US milblogs

For some recent quotes and posts that have caught my eye, hop on over to my Frontline blog.

Twitter and the earthquake in China

Much excitement among new media types this morning at the ability of Twitter to provide up-to-the-minute information on the Chinese earthquake.

Earlier in the day, Rory-Cellan Jones, technology correspondent at the BBC, described twitter as an 'amazing way of tracking Chinese quake news'. In fact, he thought his discovery that the tool was not merely a 'fad for people who want to share too much of their rather dull lives' was worth a quick blog post.

Paul Bradshaw has an excellent summary post on how Twitter can be used for newsgathering with links to various other places. He suggests that this sort of crowdsourcing is far superior to some of the more traditional methods of journalism:

'How quickly would a journalist have found someone who speaks English and was affected by the quake? Or an image? '

If you really want to take advantage of this resource you'll also need:

• Tweestscan, allowing you to search 'tweets' for key words like 'earthquake'

• Twitterlocal, enabling you to track down tweets from China, (especially useful with a dose of Google translation)

• Tweetburner, which means you can track what other tweeters are linking to. (Alpha Twitter does a similar job.)
  

By all accounts, following self-confessed 'tech geek blogger', Robert Scoble, on Twitter also helps.

Quiz questions about blogging at the BBC

You won't be hearing these in the local pub quiz.

Anyone who comes up with the answer to these seemingly impossible questions will receive my eternal gratitude and a follow up interview request. (This may include the promise of a free coffee or drink of your choice.)

1. Who was the first journalist to use a blog as a source of information at the BBC; which blog did he or she use; and on what story? (I reckon that's going to prove quite tough but I didn't say it would be easy. You need to earn that coffee).

2. Who was the first person to appear anywhere on BBC output who was specifically introduced as a 'blogger'?

More blogging at the Frontline

My latest offering at the Frontline resembles my journey on the Underground yesterday: somewhat delayed but I got there in the end.

Advance warning

I fear my blogging output may become more erratic over the coming weeks. (Hence, the lack of pretty photos and any longer posts in recent times.)

This is what happens when you start another blog (new post for this coming later today) and when you really have to get on with researching and writing an erudite piece of literature that is directly relevant to the PhD.

But hopefully my blog won't reach this rather concerning state of affairs.

I'm informed by other PhD students at King's that spending several months researching an interesting topic which is totally irrelevant to your PhD thesis is a completely normal and acceptable practice (as long you get back on track at some point in three or four years).

In my case, I'd like to think I hadn't strayed too far from the target. But recently, I've got rather too involved with researching milblogging or the lack of it in the UK.

Most of my work in this area is unlikely to make the final thesis, so I need to rein myself in and focus on what I'm supposed to be doing.

Origins of Blogging at the BBC

I'm putting together some information about the early days of blogging at the BBC. Here's a collection of links if you're interested in where blogging at the BBC began.

Nick Robinson

1. The first official BBC pseudo-blog was Nick Robinson's The Campaign Today. A regularly updated diary of the 2001 General Election.

2. This led to Newslog, which specifically cited the influence of weblogs on the format...

3. ...and it became the first piece of the ever-expanding BBC Blog Network puzzle in late 2005.

Scotland

1. Meanwhile BBC Scotland Interactive was leading experiments with blogs at the organisation. This is Scotblog which started in 2002. It provided interesting links to web content with a few lines of commentary. It even had an RSS feed - something Nick Robinson wasn't offering back in 2002.

2. Producers also worked with the Scottish Executive on a project encouraging Scottish Islanders to start up their own blogs. It's still going strong.

Reports and reviews of these projects considered important issues that would feed into the BBC's overall blogging strategy.

Personal Blogs

1. Away from the official BBC website, BBC journalists were keeping their own personal blogs. Stuart Hughes wrote about reporting the war in Iraq in 2003.

2. Martin Belam writes about how he discovered blogs by reading those of his BBC colleagues in the new media team. (Martin's series on these early developments is a must read for interested parties).

The Destroyermen

Click here to read my latest post on the interesting history of US Milblog The Destroyermen at the Frontline Club.