reporting
Latest
Google's News Lab helps journalists with their online reporting
Google's efforts to improve internet journalism are going far, far beyond a special YouTube feed. The search firm has officially launched the Google News Lab, an initiative that helps reporters collect and publish news online. The Lab shows journalists how to use Google tools like data visualizers, Maps and Trends. It's also partnering with news outlets on data experiments, fostering media startups and supporting citizen journalism. Google hopes that all these tutorials and team-ups will adapt journalists to the direct, data-driven nature of internet reporting -- and, no doubt, show that the company isn't always at odds with publishers. [Image credit: AP Photo]
CNN teams with the FAA to make drones work for news gathering
CNN has been looking into the prospect of using drones for news reporting for months, but it now has an important ally in its corner: the FAA. The two organizations have forged a research agreement that will create an official framework for UAV use by the American press. CNN hopes this will move the media beyond "hobby-grade equipment" (instead, think pro drones like the DJI Inspire 1) and establish a safe way to produce quality news footage with robotic aircraft. There's no estimate for when this would happen, but CNN, its existing partner Georgia Tech and the FAA have already started coordinating their efforts. You may not have to wait too long before your local news network is covering breaking stories with a swarm of unmanned machines.
CNN wants to prove that drones are safe for news reporting
Stunning video footage like that from a recent tornado in Arkansas (see below) shows the potential for drones to radically change journalism. However, it's illegal to operate them in the US, especially near a disaster or accident scene -- which has prompted a new research project from CNN and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The aim is to figure out which type of equipment, personnel and safety measures would be needed to safely operate news-gathering drones in US airspace. While such UAVs would no doubt give media outlets like CNN improved coverage, they'd often end up in close proximity to crowds, emergency personnel and even rescue aircraft. That means US regulators might be reluctant to approve them for reporting -- even though they've already authorized lower-risk activities like pipeline inspection. CNN's group hopes to show the FAA that it can be made safe for journalism, likely so that it won't be frozen out when new drone regulations are finally announced. [Image credit: Brian Emfinger via YouTube]
SOE relies on players to report inappropriate posts
If you see something, SOE definitely wants you to say something. EverQuest II CM Linda Carlson responded to a post on EQ2Wire to say that the studio depends on its players to help police the "meeelions" of comments in its forums. "Unless we are actually perusing the forums when something comes up, we do indeed rely on players helping to keep the forum community a reasonable and comfortable place to post by reporting disruptive or inappropriate posts," Carlson said. Carlson went on to give advice on how to constructively post on forums and avoid unnecessary conflict with other posters, including "Never post angry. Never post drunk." and "Two trolls do not make a right."
CNN turns Google Glass owners into citizen journalists
Sometimes breaking news happens right before your eyes while you're out and about. If you happen to be wearing Google Glass when those events take place, CNN now has a way for you to share photos and videos of the action directly from the headset. The news outfit announced the addition to its iReport citizen journalism effort earlier this week, and it's claiming to be "the first major news network" to allow contributing via the wearable. If you're interested in joining up, you'll have to authorize CNN to send notifications to Glass and link up an iReport profile in the settings. When you've completed those steps, the appropriate avenue for beaming captured media to the newsroom will appear as a sharing option for photos and videos. Folks have already opted in, as the first mobile coverage (relating to gas prices in Miami) can be seen here. [Photo credit: Angel Navarrete/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
The Drama Mamas guide to handling in-game harassment
You've tried being clear, and you've tried being firm. Somebody's on your case in game, and they're not letting up. What are your options for managing in-game harassment? Rule #1: Managing harassment is about protecting you and your enjoyment of the game, not about stopping or changing a harasser's behavior. You can't change other people. It's extremely unlikely that anything you do or say will inspire someone to see the light and become a thoughtful, more compassionate person. Managing harassment, then, is not about how to "fix" your harasser but how to extricate yourself from the situation so you can get on with playing your game.
Breakfast Topic: Do you report problem behavior in game?
Nobody likes a snitch, but let's face it: Unless players are willing to report bad behavior and spammers, our virtual world is going to remain uglier than it has to be. True, filing a report isn't always simple or convenient. It's often simpler to ignore or /ignore bad behavior and move on. Ideally, we'd all shoulder some of the responsibility of keeping our online community balanced and clean. Even in the best of circumstances, though, being the squeaky wheel is no fun. Whiner, snitch, tattletale -- there seem to be plenty of labels for players who are simply letting Blizzard know that another player is breaking the rules. Thing is, it's up to us to get that job done. Blizzard can't be everywhere at once, but we can -- and are. Do you take the time to report problem behavior in game? If so, do you tend to stick to cases of personal harrassment? Do you bother to report spammers? What about problem players in the dungeon finder or raid finder -- do you let a kick "take care" of them, or do you follow up with a report?
BBC News Channel conducts live video interview over smartphone, goes where satellites can't (update with video)
We usually associate smartphones in news reporting with citizen journalism, not full-time journalists. However, a confluence of events has just led to the BBC's Nick Garnett becoming a pioneer for mobile broadcasting on the professional level. When a shortage of satellite trucks prevented Garnett from getting the usual video feed for the BBC News Channel, he successfully arranged the British network's first live video interview piped through a smartphone. The key, Garnett says, was Dejero's Live+ iPhone app: while live streaming apps are already commonplace, Dejero's let him merge the 3G and WiFi connections together, getting enough bandwidth to make a TV-worthy broadcast in a country where LTE is still very new. Combined with some very ad hoc staging and help from the BBC's technical teams, the coordination resulted in a surprisingly smooth interview about flooding in northeastern England with relatively few hints of the extra-tiny recording equipment involved. It's unlikely that broadcast crews will reach to their pockets for live coverage solutions before anything else, but the BBC is actively testing Dejero and other apps that could make smartphones as much a part of the field reporting arsenal as a camcorder and an eye for a good story. As we can't embed the clip, check the source link to see it for yourself. Update: We've now managed to embed the clip after the break.
Drama Mamas: How to deal with profanity in Battlegrounds
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. I'm not one for the profanity filter. Special characters randomly appearing in public chats don't improve my gameplay experience. Also, it's so easy to get around, so why bother? And honestly, I just don't mind profanity. Now, if there were some kind of hate and trolling filter, I might use that. Ah, just think of how slowly trade chat would scroll ... Hey Mamas, I've been playing since vanilla. The reason I preface my letter with that is because I know the drama that goes on in battlegrounds. Really, I do. But for some reason, I feel it's just gotten so bad lately. People being rude or just trolling isn't anything new. But this is a whole new level of mean, and the offenders act like every little (often just perceived) mistake is a personal slight against them, one from which they will never, ever recover from. This isn't just about one instance either. In literally every battleground, whether we're winning or losing, someone is cursing someone else and causing a ruckus over something very little.
How ESPN reporter covers NASCAR with an iPad
ESPN Pit Reporter Dave Burns covers NASCAR's premiere Sprint Cup Series for the network. He's been reporting on racing for many years, and recently abandoned his personal paper-based note system for carefully selected iPad apps. Burns says that note-taking is "highly personal," and that ESPN does not require him to use a certain system. For years, he effectively used a paper form the he devised himself. When the iPad debuted, however, Burns saw the potential. The digital system he's created includes Note Taker HD and SimplyPDF. He also uses a FreeOneHand iPad case as it prevents overheating, unlike a full-cover case he used. It's an interesting story which includes a sample of the notes Burns takes on race day.
When players cross the line to harassment
Sometimes, despite our best efforts at being pleasant and respectful, we run into "that guy." You may or may not know who they are. They may be male. They may be female. They may be young or old. But the one thing they are, no matter who they are, is rude, inconsiderate, and possibly a little scary. It seems odd that someone could be considered frightening in the context of a video game full of fanciful creatures made up of millions of pixels, but harassment exists, and it's not a laughing matter. I hate using my ignore button. I'm one of those people who lives in a fantasy land where I assume and am forever hopeful that people can talk things out like two reasonable adults and come to a mutual, satisfactory conclusion about things. I hate stopping the flow of conversation, because I believe that everything can be worked out in due time as long as people are being reasonable. Unfortunately, I've had to use that ignore button on more than one occasion, and I've had to deal with people who were anything but reasonable over the course of the seven years I've played this game. When someone crosses the line from reasonable to threatening, there is a distinct course of action a player should take.
Carrier IQ opens up IQCare diagnostics platform to smartphone users
Carrier IQ has announced the extension of its IQ Care platform to enable mobile operators to share the insight gained with its customers. The analytics software measures diagnostic information on your phone relating to network usage, battery life and dropped calls. Previously it's only been available to customer care agents as they remotely diagnose your phone during a support call, but the platform is now being opened up so that data can be viewable on open customer service portals. It's hoped that people will learn how to resolve network issues, the company remarking that 40 percent of smartphones are returned, only to be found not to have any faults at all. It'll launch in the second quarter of the year and you can find out a whole heap more if you head on past the break.
Should WoW players be responsible for player accountability?
Blizzard's policy as far as reporting players has been about the same since day one. If you have a problem with a player, you report them. While Blizzard can contact you and thank you for reporting the issue, it will not give any details regarding what it has done about the problem being reported. This has always been understandable to me; in the many years on and off that I worked customer service and call center jobs, rule #1 was that you did not speak to anyone but an account holder regarding the status of their account. To me, the Blizzard policy is just more of the same kind of treatment -- Blizzard cannot tell you about actions taken against another player's account, because hey, their account isn't yours, you know? It's private information. That said, I have reported my share of players over the years, and I never really knew if action was taken against these players or not. In simple cases of name violations, like using an inappropriate word for guild or character name, I could usually tell if something had been done, because the guild or player in question would have their name changed. But in cases of player harassment ... well, you never know if they've been told anything or not. You just sort of hope this means the person harassing you will go away and that will be the end of it, but there are absolutely no guarantees.
The New York Times goes to BlizzCon
It's rare to see the mainstream media cover anything related to World of Warcraft with a generally approving tone, but no less prestigious an outlet than The New York Times reported on this year's BlizzCon quite favorably indeed. Seth Schiesel, in covering the convention, bypasses the media's usual narrative and notes that the big draw of an event like BlizzCon isn't what you'd expect. It's not the StarCraft 2 tournament with the big purse, the company's annual announcements, or even the closing concert. It's simply the chance to meet and enjoy your fellow gamers, whether you're a developer or a player. I think Schiesel nails it here: ... the most powerful and important games are the persistent online dimensions like World of Warcraft and Eve Online. That is because they're not really about the games; they are about the relationships players form within them. I'm surprised but gratified to see a reporter in a major media outlet who really gets it. Of note is also a comment by Rob Pardo (Blizzard's executive vice president for game design), who observes that Blizzard could easily fill larger venues than the Anaheim Convention Center (my suggestion: rent Wyoming) but prefers to keep the con local for the benefit of Blizzard employees who want to come. I think it's safe to say that gamers are still working toward mainstream acceptance (possibly because people often don't consider things like Angry Birds and Farmville to be "true" gaming), and it's really nice not to see the usual caricature of the angry, antisocial nerd rearing its head.
Massachusetts court opens up to social media and live video, Ice-T expected to cameo
This story ripped from today's headlines: the Quincy District Court, just south of Boston, Massachusetts, will now stream live video online. Dubbed OpenCourt, the experiment will also offer WiFi and encourage liveblogging and social media reporting -- all in an attempt to help the judiciary understand and accommodate new digital reporting tools. Funded with a $250,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge, it proposes a more transparent philosophy for the legal system, which has often banned cameras and restricted access. But the court won't become an open free-for-all. There will be no video for restraining order cases and those involving minors, among others, and judges can disable the video feed at any time. Said executive producer John Davidow,"The idea is to bring the courts and what goes on in the courts closer to the people so they understand how the law and the justice system work in this country." With such high-minded goals, expect viewing that's closer to C-SPAN than Law & Order.
The New York Times to provide reporters with the iPhone 4
The New York Times is giving their mobile reporters iPhone 4s to shoot video out in the field along with the ability to upload them to NYT servers using Aspera's high-speed file transfer software. Brought to our attention by MacStories, The New York Times' Editorial Director for Video and Television, Ann Derry, recently spoke to the Beet.TV Online Video Journalism Summit about the decision, saying that the iPhone 4 is a "game changer" for mobile video and the news business. The first NYT staff member to receive and use his new iPhone 4 was Andrew Ross Sorkin, who used it for his coverage of The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. You can watch his report, "Setting the Stage at Davos," over at the NYT site. With a critically acclaimed director shooting movies with an iPhone and even some professional photographers giving them a go, it's no surprise that the media is starting to use them as real-time news-collecting devices. When even my local news station asks me each night to send in any video I take with my iPhone, I know it has become a rather mainstream phenomenon. Click Read More to watch video of Ann Derry discussing the iPhone 4 and The New York Times. [via MacStories]
The Soapbox: Game "journalism" is not journalism (yet)
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Hey folks, welcome back to the Soapbox. Before I get started, let me add a personal disclaimer onto the Massively disclaimer you just read: I don't hate game devs. On the contrary, I hold a couple of them in pretty high esteem. What does annoy me is the way that most of them get a free pass when it comes to tough questions. Another thing that sticks in my craw is the way readers sometimes confuse journalism with game journalism. The two aren't often the same thing, and in fact the latter term is a complete misnomer. So, when you throw together my disdain for PR-soaked reporting and my facepalming at any mention of the phrase "game journalism," you end up with this week's Soapbox. In it, I'd like to take a crack at educating the folks who erroneously refer to both me and other game bloggers as "journalists." To do so, I'll spend some time examining "game journalism," and I'll start by defining journalism itself. Then we can look at how applicable the term is to the current landscape of MMO-centric media (and really, game media in general). Merriam-Webster defines journalism as "the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media." So far, so good, right? Well, look deeper. A more thoughtful, thorough, and instructional definition is provided by the folks at Journalism.org. Rather than quote the entire nine-point synopsis here on my front page, I'll highlight what I consider to be the second most important principle of journalism (the first obviously being truth). Not coincidentally, this principle is one that game "journalism" utterly fails to uphold on a daily basis: "[Journalism's] practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover."
British police force tweeting every emergency call over 24 hours, ironically keeps getting TwitJailed
The Greater Manchester Police team has decided to show the world how busy law enforcement can get by tweeting out every enquiry/emergency call it has to deal with. Only problem is that it keeps ending up in Twitter jail for posting too much. This one-day-only experiment (or is it a publicity stunt?) will detail every local call to 999 (the British 911) and the GMP's switchboard, uncovering such exciting episodes as "concern for welfare in Rusholme" and "report of threats and abuse on Facebook in Salford" (we're not making this up). It's intended to illustrate to the public and politicians alike the real life daily grind that police officers go through; and we see their point, it must be hell setting up all those new accounts to avoid Twitter's own rule enforcers. Tsk tsk.
Player stories on the official site
Blizzard asked for real-life stories from players a little while ago, and now they've posted a pretty big collection of them over on the official site (this page was around last year, but they've added many stories since then). As Bornakk says, these are personal accounts from players of how playing the game with others has helped them grow relationships in real-life. I'm not sure what exactly the point of posting these is (maybe Blizzard wants to stave off some of that negative media reporting about the game and addiction to it), but then again, if you dive into a few of these, you can see that they don't really need a point -- they're really interesting (and in some cases pretty heartwarming) stories about how players are using this game to enrich real-life relationships.They're still accepting more stories as well, so if you've got a good tale of some WoW-sharing in real-life, hit them up over on the submission page and put yours in the mix. Hopefully Blizzard will figure out a way to get these out into the real world -- harsh stories about addiction are so easy for the media to jump on, but great stories like these are the real reasons we all play this game.
iPhone usage metric for Flickr drops big time
We've posted before how popular the iPhone is as a camera on Flickr, with people uploading tons of photos, both shot by and straight from the iPhone. But now, The Next Web has covered a huge drop in photos referencing the iPhone over on the popular photo sharing site. The suspected culprit? Flickr themselves. TNW suggests that the problem is the Flickr iPhone application, which will upload pictures straight to the service -- but not include metadata information like the fact that the pictures were taken with the iPhone. Still, even they sound a little skeptical: not all of that drop can be attributed to just the Flickr app's shortcomings. They also suggest that the iPhone is wearing out its welcome -- lots of people jumped to use it as a camera when the 3GS introduced a better lens and the video capability, and now in day-to-day use, they're not using it as much. Other commenters to the post suggest that the vastly improved Facebook app may be eating away at the use of the built-in Camera app. I know that my photo habits for the phone haven't changed -- I use the iPhone quite a bit to take pictures, but looking at my own usage, I don't use Flickr nearly as much these days, as I use services like Twitpic and other sites built up directly around the iPhone. A drop in usage on Flickr doesn't mean people aren't using their iPhones to take snapshots -- they could just be sending their photos and media somewhere else. Update: One of our commenters, echoed by our old friend & past colleague Barb Dybwad at Mashable, notes that Apple's change to the EXIF data recording for iPhone photos (breaking out the different iPhone models to indicate which specific phone took the picture) may be partly responsible for the drop.
