Browsing: journalism

News
A nice show?
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This year, Reporter without Borders will be releasing its 50th photography book promoting the freedom of information. And alongside the release of the book, the organisation has also released a short online film that juxtaposes how governments want us to see wars to how they actually are.

News
Finding stories in the statistics: welcome to the age of data visualisation
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Data is, as they say, big. It’s everywhere. We’re all creating it all the time. And within all the data are stories. Millions and millions of stories. And to help us make sense of those stories, a new breed of data visualisation from the likes of Pitch Interactive’s Wes Grubbs has arisen to deepen and broaden our understanding of the world around us. PLUS: some of our favourite data visualisations.

News
2015 Magazine Media Awards: NZ Life & Leisure takes top honour, Bauer lands biggest haul and Ben Fahy claims all the credit
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Last night, laptops across the magazine industry were closed a little earlier than usual as journalists, publishers, editors and sales people headed to Shed 10 to attend the 2015 Magazine Media Awards to celebrate another year of storytelling across print and online. 44 awards were handed out over the course of the event, and it was a particularly good night for NZ Life & Leisure and StopPress/NZ Marketing’s Ben Fahy.

News
Future tense: Stuff’s projects team on visual journalism, reporters working with developers and unusual faces in the newsroom
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Following on from our story on the work of NZ Herald data editor Harkanwal Singh, we recently also got glimpse of some of the work that the Stuff projects team is doing in the data journalism space. Stuff projects editor John Hartevelt chats about why the newsroom will become increasingly occupied by specialists not traditionally associated with journalism.

News
Future Tense: the data journalist behind the Herald’s interactive graphs
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In an ongoing series, StopPress talks to a range of newsmakers currently trying to shine lights into dark places while also keeping their own lights on and looks at whether commercial realities are leading to editorial compromise. Next up, Damien Venuto talks with the NZ Herald’s data editor Harkanwal Singh about turning big data into accessible journalism.

News
Future Tense: Radio New Zealand’s Paul Thompson on going commercial, the rise of podcasting and the importance of state-funded journalism
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In a new series, StopPress talks to a range of newsmakers currently trying to shine lights into dark places while also keeping their own lights on and looks at whether commercial realities are leading to editorial compromise. First up, Radio New Zealand chief executive Paul Thompson chats about why it’s unlikely—and important for journalism—for the state-funded broadcaster to go fully commercial.

News
Life after editorial staff: Yahoo’s Ed Harrison on restructuring the business
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In March, the story broke that Yahoo would be releasing all of its editorial staff as part of a restructuring process that would create five new roles, which these previous staff members could apply for. Until now, the regional executives in charge of this restructure have not commented to the media about what the changes have entailed or why the the website had decided to rethink its business operations. After several requests for interviews, Yahoo 7 chief executive for Australia and New Zealand Ed Harrison recently chatted to StopPress about the changes and what they mean for the company.

News
The robot threat to our jobs
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The Associated Press recently revealed that it would be automating its business reporting through a series of algorithms that compose 150- to 300-word stories in lieu of actual humans. Powered by technology developed by a company called Automated Insights, these algorithms pull data from readily available statistics and are already used by the New York Times for its wedding announcements and by Forbes for its earning reports previews. According to Mashable, the technology resulted in 300 million automated stories last year, a number that’s higher than that produced by all the major media companies combined. And in 2014, they’re setting the bar even higher by aiming to produce over a billion stories.

News
Chronicling history: a year of Kiwi journalism in video form
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Last Friday night, a good chunk of the nation’s newspaper and magazine community gathered at the Pullman to celebrate the best writers, photographers, cartoonists, publishers and—be still our beating heart—marketers and bloggers. And while the commercial seas have been relatively choppy in this industry of late, the Canon Media Awards are always a good reminder of the important role journalism plays in telling a nation’s stories. And the event’s opening video, which was put together by OnDigital, shows just how broad that remit has been over the past year.

Opinion
Review: The Most Dangerous Man in the World
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Some see him as a journalistic pioneer. Others see him as a narcissistic megalomaniac. And Andrew Fowler’s chronicling of Julian Assange’s rise and fall will help you decide which side of the fence you sit on—and should be of interest to anyone with a passing interest in the media—writes Kelly Bennett.

News
Broken news? Fairfax’s Garry Ferris on the newsroom of the modern era
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As if taking on the rather sizeable job as Fairfax’s Auckland editor-in-chief wasn’t stressful enough, Garry Ferris’s home was robbed three times in his first eight days in Auckland. But despite the tough introduction and fairly troubling times for print media—and the company he’s now working for—the avowed newspaper man is still remarkably chipper.

News
Fairfax looks on the bright side, prepares for the future with continuation of intern scheme
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There’s been plenty of press lately about media companies being forced to adjust the way they did business in fast-changing circumstances, chief among them Fairfax, which announced the cutting of 1,900 jobs in Australia and host of other big changes (check out this anonymous opinion piece by a Fairfax journalist in Australia that painted a rather vivid picture of the current situation at the company). But according to Fairfax Media’s group executive editor in New Zealand Paul Thompson—and as evidenced in Oriella’s global study—journalism remains a career of huge variety, opportunity and importance and the company says its continuation of the intern scheme in 2012 is “a sign of its belief in itself, its journalism and the future”. And, given that future will likely be digital, this year applicants will have to upload a video clip of no more than 90 seconds about themselves to YouTube as part of the process to show they’re up to the task.

News
Global journalism study shows ‘cautious optimism’, Kiwi media less affected by digital technologies
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News of three senior defections at Fairfax in Australia surfaced yesterday, following on from last week’s news that it planned to cut 1,900 jobs—or around 20 percent of its staff—as part of a restructure aimed at facing up to the challenges of digital publishing. News Ltd is also set to cull staff, although it has said the number is “significantly less” than Fairfax (its own press appears to be looking on the bright side of that decision). And while New Zealand’s newspaper biz is still doing it tough at the moment, Fairfax NZ chief executive Allen Williams told the NBR it was a “case of two different markets, in two different timeframes”, so going tabloid and putting up paywalls wasn’t on the agenda–yet. Add in the Leveson enquiry in the UK and it’s tough out there in media land, so it was interesting to see the results of the 5th annual Oriella Digital Journalism Study, which showed the world’s media were cautiously upbeat despite continued uncertainty in the global economy and “digital technologies have affected the practice of journalism less markedly in New Zealand” than elsewhere.

News
Words and images used to explain things
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Unless you’re scared of large, uninterrupted blocks of text, why would you read a story about one boring thing, when you could read a story that deals with a whole range of exciting things? That’s right, you wouldn’t. Or would you?

News
Finish the line – and win
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Can you complete this terrific little gag by Idealog cartoonist Alister Kitchen? Make us belly ache and we’ll send you a million dollars worth of Steinlager Edge. Post your entries on the comment wall.