Online Project

Adding images to your blogs

One of the things we'll try to cover today is how to put images on your blog. Not something that seems that hard, really. Just fire up Google Images and you're away. However, there are problems with using the pictures you find that way. We'll talk a bit about that today and about how to find images online that aren't copyrighted.

One option is Flickr, which is a great photo-sharing site and a brilliant source of non-copyright images - via the Flickr Creative Commons page. We'll look at Creative Commons a bit and what it means and go through some ways to find images there. In the meantime, there's a great guide to finding images on Flickr on Skelliewag.(Incidentally, the rest of the site is worth a look too).

There are various sites online that have stock photos you can use for free. Blogsessive has a good guide. The best known of the stock photo sites is probably stock.xchng. EveryStockPhoto is a search engine for free photos online. PicApp is an interesting site which gives you access to the latest news/celebrity pics, in exchange for embedding ads on your page. If you want to do a blog with this kind of imagery on, it's probably the safest best, though it is kind of irritating.

Adding video to your blogs

Adding video to most blogs from a service like YouTube is pretty easy. You just have to paste in some code to a post, which will then embed the video. The embed code is different to the standard url (web address) which you use when linking

Go to a video you like on YouTube and look on the right of the page for the embed code. You need to copy that. Then start a new post on your blogs and paste the embed code in where you want the video to go. We'll go through this in class - it's very straightforward.

Actually, Wordpress has done various things to make embedding video even easier. For more info, try their general Video help page and the specific YouTube section.

There are other video sharing sites online aside from YouTube. One interesting one, aimed at artists and people who create their own video is Vimeo. You're not allowed to post material you haven't created yourself to Vimeo - so no clips from TV shows. And there are weekly upload limits. But to compensate, the site lets you post HD video, has some good networking features, looks nice and gives you more options when it comes to embedding video.

To embed Vimeo videos on Wordpress blogs, don't use the embed code. Instead, follow the guidlines on the Wordpress Vimeo page. There are guidelines on Wordpress for embedding video from various video sharing sites - but perhaps the simplest way to do it is to add a Vodpod button to your browser toolbar. once you've configured it, all you need to do is click it to embed the video you're watching to your blog

The Guardian's minute by minute match reports

Lots of the major news media websites cover big football matches live. They can't show video but they use Flash packages and live text-based commentary to cover what happens as it happens.

The Guardian's minute by minute reports are actually fairly low tech in comparison to the coverage on some of their competitors' sites (a recent example was the coverage of Arsenal vs AS Roma in the Champions League). But they seem to be incredibly popular, perhaps because they work with the community dimension of online journalism, responding to reader feedback as they cover the action.

Emily Bell, director of digital content for Guardian News and Media, argues that the low tech nature of their approach is a strength because it focuses attention on the writing.

Football coverage on the big news media websites

While I help the people in the class who didn't do Online Project set up their blogs, I'd like the rest of you to analyse the way football is covered on some big news media sites. Have a look at the following:

• Sky Sports
• BBC Sport
• The Guardian
• The Telegraph
• The Times
• The Mirror

When you look at a site, make a list of the different ways it covers football. Ask yourself how the site has adapted traditional ways of covering the game to make it work online. Try to think about what really works and what doesn't. If the site has blogs devoted to football, pick one and look at it. Look at the types of posts featured on the blog.

Later on, we'll compare notes about the different types of online football coverage.

Basic principles and distinguishing features of online journalism

I'm going to kick things off by talking a little bit about online journalism and what makes it different. Some of you have heard me talk about this before. One thing I'm going to go over is a quick list of the key distinguishing features of online journalism - I'm hoping that some of you will remember some of these from Online Project.

I'm also going to mention something I didn't mention then - Paul Bradshaw's five Basic Principles of online journalism. Paul teaches online journalism at Birmingham City University and runs a really excellent blog, which you should read if you're interested in this area.

A while ago, he came up with his list of five basic principles:

• Brevity
• Adaptability
• Scannability
• Interactivity
• Community and Conversation

There's some crossover with the list I gave you before. But there's also lots of useful ideas and links here so you should follow the links and read the whole series.

Football blogs

I'm going to talk a little bit about blogs and how they work. Which means I need an example to point at on the screen. So I think I'll go for the rather unfortunately named Arseblog.

The assessment brief

This session is preparation for the blogging assessment for this module. What you have to do is set up a blog and cover a particular sport - football, cricket, swimming, whatever - it's up to you.

I want you to write five posts on your blog. You should write them over a period of five days. You can't write them all on the same day. The idea is to work with the potential of the blog form.

So respond to events as they happen. Link to coverage elsewhere. Link to and contribute to discussions happening online about things connected to the sport your blog is covering.

I want you to try out a variety of different posts on your blog - opinion pieces, news updates, predictions, jokes etc. You can add video if you want. You can also add pictures though you need to think about issues like copyright.

Word count is up to you. But the idea is not to write lots of lots of copy. Sometimes, short posts work best online. Try to think about what works best for the type of story you're writing that day. You might want to write a short news update about something. Then follow up with a longer opinion piece the next day. Then write a list-based piece linking to coverage of the same story elsewhere online.

Today, we're going to explore sports coverage online. I want you to start thinking about what you might cover on your blog. Next week, I'll drop in to the session to see if you've developed an idea for your blog.

Once you start your blog, email me and let me know the address. When you start it is up to you. But you need to complete it before the hand-in date, May 1st.

Once you've finished your blog, I'd like you to write a short evaluation of it - no more than 500 words - explaining the idea behind the blog, how you used the net and whether you think it worked.

OK - I hope that's reasonably clear. We can talk some more about it today if you have questions.

Today's Sports Journalism session

The idea behind today's session is to prepare you to do the blogging assessment for the Sports Journalism module.

So first, I'm going to talk a little bit about online journalism in general and how it differs from traditional forms like print and broadcast. I'll get you to set up a blog using the free blogging service Wordpress. Now, some of you know already know how to work with blogs and blogging platforms. So while I go through this with those people in the class who don't, I'm going to get those who do to analyse the football coverage on a variety of big news media websites.

Once you've done that, we'll compare notes on what you think works well online. We'll talk a bit about writing on the net and how to adapt traditional news stories and opinion pieces online. If there's time, I'll try to talk to each of you about the blogging assessment and any ideas you have about what you might do.

Sports Journalism

Just a quick post to say that I'm going to use this blog to support the teaching I'm doing on the Sports Journalism module over the next few weeks.

Today's session

Today's going to be a pretty open-ended session. My feeling is that you probably need the time to finish off your assessments. So I'll let you focus on that. I'll be around to offer advice if you need it.

If you're  not coming in to class but checking in from home, remember that you need to finish your features and your module blogs by 5.00 tonight.

If you've done everything you need to do, you could use the time to tidy up your blogs, proof read, correct errors etc... Here's a checklist of things you could focus on:

• Links Link to specific sources. Don't be too general. Think about your link text and how it works with your writing. Test all your links once you publish - to make sure they work.
• Writing A conversational tone works well on the web. But remember - your blog needs to be professional too. So don't be too 'intimate'. This is a blog, not a personal email. Proof-read carefully and fix mistakes. More generally, the prevailing wisdom about writing online is that it should be short, punchy, scannable etc... Lists, bullet points etc. And that's all good. But you don't have to write like that all the time... You can go long, as it were, if you write well and take your readers with you.
• Visuals If you use images from another source, credit them and link back to the place you got the visuals. A general link to Google Images doesn't count. It's also a good idea to put a disclaimer on your blogs reminding people this is student work, an educational project, not something commercial. Don't deep link to images.
• Layout Remember - it's hard to read online. Think about that when it comes to choosing colours for text and links. Consistency helps usability on the net. So don't keep changing the colours you use for text/links etc. Colour works as a little sub-conscious cue that helps navigation. If you change it, you confuse people. Remember, you can rework layouts to make sure the pictures work and that the spacing between paras is consistent.
• Writing in Word If you paste in posts from Word, they can mess up the text formatting on the Blogger template you're using. Wordpress has a special Paste from Word button. With Blogger it's better to save what you write in Word as plain text and then paste it in. That way, it won't mess up the formatting.
• Settings Make sure you tidy up the basic settings on your blog. In particular, make sure the time is right. It's also a good idea to sort out your profile on Blogger too. Remember - the module blog is, in a way, a personal showcase. So think about how to use the profile to present yourself.
• The Sidebar Think about how to use the space in the sidebar. Don't just leave it empty. Blogs are networked. They give you the chance to link out to the net and to let the net flow back in to what you write. One way to show the networked side of what you do is via the sidebar. Think about adding lists of links to sites you use, news feeds, image feeds... It's also good to add some text so it's immediately clear to visitors what your blog is about.