New to the blog?

This blog has been going for a fair few months now, but if you're new to the blog, or to blogging in general, here's a quick guide to some of the current features available here.

(If you've read that sentence and thought: 'I'm not just new to the blog, I have NO IDEA what on earth this thing is', then check out this brilliant short video and you'll be right up to speed.)

1. Ordinary blog-standard postings - like this one. These used to be about Mediating Conflict - 'new media', war and terrorism but now most of these type of postings tend to be on my other blog at the Frontline Club. (You can find that here.) On this blog, I tend to write more about blogging and the media in general.

2. If there is nothing new in the ordinary posting section, fear not. On the sidebar you will see a list of my delicious bookmarks. Delicious is a way of sharing webpages you bookmark with other people. My bookmarks are constantly being updated as I save interesting and relevant online articles about blogging, media, war, terrorism, the BBC and how all of these things come together. All you have to do is click on one of the bookmarks in the sidebar and it will take you to the article.

3. If you want to find out what I'm up to at any given time, go again to the sidebar and you'll see my Twitter feed. This regularly lets you know what I'm doing a little bit like a Facebook status update. When you see something like "@Joebloggs", that means I'm replying to what somebody else has said on Twitter which won't make much sense unless you sign up and get involved.

4. Other sidebar features include an archive of all my postings and a 'newsfeed' that pulls in articles from Google News in various categories. You'll also find some sort of an answer to the question: 'Who the hell is this guy who writes this blog?'.

5. That big orange 'you've-been-tangoed' button that says "RSS feed" enables you to subscribe in a feedreader (like this one), so that you don't have to keep coming back to my blog to check out if I've written anything new. (It's a bit like the difference between having to go and collect your post from a pigeon-hole or central storage area and having someone deliver it directly to your door). If you set up a feed reader and subscribe to my feed you'll never miss anything I write. Ever. (Warning: this may not be desirable). You can do the same for my Frontline blog here. But you might just like to subscribe by email - using the link below the big orange button.

6. Finally, if you don't like what I've written, have some helpful additional info or just want to tell me what you think then you can leave a comment by clicking on the 'Comments' button that appears below an ordinary posting.

Recent Frontline posts: 9/11 and military blogging

I've written a couple of posts over at the Frontline blog. The first on 9/11 and the birth of blogging. The second, a quick link to an article on military blogging.

Links for today: blogs, multimedia, and linking

• The Guardian is relaunching their blogs.

• The Independent talks to the BBC's head of multimedia, Ian Burrell about the Corporation's multiplatform approach.

• National media outlets fail on attribution and linking according to Adam Tinworth.

• Which is made more interesting when you consider that Kevin Anderson reckons the way to fact-check online is to follow the links.

• What do you reckon? Let me know. Or don't. Your choice.
  

Google Chrome usage

Everyone's writing blog posts about how many people are now using Chrome - that's Google's new web-browser-cum-operating system for those of you that missed the fuss - to access their websites.

So I thought I'd let you know that only 0.75% of my visitors are using Chrome. That's not a high percentage, suggesting this blog is read by quaint old-fashioned types who prefer Firefox 3. I like it.

BBC Monitoring's Emerging Media 'Team'

Last week, I went to a talk by BBC Monitoring at Bush House on the Strand. The general gist was that blogs and other forms of social media are becoming increasingly important sources of information. No surprise there, then.

But I was rather taken aback by the fact that Vivien Sands from BBC Monitoring was not just representing the 'Emerging* Media Team'. She was and is the 'Emerging Media Team'. Which means she must be exceptionally busy - there's a lot of emerging media to monitor!

Vivien did go onto say that existing Monitors are being trained up in these emerging sources of information and regional specialists are already fully aware of blogs and the like. But I imagine she'll be hoping that her plan to increase the size of the Emerging Media Team will come to fruition.

Of all the emerging media available, Vivien said BBC Monitoring uses blogs the most. Although Monitoring does produce a weekly round up Iranian blogs, most of the time blogs will be scoured in relation to particular news events. Monitors will then put the best of the information together for the BBC and their other clients - such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence.

Recent BBC Monitoring projects include:

• China's '50-cent' bloggers and the media campaign accompanying clashes in Tibet.
  
• Zimbabwe - particularly the 'This is Zimbabwe' blog
• The use of Facebook to defy governments in the Middle East
• An anaylsis of the cyberwar between Russia and Georgia.
  

*I'm guessing the thinking here is that the 'new' media is no longer deemed to be 'new'. But then why replace it with emerging? Hasn't the 'new' media already 'emerged'? I'll carry on using the word 'emerging' in this post for consistency.

Links for today: Moult, the Mail and loose ends

• This is a story about Julie Moult, of the Daily Mail, who wrote a poor article about Google-bombing. It's something of a warning to 'old media': respond to comments (and employ some basic fact-checking) or 'new media' will make you look silly. Very silly. (But remember folks it's not a war and we should all be working together...)

• BBC's Evan Davis 'defends' Chancellor. Somewhere here is the line between personal opinion and professional judgement. See if you can spot it...

• The EU wants to 'clarify' the position of blogs. That means 'labelling' them and sorting out their legal status etc.
  

• A different model for journalism. Pitch a story and raise funds direct from the audience to report it.
  

The cycle of a news story

Ok, so I liked Alison Gow's post about the lifecycle of a news story in the 21st Century.

I thought it would be worth combining with some of Paul Bradshaw's ideas in a Model for a 21st Century Newsroom.

I thought I might have a punt at visualising the news process as a cycle, rather than as a diamond or in a linear fashion.

I thought it might help reveal how the news story is 'unfinished', non-linear, and has the potential to regularly be adjusted by the interactivity offered by the Web.

I'm not sure I've entirely succeeded in what I thought, but I came up with this fine mess instead (if you click on it, it'll open so you can actually see it):


And after all, maybe journalism has become more of a mess than it used to be. Your comments most appreciated.

(I haven't included all the additional details available on Paul and Alison's posts of how journalists might achieve each stage because it was getting quite cramped already and they've covered most methods in any case.)