LOJOCONNECT.COM
location-based technology + journalism

By Amy Lee

CBS last month quietly joined the ranks of seemingly countless local and national news sites to allow users to capture and post video and photos of events instantly onto its Web site. While hardly a novel idea, the launch of CBSeyemobile.com in mid-April is billed as a cyber site “where everyone reports,” and ostensibly is a way for CBS to try to broadcast footage captured via cell phone by eyewitnesses to breaking news events.

This approach makes sense, of course. No news-gathering organization can possibly anticipate every breaking news event on any given day, so having an army of volunteer citizen journalists on hand for such events, especially natural disasters or crime events, could be invaluable.

CBSeyemobile.com, however, has suffered from the lack of organization and purpose that befalls many such attempts to recruit citizen journalists. It’s chock full of videos that may be interesting or intriguing to some, but on the whole are not footage of actual news events.

It’s chock full of clips of cute pets, being, well, cute. It’s got some smash-em-up footage of stock car races and a bus being dismantled (on purpose and in an apparently planned action) in Iceland. In short, it’s a lot like YouTube.com, but very little like a branded news site.

Today’s posts thankfully included footage of citizen reports from the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, but that is hardly “unique” footage CBS’s own reporters and producers could not have captured on their own. To CBS’s credit, perhaps the company felt the site was a way to test the waters to see the quality of the submissions and whether the effort is worthwhile. Regardless, the site is largely pointless and has almost zero interface with the company’s other, more mature and professionally-maintained news sites.

To me, this is one of those forays into new media that established news organizations should be careful about. Hosting a site such as this, where nearly all the content is submitted by anyone with a computer, could potentially water down its hard-fought brand name as a news organization. CBS, and others interested in hosting citizen-gathered information, should promote these sites as a way for the audience to participate in the news gathering of a news event, and stick to that genre.

Certainly CBS doesn’t need yet another Web site that hosts a library full of pet videos.

By Hilary Powell

This afternoon, I received an email digest of stories from my home state of Indiana (especially important today, given the presidential primaries taking place there) that I read from my iPod Touch media player. Because my device connects to free Wi-Fi networks wherever possible, I essentially get the latest online news at no cost.

Soon – according to a survey conducted by Zogby International for the World Editors Forum and Reuters – newspapers will make sure that I can get their print content at no cost as well.

A Reuters story published today reported that 56 percent of respondents believed the majority of the news – “be it via print or online” – would be free in the future. One year ago, 48 percent of respondents supported this position. The reason for the increase: a widespread belief that, within a decade, the most common form of news consumption will be via electronic media (such as PCs and mobile devices).

Newspapers seeking to compete with the Internet are likely to become free and place greater emphasis on comment and opinion in the future. [...] Some 86 percent of respondents believed newsrooms should become more integrated with digital services as two in three believe the most common form of news consumption will be via electronic media such as online or mobiles within a decade.

The Web revolutionized the way we exchange information and enhanced the user’s ability to control how information is shared. To survive in this new media reality, editors will also have to revolutionize and come up with approaches to journalism that capitalize on emerging technologies. Said pollster John Zogby of the editor’s necessary solution: “Innovate. Integrate. Or perish.”

By Amy Lee

Internet browsing on a mobile device grows the audience of many top Internet sites by 13 percent, according to a Nielsen Company study released on May 1. Some sites, such as those devoted to weather and entertainment, saw mobile users lift overall audience totals by 22 percent, based on combined data culled from Nielsen Online and Nielsen Mobile. (I found this interesting, as the two sites I check most regularly are an admittedly cheesy gossip blog and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to get the weather. It appears I’m not alone!) Shopping sites, however, received the least lift from mobile browsing due to duplication of PC-based and mobile audiences.

The cross-platform insights come from TotalWeb, a new report from Nielsen that integrates data from Nielsen Mobile and Nielsen Online to show the unduplicated, unique audience for more than 200 leading Internet sites across the PC and mobile Internet space, according to this Nielsen Company release.

What’s more, the data revealed that mobile users visit Web sites on their mobile devices that differ from those they visit on their home computers. The study found a small, but undoubtedly growing, audience turning to their mobile device for a regular fix of weather, games and entertainment. I count myself among them, as I bought a Motorola Q around Christmastime this past winter, mostly because I needed instant access to my email account. But I often browse Internet Explorer and search for news on Google. I have favorite sites bookmarked, and actually find I browse most often when I’m traveling via train into downtown Chicago. A mobile entertainment and news device, aka “my phone,” really helps pass the time on the long commute.

This audience boost gleaned through the mobile platform may seem like a small jump now, but my guess is this is just the beginning of what will eventually mature into a decent-sized chunk of consistent visitors on many leading Web sites. “The data demonstrate that the mobile Internet can not only increase the frequency of visits to a website, but also grow the overall size of the pie,” Jeff Herrmann, Nielsen’s vice president of Mobile Media, Nielsen Mobile, said in a company statement.

By Hilary Powell

As we research the possibilities of Google Maps for our LoJo needs, the team realizes that it’s important to know the limitations of such technology.

In establishing our goals for locative storytelling, we must take into account that there are some places kept private, even in the virtual world.

For example, just last month, Google pulled Pentagon pictures of U.S. military bases from Google Maps. According to the BBC News, the military denied access to the company because “close-up, ground-level imagery of US military sites posed a ‘potential threat’ to security.”

In early April, reports surfaced in the blogosphere that the Singapore government is pondering a ban on Google Earth for fear the images infringe on the Singapore Land Authority copyright.

To ensure that the company protects individual privacy, Google has taken a few precautions. According to CNet News:

Now anyone can alert the company and have an image of a license plate or a recognizable face removed, not just the owner of the face or car, says Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

By Satta Sarmah

We’ve seen interactive maps used to recount historical events like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination or to make public data on city crimes and home foreclosures more accessible to average citizens.

Now, one organization in New York City is using an interactive map to build community awareness and promote much-needed development in neighborhoods across the city.

The Community-Based Planning Task Force of the Municipal Art Society has created an “Atlas of Community-Based Plans in New York City.”

The task force touts the atlas as the “only publicly accessible compilation of the city’s community-based plans.”

The map appears to be the first of its kind in any U.S. city.

Though it’s labeled as an atlas, it’s basically an interactive map powered by Google. Each trigger point on the map has links to a text pdf version of a community-based plan for a particular area, whether it be Coney Island, East Harlem or Chinatown.

The task force also made the atlas very user-friendly and location-centric. Users can search for plans by borough or by type. For example, you can look up community plans in Brooklyn or search for housing revitalization and water revitalization plans. The atlas includes current plans and plans dating back to 1989.

The atlas was initially created to provide local political candidates with in-depth information about improvement efforts in certain communities. However, the atlas is also being used as a road map for communities that want to mimic plans created in other neighborhoods.

Presumably, the task force has used the atlas to push community development efforts to the forefront of the city’s consciousness. In their explanation, the task force said they created the map because the city seems to be committed on paper to improving disadvantaged areas, but needs to put in more elbow grease to complete these projects.

The atlas has certain implications for journalists, especially community and urban affairs reporters. It could be a good source for stories, provide reporters with an overview of neighborhood concerns on their beat and help them determine the efforts local politicians are making to address these issues.

By Hilary Powell

Savage winds are common in the twister-prone prairies of the Central U.S., but, on Monday, southeastern Virginia was pummeled with an unexpected series of tornadoes.

In their coverage of the rare event, a number of news outlets used maps to help readers grasp the depth of the destruction.

But some industry watchers wondered why the use of location-based technology wasn’t more widespread and/or sophisticated.

The issue was brought to the team’s attention by a Roosevelt University professor in Chicago who recently took our survey on how locative technology is being used in newsrooms.

He was hoping to find even a simple, non-interactive map showing where the tornadoes hit in Virginia, but both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune disappointed him, he wrote to me in an e-mail.

So I went looking for stories that used maps to explain what happened.

A Google search for ‘Virginia AND map’ resulted in a trickle of stories accompanied by a map, including one from The Examiner online. It used a basic Google Map, with a bullet point focused on Suffolk, a city where emergency crews were deployed after the storm. But besides clicking the dot — revealing the longitude and latitude of the location — there was not much interactivity involved.

The Virginian-Pilot’s online map of the area is a step up in terms of locative technology. The Pilot’s map zooms in on the Suffolk area and provides a tool that allows viewers to plot and enter small blurbs about their own “storm stories.” I wish those stories had added some pictures and maybe even home footage. If the map is going to be labeled “interactive,” let’s not skimp on the possibilities of that term. Still, the map key helps to break down details on road closures and major damage. It’s a strong example of using maps to localize a story.

Finally, after much online searching, CNN.com gave me the Flash fix I needed to better understand how the storms devastated specific locations.

These are just a few examples of how news outlets are using available locative technology to tell stories in interesting, forward-thinking ways, and they will help us determine where to go next.

By Satta Sarmah

On Friday, the Associated Press announced a deal with Verve Wireless to create the Mobile News Network, a service that’ll provide users with news anywhere and anytime.

Like other news outlets that have gone mobile, the AP’s service is available only to smartphone users. Customers will get multimedia content that covers not just local, but also domestic and international, news.

The Associated Press is the oldest and largest news organization in the world and it is just the latest big-name media outlet to join the mobile revolution.

In February, the Wall Street Journal launched a mobile network for Windows phones that will allow those users to get up-to-the-minute business and stock market information. It’s an expansion of the Journal’s mobile service to more users after its original launch in December 2007.

It appears that the traditional media are making attempts to innovate, albeit a little late.

A report by the Newspaper Association of America released in mid-April showed that regular visitors to newspaper Web sites are more tech-savvy than average Internet users. According to the report, visitors to newspaper Web sites are 76 percent more likely to have downloaded audio and video content on a regular basis, twice as likely to have searched the Internet using their cell phones and wireless devices, and twice as likely to have visited iTunes the month before the report was released.

By Ki Mae Heussner

Location, location, location. It’s the most oft-repeated mantra in real estate. But now that location-based services are sprouting up all over the Web, it’s starting to take on a new meaning to more and more professionals in the news media.

Charged with devouring as much as we can about mobile technology and its applications for journalists, team LoJo has been scouting the Web for updates on how newsrooms are adapting to and capitalizing on locative media.

During the past few weeks, we’ve encountered some excellent examples of location-based storytelling that seem likely to push more newsrooms into the emerging geo-journalism space:

- Earlier this month, the New York Times and Google announced a new partnership that allows readers to track articles geographically using Google Earth. (If you want to see what’s going on in Paris, for example, a few clicks on a Google Earth map will show you the latest headlines coming out of the French capital.)

- When protesters attempted to disrupt the Olympic torch procession in San Francisco, the Sacramento Bee used Qik (technology that streams live footage from videophones to a Web-based flash player) to broadcast live videos of the scuffle.

- And, just the other night, as we waited for the results of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary to come in, we were treated to a high-tech presentation on CNN, featuring correspondent John King and a gigantic, touch-sensitive interactive map.

These examples give us the sense that locative media is gaining a foothold in newsrooms across the country, but… we know that there’s a lot going on out there that we still don’t know.

So, to scrape together a clearer picture of locative media usage, we’ve posted a survey online.

If you’re a working journalist or work in the news media in some other capacity, please help us out and complete our (very short) survey. If you don’t work in a newsroom, but know those who do, please forward on the link below.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Pw7knnDn37s7tY0C9sA2Pw_3d_3d

As always, we’ll share the results online, along with our own analysis.

By Hilary Powell

It isn’t as big as the Second City, but neighboring Aurora still says that it’s “a city second to none.” Chicago may boast the Sears Tower, the best popcorn in the Midwest and Oprah. But Aurora’s got a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a stop on the Underground Railroad and a building that houses records of black veterans. How do I know all of this? I found out from a map.

The Greene House is the only house in Aurora designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s stop 17 on the self-guided driving tour available on the city’s official website.

While researching ways to tell locative stories, I came across several websites, like Aurora’s official site, that offer self-guided tours. As we identify newsworthy, Chicago-specific stories to tell, Team LoJo must figure out the best ways for our viewers to travel between the places that will bring those stories to life.

A walking tour might do the trick. When the weather is nice, the city is dotted with folks walking along scenic Lake Shore Drive or trotting with their dogs in the city’s vibrant communities. But with the city’s magnitude, it might be hard to contain a story in an area capable of walking.

So we pondered a driving tour. There are some great examples online that could give us guidance about creating a story people can really step to. For example, the Aurora’s self-guided tour of historic landmarks. For an example on a larger scale, I turned to a site linked from Denver’s local government Web site. Denver Today is a website that lists local walking tours and driving tours around the city. So there’s proof that even a medium-sized city distribute information effectively using a driving tour.

But then I got to thinking, what about the character of a city? Shouldn’t that come into play when considering the best way to deliver news or a story to the city residents? And when you think of Chicago, you think of the elevated train, also known as the ‘El.’ It bisects and bristles in a multi-colored maze through every major neighborhood in the city. It’s even famous for the web it weaves in the center of the city, known as ‘The Loop.’ To think of transportation in Chicago without the El, is like imagining New York without the subway.

I’ve found several examples of getting around to location-based stories on foot, and by car. But I had trouble trying to find stories told by way of train. In addition, there is not much out there about the technical capabilities of using mobile devices to take tours via train. But that’s the kind of challenge this team is up for.

If Team LoJo is going to tell a story about the Second City, our first priority is to be accurate and stay true to the character of the city.The next step for our team may well be onto a train, with our bold technical devices, to test the tracks.

Thanks for stopping by our site. This blog is maintained by a group of multimedia journalism students at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University intent on exploring the intersection of location-based technology and journalism. From now until mid-June, we’ll be writing about current applications, emerging trends, likely limitations, ground-breaking projects in the field and other topics related to digital media that we find interesting. We’ll also share our progress in creating a multimedia project that showcases how location-based technology can enrich journalism and engage audiences. We hope you’ll check back from time to time to see what we’re up to and let us know what you think.

Also, while you’re here, take part in our informal poll. The results won’t be used for anything other than to satisfy our growing curiosity about mobile technology and its applications for journalism. Every week, we’ll ask a new question and present results from the previous week’s poll.

Thanks again for your time – the LoJo team