How to build a smartphone App without using any coding, with App Builder: previewing Masterclass 8 at Multimedia journalism

In Chapter 17 of Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide we took a look at several platforms that allow the non-coder to create a professional App for smartphone and tablet.

Now I'd like to look at a worthy addition to that list.

It's called App Builder, and comes from the App Institute.
 So here's a run down on how App Builder works. As ever, this tuition is not intended to work independently of the much more extensive guidance included in the paper and ebook versions of Multimedia Journalism (MMJ) and the associated website.

This is by way of an update on what you will find there.

You can buy the Multimedia Journalism book here for the UK and here for North America.

It's also available at all national versions of Amazon

What App Builder does

App builder is designed for the small business, but works just as well for journalists and publishers.

 It enables you to create a professional app, and add content to it, with just a few clicks - as long as you have your content ready. Submission to the Apple and Google app stores is available, as is hosting (pricing here).

 You don't pay anything until you publish, which means App Builder is a great platform for practising app building.

Before you start

 Read Chapter 17 of MMJ, on Multi-Platform Publishing, particularly section 17C4, on page 436, which goes through the general principles of building an app without using any coding.

 Platform overview

 This video introduction gives you the basics:

Click here to go to the full tuition

How to publish with Apple News, Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP, Medium and Bloom

via GIPHY

Since Multimedia Journalism edition two launched in October 2015, a whole raft of new news-publishing opportunities have come onto the market.

 They include offerings from the big players - Apple, Facebook and Google - plus some from lesser known ones.

 All are designed to make the mobile web work better, and to help publishers take advantage of much faster page loading speeds, a much better user experience, great design, and far greater reach.

 So,  as a student journalist, should you be publishing on one or more of these platforms?

 And, if you should, how do you go about getting your content on them?

 Actually one - Medium - has been available for a while, but it's really only gained major interest in the past few months.

 In this masterclass we'll answer those questions for the following:

• Apple News Publisher
• Facebook Instant Articles
• Google AMP
• Medium
• and a platform that enables hyperlocal publishers to geolocate news called Bloom

 All five of these platforms have WordPress plugins associated with them that simplify and streamline the publishing process, enabling you to direct content to them from your Wordpress site - the sites we created in Chapters 2 and 8 of MMJ.

 As ever, this tuition is not meant to stand alone - it is a supplement to all we covered in the print and ebook textbook.

 Buy it here for North America here for the UK

Next: Publishing on Apple News Publisher

Masterclass 6: Road-testing Prowly - a new publishing platform for brand (and traditional) journalism

  Prowly is a publishing platform that combines a very simple set-up, design and publishing process with a good deal of guidance and tuition in how to optimise your content's appeal to your target audience.

  Prowly was conceived as a brand journalism platform, but to my mind it works just as well for a traditional publisher.

  As with all these masterclasses, what follows is designed to supplement and update the detailed tuition included in my Multimedia Journalism and Brand Journalism textbooks.

 I'll link from material here to relevant points on the two textbook websites, where you can find context, background and further tuition in what we cover.

  Here's Prowly's MO:



Because it is targeted at brands which are not traditional publishers, and for which content creation of high journalistic standards is a new challenge, it is very informative for beginners in journalism, including students.

Who publishes on Prowly? 

Let's take a quick look at three companies that publish on the platform. Prowly hails from Poland, so the examples here are in Polish.

If you browse them on Google Chrome you can click the translate button to render content into English.

 Among their clients is the journalism brand National Geographic:

 

National Geographic publishes articles about forthcoming programmes on the schedule, and additional content such as an invitation to pitch ideas for TV shows.

 

 Non-journalistic clients include: Spotify 



The music streaming service runs brand journalism about its content, for example on the popularity 
of the Beatles on the service,

 

 using text and info graphics...

 

... and surrounding the Eurovision Song Contest, integrating playlists into the articles it posts on its Prowly site:

 

As far as I can tell, Spotify does not offer such content to its UK or American users, which is a shame, because the one flaw I find with the service is that it does not do anything like enough, through brand journalism, to help us find music that might interest us.

 I believe Spotify would be substantially improved if it included music journalism of Rolling Stone quality alongside its access to millions of songs, because such abundance is hard to navigate without the guide, filter and recommendation engine that informed, authoritative journalism can provide.

As an aside, Spotify allows brands to use its content to create closer relationship with customers. BMW did it in the US to promote a new model, offering purchasers the chance to go to a map to create playlists related to classic road trips:

 

Hill and Knowlton The PR agency includes case studies and news:

 

  Prowly's tuition for brands and brand journalists

  Integrated within the publishing platform are resources to help you understanding your audience and learn to pitch to them more effectively, and to make "Brand journalism a centrepiece for your communication".

That's a topic we cover in great depth in the Brand Journalism textbook pages 21-34 and on the companion website here.

 For brands that want to get into journalism, Prowly provides a magazine with guides to content creation for particular groups.

 For example young mums:

 

There is an academy with tuition on brand journalism and content creation:



  Why Prowly is worth a closer look

 Prowly combines the ease and elegance of publishing I like about Scoop.it, with the ability to target a campaign to a given audience provided by Mailchimp.

We cover these platforms in the Multimedia Journalism textbook: Spotify on page 211 in the book/ebook and on the companion website here, Mailchimp on page 278-282 and on the companion website here.


  NEXT: How to publish on Prowly

Masterclass 5: How to bring gaming into your news reporting and compete with Candy Crush

Why do games have a place in news?

This post introduces the latest tuition related to my textbook Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide

  We're not talking about games for diversion here, but rather games that are part of the news offering of a media company.
  The idea is that games serve to illustrate the impact of given events or actions much more powerfully than if a story is told through text and other media that do not directly involve the reader.
  Gamifying a news story enables readers to interact with the information presented, entering into the story, exploring it and discovering its complexities.
  They might, for example, choose options within the story and then discover the consequences. Games make for a more immersive experience.
  In a survey of what media companies are doing to make games a part of their offering, Poynter came up with this list of those experimenting with gaming that included The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, the New York Times and AP.

Readers love games 

  Games are popular - as we'll discuss later, there is a view that if your journalism can't compete with Candy Crush for sheer irresistibility and as an immersive experience, it will fail. 
 The good news is that news-based games are also very popular with readers.  This dialect quiz was the most popular piece of content on the NYT in 2013, according to Poynter. Slate's most popular piece of content to date was this name generator, inspired by a light news story in which John Travolta mangled a name at the Academy Awards  Both those examples are entertaining adjuncts to news stories, but games can also be used to tell a story.
  Poynter reports that American University has had many enquires from news organisations seeking to incorporate games into its news coverage since it launch an MA in games design

Games allow audiences to experience information in a new way 

  Programme director Lindsay Grace told Poynter he attributes this growth in interest in games to factors including the ubiquity of mobile devices, and the shift to a culture that views play as productive. 
He believes that, done right, games can be useful storytelling tools, because they allow audiences to experience information in a new way. A story experienced through a game may have a more lasting impact, he believes, than a report in which facts and figures are quickly forgotten.
  Lindsay gives two examples of games which put a reader into a story.

  Cutthroat Capitalism 

  One, from Wired, is called Cutthroat Capitalism and explains the economics of modern-day piracy by putting the reader in the role of a Somali pirate commander seeking to board supertankers and extract millions of dollars in ransom for their safe return, and for sparing the lives of their crews. 
There is a conventional story, with facts, background, analysis and video here 
  Go here to play the game.
  This approach could be used in all kinds of major news stories.
  You might for example, seek to gamify the story of individuals trapped in a war zone - Syria would be a powerful current location - and allow the reader act out the role of a refugee. They don't just see what is happening to others. 
 Their role in the game gives them a much more profound - albeit virtual - experience of what happens to a refugee when they take a given course of action. Do they stay put? Do they seek the protection of one faction or another? Do they move to a refugee camp in the region? Do they seek to make the journey to the EU?
  Real stories could be used to illustrate what happens if one or other of these options are taken. 
The individual stories will be true, and information about the wider context in which those individuals are operating ( and the reader-as-player) can be introduced as the game is played.

  Gauging your distraction 

  Grace's second example, Gauging Your Distraction, from the New York Times, puts the reader in the driving seat of a car and forces them to send and receive texts while navigating a series of obstacles. You could use this format for all kinds of stories which explore the consequences of actions.

The place of games in modern news reporting

Maxwell Foxman of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism has studied the place of games in modern news reporting.

In this NeimanLab report he says: "While games, play and the news have a long history, we find ourselves at an exciting moment as newsmakers' strategies and efforts to playfully engage with users are beginning to see benefits...for digital newsrooms already built around much of the same technology and practices of game designers, a playful approach seems particularly attractive."

NEXT: EXAMPLES OF GAMES USED TO TELL NEWS STORIES

Masterclass 4: Creating a mashed-up RSS feed of news or information

In Chapter 10 of Multimedia Journalism we looked at creating email bulletins and, in module 10B4 within that chapter, at how you can mash up RSS feeds from a number of sources to create a new, curated RSS feed of targeted news or information.

  One element of that tuition now needs updating. The text below forms that update.

  10B4 Creating an RSS feed with ChimpFeedr

Yahoo Pipes, which we used originally, as been withdrawn, so I have been on the lookout for a suitable alternative.
  Sadly, there isn't anything I can find that is as easy to use for the non-coder, and does as much, as Pipes.
  A number of people have offered lists of alternatives, and you'll find a range of suggestions here, here and here, but I wasn't entirely happy with any of them.
  They were either too complicated, or did not allow you to sift the information you were gathering as efficiently as Yahoo Pipes did.

  The best current option, for me, is a service offered by MailChimp and, as we are using MailChimp to create our email bulletins, that's pretty convenient.
  It's called ChimpFeedr, and you an find it here: http://chimpfeedr.com/  
 ChimpFeedr - like Yahoo Pipes - lets you add a series of individual RSS feed urls to a list, and then - at the click of a button - it generates a new RSS feed which combines all the posts going to those individual feeds in your original list.

Why would you want to do that?
  Well, if you get this right, you can create a feed that picks up on all the latest news or information in the area you cover. 
 You can combine your own output with that from other specialists in your field, giving readers the place to come for comprehensive coverage of your beat.

How to choose your feeds
  Your feeds need to come from a closely targeted area. That might be localities, if you have a local or hyperlocal site; an area of business activity if you are creating a B2B news product; or other news sources if you are covering a topic nationally or internationally. 
  You might also cover film, music or any other special interest area in a mashed-up feed. (In Chapter 17 of Multimedia Journalism we look at how we can use the RSS feeds we create to feed into a mobile phone app.)
  You'll need to be highly selective when combining feeds.

Here's an example of how to get started
  As mentioned on page 117 of the print version of Multimedia Journalism, the Mail Online offers a comprehensive list of news feeds here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/article-2684527/RSS-Feeds.html
  Among them are feeds for Mail Online coverage of many celebrities. If you are a showbiz reporter, and want to create a mashup RSS feed from a range of key stars, this is a good starting point. 
  You'd also need to identify other sources of news on the celebrities you have chosen. Choose the ones you find most useful in your research and you won't go far wrong.
  The Mail Online presentation makes it easy to find the feeds, linking to each under an orange button, but when seeking feeds from many sites it is often it is harder to find them, so here's some guidance...

How to find the feed url in each case
  Click on the page’s orange RSS button, and you’ll get a screen come up that offers you various ways to subscribe to it. 
  In the url address box at the top of the browser window is the feed url. 
  Copy and paste it into the input area of ChimpFeedr.
  Some sites put this logo prominently on their homepage, others hide it, so you occasionally have to hunt it out. 
  As a last resort, Google the website or blog name plus RSS and see if that helps.
  For this demonstration, I've gathered a range of news sources for the area covered by my hyperlocal news site, LondonW5 (creating it is covered in Chapter 2 of MMJ).
  I've gathered the RSS feed urls from a mix of local news sites, the Met police, what's on guides and transport updates. The grab below shows some of them ready to be combined. 

ChimpFeedr will ask you to name your mashup, and I'm calling mine West London Live.

When you have all your feeds gathered
  Click the 'Chomp Chomp' button and ChimpFeedr generates your new RSS url.

What to do with your new RSS feed url
  As covered in Chapter 2 of MMJ, Wordpress lets you display content from an RSS feed on your website, using either a widget (if you are using Wordpress.com) or a plugin (if using Wordpress.org).
  You can place the widget or plugin on your website's homepage, following the guidance given in Chapter 2 (for .com sites, or Chapter 8 for .org sites). 
 Then paste your RSS url into the box indicated, and title the feed.

To see your content
  Switch from the edit view to 'view my site' and you'll see the content you have gathered. Here's a grab of mine: 

MailChimp's own tuition
  You'll find it here: https://blog.mailchimp.com/chimpfeedr-stupid-simple-rss-mixer-from-mailchimp/ 

The journalism of now: using Snapchat and Periscope for reporting

This tuition is about using Snapchat and Periscope for journalism

Credit: Nieman Journalism Lab

It supplements material in the new 2nd edition of Multimedia Journalism Chapter 6, on live blogging.

  I've called it the journalism of now simply because both these platforms are designed to carry live news and information. It typically disappears within 24 hours, although there are ways to keep it live for longer.

  As ever, we should not get fixated on particular platforms - Snapchat and Periscope, as with all the other platforms we have looked at in MMJ - are merely additional ways of publishing or broadcasting.

  As we shall see, the way we report on them is the same, in most ways, as when we report on any of the other platforms covered in MMJ.

  What they offer us as journalists is access to new audiences. 

As we'll see later, many of the news organisations using Snapchat and Periscope - be they legacy publishers, legacy broadcasters or digital natives - do so to reach millennials and others who it is hard to connect with on the more traditional platforms they publish on.

Here's what we'll cover

  You can follow the links here to go to individual tuition modules, or go through them sequentially by clicking on the next button at the bottom of this screen.

  Please note that this tuition is not stand-alone. It is supplementary to that in the new 2nd edition of Multimedia Journalism, which is available in print textbook and ebook form here for the UK and here for North America.

• What Snapchat is and how to use it
• What Periscope is and how to use it
• How news organisations are using Snapchat and Periscope for reporting

Next: What Periscope is and how to use it

Previewing Masterclass 2: How to write for Buzzfeed, the art of the listical

 
via GIPHY

New ways of communicating - of doing journalism - are coming thick and fast these days.

 Not all journalists believe sites such as Buzzfeed, with their distinctive use of listicals, animated Gifs and highly-shareable content are really about journalism.

Some hate the idea of having to craft content that fits this style.

They're wrong to dismiss this trend. Buzzfeed, and the best of the new breed of journalism sites, embody all the core virtues, skills and values of good journalism. And what they do is not nearly as new as it might at first appear.

 So this masterclass offers a practical demonstration of how to create features in the listical style used widely on new journalism platforms such as Buzzfeed.

The tuition updates and builds on material covered in Chapter 17 of MMJ

 But it also draws on everything taught in MMJ about what news is, finding news, writing it, headline it, creating stills and moving images and so on. So what follows is not to be taken in isolation.

Buy they book here for the UK or here for North America

 Not sure what a listical is? Check out this definition.

Why Buzzfeed?

One of the key things I've tried to do in MMJ is replicate the working journalist's experience of coming up with ideas, pitching them to an editor and then producing a highly professional story that gets published.

If you are on a university course that's no doubt what your tutors try to do as well, and you almost certainly create content for a print or online publication.

Buzzfeed also offers you that opportunity.

They invite you to write, photograph and produce video for them. This How to use Buzzfeed guide tells you what you need to know. 

And here's how to sign up and post to Buzzfeed.

Once you are up-and-running with a Buzzfeed account, you'll be ready to click on the link below to continue with our tution.

NEXT: HOW AND WHAT TO PUBLISH ON BUZZFEED

Previewing the brand-new 2nd edition of Multimedia Journalism, published October 14 2015

Equipping you for the fourth revolution in journalism

Yet again, journalism is undergoing radical change.

James Harding, the BBC's director of news and current affairs, speaks of a fourth revolution in journalism.
First there was print, and then came the first three revolutions:
• Radio
• Television
• Online
Each caused radical upheaval in their turn.

The fourth revolution, which is taking place right now, is being caused by mobile technology.

Harding, who is responsible for shaping the BBC's vision for news coverage, told staff: "In the age of the smartphone, we have entered the age of smart news, of handheld, news of what, for want of a better term, I will simply call interactive news – news that is portable and personalised; news that is fully internet-enabled and responsive; news that is available to everyone, everywhere, right now; news in which everyone has a hand on the microphone, i.e. not just broadcast, transmitted or distributed, but shared, exchanged, checked, investigated and explained as much by the audience as the author; news that can plug you in to what’s happening anywhere in the world, but equally root you into where you live and work; news that puts the world, with all this implies, in the palm of your hand."
The Multimedia Journalism (MMJ) project is designed to equip student journalists - and, indeed, working journalists - with the skills they need to join this revolution.

With its textbook in paper and ebook form, its companion website, its mobile and social media presences, MMJ teaches how to do journalism across all media and on all platforms.

It will take you through from day one to graduation, covering all practical, journalistic aspects of your course.

It will give you everything you need to know to develop as a fully rounded multimedia journalist.
It will start by assuming absolutely no knowledge or experience, and accompany you through to full competence: the level of competence required to graduate from a practical undergraduate or postgraduate journalism course.

It will take you through the practice of reporting - of storytelling - in text, audio, still and moving images, mobile platforms and on social media. MMJ takes as its starting point the way news, information and entertainment is consumed today.

How do you consume your news?

Chances are, you use a mix something along the lines of the following:
• News alerts on Twitter
• Status updates on Facebook or other social networks
• News headlines from a range of titles you like
• An app - either free or (possibly) paid for - on your mobile phone or tablet computer
• A free print product (if you live in a city) that you pick up before or after your morning commute
• TV news

You may, just possibly, also buy a newspaper.

What about your other information and entertainment needs?

You might buy one or more glossy magazines that fall into the categories of general consumer or specialist consumer titles.

That's particularly likely if you are into fashion, movies, gaming. Or you may read them on a tablet.
Your interests and hobbies may also be served by a range of other apps, headline alerts of email newsletters.

So if you follow a particular sports league or team, for example, you are likely to be signed up for news from them, and this news will often be produced not by independent journalists but by journalists employed by the club or league itself.

A lot of what you read or watch will come to you - those in your social circle will share or like a video on YouTube, say, or a news story that has been shared by someone you know on Facebook, or linked to on Twitter.

You might listen to a radio station, or download podcasts of news or other information to listen to on your smartphone, iPod or tablet while you are on the way to work, at the gym or on a run.
So that's a pretty complex media landscape, and because we have so much choice about where we get our news, information and entertainment, everyone’s pattern of media consumption is likely to be unique to them.

How you learn to deliver news and information in the age of the fourth revolution

So if you want to be a journalist, how to you find a way to make a living in this complex landscape?
The answer is to acquire all the skills it takes to produce that news and information, across a wide range of media.

To become, in short, a multimedia journalist.

Someone who can use all the modern tools that are available to us as gatherers and disseminators of news and information - to be equally at home writing for print or online, doing an audio or video report, taking still images, crunching data to reveal the stories hidden within it, and using a wide range of social media to find, research and publish stories.

That's what the MMJ project sets out to help you do.

And, because this is a revolution, MMJ can't stand still. So, while the textbook will remain a guide to the unchanging principles of good practice, in whatever medium you operate, the online versions will be constantly updated to take in new technologies - new software, hardware and ways of doing journalism.  

MMJ 2nd edition is published on October 14 2015

Its available on Amazon in the UK
And in the USA

If you REALLY want to be a journalist - you need the answers to these 10 questions

Usually on the Multimedia Journalism site we concentrate on how to do journalism

How to be a better reporter, video editor, podcaster or whatever

This time I want to look at something different.

Something that comes before all of the 'how to do it'.

It's the 'do you really want to do it?'

It's about the state of journalism today.

So I'm posing and answering 10 key questions.

The answers are designed to fully inform you about the state of the journalism trade today in the US and the UK.

I'll lay my cards on the table right now - I think we are at the start of a golden age of journalism.

I say that because it's never been easier to do journalism: to create and publish high-quality multimedia content.

Getting good at it is the hard part, and is what the MMJ course of learning is all about.

But there are also some stark facts that anyone considering spending a lot of time and money studying journalism ought to know about before they commit themselves.

For example: there are between 40,000 and 60,000 journalists working in the UK, depending on whose figures you believe (more on that here)

Yet, each year, around 15,000 students begin journalism degrees.

In the USA, the ratio of fresh graduates to working journalists is similarly scary.

So, no pressure there then.

This doesn't mean you'll never get a job in journalism, although in the UK, applications for journalism degrees plunged by 20 per cent in 2012, and only recovered by 1.4 per cent in 2013. 

What the tough employment market does mean is that you need to be really well trained, qualified and prepared if you are to stand a chance.

You need to be well-informed about where the jobs are, and how to equip yourself for a career in journalism.

So in this masterclass we look at these things:

• How many jobs there are and what percentage of journalism students get one
• Where those jobs are in the various branches of the media - newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, online and in brand journalism
• The qualifications and experience you need to be a serious candidate

and other key questions.

Along the way we'll link to further information and resources - so, for example, in the module on what experience you need we link to a rich resource of advice on getting work experience and internships and on building up an impressive portfolio of published and/or broadcast work.

Next: How many jobs are there? How hard is it to get one?

8 things every new journalism student must learn to do before they start their course

T-shirt: customised at zazzle

You’ve probably got a pretty daunting reading list that you know you ought to plough your way through

But nobody does that. And you don’t need to.

What you do need to do now, if you want to be ahead of the game when your course starts, is learn some essentials.
Here are eight things that, if you tackle them now, mean you’ll find the first few weeks of your course plain sailing.
You’ll find a short explanation of each item on this screen, plus links so you can find out more.
The links go either to further screens in this masterclasses, or out to other resources in the MMJ project.
Some are outside the paywall, for others you’ll need to become a registered user to gain access. To do that, you need to buy the book in print or ebook form. You can do that here for the USA, here for the UK.

1 Learn to write a news story following the inverted triangle method

That means, knowing that every story must answer these six essential questions about the event you are reporting on:

Who   What   When

Where   Why   How

And these questions need to be answered in a structure we call the inverted triangle or pyramid, which has these four elements within it:

You’ll find a detailed demonstration of how such a story is written in this masterclasses, on the screen called Learn to write a news story following the inverted triangle method
Plus there are loads of real-life examples of how news stories are written in Chapter 1 of the print/ebook versios of Multimedia Journalism, with supporting links and material on the immersive website here.

2 Develop a beat or specialism

The days of the generalist are over. Being a bog-standard news reporter is a dead end job when so much general news is available, and when such a low price is put on it.
To offer value, and material that people are prepared to pay for, you need to become an expert in a particular field - to cover what we call a beat, or specialism.
That might be movies, music or fashion. It could be health, education or politics.
Maybe you have no idea what specialism to choose.
If so, just pick a subject – ideally something you are passionate about – and make covering that area your way of learning to be a good journalist.
We’ve covered 12 specialisms in depth in previous MMJ masterclasses. You’ll find an introduction to them, plus advice on how to choose a specialism and how to begin covering it here.

3 Begin to develop your personal brand

There has been a fundamental shift in the way journalists establish themselves as reliable, authoritative reporters and commentators.
In Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present, Clay Shirky, Emily Bell and CW Anderson said this:
“[There is] a new reality for journalism school grads in which the first step in their careers will not be to tie their reputation to an established media institution, as they might have in the past, but to create their own reputation.
“Already, journalism schools are more like film schools than law schools, which is to say that the relative success or failure of a J-School grad is going to be far more variable than it used to be
“There are fewer entry-level jobs than there used to be.
“Like film school graduates, they will have to go out into the world and create a name for themselves. It's a far less predictable environment and the career paths are less clear.’”
We take a look at doing that in this masterclasses on How to build your personal brand.

Read the other 5 essentials here: Multimedia Journalism Masterclass 58

Infographics for everyone: how to create great infographics using free tools, and with no design skills

Follow @andybull
You don't have to be a whizz at graphic design to create infographics anymore
A number of free tools now let onyone turn dense information into an attractive, easily-read and absorbed visual story.
So in Masterclass 53 at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide we show how to do that.
But before we get to the free tools to use, we need to decide when, and why, infographics might be important to us as news reporters or storytellers.
So we'll look first at why infographics work, and what they are.
Then we'll map out some ground rules on how to tell a story via an infographic.
We'll look at the source material, the mix of stats and facts that will form the content of your infographic.
And we'll present a range of effective infographics to show what is achievable.
Then we'll build some infographics, using Piktochart, which I judge to be the best free tool.
Finally we'll look at some alternative infographic-building platforms including Infogr.am and Easel.ly.

Next: What are infographics and why use them?

Latest storytelling platforms for journalists - previewing MMJ Masterclass 52

One of the great challenges journalism faces is to find new ways of storytelling

Why do we need to do that?

Because the new media demand new ways of storytelling that are appropriate for them.

So how should we tell stories in the mutlimeda environments of websites or mobile devices, for example?

That's something we are still working on discovering.

Nobody has the definitive answer.

But we do know what tools we now have to work with. We know, for example, that a mobile's inbuilt GPS and camera create storytelling and reporting opportunities that we've never had before.

So in this masterclass we are looking at two brand new storytelling platforms that enable multimedia story finding and telling on websites, blogs and mobile devices.

We look at Grafetee, which is a location-based app that draws information from all sorts of other apps onto one platform, and which I think may have the potential to let you create a local or hyperlocal news resource that can be consumed on mobiles.

We also explore MyHistro, which lets you build multimedia timelines around a theme or story, apply them to a Google map, and embed them anywhere you like.

I'm not going to pretend that I've fully roadtested these two platforms, but from what I've seen I think they deserve serious consideration by anyone who wants to develop their new media storytelling. So this is very much a first look.

We also consider Conweets, which is more accurately described as a story-gathering device rather than a platform on which to tell those stories.

Conweets lets you track conversations between two Twitter users, or identify and follow any of the conversations a given user is having.

With so much news being made on Twitter, Conweets is a great device for easily following the conversations in which stories can be found.

Next: Grafetee: Create a local news site for mobiles

Analytics for journalists; previewing Masterclass 51 at Multimedia Journalism

The latest masterclass at MMJ is about analytics, or the analysis of web traffic

We'll look at how to use analytics tools to chart the effectiveness of your journalism

Analytics show you not only how you have done, but can help you improve what you produce in the future.

If you work for a publisher or broadcaster, analytics tools will be built into the content management system you use. As a journalist, you may or may not have access to those analytics.

Here we'll concentrate on how you can install your own analytics tool on your websites, blogs and apps, and how to use the analytics tools built in to social media networks.

Google Analytics is a powerful free tool, and we'll look here at:

• How to install Google Analytics
• How to understand the analytics that Google gives you 

We'll also look at analytics tools for:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram

  Next: How to install Google Analytics

5 new masterclasses to help journalists boost their storytelling skills - from Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide

We’ve clocked up no fewer that 50 masterclasses at MMJ in the past two years, covering everything from data journalism to Wordpress, video storytelling to creating smartphone apps.

All of these practical guides are available to registered users of MMJ, as are all other masterclasses – including our detailed guides to 12 popular journalism beats including sport, politics, fashion and health.

In the 2012-13 academic year we aim to tackle the latest developments in multimedia journalism, including promising new storytelling platforms, a journalist’s guide to analytics, and how to create infographics.

You’ll find the publishing schedule for the first five masterclasses below. But, as ever, nothing is set in stone, We’d love to hear from you with any suggestions you have for areas you’d like to see us cover.

The way we do journalism is changing at a phenomenal rate. Our goal is to help you keep up. So if there are any tools you’ve discovered that you think other journalists will find useful, let us know and we’ll take an in-depth look at them, and how they can be used.

Masterclass 51: Analytics for journalists

How to use analytics to improve your content and the effectiveness of your journalism.

We’ll include a guide to the tools social platforms including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube provide you with, plus a step-by-step user’s guide to Google Analytics.

Going Live: October 13

Masterclass 52: New storytelling and research tools for journalists

The most promising of the latest tools road tested – how to use them and what they may be able to do for your research and storytelling.

We plan to include Graftee, myhistro, Contweets and others. But if you have further suggestions, get in touch.

Going live: October 27

Masterclass 53: Infographics for beginners

How to easily make professional infographics, and when to use them

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to create infographics anymore. We roadtest some of the tools that promise to help you make great infographics.

But when should you use infographics as a storytelling technique? We’ll give a guide.

Going live: November 10

Masterclass 54: Better smartphone photography

Mobile phone cameras get better all the time, and so do photo apps that let you turn an average snap into an impressive piece of photojournalism.

We’ll give a guide to the best cameras, apps and a run down on good photo-technique.

Going live: November 24

Masterclass 55: Boosting your online presence and personal brand

There are many apps that promise to help you look good on line.

Some, such as Vizify, aim to turn your cv/resume into a beautiful interactive graphic. Others, such as Brand Yourself, work to boost your Google ranking.

We’ll take a look at these and others to see which can do the most for you.

Going live: December 8

Brand journalism - what it is and how to do it

This is a preview of the 50th masterclass at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide and it’s a little different to the preceding 49.

It’s about something that some people deny is journalism at all. They say it’s just PR or marketing under another name.

But what exactly is brand journalism? You can read a definition of brand journalism in this module.

In other modules we'll look at how to do it, something of its history - how brand journalism has developed as a discipline - and the cases for and against it as a valid branch of journalism. 

Here I want to say why I’m doing this.

Why cover brand journalism?

My reason for covering brand journalism is rooted in two realities.

One is the dire state of employment for journalists with traditional publishers and broadcasters.

The other is the way brands are using social media to communicate. And how they are using journalists, or non-journalists using journalistic techniques, to do so.

And as everything I’ve done under the Multimedia Journalism banner over the past two years has been about trying to equip journalism students for the world of work, and helping working journalists to gain the new skills they need to stay employed, I think we really must cover this new source of work.

It seems to me pretty obvious that in the future many – perhaps most – journalists will be employed by brands. They'll be doing the stuff journalists have always done, and which we are best at, but instead of being employed by a media brand, they'll work for some other sort of organisation.

I use 'brand' as an umbrella term to encompass any organisation, any charity, any pressure group or cause; any manufacturer, retailer, wholesaler; any branch of public service from the police to army to education to social services; any politician or political organisation, group or campaign at every geographic level; any profession, any trade.

All of them will be using what I’m calling brand journalism, but which can also be called content marketing, to communicate, as appropriate, with their existing and potential customers and clients; with those who support a cause or who they’d like to persuade to do so; with whatever communities they represent or serve.

That’s a big shift. 

It's here: get used to it

I don’t think most journalists are ready for it. We are still too hung up on the idea of PR and marketing as the dark side – as the place old journalist go to die when their careers are over.

We need to rethink. This masterclass is my attempt at beginning to do that.

It's also written from a desire to see a debate about brand journalism. In the UK, the Leveson Inquiry into press standards is causing a fundamental rethink of  how journalists operate, and how media companies, governments and other institutions intereract.

It's likely to lead to stricter regulation of the press; to the establishment of standards of behaviour that have been sorely lacking within some sections of the media.

I'd like to see a parallel debate on the emerging world of brand journalism. Maybe we need a powerful new code of ethics and conduct, perhaps enshrined in law, to regulate all journalism, including brand journalism.

I'd like the debate around brand journalism to be rooted in the reailty that, like it or loath it, jornalism performed on behalf of brands, corporations, charities, causes, governments and many others is expanding exponentially. We need to understand what is happening.

Brand journalism, its practice, and its impact is a very big - and very important - subject. For that reason I’m writing a book about it. I'd like that book to be as fully informed as possible, and I invite you to tell me what you think about the subject. You’ll find a note about the project, and how to get in touch, at the end of this masterclass.

Next: What Brand Journalism Is

The Brand Journalism project

I've been commissioned by Routledge to write a book on Brand Journalism, with a companion website. 

The book will be a companion volume to Multimedia Journalism, which deals with essential journalism skills. It won't duplicate the learning programme of MMJ; rather it will move up to the next level and demonstrate how to apply those skills to brand journalism.

It will also demonstrate to journalists, marketers, PR professionals, brand managers and others how to develop and implement a brand journalism strategy. 

It will be highly practical, packed with examples of how brands, organisations, charities, public bodies, campaigns, causes and many more entities are doing brand journalism in ways that are appropriate to them.

If you have any thoughts or comments, or would like to contribute to the project in some way, please contact me, Andy Bull, via the buttons on this site, or DM me @andybull on Titter.

I'm looking for case studies of brand journalists, and examples of brand journalism in action.

Building proficiency with Wordpress.org - a guide for journalists from MMJ

I'd like to introduce you to the second in a three-level programme of tuition on using Wordpress as a publishing platform for journalism, to which you have free access until 26-03-2012.
The three levels correspond to the levels common across the whole Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide learning programme
We covered level one, Getting Started with Wordpress, here.
The focus there was on Wordpress.com. Now we are looking at Wordpress.org.
If you are new to Wordpress, and want tuition on how to:

• Find your way around the Wordpress dashboard,
• What themes are and how to choose one,
• Add posts and pages to your site,
• Add and remove widgets and other basics,

then you should check out Getting Started with Wordpress.
You’ll need to be a subscriber to MMJ to gain access. To become a subscriber, buy the textbook, in either paper or ebook form.
You’ll find it on Amazon.co.uk at around £25, and at Amazon.com for the US at around $40.
Becoming a subscriber gives you full access to the extensive supportive website that complements each teaching unit in the book, plus access to the now 45 Masterclasses, which are up-to-the-minute tutorials in a wide range of key developments in multimedia journalism.

So what do we cover in level two, Building proficiency with Wordpress?

The focus now is on Wordpress.org. If you need to know the important differences between .com and .org, you’ll find an explanation here.
Here we cover:

• Choosing a host and downloading Wordpress.org to your computer
• Choosing, downloading, unzipping and activating a theme in Wordpress.org
• Recommended themes for creating magazine and news sites on Wordpress
• Essential adjustments to make to your Wordpress account
• Plug-ins you should add to your Wordpress site to boost functionality.

 It is intended to add a third level of tuition, Professional Standards with Wordpress, in the future.
That level is likely to include tuition on:

• Using FTP to administer your site
• How to run a news site and newspaper using Wordpress
• Essential plugins for newsrooms
• Building a mobile app on Wordpress

Next: Choosing a host and downloading Wordpress.org to your computer

The Port Talbot MagNet and the West Londoner win print runs from MMJ and Make My Newspaper

At MMJ we’re confident that print has a future.

But, sadly, more and more towns and villages are being denied a print newspaper, as local papers run by the big publishers put up the shutters. Certainly there are many excellent hyperlocals stepping into their shoes, but they can rarely stretch to a physical product; relying on websites, blogs, and social media to distribute their news.

So when I heard that Make My Newspaper, a short-run publishing house that lets you create your own tabloid online, had launched in the UK, I thought it was worth checking out.

Chatting to Paul McLachlan from the company it struck me that Make My Newspaper could perhaps provide a solution to the knotty problem of how a hyperlocal might make it into print.

And Paul generously offered a free print run of 150 copies of a 16-page tabloid newspaper to two readers of MMJ.

So we launched this competition to find worthy winners, as part of a look at the future of print, and a practical guide to creating a newspaper on the Make My Newspaper platform.
The response was overwhelming.

It proved beyond doubt that many hyperlocals would love to get into print, if only they could find an affordable way to do so.

I’ve been sifting through pitches from all corners of the country, and I’m sorry to have to disappoint so many hard-working local journos who are showing their commitment to keeping their communities informed.

But we do have two winners.

They are:

The Port Talbot MagNet

And

The West Londoner

NEXT: Why they won