Week 8: Stomp & Innovations in Newspapers

Posted on September 3rd, 2007 by kmburb.
Categories: Uncategorized.

Stomp sounds like a very interesting news initiative, and quite different to other forms of UGC-based news. Particularly interesting was how people who sent in story ideas and information preferred to be interviewed and have the story written by reporters. I guess what I like about OhmyNews is that it offers me a means to practice my own writing and reporting, but understandably not everyone wants to write, but they still want to get their story out there.

Felix Soh oversees Stomp. He talks about how convergence has affected news presentation and about how we expect news to be constantly up-to-date. “We live in a multi-source world when it comes to getting information and news,” Soh said. “I get breaking news on my mobile phone. Mobile is big for breaking news.”

Like what Wright said about journalists (see last week’s post), Soh said all journalists employed on Stomp needed a fresh and creative outlook, to come up with innovative ideas for multimedia news.

Through Stomp, Soh wants newspapers to interact more with their audiences and help form communities, like Kathleen McCoy (see last week’s post), who discussed the importance of building a community when it comes to news. “How do we make them feel part of the paper? Through online social networking sites,” said Soh.

It seems fitting then that I was reading a wall posting on a friend’s Facebook profile, where her dad, an accountant for a Fairfax newspaper wrote: “Hi……find it all a bit confusing at the moment….but thought it was worth a look…..we are moving ahead big time at work with more enhanced digital services through the Fairfax group, so a good way to see how ‘your generation’ are using this sort of technology for social networking etc. cheers Dad.”

This just shows how using social networking sites to capture online communities which can then be channeled into news audiences and news-creating communities is happening as we speak!

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