SoloJourno

The Globe and Mail has posted Behind the Veil: An Intimate Journey Into the Lives of Kandahar’s Women, an outstanding multi-part interactive series by photojournalist Paula Lerner and reporter Jessica Leeder chronicling the lives of women in Kandahar, one of Afghanistan’s most conservative, volatile cities.

Part 3: Child Brides Bought and sold - ‘Among us, there is no happiness or sadness in weddings. It’s just something we do’

Sakina, 18, is an internally displaced villager who says she’s been driven “insane” by the bombings, and decided to abandon her home to move to the city.

Photo credit: Paula Lerner.

The Globe and Mail has posted Behind the Veil: An Intimate Journey Into the Lives of Kandahar’s Women, an outstanding multi-part interactive series by photojournalist Paula Lerner and reporter Jessica Leeder chronicling the lives of women in Kandahar, one of Afghanistan’s most conservative, volatile cities.

Part 2: A day in the life - You get pregnant, you give birth. And that’s about it’

Women don burkas on their way out the door. Although many women in Kandahar do not often venture outside their home compound walls, on the rare occasion when they do they cover from head to toe. Paula Lerner/Aurora Photos

Photo credit: Paula Lerner.

Via Mashable:

Journalism is supposed to be a conversation, but often news websites don’t provide the tools for that conversation to take place. Implementing social media tools and allowing readers to connect to the organization through Twitter (Twitter), Facebook (Facebook) and other networks, can make it easier for users to engage with the news content and their community members. However, some fundamental tools that allow readers to share content through social media are not being utilized. A recent study that looked at almost 200 newspapers and TV stations with Twitter accounts found that only a third offered readers a way to share a story link using Twitter, while 80 percent provided a Facebook sharing button.

Making it easier for readers to comment, take part in live chats and in some cases even contribute user-generated blogs can enhance the conversation and strengthen the relationship between the news organization and its audience. Here are a few tips on how a news website can become more social and examples of how some news organizations are doing it. Of course this isn’t comprehensive, so we’d love to hear about some innovative examples and successes about your sites in the comments below.

Read the full article.

1. The stories that are published are the stories that sell
2. Many stories are not copy edited
3. Many stories come from wire services
4. Some journalists are driven by awards
5. Journalists are biased
6. Some journalists use Wikipedia
7. There is no big conspiracy
8. Many journalists have side projects
9. Entertainment stories rule
10. No one has the answers

Read the full article. See also 12 Things to tell your tech-impaired editor, 10 Reasons why online news sites suck, The difference between print and online design and 25 Things I’ve Learned About Journalism.

Via Online Journalism Review:

The chipper consultants whom legacy media organizations overpay to update their brands don’t typically deign to tinker with traffic reporting.

But from where I sit – clutching the handlebars of my Dutch bicycle – this rather routine news service represents a basket of low-hanging fruit for news brands trying to create atomized content for multiple platforms, especially the mobile Web.

For the teen or job seeker who is riding his or her local bus for the first time, a mobile application branded by the local paper represents a chance for tangible interaction with that paper. It’s a great service for local visitors and that nervous commuter who, although she always keeps his watch set five minutes ahead, is always unsure if she’s just missed a bus.

“When I visited San Francisco, I never knew how long I’d have to stand at a bus stop waiting,” writes Ginny Skalski, a community content manager at the NBC affiliate in Raleigh-Durham. “If I had an app that was tied to the GPS of the buses on the route I was riding, it would have been amazing.”

Smart phone applications for public transport users are being developed and marketed by startups like HopSpot, AcrossAir and ExitStrategyNYC. Public transpiration services like the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York and, of course, Google, are also in the game.

News companies, still entrenched in a drive-time mentality and unsure how to make money online, are on the sidelines.

Read the full article.