Nicomedia

A slickly produced reminder of the potential that blogs offer those whose voices are routinely repressed. Some of the images strongly recall Persepolis, a great animted film set in Iran, adapted from a graphic novel of the same name (here is its website).

I found it at Antony Loewenstein’s blog.

Iran: A nation of bloggers from Mr.Aaron on Vimeo.

Innovations in Newspapers is a blog written by Juan Antonio Giner (fouder and director of Innovation International Media). Giner clearly stills get excited about print – a rare spark of hope amongst current media commentary – and in his blog lauds innovation caviar while remonstrating with those responsible for what he considers rubbish.

Giner is a prolific poster. While his posts are brief – often photos with a comment or material quoted from other sources – he manages to post numerous times daily.

Giner has a sharp eye for design, and plenty of his posts highlight good front covers and pages, and at times he is not afraid to be critical.

The US Election kept Giner busy – understandably considering what a major media event it was. Lots of posts at Innovations in Newspapers showed Obama front pages from around the world and photos illustrating the spike in demand for newspapers following Obama’s win. This huge interest in election newspapers Giner followed keenly. It was a boost to those arguing for newspapers continued relevance – The Australian reported that Nov 5 editions were selling for upwards of $600 on Ebay.

So what would Giner say about innovation in Australia’s newspapers? While The Age has some great slideshows and multimedia (like the Art Deco piece) and The Australian makes the occasional video, our best broadsheet papers seem to treat innovative content as an aside. The multimedia sections of the the papers’ websites are not adequately signposted. 

Giner uses photos to good effect in his blog – illustrating for example voter turn-out at the election. This photo I think is great (see here for the original post).

Antony Loewenstein is a freelance journalist, author and blogger. He has recently published a book, The Blogging Revolution, which I have not yet had a chance to read, but I have listened to an ABC Fora podcast of its launch.

Loewenstein bemoaned the state of Australian media, citing the decline of Fairfax as an example. While not claiming to be a ‘blog evangelist’, he suggested the current void in investigative journalism could be filled by bloggers, or citizen media  or network journalism.

While Loewenstein made the point that in Western media, bloggers tend to leach off mainstream news sources. In non-Western countries however, blogs often provide the only reliable source of news, and form an alternative to state-run media.

He used the quite horrific example of Egyptian police officers using video they had filmed of each other raping men in custody as a tool for intimidation. They would show it to those whom they were trying to coerce presumably. Bloggers in Egypt got hold of some of this footage and exposed the police’s brutal tactics, and forced the government to answer for this terrible behaviour.

Sydney Launch of The Blogging Revolution

The term blog has come to refer to an impossibly diverse collection of online content, operating as a sort of umbrella term without giving any specific information about what you are likely to find when you visit a blog.

Margaret Simons has attempted to address the lack of insightful vocabulary available to adequately analyse blogs. Speaking on The Media Report, she discussed a system she has come up with that incorporates nine categories.

One of these categories is the ‘Digest Blog’, where material from around the web is collected to one site, using links or summaries. Some digest blogs feature commentary, though not all do.

I would put CyberJournalist.net in this category. Brief posts under headings including Future of Media, Innovation and Citizen Journalism inform about developments in the online media world and provide links to useful content.

The Blog Scan is particularly relevant, with links to lots of recent postings from blogs elsewhere on the web.

Tips and Tools offer online writing tips from CJ.net founder Jonathan Dube – I liked his reminders to keep it ’short and sweet’, and to ‘break it up’. This section reinforces the sense of community CJ.net tries to foster, taking advantage of the technology it analyses and advocates. You can contribute to the site through comments and wikis and you can submit your work.

CJ.net can give some invaluable tips on where to find great online content. I found a link to Vanity Fair’s Blogopticon at CJ.net, which in turn has provided hours of entertainment.