Written on July 18, 2008 – 10:59 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Ever stayed at home while trying to follow a conference? If it’s a popular gig; tweets, live videos, blog articles, and pictures keep popping up. Hard to keep track of and most of it is not so interesting too. No wonder there’s a start-up that tries to structure this whole live coverage experience. I’ve written about them before, as Canada-based CoveritLive is definitely the best live blogging tool around.
New technologies for traditional journalists
Not only is this service easy to use, CoveritLive also builds bridges between traditional and new media. By making live reporting extremely accessible, CoveritLive has tempted several traditional journalists to embrace new technologies. I hope these journalists are now ready for another one: low quality live video coverage.
Qik, Mogulus, and uStream integration
CoveritLive president Keith McSpurren has just mailed his users that they can now integrate videos from Qik, Mogulus and uStream into their CoveritLive live blogs. YouTube integration was already possible, but we all know how long it takes for YouTube to process a video. So for those moments that need super fast reporting - like the NBA drafts or the recent E3 conference (both covered by CiL users) - reporters can grab their fancy phones and push the record button. See the support center for a video introduction.
One step futher
I love the way CoveritLive makes these new reporting technologies accessible. It’s another step for journalists who used to be afraid of the digital revolution, buy a Nokia N95 and surprise your editor in chief with live coverage. If he’s skeptical, tell him CoveritLive live blogs have been seen by just under two million readers in the past thirty days.
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Written on June 6, 2008 – 9:50 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Although I’m not a big fan of live blogging - I would rather write an article right after the presentation — I do admire the team behind CoveritLive. They’re making blogging more mainstream by building bridges between traditional media and new media. Its easy UI, good functionality, and no-nonsense approach make it easy to convince people to get some live blogging 2.0 going on. The Liverpool Daily Post for example, showed its readers how a typical day in the editor’s room looks by live blogging for 17 hours. These English journalists are pioneers, but they’re certainly not the only ones exploring the new frontiers.
Belgium newspaper La Libre used CoveritLive to keep worried tennis fans up to date during the Justine Henin retirement announcement. American regional television stations have warned their viewers for tornadoes and wildfires and collected eye witness accounts from across the disaster area. These news media only had to place a widget on their site. After that it was just a matter of doing what they’re payed for: report. Users can browse to the site and look up the widget. That’s more accessible than, for example, a Twitter feed as it doesn’t look too abstract for less-experienced Internet users.
Lowering the barriers of live blogging
With its growing popularity, CoveritLive has found the resources to add some new features that improve its accessibility.
- Users can now add their own logo to the widget and adjust color, fonts and whatnot so that the CoveritLive screen blends in with the rest of the site.
- CoveritLive has added dedicated media servers, attached a one GB outgoing pipe and improved the compression technology of the pictures so that users can live post pictures without too much hassle.
- There’s a new support center which will help less-experienced web users to set up and run a live blog
- Every self respecting hip Web 2.0 service adds an iPhone client, so does CoveritLive.
There’s an advantage for journalists
Apart from its accessibility, another reason for the success of CoveritLive is that it simply fulfills a need of journalists: live reporting without any hassle. They don’t need blogging software for writing editorial pieces, as they can just use the existing content management systems. But those programs weren’t build for quick reporting. So that’s why they now embrace a technology that most of them have maligned for quite some time.
Written on May 13, 2008 – 4:21 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
During Web 2.0 Expo, Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs called upon all media companies to look at the bright side of the digital revolution: “Media business are focusing on the destruction of their business and therefore lose sight.” I couldn’t agree more with this man. So I was happily surprised when David Petherick mailed me an example of a newspaper that seems to get what’s going on in their industry. The Liverpool Daily Post, a regional newspaper, is using CoveritLive to live blog the production of tomorrow’s paper:
Over the next 17 hours, members of our team will be logging on to this blog to talk about what they doing, and how the Liverpool Daily Post is put together.
Editor Mark Thomas, deputy editor Alison Gow, news editor Andy Kelly, sports editor Richard Williamson, business editor Bill Gleeson and features editor Emma Johnson are involved with this unique experiment and will write a story for the paper about their experiences as well. So why are they doing this?
It’s an attempt to get our online readers more involved in what we do on a daily basis.
Sounds good and daring. And I must say, I’m impressed by the amount of messages they have been posting. The number of comments is also pretty high, yet the news editors might need some more time to answer them. As one of the most important parts of the digital revolution is the growing need of people to interact with media professionals.
All in all, this initiative of the Liverpool Daily Post is a good example of the attitude media companies should have. Some optimism in this business doesn’t hurt anybody, in fact, it’s exactly what it needs. Especially now The Guardian Journalist Nick Davies has pointed out with his book Flat Earth News that British newspapers basically just copy/paste from the newswire of the Press Association. A bit of transparency is the least that newspapers can do to win back their audience’s trust.
[WebTipr: David Petherick]
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