The best journalism articles you might have missed

Image: crsan on Flickr

Another three months have flown by and it’s been a busy quarter with lots of new articles on online video and entrepreneurial journalism on the blog.  

It’s been a bit quieter this spring as I’ve been working on several film and training commissions.

A normal (twice-weekly) blog service should resume shortly. In the mean time, here’s some of the most popular articles on this site since March. For earlier ones, click here.

Online video

What makes you a visual storyteller? – we talk a lot about ‘visual storytelling’ but what does it mean? And how do you do it?

The end of television and what that means for you – why I think television’s days are numbered (and why that’s great)

Five principles every video editor needs to know – from the 1920s, the earliest principles from the masters of cinema.

How to let transitions tell the story – how can our use of transitions make us better storytellers?

How I used motion graphics to explain the AV referendum – In May I produced a film to explain the UK referendum.

Two amazing video stories about loss – two more examples of extraordinary video storytelling.

My process for developing new video projects – I explain how I develop my visual storytelling ideas.

How to make online video that really engages audiences (and how to utterly fail it it) – one issue, two very different ways of using online video.

Entrepreneurial journalism

Can we teach journalists to be entrepreneurial? – I argue we must teach journalists to be entrepreneurial – for their own sake, and for the profession.

The age of the online publisher – and five people who are embracing it – some inspiring examples of people who have become online publishers.

Five big reasons to run a small news business – I explain the big advantages of running an intentionally small business.

Why layers could be the secret to improving online video – some ideas I helped come up with for the future of video with Mozilla and the Guardian.

Why do so many student journalists call themselves ‘aspiring’? – would you hire a journalist who called themselves ‘aspiring’?

What does the myNewsBiz competition tell us about entrepreneurial journalism? – as our nationwide search for entrepreneurial journalists wraps up, I look back at what we’ve learned.

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5 ways join in with the future of news

A quick post today, sandwiched in between some pretty hefty ones. Here’s five quick ways to make sure you don’t miss a trick with the Future of News.

.01 subscribe to this blog – just put your email address in the box to the right of this page for more ideas and advice on online video & enterprise.

.02 join the Future of News Group on Facebook – click here: more than 250 people have already joined!

.03 follow me on Twitter – I’m @AdamWestbrook

.04 read this post – and stick the recommended blogs into your Google Reader

.05 if you’re on Vimeo, subscribe to the video .fu channel, a growing collection of the best online video in the world

Sit back, relax, and let the future of journalism come to you!

A new look to the website

The more astute of you will have noticed my portfolio website at www.adamwestbrook.co.uk has been offline for the last week.

It’s undergone a bit of a makeover and is now back up and shiny and new. Although it is now not connected to this blog, a feed of my last posts are available on the front page, plus lots of examples of my multimedia, radio and teaching work. Although I am using a different theme, I have kept the same general feel for both website and blog.

You might find it’s cheaper and easier to put together a distinctive portfolio website than you first thought, and I’ve shared how I did it on Journalism.co.uk this week.

And on a completely different note, I’ve been interviewed for this article about SEO for journalists over at Distilled.

Some writings over at Duckrabbit

Multimedia chums Duckrabbit have been in Bangladesh this month reporting on the effects of climate change. While they’ve been away I, and some other journalists, have been filling in on their popular blog.

Here’s a few of the posts I’ve written over there, mostly highlighting and critiquing various multimedia journalism projects:

“Hidden Hunger“, 11th September

“Behind the Veil“, 23rd September

“Black Saturday“, 28th September

Old news

This whole Future of Journalism thing and the various blogs, articles, and presentations I’ve done on it, is all a relatively recent epiphany for me. Or so I thought.

An accidental trawl through my old blog posts unveiled two articles predicting almost exactly the same as I’ve written about recently….from 2006.

“Never a better time to be a journalist” (31st December 2006) highlights an article from Andrew Neil saying:

The journalists of tomorrow will write for newspapers, contribute to magazines and podcasts, work for TV production companies, write their own blogs, because you wouldn’t give them a column – and then they will sell the blog back to you at an inflated price…“The journalist of the future…will  have more than one employer and become a brand in their own right.”

“Futures” (28th September 2006) I put it (not so) delicately:

If you’re a newspaper journalist, you’re fucked. No not really, but it seems big change is on the horizon for the old hacks. UK paper circulation is declining big time; one doomsayers predicted something like 2043 as the year the last newspaper closes down.

I don’t know, it took me completely by surprise people were predicting this media revolution as long as go as 3 years ago.

Journalism tip #218: always be able to recycle old content as new!

Journalism posts: Summary II

It’s been a busy few months on here! Here’s a wrap up of the journalism related posts since my last summary back in April.

Image: LynGi (Creative Commons Licence)

The future of journalism

This is why we’re entrepreneurs :: an inspiring video which makes any creative want to leap off their seat, start a production company. NOW!

Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay :: Richard G Picard’s article makes me realise the utter foundations of journalism have changed and are no longer economical

Life After Newspapers? :: the newspaper journalists who are reinventing themselves after being made redundant

Future of Journalism presentation :: in June and July I gave a couple of presentations outlining the crisis in journalism and it’s possible future. You can watch it here.

Noded working: a new way to do journalism? :: how noded working can help the new generation of freelance creative entrepreneurs

Introducing: the journalist of the future :: some of  you said it was great, others naiive, others optimistic; others said it was rubbish. Whatever you might think, if you haven’t read it yet, here’s my picture of the skills and abilities of the journalist of the future.

The Journalist of the future: your reaction :: a neat summary of what some of you guys said about that article

Multimedia Journalism

Learn From The Best :: multimedia producers Duckrabbit shows me the importance of a damned good photograph (they’re still doing it, here)

One Week In Iraq :: how I put together my small multimedia piece reporting from Iraq

History Alive! :: two brilliant examples of how multimedia can be used to bring history to life

Choose your multimedia, wisely :: a look at the individual strengths and weaknesses of video, audio, images and interactivity. Now choose it wisely!

Open Source for multimedia journalists :: a brief skit over popular open source software the multimedia journo should have in their armoury

What does #digitalbritain mean for journalism? :: why Lord Carter’s Digital Britain Report is a massive FAIL for journalism