Jul/100
The blog, the MA and the future
This blog has been neglected. There, i said it. Call the Blog Protection Services and i might lose custody. The problem is that i have a reason for that. Several, in fact, but these are the ones that matter, and most of them sound so lame i won’t even bother to list them, like “time” or “i needed a break” or a “fresh perspective”.
As you may know, i’ve been doing the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University, under the guidance of Paul Bradshaw, for the last nine months. Best thing i ever done in my life: not only i got to learn with one of the best minds in online journalism, but i also had a great time living in a foreign country, a first for me. It wasn’t a life changing experience or anything like that, but it ‘s damn close. Now that i’m back in Portugal i’m slowly recognizing the effects it had on me, and i’m in what i call a “hangover period”. You know, you wake up a bit disoriented, and wonder about what you’ve done the night before? No regrets in my case though.
But since i was busy as hell, i put the blog aside for too long. I have a list of posts i want to write, and i’m starting to work on them this week. I have stuff waiting to be posted since last year, but now i know how to do it better. So pay attention to the forthcoming posts, i’m back.
Meanwhile, i was doing this MA like i said. I still have one project to do during the Summer, and i’ll talk about it here soon, but you can take a look at what i’ve done in the last six months in this blog post Paul wrote about the assignments and experiments me and my colleagues did.A timeline, the spontaneous online coverage of the Madeira floods, a multimedia project, those were some of my relevant efforts.
I’m proud of mine – though i think i could have done so much better - but my colleagues were great. Read the whole series of posts so you can have an idea of what we were doing. We got in touch with amazing people, and though sometimes the brits seem hard to reach, i met some of the nicest people ever related to journalism. Maybe i was lucky, maybe they were just polite, but what a difference! The small country blues hit me hard sometimes, but then i also realized that in Portugal we are not behind anyone, we have incredible people working in journalism and new media, the problem is that we don’t have many chances to grow. Well, we do, but no entrepreneurial attitude (i had a class on that), fortunately some people don’t think that way. But that’s for another post.
Anyway, i’m on a break now, doing this course in Porto, and then i’ll be working on my Summer project for the MA. And afterwards i may have a job that allows me to do lots of stuff on the side, and push the boundaries of journalism a little further. I have lots of ideas, so all i have to do is work on them, no matter if i stay here or change countries again.
The future is now, and there’s no better place than that.
PS: by the way, the reason why i’m writing english only posts is that writing both in portuguese and english is time-consuming and i’m a bit late, but i’ll try to go back to dual language soon.
Jun/102
MA Online Journalism – The Paranoia Timeline
One of the assignments i did for my Online Journalism module was a timeline depicting some of the major events that caused social stir across the world in the last 20 years. Some were real, some were just, well, paranoid behavior, hence The Paranoia Timeline. This is a description of the project – that stayed incomplete, still in a conceptual phase - and the steps and views i have on it.
I would like to hear from you, about what can be done with archive journalism, with different narratives, and if you want to help me develop the timeline (it’s filled with mock content, and it’s maybe in the 5% of its full potential) let me know. I wanted this to be a collaborative project, with different people contributing with ideas, videos, text, pictures, graphs, opinions, so any help is more than welcome.
So you can have an idea of what is the spirit of The Paranoia Timeline, here’s a small video i edited as a promo.
“Paranoia is a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion.” Wikipedia
The Project
In an attempt to explore new ways to report stories, I decided for this project to use a timeline as a platform to report on some events that had social impact in the last 20 years. The kind of aftermath these events had is not constrained to geographical levels, and they altered our everyday lives, and in some cases, our world views and personal experience. Some of these events caused social hysteria or global discussion and forced governments to act in ways that affected the common citizen.
The Paranoia Timeline[i] is based in a type of journalism that I believe to be quite ignored by mainstream media, which is archive journalism. This type of reporting works with – as the name implies – with archive information and preexistent content, and my idea was to use available data and information to create a retrospective view on a few events that fulfilled the parameters presented before. Being the Internet the world’s largest archive, it was logical to work exclusively with online content, and reuse it to make something new, using computer assisted reporting and mashups.
Though the current result falls short of my initial goals, it is a prototype for a more involving experience, and I consider it to be a work in construction. What I’ll be defending here is a concept with a few examples using interactive tools, but I realize this is just a small sample of what it can really be: an immersive, ongoing project, with more interactive features, providing a journalistic approach to issues highly debated and prone to partisanship, many of them used by religious and political groups to spin their own ideologies to the general audience. The purpose is to create context.
Research
First of all, I had to look for the most reliable and customizable timeline creating tool available for free[ii]. After pondering a few options, I chose Dipity[iii], mostly because of its reliability and ease of use, but I must admit I preferred something even more powerful: Dipity still has some glitches.
The first question was how to pinpoint in importance and time the events for this timeline. At first I used my own memory and experience and then used other people’s to limit it to the most important and visible ones. Wikipedia is a great resource when it comes to sum up the most important events in a decade, so I looked up the decade entries, in this case the 90’s and the 00’s. It was a good starting point to find the candidates for this timeline, and, simultaneously, to have more links for my research.
But when it came to limit those events in time I had a problem: how could I limit the span of the importance of the events in public opinion? The best way I found was to use Google and their timeline tool.
By searching for peaks in the timeline created by Google, I could define exactly the period when the subject was widely discussed. Since Google also has the Google News Archive, with copies of pre-Internet newspapers, I also had a long run perspective for the subject at hand that could be used for historical context.
Other valuable resource was Archive.org. This website has an immense collection of media under public domain that can be used to illustrate some of these stories. I made a pastiche video using almost exclusively footage available there, with the exception of some stock footage available for free at a specialized website. The video works as a promo for the website, and it should have included two interviews, but I wasn’t able to do any of them. Still, my idea was to create an audiovisual narrative for each subject of the timeline, like a mini documentary series, using both archive footage and actual interviews with experts. I also tried to use Google’s Newstimeline[iv], but it wasn’t embeddable I had to give up the idea of having a scrolling timeline with newspapers about the specific subject.
Data
I chose two subjects to investigate using data: the recent swine flu and the credit crunch. Both of them are rich in statistical information so I decided to do a death map for the flu[v], and a graph showing loan evolution in the United States since 2003, using Tableau.
The swine flu data came from Wolfram-Alpha[vi] that generated a rather reliable (after cross checking with other official websites) amount of data, with the number of cases and deaths per country. I had to make an option about which would be highlighted, but discrepancies in the logical amount of cases between countries made me go just for the death numbers. The conclusion that I got from the map is that swine flu was either more serious or reported in the developed countries. Traditionally considered Third World countries do not have many reports, which reflect the lack of structures to deal with the problem or how overhyped it was in the Western world. But France on its own had almost 3 million cases reported against 57 thousand in the United States, which led me to verify closely other sources. It seems Wolfram Alpha had the number wrong, there were only about 5000 reports, which proves that outliers in data are either new stories or just input errors.
For the credit crunch[vii], I researched the FDIC – Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation[viii] database. They have a considerable amount of statistical data available for download. My idea was to chart the evolution of loans in the United States in the last years, and the main idea was that overall loans slowed down since 2009 but individual credits rose, meaning an increase in personal debt to cope with overall difficulties caused by the crunch.I selected the items that seemed more relevant and went for a simple line chart. My purpose was served.
Production
The timeline had to be embedded in a website, so I used WordPress as a platform. The timeline would provide links to the posts about each topic, and each post would have developed content besides the one already present in the timeline items.
I tried to crowdsource some of the work, using Google Wave and my own network of contacts, but it didn’t work. I also tried to use HARO[ix] network, but they don’t call themselves HASO for a reason (they don’t help students out). Taking all the responsibility for the reporting made me narrow down the content for this assignment to just a few events. I asked permission to use some works already created by other users, like the chart in the 2012 post and some pictures from Flickr. An issue stood out immediately: my idea was not to aggregate content, but to create new content from what I had found. But eventually I realized there are many works out there that fit the needs for contextualization that are so much better than what I could try to create.
So I focused more on the concept, and that’s why I have so many empty posts, like I said, it is a prototype that needs further development. That’s also why I didn’t use social networks, although their importance would be paramount in the future, to engage users into debating the subjects of the timeline.
Copyright and ethics
Using Public Domain material is not an issue, but we always need to read the small print in some of the Creative Commons available content. Not all allow transforming the original, so I had to make some options. Overall, it was quite easy to find audio and visual content to work with, and I have a long list of links to videos to assess. I asked for permission to use some visual elements, namely the 2012 chart, which was what I was looking for, kindly granted by its author.
The disclosure of the Paranoia Timeline as a non-conspiracy theory website also allows me to avoid one sided views and the usual partisanship that we find in other websites that address these subjects.
Innovation
What makes me look at my project as an innovative narrative for journalism is my idea that retrospective journalism should be made, especially now that we have easy access to so much archived content. The perennial quality of web content makes it easily available and thanks to the efforts of Google, even non digital content – old newspapers – is available, which makes it, in my perspective, an interesting and valuable journalistic narrative. Context is the keyword here, and I believe this is the most important objective of new narratives in a world of fragmented torrents of information. This could be also a premium feature for news companies.
This is yet far from finished, but I’ll be working on the project in the near future, and hopefully not as a one man band.
[i] TPT website http://www.theparanoiatimeline.com/
[ii] My blog post about timeline tools http://tinyurl.com/28erszn
[iii] Dipity timeline http://tinyurl.com/38zk5ug
[iv] http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/
[v] Swine flu post http://tinyurl.com/39c282w
[vi] Wolfram-Alpha swine flu data http://tinyurl.com/39urc6d
[vii] Credit Crunch post http://tinyurl.com/24xb7ok
[viii] FDIC – Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation http://www2.fdic.gov/SDI/SOB/
[ix] Help A Reporter Out – http://www.helpareporter.com/
Nov/090
Recommend me | Recomendem-me
My LinkedIn profile | O meu perfil no LinkedIn
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As you can see i haven’t been able to post recently, i just have too many things going on right now connected to the MA, being the most time consuming and challenging the Hashbrum project. Anyway, as soon as i clear all my assignments i’ll return with some new ideas and a couple of interviews. They’re planned, i just don’t have to do them properly. One of the assignments i have is a presentation for my Enterprise module, in which i have to pitch a project. After a change of plans, i became it. I’ll be pitching me and my abilities as a new media professional and thinker, how i have been developing my work and reputation, how will i do it in the future, and define my goals. I had to do it someday, so this is a good chance for it. So what i ask from you is to give your testimony and recommend me at my LinkedIn profile. I have a reputation – a good one i hope – and i must profit from it. I’ve been doing this for so long now because you people have been generous and supportive, even in my most complicated times. So i know how valuable your input is for me and to my work. It doesn’t have to anything fancy, just be honest. Of course this is self-promotion oriented, which means i’ll use the best ones. I’ll at least thank you back. As a matter of fact, i’ll do it right now: thank you. And if you have any suggestions, they’re more than welcome. |
Como podem ver não tenho conseguido postar nos últimos dias, tenho demasiadas coisas em mãos relacionadas com o Mestrado, sendo a mais exigente e desafiadora o projecto HashBrum. De qualquer forma, assim que terminar estas tarefas voltarei com algumas ideias novas e umas entrevistas. estão planeadas, não tenho tido é tempo para as fazer em condições. Uma das coisas que tenho que fazer é uma apresentação para o módulo de Enterprise, na qual tenho que vender um projecto. Depois de uma mudança de planos, eu sou o projecto. Eu vou promover-me a mim e às minhas capacidades como profissional e pensador dos novos media, como tenmho desenvolvido o meu trabalho e reputação, como o farei no futuro, definir objectivos. tinha que o fazer algum dia, e esta é uma boa oportunidade. Portanto o que quero de vocês é o vosso testemunho e recomendação no LinkedIn. Eu tenho uma reputação – boa, espero – e tenho que a rentabilizar. Tenho conseguido fazer isto desde há tanto tempo porque vocês apoiaram e foram generosos comigo, mesmo nas alturas mais difíceis. Por isso sei como o vosso contributo é valioso para mim e para o meu trabalho. Não tem que ser nada de muito elaborado, apenas sejam honestos. Como isto é para autopromoção só vou escolher as mais favoráveis. No mínimo vou agradecer-vos de volta. Aliás, agradeço já: obrigado. E se tiverem algumas sugestões, elas serão bem vindas. |
Nov/092
#hashbrum: Moseley Road Baths Tour – Video
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I’ve been working all week in my HashBrum school project, and today i can present the latest installment for one of the major stories there: the Moseley Road Baths. I was there last Saturday shooting the tour, and i fell in love with the place. It’s a beautiful building left to ruin, with a huge importance for the community that serves. It’s Birmingham in all of it’s schizophrenia: out with the old, no matter how valuable it is, in with the new, no matter how bad it will be. We suffer the same in Portugal. This video was shot with a Sony DV cam, and it has a Lars von Trier feel (it is shaky and out of focus, strange cuts in between). I like how it looks, anyway, but I’d appreciate to hear from you, and know what ideas and suggestions you might have for me and my video making. I have to thank Steve Beauchampe for being such a great tour guide – passion helps – and Rachel Gillies for the support. The music is by Ludovico Einaudi, from his latest and most beautiful album, “Nightbook”. Buy it. |
Passei a semana toda a trabalhar no meu projecto da escola Hashbrum, e hoje posso apresentar a última parte de uma das maiores histórias no site: Moseley Road Baths. Estive lá no Sábado passado a filmar a visita, e apaixonei-me pelo sítio. É um belo edifício esquecido e arruinado, com uma importância enorme para a sua comunidade. É Birmingham em toda a sua esquizofrenia: fora com o velho por mais valioso que seja, venha o novo por pior que seja. Sofremos do mesmo em Portugal. Este video foi filmado com uma DV da Sony, e tem ares de Lars von Trier (está tremido e desfocado, cortes esquisitos pelo meio). Gosto do aspecto dele assim mesmo, mas gostava de ouvir as vossas ideias e sugestões que possam partilhar comigo, para que possa melhorar os meus videos. Tenho que agradcer ao Steve Beauchampe por ser um guia fantástico – a paixão ajuda – e à Rachel Gillies pelo apoio. A música é de Ludovico Einaudi, do seu mais recente e lindíssimo álbum “Nightbook”. Comprem-no.
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Oct/090
MA Online Journalism: the videos | os videos
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Just one year ago there was this huge debate over a student that was banned from blogging his classes at New York University. Here at the MA Online Journalism Paul Bradshaw is such a forward thinker we are recording the lectures on video. And this is not a regular classroom, it is a cafe Birmingham’s city centre. Pretty cool huh? In this video the class was invited to share work experiences, and around 3’40” i get to say some rubbish. Two things: it’s a diverse bunch indeed, and i have to do something about my haircut and/or beard. In order of appearance: Dan Davies, Caroline Beavon, me, Ioana Epure, Andrew Brightwell. Watch the related videos for more bits of our first lecture. |
Há apenas um ano atrás houve uma discussão enorme por causa de uma estudante da New York University que foi proibida de blogar as aulas. Aqui no Mestrado, o Paul Bradshaw é tão à frente que estamos a gravar as aulas em video. E não numa sala de aula qualquer, mas num café no centro de Birmingham. Porreiro, não? Neste video a turma partilhou algumas experiências de trabalho, e por volta dos 3’40” tenho espaço para dizer algumas asneiras. Duas coisas: é realmente um grupo heterogéneo, e tenho que fazer alguma coisa ao meu cabelo e/ou barba. Por ordem de entrada: Dan Davies, Caroline Beavon, eu, Ioana Epure, Andrew Brightwell. Vejam nos videos relacionados outras partes da nossa primeira aula. |
Sep/090
Changes 3: New column | Mudanças 3: Coluna nova
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And in the latest instalment for changes around here, i’d like to announce that yesterday i started my column dedicated to new media at Rascunho.IOL.pt. I am honored for the invitation they made and hope to provide a few interesting insights about the Media Revolution. The title for this weekly reflection is “Media DJ”, and the English version will be available in my (new) blog, becoming somehow an extension of my work. Below is the first text for Media DJ.
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E no mais recente capítulo dedicado a mudanças por aqui, gostaria de anunciar que ontem iniciei a minha coluna/caderno sobre novos media no Rascunho.IOL.pt. Estou honrado pelo convite que me fizeram e espero dar algumas visões pessoais interessantes sobre a Revolução dos Media. O título para esta reflexão semanal é “Media DJ”, e a versão em inglês estará sempre disponível no meu (novo) blog, sendo uma extensão do meu trabalho. |
REMIX
Imagine a stage, and you’re sitting in the audience. From up there, one or several characters proclaim the news of the day, the events they chose as the most important. They do it at a certain time, in a ritualized fashion and within a specific duration.They ignore your reactions, and aren’t quite interested in you but in how many of you are watching them. This was the paradigm for the relationship between audience and media. Then came the Internet and everything changed.
Today, the stage and the audience share the same space, there are several voices for many subjects, each one with its own perspective and different origins; information flows within that space between all the elements, from media to users, to other users, to other media. The keywords for this new model are sharing, dialogue, mobility/ubiquity and real time. Contents are made of layers, a new contribution or production is built over the previous one. And everyone can participate: with text, photos, video.
The information industry and journalism are going through the biggest revolution they’ve ever gone through. The content creation and dissemination tools evolved rapidly, and more important, they are availabe to anyone. The audience became an active element in the creation and disseminaton of information. In a matter of years we went from static versions of newspapers to multimedia rich content, real time information provided by users in social networks and on Twitter, anywhere, to everywhere, which deviated the media from the center of the news paradigm, forcing them to reconsider how to interact with their users, how to work information on the web, publish it, renew it, in a profound change of processes and views. And also how to make that profitable.
The name of this column is Media DJ, because all these changes influenced journalist’s work, demanding new skills. DJ has a double meaning, being the first, the one who, from other people’s music, mixes, remixes, aligns and generates a new dynamic, turning the whole bigger than the sum of its parts; and it also works for Digital Journalism/Journalist. Information DJs do exactly the same as music DJs, they pick up the pieces and generate a a new set, but with a totally different responsibility: they contribute to the creation of a collective conscience, and a well informed society will make better choices. In the end, nothing changed in the fundamental role of journalism, just the way you do it.
Every week i hope to bring a part of that (r)evolution, that is unfolding faster than reality can keep up. You just have to follow the music.
Aug/097
Changes 2: Welcome | Mudanças 2: Bem vindos
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Welcome to my new blog. This is the continuation of the work i did at The Lake, but under a self hosted, personal branded website. There is still a lot to be done, but we’ll get there soon. Meanwhile, all the new posts will be published simultaneously at The Lake and here for the next few weeks, for a smooth transition. I decided not to import the old posts from the old blog, but they will all still be there.The reasons for this change can be found here. Below are the feeds available to follow this blog. Thanks for visiting and be back soon.
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Bem vindos ao meu novo blog. Esta é a continuação do trabalho que fiz n’O Lago, mas num site com alojamento e marca própria. Ainda há muito por fazer, mas chegaremos lá em breve. Entretanto, todos os novos posts serão publicados simultaneamente n’O Lago e aqui durante as próximas semanas, para uma transição suave. Decidi não importar os posts antigos do blog, mas irão todos manter-se por lá. As razões para esta mudança podem ser lidas aqui. Abaixo ficam os feeds disponíveis para seguir este blog.Obrigado pela visita e voltem sempre.
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NEW LINK | NOVO LINK - http://blog.alexgamela.com
Get the new feeds | Aqui estão os novos feeds
Subscrevam por Email | Subscribe by Email
Subscrevam o feed | Subscribe the feed (via FeedBurner)
Normal feed- http://www.alexgamela.com/blog/feed/
Aug/090
Portuguese Journalists on Twitter and @JayRosen_nyu’s List | Jornalistas Portugueses no Twitter e a Lista de Rosen
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Who are the top portuguese journalists on Twitter? Who is more popular, chatty or has a better following/follower relation? Tireless João Simão, teacher at UTAD (by the way, check his new project of live video interviews using Twitter) did an analisys on who are the journalists on Twitter, using data from TwitterPortugal, and came up with a top 25 list. It’s a nice crowd, and you should be following at least some of them. |
Quem são os jornalistas portugueses que estão no Twitter? quem é mais popular, falador ou tem uma melhor relação seguidores/seguidor? O incansável João Simão da UTAD (já agora, vejam o seu novo projecto de entrevistas video em directo usando o Twitter) fez uma análise dos jornalistas no Twitter usando dados do TwitterPortugal, e criou um top 25. É um grupo porreiro e deviam seguir pelo menos alguns deles. |
Know anyone? | Conhecem alguém?
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After this analisys was published i got a whole new batch of followers (thank you all), but my major source of tweeple lately has been Jay Rosen’s “600″ list. I recommend it to everyone who is looking for media related tweets. (shameless self promotion moment, so sorry for that…) |
Depois desta análise ter sido publicada ganhei um monte de followers (obrigado a todos), mas a minha maior fonte de seguidores nos últimos tempos tem sido a lista dos “600″ de Jay Rosen. Recomendo-a a quem quer tweets relacionados com media. (momento desavergonhado de auto-promoção, as minhas desculpas…) |
The "600"...well, some... | Os "600"...bem, alguns...
