BNO. To learn more about the service, van Poppel and how it came about, read here: van Poppel first began with copy of bin Laden tape

Anyways, FriendFeed is a hybrid of Facebook’s Live Feed and Twitter, which are basically the same thing, however, on Friend Feed, you can say that you “like” something like on Facebook. (While Facebook is making so many asinine changes, why not add a “do not like” or “absolutely hate” or “I just vomited in my mouth when I read your status” option?) Anywho, BNO is basically what most people do anyways, scan the headlines to understand what’s happening and read enough to get the gist of the story. It’s microwaved news. It’s the Toaster Streudel of New York Times and the icing is FriendFeed.Of course, you can also get your BNO News via Twitter as well. BNO has 1,361,841  followers on Twitter, as of right now at 5:12 p.m. on Oct. 29, 2009. CNN only has 595,730 Twitter followers, though CNN Breaking News has over 2 million.

The fact that the news is reported in real-time is a plus. The lack of what I think is appropriate attribution is, where’s the do-not-like button?

Including a BNO News iPhone app (charging $1.99 to download and a monthly subscription fee of 99 cents)was a good strategy because the iPhone is so incredibly handy. Plus, I would assume (I know, I know) that a large proportion of the audience of BNO News would be avid  iPhone users.

Besides following BNO News on FriendFeed or Twitter, users can also receive e-mail alerts.

Hopefully, people will use BNO as a starting point because apparently BNO is as “breaking” as news comes. So, readers can go there first to know what’s happening in the world around them and head to other news outlets to get the rest of the story.

Inverted Pyramids, Comma Placement and “Get the name of the dog”

Yes, your journalista is up and at ‘em at 5:30 in the morning. I just woke up this early for some unknown awful reason and figured since I’m up, I’d give you all a little something to talk about. I was speaking with another journalist about being a journalist and about going to school to become one. We both wondered if it was somewhat strange to go to school to become a journalist instead of learning about something you would cover as a journalist. We both acknowledged that it seems as though having a degree in journalism is almost a prerequisite in media jobs now, though this was not always the case. One of the main reasons I went back to school and again majored in journalism was because there are quite a few things that I want to learn to make myself more competitive. Competition is fierce in today’s job market, especially for us. Graduate school has been a blessing for me. I am learning so many different tools and about history, theory, methods that can only get me closer to true journalista status: a multimedia force to be reckoned with.

Here’s a great blog post about the subject: “Suddenly you became a journalist by getting trained in journalism, as opposed to being trained in science or economics or business or statistics or any of those things journalists write about.”

Never Use A Big Word When A Small One Will Do

http://trueslant.com/jerrylanson/2009/10/27/shell-settle-for-nothing-short-of-plain-english/

Apparently marketing has no boundaries in this day and age. KFC is attempting to have The Grilled Nation added to the UN. I haven’t tried the grilled chicken despite it being free this past Monday.

Follow “Fake AP Stylebook” on Twitter

Journalism humor is a little exclusive, a little nerdy, but nonetheless hilarious. For more journalism humor, check out Overheard in the Newsroom (also on Facebook) and Gawker’s Journalismism. Fun(ny) times in hard times. Enjoy.

Newspaper Circ. Down 10.6 Percent, Nobody’s Surprised

If you are, then um, that’s fine, I suppose. However, I don’t know anyone who is. I don’t know anyone who (reads the newspaper) is not annoyed by his or her daily newspaper and has not said, “I don’t know why I still subscribe.” As a 24-year-old newspaper journalist, I have heard it from people of all walks of life. It doesn’t get any easier to hear, either. You can read the story here: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-fas-fax-daily-newspaper-circ-down-10.6-percent-nyt-loses-ground-as-wsj-/

Alan Mutter says this is the lowest circulation of newspapers since before WWII: http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/10/record-plunge-newspaper-circ-at-pre_26.html

Crash Blossoms

A crash-blossom is an ambiguous or bizarrely worded headline. Here’s a link about the new phrase:

http://www.good.is/post/confusion-caused-by-crash-blossoms/?GT1=48001

Current TV: Still current?

I definitely have loved Current TV since the beginning. I thought it was innovative, exciting and able to deliver news that I cared about that was left out of the mainstream media. I enjoy that everyday people are able to use technology to post their own in-depth reporting stories or their own editorial pieces. One thing that I also love is that if I’m at home, I can turn Current on just like MSNBC or CNN and watch it that way, enabling me to watch it while I continue working on my laptop.

One other innovative aspect of Current, which is not likely found in other online spaces is the Viewer Created Ad Messages (VCAMs). Watch a few here: current.com/vcams.

SuperNews is like Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim for news junkies, and I feel cool just cause I’m watching it.

However, what I might say is my absolute favorite part of Current, is that infoMania presents the 24-hour news cycle in an E! News or Talk Soup format, which I enjoy because I like being entertained while being informed. Sorry if that makes me seem like a less serious newsperson, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who thinks news does not have to be presented in a solemn way. This week’s episode definitely touched on “Balloon Boy Mania” as well as an episode of a show on Univision and even Mo’Nique’s show on BET. Everything is covered! Love it.

I was actually LOLing (ever notice how often we put LOL when we are not in fact, laughing out loud?) about how CNN thought it was just so amusing that the hurricane headed towards Mexico was Hurricane Rick, and they also have an anchor named Rick. “fake chuckle. Uh, it killed a person,” said Conor Knighton, anchor. Watch it: <object id=”ce_91251944″ width=”400″ height=”300″ data=”http://current.com/e/91251944/en_US”><param name=”movie” value=”http://current.com/e/91251944/en_US”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”http://current.com/e/91251944/en_US” width=”400″ height=”300″ wmode=”transparent” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” ></embed></object> (oh, oops, I have to pay $56.97 for the video upgrade. Damn you, Word Press, and your wanting to actually make a profit! Ok, so here’s the link: Balloon Boy Media episode

I like seeing real people present the news, especially news that I had no idea about, and do so in a compelling way. This is the main reason I feel that Current TV is not going away any time soon and that other networks are trying to find ways for to interact with their audiences by asking their them to send them their stories or to provide  various ways in which audience members can be engaged, such as CNN’s live Facebook chats during the 2008 presidential debates.

The question I have is with its cross-platform structure and foundation on two-way communication, is Current TV still current? Isn’t this what YouTube provides as well? Does it need to be a television channel on cable as well?