Everyone is a Reporter-The Ukraine

Anyone can be a journalist or news reporter these days, all they require is an internet connection. Through an article posted on mashable we are currently finding that when it comes to the political crisis in the Ukraine, social media is providing immense amounts of information. Twitter has provided the world with images of the crisis, but YouTube has provided more than 90,000 videos in relation to the crisis.

These videos have been uploaded since Feb. 1, and they represent 82% more videos than were shared to the service over the previous two months. They also give a look at the mayhem in the streets with unfiltered eyes. More than 200,000 people watched Espreso TV’s live coverage of protests in Ukraine’s capital city of Kiev. Furthermore, the YouTube videos and live streams have reached more than 25 million views between them.

Tom Sly, YouTube’s global head of news partnerships said in a statement, “YouTube is critical to giving people access to immediate and unfiltered information about what's happening on the ground from multiple perspectives…Eyewitness reporters, traditional broadcasters and new made-for-digital news organizations are playing a big role in moments such as the protests in the Ukraine and Venezuela to enable information to reach more corners of the world via YouTube."

I think that the people involved in the crisis or those that have access to information about it, including video should unquestionably share it with the world on any medium they have. News coverage is a business be it print or video, and as such they often have slants and don’t provide proper coverage or filter the information before it reaches the general public. When individuals share their findings there is less chance for bias or slant especially if it is just a live stream of chaos. 

Will Facebook's App Paper Survive?

Facebook recently released it's much hyped app called 'Paper.' This app collects news feeds from your Facebook timeline and is laid out like a magazine. Sound familiar? Well it may for some of you who know of another app called 'Flipboard' that allows people to choose what news they want to read and collect. Facebook has already been accused of stealing the name of this new app and is now receiving criticism for copying Flipboards layout.


Paper and Flipboard share a very similar tiled design that displays news in a grid pattern. However what separates the two is that Paper accentuates interacting with your friends and timeline. These two apps are also very similar in their navigation with Paper's being slightly more complex. Where both of these apps really differ is in their method of finding and reading news. Flipboard makes personalization its first priority and and discovery second. Also, Flipboard focuses on what the users want by allowing them to pick and choose the topics they want to see. While Paper concentrates on alerting readers with trending topics, interaction with your friends, and using broader themes.


Another difference between the two apps is their emphasis on socializing. It's obvious that Facebook's Paper would put social media at the center of their app, while Flipboard's approach to social media is much more subtle. What I find bothersome is it seems that just about anything you can do on the Paper app you can also do on the original Facebook app so why even download it.

This leaves me with a few questions; was Facebook copying Flipboard? Will Paper survive as a news app? Will apps like these replace traditional news websites? Let me know what you think.



Paper vs Flipboard

Does TV news actually suck?

      Jeff Jarvis, whom we all know now from reading his article about the future of articles, analyzed the current state of TV news and how it needs to change to stay current in our ever-evolving world. It's true, many times we may think TV news, whether it is local, 24 hour cable news, or nightly world news, sometimes sucks. But why is this really? Is it because of the ridiculous, fake way the reporters and anchors talk? Or is it because of the way news crews can never really be there when the real action happens, unless it happens outside the TV station?
      
       Whatever the reason, Jarvis and I agree that something needs to change in order for TV news to stay a current
medium. What many TV stations do now, right here in Rochester is include people's feedback on current stories via Facebook and Twitter, and feature them on the news, perhaps to include some more "relatable" viewpoints. What I personally think is the best example of what most TV news, especially local, will be like in the near future is ROC City Tonight on News 10 NBC. It features today's news in a fast-paced way, as well as information from around the web. Having all that current information that we are bombarded with every day online, presented in a news format, in my opinion, is the way of the future. If that is a foreshadowing of what is to come, perhaps TV news will still suck in the eyes of some, but it will suck less, and that is a good thing.

Article posted by Jeff Jarvis on December 31, 2013