New Media Workshop

The presentation summary is available in Adrian’s site.

Here is the link to Climate of Hong Kong in Wikipedia.

I add this, major climate changes in the past decade into it.

Beside the two sub sections on the page, which are Climate of Hong Kong and Tropical cyclones, now when anybody visit the page in Wikipedia is going to know some major changes of the city in the past decade.

Actually those information are available at Hong Kong Observatory, yet some kind of modifications for the update process are made and then grouped together to provide a more convenience page for visitors now.

And here is the history page which shows the editing process.

Well, firstly I really do not think it is journalism if that is explained in a narrow sense. General journalism produces news feature or feature etc… All these are much different from a encyclopedia like Wiki. Although Wikipeida has timely updated versions the core nature of it is not the same.

Yet, as mentioned, the frequently updated version does correlate with some broader journalistic value, say for example, the Oscar Awards list is nearly updated simutaneously as the ceremony goes on today.

Therefore, I would rather term it as a timely encyclopedia, which is the opposite to the Britannica.

It is clear that the case of the Alabama couple has shown much difference in perception between the common people what Wiki is. The couple tend to have believed more than they should by making “decision in part by referring to material from articles in Wikipedia”.

Opposite to this, the judge commented that materials “culled from the Internet do not — at least on their face — meet standards of reliability”.

Yes, in actual terms, like what Middlebury College claims, that “Wikipedia is not appropriate for research”, and the thing is, “somewhat surprisingly, Wikipedia doesn’t necessarily disagree with them.”

Actually, this is imaginable, cause when I was trying to edit the Wiki page, it is as easy as editing a blog of mine. Even if I do not have the intention to put in incorrect informtaion, somehow it is hard to guarantee all Wiki editors do the same. Spelling mistakes are often found, and yet these are minor mistakes, greater ones come when someone intentionally play with that.

Therefore, Wikipedia should act more like a data bank which gives you some basic knowledge or at least information to a certain topic, but after that, if you are making an important decision like the couple, or are hoping to cite something from there, you should have tried to assure that what inside are correct, by going through other reliable sites.

After all, unless Wikipedia is the only source of a certain topic, one should not solely rely on them, though obviously, for some general entertainment news like Oscar Awards, it is toally fine to believe in what is in there.

Find approximately 6 newsfeeds (from news sites, sections of news sites, and blogs) that relate in some way in the topic you’re considering for your final project. and add them to your aggregator. Write a blog post introducing those six feeds, explain why you are interested in following them, and discuss how they relate to your project idea as a source of information and research.

The 6 newsfeeds are obtained from NYT, IHT, London Times, The Guardian, the HK Standard and Greenpeace (China).

Asia/Pacific news from NYT and IHT are quite similar to a certain extend obviously. While the two focusing more on American news, the London Times reports more on European news. These are 3 newspaper organisations which provide much information to their readers. While for the Guardian, the newsfeeds they provide are fousing on British news, probably because the news are not categorised and therefore specific news on a certain area is not available. And the HK Standard is quite similar in that sense.

For the Greenpeace (China) one, there are explicit differences. Press releases, rather than news reports and analysis are available there. Therefore it comes in a less frequent terms, and it is more likely for us to find the needed information from this kind of organisations.

My project is going to talk about how global warming affect the recent climate of HK, say for the past ten years. To finish this, I will need information from international newspapers. Other than that, probably local newspaper and press releases from NGO working on a local scale are also required, this is why I picked the above newsfeeds.

They four global or foreign newspapers, are authoritative for international news reporting. The Guardian is important here as it is the different with the others for the fact that profit-maximisation is not it’s main goal. (though others may not be upholding this also, the Guardian is run by a foundation, which gives them more freedom and leeway in news reporting)

Together with, the Standrad is picked because the only other available local English newspaper, the SCMP is not offering newfeeds to its readers.

Among the various conservative groups, the Greenpeace is picked because it is one of the most authoritative organisation in the area, and it is convenience to readers in many aspects, for example the site is a bilingual one.

All these newsfeed, and also official data from the Hong Kong Observatory would serve as the core information needed to accomplish the project.

Describe the different ways in which each of the four news organizations linked above do or do or do not use feeds.

The four news organisations I checked are NYT, BBC, Standard and SCMP. They all provide news feeds except SCMP.

In short, the BBC site provides the most detailed categorised Feeds, followed by NYT. For Standard, the Feeds come without any cateogirising process which is a bit inconveniecne. And for SCMP, except for PodCast users, Feeds are simply not provided

Compare the difference between reading news in a newsreader and reading it on the news organization’s website through your browser.

Reading news in a newsreader is quite new and unfamiliar, obviously. While we do know  easily, by the setting of the front page, what is the most important news of the day in the past when we read on the news organisation’s website, we tend to be confused a bit as they are not done in the same way in a reader.

Moreover, without the aid of pictures and graphs, etc., the topic itself has to be attractive enough to catch our attentions, which is a difficult task as it is tiring to read through all updates from a dozen of news organisation everyday.

The good thing of Feeds are obvious, just like what described in Feed 101, “regular updates to web-based content, but also keep track of a large number of your favorite Web sites or blogs, without having to remember to check each site manually or clutter your email Inbox.”

And yet, there are still some improvements that could be made in the near future, like what J.D Lasica commented on Surf’s Down as More Netizens Turn to RSS for Browsing, which are relevant graphics and images in the feeds and a better interface between my RSS reader and Weblog software so comments could be made on the news faster and easier.

Based on your understanding of the readings above, how do you think feeds will change the way you get information on the web? As a journalist, how might feeds change the way that news organizations (or solo freelancers) report and present the news?

I think this news reader feature is more likely to act as a tool to file up news from different organisations. Say for example, as individual journalist or a freelancer, when he or she is writing for a certain topic, it will be far more convenience for him to search in his news reader, instead of using the conventional way. it saves time on one hand, and it gives him a more general and representative picture to the issue. As a result, it is quite possible that news written by different journalists will tend to be less ‘isolated’, for it is most likely that they will have to react to other’s news reporting and analysis.

Nevertheless, I do not think that news feed will be popular among general public. Usually, they tend to read a newspaper or two, at most daily, to get a general picture of what is currently happening. The reason is that, for them, it is not that necessary to look into a matter with all available perspectives.

We heard of climate change very often in the present days.

But how the climate actually changes in the city? Are we having more warm winters and more severe typhoons now? How does El Nina affects us? What the future scenario is going to be?

I shall be focusing on temperature and rainfall in this project, hoping to produce an objective, scientific report on this issue in Hong Kong.

Here are two links, an officail one to Hong Kong Observatory and anther “underground one”, also containing much information about Hong Kong weather.

Official one
Underground one, but it is professional

In this project I would make full use of these sites and probable also information from related ones as the project proceed.

How do you think the Internet is changing journalism in Hong Kong, China or wherever you call home? What do you think that means for your future career as a journalist?

From the readings given, it is clear that we are in a new age. Just as what the article

Go to the web, young journalist

says, “That’s (online advertising) prompting news organizations to realign their resources to focus more on Web journalism.” In such an era, we know that this is an irreversible trend. Commercial advertising on internet is growing at the expense of traditional medias, especially newspapers and TV channels. This is also seen in Hong Kong, AppleDaily, the newspaper with the second largest readership, recorded declines after declines for the number of readers and now the figure is less than 300,000, which is only 3/4 when compared to the figure several years ago. Despite of this, the internet actually is another chance to generate profits, as the advertising there is increasing. Therefore, as a journalist, I think I need to think of how to make full use of the internet resources, and perhaps persuading my colleagues to pay more concerns in this area also, in order to survive.

Besides, as in the other article, the issue is put forward to another stage, not only we need to work with the internet, actually we have to run in a web 2.0 based model, which emphasises more on interactions between journalists and the readers. This is also something I have to beware of once I decide to get myself involved in this industry. It keeps readers in one hand, and also it could probably generate better and more solutions to difficulties, etc. Yet, we have to be sure that we are not letting everything in, just as what Cal Massey commented on this article,

I don’t fear the Web at all

“I don’t fear the Web at all. I find it disheartening. The primary reason I resist mimicking or merging substantially with the Internet community is because so much Internet content is mind-numbing silliness.” This is actually a concern most traditional journists uphold. As a journalist, I think we have to be fair and wise in selecting relevant materials, perhaps screening comments on our articles so as to eliminate the chance of being manipulated by others, or even incorrect information.

And here are the links

How WallStreetJournal sees web 2.0

It is very true indeed that the media world in the western countries is undergoing enormous changes. In the article posted by the blogger working at ApplyDaily, he said that Wall Street Journal is one of those not admitting the media world, unlike those risk management groups is switching to a web 2.0 structure. And he deemed Wall Street Journal as the ‘conservatives’, and further expressing that the Journal is not that convincing in the argument.

Challenges Yahoo meet in the web 2.0 era

But here in the Chinese world this is not the case, at least not now. For instance, at present in Hong Kong, only few publications are emphasising and making full use of the internet resource. The Yahoo group (Chinese) former CEO Xie Wen quitted his job after Yang Zhi Yuan, the establisher of Yahoo refused to shift the Chinese Yahoo site from an integrated searching engine to a web 2.0 based one. It clearly shows the different perspectives those within the business are having. Now Xie is working at Alibaba, another huge search engine in China, which emphasises more on the web 2.0 business. We will see which of the two big companies will survive in the future.