As far as newsgathering tools go, Storify has radically changed how reporters navigate breaking news and information on social media. In just a matter of clicks, a writer can pull together dozens of tweets, videos and photos onto one platform and collate it into one thorough, complete story. Although it provides for media, there isn’t an easy transition from one video to another.

Now, reporters can create high-impact story compilations with Soo Meta, a video mashup tool that enables users to piece together different Youtube clips to create a cohesive story based around a topic or idea. Users can pull in information from Youtube, Pinterest and Twitter and create full multimedia compilations. Each segment can be controlled and clipped, so only the most important parts of a video would make it into the final piece.

Read more

Like most people, I have a fear of getting really old. You know how sometimes you see an old, grey lady in the supermarket grumbling about the price of milk and scowling at the clerk who tries to help her? I don’t want to be her one day. Other times, I see a woman of the same, grey age on the street with a cooler handbag than I currently do, tweeting her way down 6th Avenue with friend and think, ‘there you go! That’s how I’m going to be!’

The New York Times is both of these grey ladies, all of the time. 

By asking Scrollkit to take down their replica and reference to ‘Snow Fall,’ the Times looks a little cranky. I’m no Lawrence Lessig, but like Cody Brown, I can see how his video ‘could be’ fair use. Asking him to cease and desist using any mention of the Times on their site? That’s a little draconian. But what do I know. 

In any case, the New York Times has been, and still is, a benchmark of decent journalism and decent survival rates online. But it’s going to have to play nice. 

Cool Grey Lady: Experimentation Read more

The Internet Archive announced this week that it received a $1 million donation from the Knight Foundation to expand it’s TV News Search and Borrow archive of television news clips. As of now, the archive has just over 400,000 clips that the public can access, link to, or borrow a hard copy for a fee.

“We want to make all knowedge available to everyone, forever, and for free. So it’s an ambituous mission,” laughs Roger Macdonald, the archive’s television news project director. 

And it all comes down to closed captioning.

The San Francisco based non-profit records broadcasts, and teases out the news using closed captioning tags and other meta-data. Twenty-four hours after the first airing, the clip is available in the archive. It’s an invaluable resource for journalists, researchers, and documentarians to study what was said, when, where, and in what context. Want to play John Stewart? Go ahead and search clips of ‘Benghazi’ on Fox last week. It can also be used for more noble causes, like tracking political speech. Read more

Do you have the New York Times Best Seller list memorized? Do you have a passion for books and want to get into the publishing business?

In this episode of “Score That Job,” career expert, author and mediabistro editor Vicki Salemi sat down with Andrea Weinzimer of Hachette Book Group to get the inside dirt on what they’re looking for in a candidate.

Here a few tips — know the industry and know which authors they publish (hint: rhymes with James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, David Sedaris…). Or just watch the video.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

In Toronto, citizens are wrestling with a difficult scenario: wily, unstable mayor Rob Ford is now implicated in a video that allegedly shows him smoking crack cocaine. But, the video is in possession of a group of Somali men who are involved in the very trade that supplied the crack to Ford, and they’re looking to sell it for six figures.

Determined to gain possession of the tape, Gawker editor John Cook (who flew to Toronto and saw the tape personally) has appealed to the wider audience of the website and asked that those interested in breaking the story with Gawker donate towards a $200,000 fundraising goal to purchase the tape and post it online for everyone. The Indiegogo fundraiser, the pun-laden “Rob Ford Crackstarter,” already has more than $86,000 a week before the goal deadline and includes a $10,000 tier that offers the phone that recorded the video in the first place.

Read more