Sheffield Online - Where to look and 'Sheffield Made Us'

Where are the best places to go for information, news and opinions about Sheffield as a student?

A city with two universities, a massive student population and a revived, thriving cultural scene. So what are the best websites, blogs and twitter feeds to follow for Sheffield?

An exhaustive list would be pushing anyone's abilities, so I'll highlight the best I know - but please let me know of any other suggestions!

Sheffield Blog, of course, deserves a mention. With fairly regular updates it should be the online starting point for anyone coming to the city, including students. Be it bands, events or flash mobs, Sheffield Blog manages to cover most major events. It may not tell you all the latest news or about the politics of the city, but it offers interesting pieces on the past and particularly on music. Also has a useful map of free wi-fi hot spots in the city.

Most importantly, Sheffield Blog also has a considerable list of Sheffield Tweets, be they bars, university departments or local government.

For my part on Twitter with regards to Sheffield, I follow:
@FUSE_forgeradio (student radio)
@sheffielduni
@unsheffield (which was a creative and digitial industries conference which took place earlier in June)
@clicketyclicks (a student-run photography company)
@shftelegraph
@Forge_Media (student website and paper, the feed for which I helped set up)
@filmunit (student film society which presents films at the union for a very reasonable price)
@sheffieldunion
@sheffieldblog
@nick_clegg (who is also MP for Sheffield Hallam)

Obviously Facebook remains the primary organising tool for students in the city, as with any UK university. A brief history: facebook first hit Sheffield in 2006, when I was in my first year in halls. I joined in around March, and within a year it's coverage was pretty much complete. I get the impression it grew into an essential in Sheffield much faster than other unis.

Now, students are on facebook years before they come to University. Student-wise, I could name one person I know who isn't on it.

It's become essential for organising committees, events and for anyone running in student elections.

Having said this, that doesn't mean there aren't other useful sites for Sheffield. The Sheffield Union site highlights all the goings on, be they the latest campaign or club night.

With any luck, the Forge Today website, which was revamped this year, will become the focal point for student news in the city. Its potential is massive but it will require real commitment to be successful.

I've also found Sheffield Daily Photo an interesting take on the city. Barely a month old, it posts a photo a day from the city, sometimes taken with little more than a camera phone on the way to work. But the author manages to show unusual angles of the city and gives some history about buildings that you wouldn't give a second look to. You can follow them at @sheffieldphoto.

I'll confess to another reason for this post. It's a build up to a project I'm hoping to do. The University is running a competition, called 'Sheffield Made Us'. You can see a video about it through the link. It's a competition to make a video about the following:

How has the University of Sheffield helped you to Discover and Understand? Record a film showing us how your experiences at the University of Sheffield shaped you and you might walk away with £3000 - roughly equivalent to a year's tuition fees!

'To Discover and Understand' originates from the University motto Rerum Cognoscere Causas or, 'To Discover the Causes of Things' from Virgil's Georgics II, 490.

I've got the skills, I've got the software, and my have I got some ideas about this video. It's a maximum of three minutes long. How can I tell you about the city and the University in that time? Wait and see.

-For more of my photos of Sheffield, I've got a set of them on Flickr:

A fellow Journalism student on shorthand, the industry and business models

Not me, but Rich Parsons, a postgrad print student at the University of Sheffield. It's good to vent every now and then:

On shorthand:

"The common argument is that its easier than electronic recording. Bollocks. We're not in the 90's anymore, recording audio onto a cd or a casette with only a fast forward and rewind function. Modern technology is valued by its UI, and as such, recording audio in digital format is a piece of cake. Recording devices will subdivide audio into tracks and subfolders, you can paste it onto a laptop and organise it on any number of programs. Also, recorders are much smaller than a notebook and easier to take with you. You also don't have to worry about losing your pen or it running out of ink. For goodness sake, the technology is so prevalent that most mobile phones can record a decent-ish amount of audio themselves"

I know there are counter arguments: namely that people are more put off by being recorded, that batteries can run out, that recorders can't be used everywhere. But I sympathise with the sentiments. Rich also wrote about the dying print industry (for a more detailed look, see the recent Economist article):

"It frustrates me beyond belief that the business models for journalism are so stuck in the past. Editors think they're screwed now, wait till mobile browsing really takes off and kindles become affordable to everyone. Then lets see people justify cutting down 70,000 trees for a week's production of the New York Times."

I couldn't speak for a generation of journalism students anymore than Rich can, but I think it's likely his frustrations (I hope he doesn't mind me calling them that, or highlighting his whole post!) are shared by many. I'm off to go and complete a survey about journalism education... Rich's post has certainly given me some comments to mull over.

TNTJ Post on advice and questions for young journalists

I've got a post on TNTJ (Tomorrow's News, Tomorrow's Journalists), part of Journalism.co.uk, on advice I'd ask other journalists - and continuing a wider theme on the future for journalism students.

An extract:

"My advice, much as it’s worth? There’s still a lot of journalism students with a minimal online presence, so maximise yours. But don’t forget that whatever tools you can use, web pages you can re-design or exam marks you can achieve, content is still king - keep writing.

In addition, continue to make as many contacts as you can: it’s one of the reasons I’m going along to the Media 140 conference on May 20th.

Ill-qualified as I am to give advice to others graduating this year, the more we talk to each other, the better chance we have of navigating this scarce job market."

See the TNTJ post on the topic, and Dave Lee's post on his advice to journalism students: 'J-students must stick around and clear up the mess'.

Related posts
TNTJ post and the future for journalism students

Deepti Bharthur on technology, complacency and new media

University of Sheffield Postgraduate Journalism Production Week

What is Production Week?

For the fourth year in a row, Sheffield journalism postgrads undertook a 'Production Week', during which two newspapers, a website, a magazine and daily radio and TV broadcasts are produced and published (or aired).


Normally, this takes place during the local elections - however, there are none in Sheffield this year, much to my disappointment. It was decided that June 4th, when the European elections are taking place, was too late in the term and therefore, we would cover the news the week beginning Monday 27th April, with the website going 'live' the day after.

I say this because unfortunately, the website is not public facing. This is for two related reasons: namely the use of PA photos, who we have a deal with, and broadcast's use of BBC and Sky bulletins to supplement their national coverage. Licensing agreements don't allow us to actually publish or broadcast his material. I've taken a few screen shots of the website though, and hopefully fellow postgrads on the other courses can put some pictures of their platforms finished results up.

To re-cap, Sheffield Uni. Journalism department has four main courses: Print, Web, Broadcast and Magazine.

The website and working with the courses

Unlike the print group, those of us on the web course rotated roles every day (as did broadcast), meaning I undertook positions as Local News Ed, Reporter (though also did some Features stuff), Home News Ed and lastly Web Editor.

For the first time I believe, we had a 'web first' policy, in which getting news online first was a necessity. However, there was a never a formal structure in place throughout the week and this relied greatly on good communication between the courses. The web team had 2 broadcast students working with us everyday, who ensured that the multimedia content got uploaded.

For the web team, our week mostly consisted of getting content from our own reporters, receiving even more content from print (especially on local news and sport), publishing our own content on national and international stories (mostly re-written from the wires) and making continuous editorial decisions on the layout and priority. We also worked closely with broadcast to get A/V content on the stories.

See below screenshots of the Local News section, and the 'Quirky' News section which we added on Friday:And Quirky:

We managed to cover a wide range of stories, including the minor earthquake in the Lake District which I spotted on Breaking Tweets, the attack on the Dutch Royal family and from the print students, the death of a 19-year old Chinese student in a car accident in Sheffield last Saturday and from print and broadcast, a by-election in East Ecclesfield. In all, with contributions from all the courses, approximately 189 stories were published by the website in 4 days.

A converged production week?

I'm told that in contrast to previous years, this was the most integrated production week we'd had. Largely, this was my experience. We worked with print on a constant basis and they provided us with plenty of copy, especially local. They wanted to save some stories for their editions, especially that which was going on their front page. It's a constant dilemma in multi-platform media, and personally, I would have preferred all content to go on the web first.

But I can perfectly understand holding some things back for a print edition and considering how well we worked together, I can hardly begrudge them! Particular thanks go to Mike Trudeau and Jasmine Coleman, who were always very willing to work with the web (and for asking me to do a comment piece on the East Ecclesfield by-election for the paper).

Broadcast were also very co-operative and were willing to upload their content as soon as it had gone out on their bulletins. They often wrote the stories accompanying their multimedia packages as well. We did get fewer stories from the 'Duck' magazine, which was out at the end of the week. I understand the need to hold back some material for a print edition, but it did leave our Features page looking a little bear at some points - though it was populated by contributions from the paper and web students.

This could also be a problem at the Forge Press - we've recently re-launched our website, and a new team are coming onboard. The roles are now entirely converged - next year's Comment editors are also the Web Comment editors - but a fortnightly production cycle doesn't led itself to instantaneous online publishing. Comissioning articles on a Monday, then having them in by a Friday and publishing them a week later is far away from a web first policy.

As I mentioned, the lack of an overall system by which stories were researched, written and uploaded did lead to a few mishaps. For example, we had a web student and a print student write the same story. But overall, we were getting there and the 'web first' policy was working.

I think we could have done a lot more with the website. We had a Twitter feed, @jusnews, though all the links would have led to a closed site for external users. It would have been good to incorporate a Google Map with locations for the stories, and perhaps inbed video within the stories - something that was considered, but only later on in the week. This is just the tip of the iceberg to what we could have done, but each of us was under a lot of pressure to write, sub and publish stories while working with each other and the different courses. Even as editors, it would have been hard to put these widgets or extras into CMS without much more forward planning. And regardless, 189 stories with pictures, video, audio and links isn't half bad.

It was tiring, fairly stressful, time consuming and occasionally frustrating. But we couldn't have had a better departmental experience for what it's like to be in a newsroom.

I must thank too all the departmental staff who helped, including Hadrian with the website, and Christine for all the online advice.

University of Sheffield Journalism Students London Trip

As part of our degree, the Print, Web and Political Communication students went down to London for two nights, taking in the Telegraph, Parliament and, in our case, the Press Association.

I hadn’t been to London in a while, something I made as clear as possible to excuse my fairly poor geographic knowledge of the capital.

We (not the tutors) stayed at the ‘generator’ hostel, just off Russell Square. Publicized as ‘London’s biggest party hostel’, we seemed to be in the slighter older range of clientele. It was adequate – sure I’ve stayed in nicer places but it worked out for us. The eurotrash-esque bar/club was a bit much though. One of my friends took willingly to the dancefloor, only to return swiftly once he had replied ‘they are all about ten’. Nasty.

The Telegraph

Anyway, to the purpose of the trip – the media industry. On the Tuesday, we visited the Telegraph Media group offices and heard from a variety of their staff. Ed Rousell, who spoke in the guest lecture series at the University of Sheffield, talked about the Telegraph’s move to digital. He pointed out that the real shift has been in management time and focus, rather than monetary resources.

He also spoke about Twitterfall, which now takes pride of place on one of the large newsroom screens at the Telegraph. Remarkable that it has been developed by two 19-year-olds from the University of York.

Guy Ruddle, Head of Visuals, made another important point. There is perhaps sometimes too much of a focus, and needless to say we have seen it with the MSM and Twitter, on the tools used to deliver the news. I have posted before about the reaction of the media to the use of Twitter during the Mumbai attacks. But the tools used become the story – and although they are notable, they should not be dominant. Ruddle said: ‘we are not in the business of delivering text, video, interactive audio. We are in the business of storytelling. The only reason is to help people understand these stories as best they can.’
This is spot on – and more on this, and the use of video, later.

Parliament

On Wednesday, we went along to Parliament after a fairly early start. Had the tour, which I’d been on before but was fascinating all the same – still ceases to amaze me just how small the chambers are.

PMQs took place, but unfortunately, we only had so many tickets so didn’t get to see it in person. We did, though, go across to Portcullis House to watch it.

Managed to miss spying any big names, apart from Vince Cable who I managed to see – twice.

However, the main reason for going along was a series of talks, in committee room 20 if you’re interested, from politicians and media professionals.

Politician wise, we had two of the biggest characters in Westminster (and, more to the point, beyond): Lembit Opik and Ann Widecombe.

Above all, what I noticed was how smooth they both were: even under free questioning, there was no hesitation, no stuttering. I would guess this comes from decades of practice. Lembit Opik was as animated as could be expected, declaring that the relationship between the politics and the press was ‘schizophrenic’, and that the media ‘are too disrespectful to politicians.’ Although he pointed out the importance of building trustful relationships with politicians. However, his interpretation did seem to treat the relationship as a little one-way. I’m pleased that he feels there is a lack of good, investigative reporting in the media.

Ann Widecombe, when asked why she uses the media as she has done, pointed out that she can get the attention of 4 million on one of her TV shows – whereas if she made a speech in Parliament, she would be lucky if 40 people outside the building knew.

We also heard from Ric Bailey, who is the BBC’s Chief Political Adviser, who spoke about the DEC appeal controversy, Michael Savage who graduated from the Print course in 2007 and now works for the Independent political lobby staff and finally Nick Jones, a former BBC Political Correspondent.

Nick Jones brought up an analysis I hadn’t thought of before, namely the effect of online video on traditional broadcasting video. The fact that sensationalist video online is so popular, and that (such as in the case of The Sun and Alfie), papers will use video to cover and enhance stories, makes Jones think that, eventually, traditional broadcasting will also be influenced. Considering the regulations on broadcasting, this could have serious implications on the industry – will traditional broadcasting be less restrained and impartial, in order to compete with video online?

When we bear in mind that broadcast news and online video are delivered in such similar forms – News 24 is online, there is video-only news on the BBC, the mainstream media papers deliver video on most of their main stories now…etc. But I don’t see why bias online video could not exist alongside neutral, detailed broadcast news, in the same way that there is a demand for BBC and More4 News alongside Sky and ITV. Video is just another form of delivering the news.

Finally, we went along to the Press Association on Thursday. It was a fairly short visit but interesting to hear about their nationwide operation.

So, that was London. Managed to fit in Hyde Park and Tate Britain as well.

Related posts:
Media Convergence Week at University of Sheffield
Next term of a postgraduate degree at the University of Sheffield

New Blog: Through the Middle East

I have a new blog on journalism, globalisation and development in the Middle East, called Through the Middle East

As part of my course, I've started a new blog, this time on Word Press.

As you can see from my previous posts, I've had a keen interest in the Middle East for some time. I've intended for some time to make a blog exclusively about the region, especially as this blog is increasingly becoming dominated by the media.

So I'll no longer be posting about the Middle East at this blog, instead it will transfer over to the new one.

To clarify this is NOT a replacement blog - I will keep posting on both regularly!

I'll be making a Twitter feed for it soon as well.

Darren Thwaites, Editor of the Evening Gazette, at the University of Sheffield

A talk by Darren Thwaites on regional journalism leads us into questions about the role of user-generared content in local news and 'The Local' project by the NYT.

In another of the guest lecture series, Darren Thwaites, editor of the Evening Gazette in Teeside, spoke to journalism students on 3rd March about the projects his paper is undertaking. He promised a bit of optimism in an otherwise depressed sector, and largely delivered.

To summarise some of Thwaites key points: he felt that the role of a regional publisher had now moved from educating, informing and entertaining to 'attracting audiences with content', and that competition was less in the form of other journalistic media, but anything - from the BBC to a Wii - that could contend with the Evening Gazette for the time of their users.

Thwaites gave five key points through which the Evening Gazette website has grown to approximately 200,000 unique users a month:
1. Treat print and digital with equal value
2. Strengthen the brand and grow audience
3. Publish breaking news earlier and later in the day than ever before
4. Get readers more involved than ever before
5. Delve deeper into their core communities.

Importantly, the Evening Gazette has managed all this while increasing their print audience by 6,000.

The last point leads onto the hyperlocal community sites that the Gazette is developing. Based on postcode areas, the project has extended the role of a community correspondent and recruited over 450 bloggers and is making use of user-generated content (UGC). Along with a group on Flickr, search engine optimisation, live web chats, a mobile site, podcasts, a cashback site and sponsored videos, the site and it's hyperlocal branches could offer a new realm, and perhaps a business solution, for regional papers.

I asked Darren whether or not the paper was making any money from the website, and he admitted that only around 5-10% of their revenue was from their online material. Of course, if the website contributed towards higher circulation, which it no doubt does, then the real figure would be greater.

In subsequent correspondence, I also asked Darren whether or not their site could have been so successful without the newspaper brand as a base. I've always been intrigued as to whether it would be possible to simply set up a sustainable website, using both professional journalists and UGC focused on a hyperlocal area without a pre-existing brand as a base, similar to the Bayosphere project attempted by Dan Gillmor.

Darren responded that:

"I don't think our hyperlocal sites could have been as successful without
the Gazette brand (in print and online) sitting above it. We're able to
signpost a massive audience towards an added value product and we're also
able to use our own professionally-generated content to help populate the
sites. We're a trusted local brand and that's an essential starting point."

Ben Spencer, a fellow journalism student at Sheffield, raises his own concerns about the project:

"My concern, however, is that this could develop into journalism on-the-cheap. If editors can get content direct from their readers, could this provide further excuses for cutbacks?"

However, considering the content I don't feel this will be a problem. Even with twice the number of dwindling staff many regional papers have, they couldn't cover such small geographical areas in as much detail as readers can.

These stories - the potholes, the cake sale, the planning permission, the reducing hours at the post office - have a fairly good chance of simply not being reported without UGC. Better to have members of the public report them, with some editorial guidance and increase the number of visitors to the site (which should increase the revenue) and give users more reasons to look at the site (therefore increasingly familiarity with the brand, and hopefully increase circulation) rather than simply ignore the potential for stories.

In all, I see such local community sites using UGC as complementary to regional newspapers, rather than replacing the reporters and therefore risking cutbacks. Most users don't have the time to investigate, to go to the council meeting, develop the contacts or make the phone calls (though the more that use it, the easier it would be to find out more). What is reported is perhaps journalism on the cheap, but that doesn't mean it is either not worth reporting, or is a direct threat to traditional reporting - especially if the subjects have previously been ignored.

However, as Ben mentions, the project requires a lot of attention with very little revenue generated as a result thus far. But regional papers need to be experimenting.

On the other side of the pond, one of the biggest newspaper names, the NYT, is launching a project called 'The Local', in collaboration with students at the City University in New York .

Jeff Jarvis on the project, which he is heavily involved with:

"We have to move past the old newspaper notion that one will - and can afford to - “own” a town. Those days are over. Instead, we’ll have ecosystems of local news linked together, and to support them we need complementary content and coverage and networks to sell ads into and for all the players. In a network that links to its own members all ships will ride with the tide of links."

This sparked a debate between Jeff Jarvis and Howard Owens other whether it was essential that those running the sites were professional or local amateurs. No doubt we'll see how well it works over the coming months, and it will continue to generate discussion either way.

Above all, despite the interest of my generation in world affairs and an apparent antipathy with local news, it should be remembered that, as stated on Springwise:

"Billions of people may inhabit this planet, but when it comes right down to it, most of us are still primarily interested in what's going on in our own backyards."

There will always be a place for local journalism. It might just end up being smaller, more focused, more frequent and on more platforms than the weekly paper we've been used to.

Related posts:
Media Convergence Week at Sheffield University
BBC local video news websites decision
Tim Luckhurst on buying a newspaper 'for democracy'

Media Convergence Week at Sheffield University

• Ed Roussel, Telegraph on digital media
• Ben Hazell, Telegraph on search engine optimisation
• The Twitter debate!
• Audio/Broadcast training and more lectures
• How do you make money out of the web?
  

Convergence Week

Here on the print, web, broadcast and magazine courses at the University of Sheffield journalism department, we've just come to the end of 'convergence week'. Essentially, in line with broader trends in the media, each course has training in aspects of the media they are unfamiliar with - for web students, this meant broadcast training, for broadcast it meant web training and for print and magazine it meant both.

Why bother? Because virtually every media organisation now wants multi-skilled journalists happy working on all platforms. Although we learn many aspects of the media together, the four courses are by nature restricted to their own domain. If I'm honest, I don't know how much longer the department will be able to preserve such a structure, without also offering (or entirely replacing all the courses with) a postgraduate degree in multimedia journalism.

I'd imagine there are conflicting views at the end of convergence week, although those of us on the web course seem to have had a largely positive attitude towards it.

I've already done a post on Twitter, a debate started by Peter Cole in the first lecture on Monday. I seem to be finding new people on all the courses on it everyday now, as well as a flurry of new blogs.

Ed Roussel
On Tuesday, in our ordinary guest lecture slot we heard from Ed Roussel, the Telegraph's Digital Editor. The success of the Telegraph online is no secret, and it was a surprise to hear that despite the latter's obsession with it, the Telegraph gained more hits on Obama's inauguration day that the Guardian.

Ed pointed a quick picture of the media: NYT suffering a 60% drop in share price, the LA Times having 3 rounds of job cuts since July (though as I have written about already, their online revenue has reached a critical point) although the Telegraph has remained profitable for 2 years.

Due to their growth online, Ed feels that the reach of newspapers has, in fact, not diminished even though print circulation is down. In essence, the talk focused on what new business models the media could use to profit from journalism online - more on this later.

I asked Ed what role citizen journalism and user-generated content had to play in such new models, as I'd been surprised he hadn't spoken about it more. He replied that it was 'critical' that readers felt they were part of the process, and stated that his colleague Jeff Randall had become 'obsessed' with reading the comments on his pieces. Ed went on:

'Can you make money from it? Right now, no. But if you don't do it, you'll loose audience and therefore loose money.'

In response to another question, Ed stated that regional newspapers, which are still held in such high esteem by journalists (and journalism students) with a more traditional outlook, were 'firmly headed down the wrong path.' Their problem is, in fact, in the title - hyper-local is now more effective that 'regional'.

Search engine optimisation
Ben Hazell, also from the Telegraph, was a student on the web course last year. He gave us a talk about search engine optimisation (SEO), which has given me even more ideas about re-designing this blog and setting up my next one.
In response to a question about Google (I'm looking forward to reading Jeff Jarvis' 'What would Google do?' when it comes through the door), Ben replied that it is not providing facts, it provides information. At university, it's been banged into us for years to be sceptical about online sources of any sort. What's needed is a different attitude, and a better approach to how to find those sources, what to trust and how to check them.

Lectures and Training
As web students, we actually had a minimum of training this week compared to other courses. We had already done the video training so essentially underwent a re-fresh on the camcorders and Abode Premier. The audio training was quick, but comprehensive enough that I'm sure we'll cope.

During the lecture on online magazines, I realised a point about online revenue. Liz Nice asked who used RSS feeds for magazines, and I replied that I did so for the Economist but obviously didn't pay for any of this. However, this got me thinking. I'm not a fan of ad blockers, simply because if they become too prolific, advertising revenue for websites will reduce and may even cause some to shut down. But is using RSS feeds any different? A tiny minority of the feeds I receive also show the adverts from the website (Mark Halperin and Time's 'The Page' is one of them). Along with a total lack of familiarity with the sites themselves - because you have much less of a reason to look at them - this is just one of the downsides of RSS feeds.

One of our last lectures was on that of digital newspapers. Although this a potentially impressive venture, I can't see it taking off myself. It seems simply like a way to preserve a platform with technology, rather than looking at the wider process of news-gathering and how stories themselves are told. With people getting news and analysis, personally geared towards them from multiple sources on their computers and phones, it may be too late for digital newspapers to seriously compete.

So how do we make money out of the web?
For me, this has been the key and often-repeated question that remains unanswered by the end of this week. I don't believe in charging for content online if it can be at all avoided. Services however, can be charged for (such as pro accounts on Flickr, as Helia pointed out to me). Certain, specialist sections of a website can be used to pay for the rest - Ed Roussel told us the Telegraph's Fantasy Football generated 2% of their web traffic, but 20% of their web revenue.

Making money out of journalism online. There's no lack of people working on this issue, but it will require innovation, creativity and many failed ventures, and even then, there is unlikely to be one, simple, universal solution.

So we'll end with a quote from Jeff Jarvis:

'I realized lately that I’d been assuming we could see an orderly transition, Jan. 20-like, from old media to new. But it’s clear that we’re going to see destruction, voids, and vacuums in the transition.'

In defence and explanation of Twitter

Following some debates on my course at the University of Sheffield, I thought I'd write a brief defence of Twitter.

From Peter Cole to Ed Roussel (his Twitter feed is here) and of course everyone on the course, it's been a few days of debate about Twitter.

Firstly, it's not simply for telling people what you are doing 24/7, everyday. In the case of Stephen Fry, public figure and national treasure that he is (and one of the foremost technology reviewers in the country), thousands - 177,371 in fact - want to know what he is doing. But for most people, in most situations, it isn't the case. For me, it exists for 3 reasons:

Breaking news
BreakingNewsOn is one of the more popular Twitter feeds, with nearly 25,000 followers. It offers, in effect, a breaking news wire and it will soon establish a full news feed. I have seen stories appear there before they do on CNN or BBC: the Hudson river crash and the Mumbai attacks included. I've never seen them subsequently have to retract a story.
In addition, members of the public can tweet on news events - plane crashes, the Hudson river crash, even the snow in the UK. For journalists and news organisations, this is a good way of seeing how the public are reacting to an event, either over time or as it happens. The ability to post pictures also adds to this (first picture of the Hudson river crash), as does the easy ability to update Twitter from your phone simply by SMS.

Linking
Using tinyurl, which shortens any url, Twitter can be used to link to blogs, news items, photos - any website in effect. This allows it to act like a blog or web-page linking to other websites, be it through self-promotion or admiration and interest in others work.

Conversation
Twitter is not there to replace Facebook, MSN (if anyone uses that now) or live online chats. What it allows is a simple, uniform platform where it is possible to respond, promote (or 'retweet') to others. It's not just for normal individuals either. Pressure groups (the NUS) think tanks, student unions, politicians, world famous authors like Paulo Coelho, even the University of Sheffield law department all have Twitter feeds.

The downsides
As pointed out to me by Ben Hazell of the Telegraph earlier today, Twitter is far from perfect. Many of the applications, such as searching what people are tweeting about, are provided by third parties. It has had bug problems. And, indeed, it is almost impossible to make money out of the service.
Twitter should be seen not as something that is replacing journalists or media organisations, but as a tool, like Google, they can exploit to attract new users, to network and to find out more analysis and news - you choose what you want to here about.

And just so you know, you can find me on Twitter here.

I'll be writing a fuller post about convergence week later. You can see Helia's, Rich's and Jasmine's comments on the week on their blogs.

The next term of a postgraduate journalism degree at the University of Sheffield

After the NCTJ law tests and the ethics essay, it's time for the next semester in my MA Web Journalism degree at the University of Sheffield.

This term, I'll be doing more Web Journalism, undertaking a convergence project across the disciplines (print, broadcast, web, magazine) which essentially means I'm doing broadcast training for the next week. I'll also be studying governmental systems and regulation in the industry, and a module under Herman Wasserman (his blog here) on Journalism, Globalisation and Development which I'm really looking forward to.

Beyond this, I'll keep writing and editing for the Forge Press until we hand over to the next team. Hopefully the new website will be up soon, and the backlog of Comment articles will be up. I hope to set up a Twitter feed for the newspaper/website soon. We've got the Union elections coming up, which I was involved with in a big way last year and will be reporting on this year.

What else this term? I'll be applying for work experience, doing a UN writing competition, looking into organising a debate on the media and going a trip to London to PMQ's.

I plan to re-invigorate the blog with new applications and to de-clutter it a bit. I'll be setting up a new website where I can bring together my blog, Twitter, Flickr and other sites into one central point. I also plan to set up a new blog on the media, politics and news in the Middle East, which will be connected with the aforementioned development module.

On with the course!

US Election Night in Bar One, Sheffield University Union of Students

I've helped to organise a US election party in Bar One, at Sheffield University Union of Students tonight. We've got the bar open until 5am with drinks served until 4, offers on American drinks and American food, a bucking rodeo and BBC and CNN on the big screens, should be a great night!
See how many people might be coming to the event here...

Kudos to the Politics Society, the American Society, the Union Finance Officer and of course Bar One for helping to organise the night.

On a personal note, I'm glad it's going to be over. It's a fantastic distraction. The analysis, from bloggers, news sites, friends and papers is so great one could never get all the perspectives on this election. Watching and reading about it though, as been an absolute fascination. I remember hearing the radio come on in January, in what seems like an age ago telling me Obama had won the Iowa caucas. We've been through the primaries, the controversies, the conventions and it now comes down to the American voters with the eyes of the world watching.

It is the most analysed, most commented on and most anticipated election in history.

Roll on tonight.

David Randall, author of 'The Universal Journalist', speaks at the University of Sheffield

David Randall, currently deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday and author of 'The Universal Journalist', gave the guest lecture to Journalism students on Tuesday 28th October.

A keen and well-tanned Randall, 57, gave an animated talk during which he managed to bounce from rude jokes to sombre reporting. Though he himself stated 'I'm pretty good, but I'm not a great reporter', Randall is widely respected and has worked on a range of broadsheet papers.

Beginning with a test to see which of his two talks would be suitable for us (it was the ruder one, a choice decided by judging our responses to amusing headlines), Randall went on to give an optimistic overview of the future of journalism and the opportunities within it. He said that it didn't matter how the news was delivered - whether in print, or online - as long as the information was delivered. He went on to talk up the opportunity of students to find jobs within the media.

Despite his convincing rhetoric, I expect it is somewhat easier to have this perspective having been in the media for as long as Randall has. On a day when Jeff Jarvis reports on the Christian Science Monitor decision to stop it's press edition and move entirely online however, the opportunities there are will increasingly be multi-media and online.

An early user of the Internet, Randall acknowledged its importance several times during the talk and spoke about his favourite blogs, Metafilter being one of them, in response to a question about his favourite papers. The net did not, however, form the mainstay of his lecture.

Randall spoke to us students about good interviewing techniques, what makes a great reporter, the importance of taking command of the material and getting a good intro, and how we have to make the news into a story - a story which people will want to read.

Randall clearly still enjoys his job, stating that journalism was

'so much fun they ought to arrest you.'

Having received his book from a friend last year I will make more of an effort to read it fully, having started it a number of months ago.

Interesting and very engaging, Randall is a classic British reporter not afraid to accept the changes within the industry and offers an unusually optimistic view of the sector.

Start of my course: MA Web Journalism

I don't normally blog on activities I personally undertake, however considering its relevance I thought I'd pen (or type) a short piece on the start of my course.

I've currently studying for an MA in Web Journalism at the University of Sheffield. It's been a busy few weeks with inductions, module choices and lectures, seminars and workshops - certainly more than I've been used to in my undergraduate degree.

Already I'm beginning to see more of the differences between the traditional media, in particular print, and the emerged world of online media.

The Journalism department at the University of Sheffield offers a a range of different MA courses, namely Print, Magazine, Broadcast, Web and Political Communication. These are roughly in the order of popularity, Print being way out front. Many of the modules are shared and thus are undertaken by most if not all postgraduate students.

So far we have had lectures and seminars on, among many other aspects of journalism, the newsroom, media law, face-to-face interviewing, the PPC (Press Complaints Comission) code and so on. Thus far, I can't help but feel that much of what we have been taught is focusing on the aspects of journalism which are in decline and very much part of the MSM.

I'm not entirely sure this is a bad thing, but at a time when print media is in decline, and thus there are undeniably much fewer jobs available, could there be more recent developments incorporated instead? Luckily, there will be.

With digital research sessions to come and an acknowledgment from every lecturer about the importance of the Internet, this is unlikely to be a perception which will last. The department is impressive in its equipment and software, with all students having remote access to the UK PA newswire. This is not a department harking back to the ol' days of print media, but undergoing the same transition the whole sector is with interactive, multi-platform journalism taking a prominent role.

It's also worth remembering that much of what is taught that may seem to be aimed at traditional journalists - media law, ethics - is just as relevant to those working in the online media. There is an awful lot that that I simply don't yet know and whatever blogs or articles I've read about the state of the media so far, I'm not going to dismiss what the course has to offer. Not to mention that highlighting such a distinction between one 'type' of journalist and another, considering media convergence, may be outdated itself.

In particular, the aspects of the course exclusive to online media have been much more what I expected - it took all of 20 minutes to mention Facebook - and a lecture yesterday touched on Twitter, the idea of 'citizen journalism' and the Guardian's disastrous 'Clarke County' project in 2004.

The course is pretty intense, but fascinating and will be a lot of hard work. I'll be making a website using Dreamweaver with original articles, as well as engaging in patch work, discussing journalist ethics and studying lots of media law. On with the course!