Nicomedia

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).

Global Voices is a site developed by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and is committed to revising the media inequities that see so much space given to American and European stories by the big news services.

GV looks to the blogosphere for a grassroots view of issues that are affecting communities around the world. Regional editors keep abreast of blogs in their area (or subject matter) and post daily links to interesting content.

Featured stories on the home page cover issues normally overlooked by Western media, and offers alternate perspectives to the mainstream. Generally the stories start with summary information from the author followed by a selection of blog excerpts on topic, with possibly photos, audio and video as well. See these stories for some fresh perspective:

New Zealand: Time for a change as well? - about the recent election there
Obama the revenge! - the view from Pakistan
Obama’s Victory: Reactions from Tanzania

A blogger profile of the author of Wahda Masyra – an Egyptian Girl, Shahinaz Abdelsalam provides a sharp reminder about how liberating the internet can be to people living in countries which implement repression and censorship. She actually speaks about the possibility of going to jail for the opinions she voices in her blog, which is a world away from my lax attitude to blogging.

Shahinaz Abdelsalam

Does a collage feature qualify as a gimmick? I could spend hours arranging my digital photos into pointless collages, and I would have today if I wasn’t supposed to be studying (but also streaming Obama on CNN at the same time).

I like Picasa’s interface and I’m sure if I had a bit more time this afternoon I would have worked out how to do whatever it was I was aiming to – and I would need to figure that out first. Frankly, I am a little bemused by the wealth of options one has on the internet these days and I’m prepared to spend some time working it all out. I think I have used photobucket in the past, and this seems to have many more creative and purposeful possibilities.

Here is what I did do.

From Movies

On the other hand, couldn’t be happier about this…