The new journalism? Perhaps that sounds a little portentous

After all, some of us haven’t finished with the old one yet

Maybe not, but a perfect storm of change has conspired to pick us up and thrust into a whole new journalistic reality.

The key elements in this revolution are these:

• The birth of new journalistic forms – key among them curation and live blogging
• Smartphones that give everyone the ability to broadcast live, multimedia content from anywhere, any time
• New mobile, geo-location platforms that combine news and community, and root reporting to place
• World-changing events that can’t be covered adequately by traditional journalists using traditional means of reporting
• The demand from many – call them citizen journalists or just eye witnesses - to be part of the reporting process

That’s not to say the old journalistic values, the old standards, aren’t just as vital in this new world, but it does mean they are under threat.

So how do traditionally-trained journalists respond?

I can only speak for myself.

I’ve tried to curate all that is going on, and to build a resource bank that looks at all the new developments, all the new software, publishing platforms and bits of kit.

I’ve drawn all that I see going on, and as much wisdom from as many informed sources as I can muster, and tried to build a range of tutorials that present all the new opportunities for journalists, and journalism students, with numerous examples of how the most inspired and adventurous are applying these opportunities and tools to their journalism.

I’ve been publishing this stuff over the past few weeks at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/masterclasses The final piece is now in place.

So here are some highlights from what I’ve come up with:

New ways of reporting online

The Digital Media Pyramid – adapting the traditional story structure for multimedia: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1489

How to make long-form journalism work online: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1490

Beat blogging: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1491

Applauding pioneers in the new ways of reporting: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1496

Location-based content for local journalism

How to build content platforms on a range of emerging geo-location applications

Building content, and community, around points on the map with Bubbleby: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1532

How to use Foursquare in your journalism: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1536

Use Gowalla to create interactive stories for your readers: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1541

Create geoguides with Gowalla: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1537

Curatorial journalism

What it is, why it's becoming more important, the best platforms to use

The best use of Storify: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1582

The best use of Scoop.it: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1583

How curation works on Wikipedia: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1585

Live Blogging and real-time reporting

How to cover major, rolling stories as they happen

Styles of live blog from the BBC, the New York Times, The Guardian and more: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1599

Planning your real-time reporting: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1600

How to report live: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1601

How to live blog: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1607

Live blog publishing platforms: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1602

Issues of balance, attribution and verification: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1604

Need a structured personal learning plan?

If you would like a personalised learning plan to help you develop your skills in any of the areas discussed above or, indeed, in any other aspect of multimedia, mobile journalism, then please get in touch.

My training company, Andy Bull Multimedia, has a wide range of elearning and in-person courses available.

You'll find the full outline of my training offering here: http://www.andybullmultimedia.webs.com/

Location is the fastest growing aspect of communication

Providing location-specific content holds out huge opportunities – and challenges – for journalists and publishers

How do we harness the potential of geo-location for our journalism, whether we are working in hyperlocal, local, B2B, specialist or any other media?

Whatever your beat or specialism, the exponential growth in the use of smartphones and other mobile, wi-fi enabled devices, means that we must look at ways we can make our content relevant to our users when they are on the move.

Mobile devices offer consumers information that is tailored to where they are, and what they want to do, right now. We need to put our own content on the leading mobile platforms.

The challenge to local media: Geolocate or die

The message to local media companies is: geo-locate or die. Or, perhaps more acurately, continue to fade.

For any local journalist, or local publisher of a blog, hyperlocal news site, or local newspaper then the question of locality is central to what they do.

Newspapers were, once upon a time, the best way to get information to those in a particular locality.

What geo-location does is bring a massive advance in the opportunities to do that.

The challenge for any local journalist or publisher is to ride this development.

If you don’t, if those in your area can’t immediately find information from you that is relevant to where they are and what they are doing, or want to do,  than you are failing as a provider of local content and information.

I don’t see many local papers getting abreast of this. I do see some pioneering hyperlocal sites and blogs doing it.

What geo-location platforms to use?

At the moment there is a competing array of localising platforms out there.

You can’t build your own and you wouldn’t want to if you could.

What you can do is see which platforms people are beginning to use, and find out whether you can get your content on them.

That’s our aim in this masterclass.

Are they on Foursquare, for example, and could you use Foursquare as a platform for reaching people?

We’ll look at the breakthrough one hyperlocal site, BlogPreston, has made using this platform. What about Gowalla, another check-in site that lets you create local journeys?

There are other potential publishing platforms that are far less well known, and I’ll be demonstrating some of them, including a very promising one called Bubbleby which I think has great potential for local journalists because it lets you create content and community – in what it calls bubbles – around a particular location.

Great for campaigning, or focusing discussion on a particular distinct area in the town you cover.

Mapping platforms

Then there are the various mapping platforms that enable you to put information on a map of the area you cover and then embed those information-laden maps into your website or blog. We looked at using Google Maps as a backdrop to a feature on pages 417-8 of the book version of MMJ, and here:  http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/98  on the web version.

We’ll look at a range of other ways of exploiting the potential of mapping in local journalism.

Build your own GeoGuide

There is the opportunity, from a company called Geodelic, to create a guide to a particular area, called a GeoGuide, that can be read on a Blackberry, iPhone or Android smartphone.

We’ll look at Geodelic, on which I’m building a guide.

The GeoGuide I’m building is not local in the local paper sense, but locality is important to it. It’s an app that brings together the best places to train as a multimedia journalist in the UK. It’s a work in progress but we’ll look at how far I’ve got with it.

GeoGuides could be useful to any editor of a magazine where location can be relevant to some of the title’s content. A golfing mag, for example, might have a GeoGuide to the best courses and cluster a lot of relevant information around those venues. Any specialist-interest magazine could create GeoGuides.

Here are some thoughts:

• A business travel mag might create a guide to each major airport.
• A fishing mag could let readers see which is the best river or lake close to where they find themselves.
• Real ale fans can be told where to get a pint of Owld Scroat in the strange town they happen to be visiting.

How to explore the potential of geo-location for your journalism

Mashable said this about geo-located content in its predictions for 2011:

“In 2010, we saw the growth of location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR. Even Facebook entered the location game by launching its Places product, and Google introduced HotPot, a recommendation engine for places and began testing it in Portland. The reality is that only 4% of online adults use such services on the go. My guess is that as the information users get on-the-go info from such services, they’ll becomes more valuable and these location-based platforms will attract more users.

“Part of the missing piece is being able to easily get geo-tagged news content and information based on your GPS location. In 2011, with a continued shift toward mobile news consumption, we’re going to see news organisations implement location-based news features into their mobile apps. And of course if they do not, a start-up will enter the market to create a solution to this problem or the likes of Foursquare or another company will begin to pull in geo-tagged content associated with locations as users check in.”

So how do we get on the bandwagon and use geo-location on our website, blogs and in the apps we create?

That’s the question this masterclass explores. It won’t give you all the answers, but it will point to some promising possibilities.

There will be some suggested projects along the way, to give you some starting points.

And, as ever, if you do experiment in this area, you must feel free to share what you have discovered with the MMJ community by clicking on any of the comment buttons and sending us a link.

Next: Create content and community around a location with Bubbleby