Everyone has been in contact with lazy journalism — whether its one article looking a bit too full of market-speak or a group of articles using the same descriptive terms — but it’s always been very difficult to suss out whether it’s a coincidence or a purposeful cut-and-paste job. Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit focusing on governmental transparency, has decided to tackle the problem head-on with its new website, Churnalism.

If you think a particular article looks, well, suspicious, simply paste the link’s URL or  the text directly into Churnalism’s free scanner (or add on a free browser extension) and the tool will match phrases to press releases within its database. The tool scans through many popular PR hubs, including PR Newswire and MarketWire, and it has also revealed it can grab text from Wikipedia and the US government’s websites. You can compare the article side-by-side and see what was lifted from source material — and whether it’s taken out of context.

Check out the video on Churnalism below. Read more

When it comes to journalism, the credentials of your sources can make or break your article. Fortunately, there are a number of tools that can help you weed out the nobodies from the knowledgeables online.

By now, you’ve surely heard of HARO (Help a Reporter Out), but founder Peter Shankman, said writers can also look to trade organizations for leads. “Each trade or industry has an organization behind it that serves as spokespeople for the industry,” he explained. “They’ll always take your call.”

Get more tips in 6 Surefire Ways to Find Sources in the Digital Age.

– Nicholas Braun

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Developing a comprehensive digital experience for a publication is no small task. While very few outlets have the financing and manpower to produce a custom app, the low-cost appeal of micropublishing could leave organizations still wanting more — especially when it forces you to choose between platforms rather than catering to all of them.

Cross-platform experiences are the goal of MediaWire, a new startup that enables publishers to create and distribute their publications directly through smartphone stores. Unlike some micropublishing apps, MediaWire charges a flat fee per upload and leaves the revenue from sales alone.

The tool already publishes apps to the Apple App store and Google Play, with BlackBerry App World and Windows Store to follow. MediaWire is one of the only companies that supports all of these devices from a single source, meaning that it’s a good candidate to use for digital publishing if the goal is to be truly cross platform across all mediums. MediaWire also allows for users to share publications across major social media networks, including Facebook and Twitter, for no extra cost.  Read more

Alex Goh and the team at Imgembed are onto something. They launched this year at SXSW and already have one million images loaded into their platform for sharing, using, and, most importantly, monetizing photos online.

It goes something like this: if you are a professional or amateur photographer, you can upload your photos via Instagram, Flickr, or any other social photo sharing platform. If you’re a journalist, you can search images for free for your blog posts. You copy the embed link, and the photographer’s name comes embedded with the photo.

If the footer bar with the creator’s name doesn’t work for your layout, you go premium. Each photo comes with a price, set by the creator, for each impression. The image is always free for up to 10,000 impressions, and after that, you pay the price. And if you’re article with a picture gets more than 10,000 you should know how to monetize that anyway.

Every time a photo is embedded, the platform generates a unique jpeg with the creator’s name attached, so the photos are easier to track. You can ‘steal’ an Imgembed photo, but it has the artist’s name on it. Win – win.

It gets to the heart of digital copyright and Creative Commons licensing. Goh believes that people want to use creative works ethically, but aren’t very good at it. He says:

There’s a big misunderstanding about Creative Commons licensing. CC licenses mean that you can use the image, but you have to attribute the work to the creator. People often don’t do that or they forget to link back…So they’re stealing because it’s free and it’s easy. We’ve made it so easy, that there’s no excuse to do it the wrong way.

Read more

When Vine was launched in January, I immediately thought it could be a new tool for reporters and wrote about it here. I didn’t have any particular good ideas, but was interested to see how people could use it.

Months later, the journalism-focused blogosphere is finally getting excited about it. But going so far as to say it’s “shaking up the news world” is a bit of a stretch.

Frankly, I’m not buying it for two major reasons:

1) The six second, GIF-like looping of video makes Vines some of the most boring video content out there. What could be done with a good photo is instead exploited and worn out with the app. In fact, “Finite Vine” would be a welcome addition.

2) Audio helps with context and Vine’s capability for voiceovers is great. But after seeing some Vines, I’m glad the default volume status is mute. It makes me want to push for other video channels, like HuffPost Live, to run the same way. I’m on a constant mission to hit the mute button on most videos on news websites before playback starts. It feels like a constant attack.

If Twitter is an incessant feed of things you’ll probably never get around to reading, or really need to know, then Vines just add to that noise. There’s a reason why traditional broadcasting organizations haven’t taken to it. You need more than six seconds and a GIF to tell a story. Even if it’s just 24 seconds more and two GIFs — anything is better than a Vine.

Let’s stop the madness.