Hard news and soft news

There have two types of news story; they are hard news and soft news. Hard new generally refers to up-to-the-minute news and events that are reported immediately, while soft news is background information or human-interest stories. The topic of the soft news is not very serious. The hard news contains Politics, war, economics and crime, and the soft news is arts, entertainment and lifestyles.

Hard news has the following three characteristics: it directly relates to people vital interests and the survival of people; for personal development, people do everything possible to understand it; it has strong timing, expired news is completely worthless. So in the dissemination of information it should mainly based on hard news.

Soft news can be developed greatly by the changing of people’s life. People like celebrity gossip rather than policy news. At the same time, the soft news could gain a lot of advertising revenue and it could bring profit to the media company. However the hard news mostly about what happened of the society and the society cannot live without hard news.

Reference:
Bob, F., Martin, H., Mark, H., Marie, K. & John, E. R. (2005:66), Key Concepts in Journalism Studies, S AGE, London

Bob, F., Martin, H., Mark, H., Marie, K. & John, E. R. (2005:85), Key Concepts in Journalism Studies, S AGE, London

http://image.baidu.com/i?ct=503316480&z=0&tn=baiduimagedetail&word=%B1%A8%D6%BD&in=7993&cl=2&cm=1&sc=0&lm=-1&pn=7&rn=1&di=1888196835&ln=2000&fr=&ic=0&s=0&se=1

The influence of mobile phone

Since the appearance of mobile phone, people’s life is changing a lot, even the whole society. There are 3 parts which are influenced by mobile phone.

1.The effect to economy

Some people say that the “thumb economy” is a miracle in the development of economic, and some people feel that this is exaggerated. However, the “thumb economy” has entered the socio-economic system, and it brings a deep impact to the socio-economic development. The whole economy environment, economic thinking, the operation mode of small business are changed. It can be said that in the fifth media, the “thumb economy” is accepted by the public, and become an essential part of social life. This is the real economy meaning of the fifth media.

2.The effect to culture

In the beginning of founding mobile phone is just to talk. However, under the promoting of new technologies, this mobile communication toll are increasing gradually rich. In a variety of hardware technology and equipment, music, film, literature, photography, animation, etc. art forms have also entered the mobile phones, and developed a new "mobile entertainment" phenomenon. In the entertainment culture of the different interpretation of the art mobile phones and personal narrowing the distance gradually evolved into a new interactive situation.

3.The effect to society

The media are a product of society, but also to promote social development. Look at the evolution of the media, the telephone made the real-time long-distance reality, which has shortened the distance between people; radio and television will be different types of crowds to the same scene, and the original differences in the transposition process role been weakened, and the network is to achieve a further globalization within the scope of information sharing, social and public areas to be unlimited expansion. When the fifth media rise, messaging everywhere, interpersonal communication and mass communication to the successful combination of media and the general public also linked to the lives more closely. Thus, the mass media on the structure of human society is imperceptible and far-reaching significance.

Reference: http://mo.zzit.com.cn/new/20100317/249500.shtml
The Fifth Media -- Mobile (Chinese Book)

Paywall (1) -- What is paywall

Paywall is a number of mechanisms, different contents, and one must pay for other content from the network (Jon, online, 2009). Harpreet.seehra said that:”It’s often used by magazines or newspapers as an online business model trying to claw back income from readers who have abandoned buying paper copies of their titles(online, 2009).” Jargon thought that:” A website that restricts access to certain content only to paid subscribers (online, 2009).” So it seems that, the paywall is a way of making money from online for the content.

Social bookmarking

Pam said that “social bookmarking is an online method of storing, organizing, sharing and searching bookmarks of selected web pages” (2008). The social bookmarking is a digital tool to instead of saving website in favorite, and it is easy to share with others online (Nation, 2009). The most popular social bookmarking are reddit and delicious in the UK.

People can simply go to delicious and choose the category or tag that people interested in, and find the most popular websites, so people may focus on that website. In addition, if a website got many tags on it and public save it on the decious, it means that the website has plenty useful article to attract readers, so that the website or blog could get better rank.

What is citizen journalists

With the development of online – web 3.0 and digital skills, many people use blog to publish their report and opinions on websites, and they can share the content to others. The citizen journalist affects professional journalist and media industry. This essay will talk about the citizen journalist and new online strategy.

Citizen Journalism is an evolving form of journalism through user generated content. (http://www.merinews.co/, 2009) The citizen journalists living in all sectors of society, so they have the ability to record what happened in the society. Citizen journalist expresses things around them or in this society. They often use digital platforms, like blog, Facebook, Twitter to publish the articles.

As a complement of mass media, citizen journalist in order to provide more media source, and interact with the mass media. Citizen journalists offer inexhaustible "source." for traditional media. In general, the mass media has its own dedicated team of professional journalists, but the power of professional journalists are limited, and any advanced technologies can not guarantee that professional journalists can record everything. The citizen journalist can make up for the lack of mass media resource.

Reference: http://www.eywedu.com/Zgbj/zgbi2006/zgbi20060511.html

http://www.merinews.com/citizen_journalism.jsp

Allan & Thorsen (2009),. In citizen Journalism , Peter Lang, New York

The digital brings more platforms to journalism

With the development of science and technology, the journalism has entered a new era. Everyone is going digital now, even to an industry which contact to newest things. Now, more and more reporters use the way of online journalism to work. So, the digital newsroom leads to a great change for journalism.

The digital newsroom brings more working platforms to journalism. The Digital newsroom and multi-media changing the way and platform of reporters usually work. Reporters only could be print journalist who only outputs in print in the old media time, whereas now they can use network resources, and even multi-platform and multi-media.

(1) Normally used multi-media tools When we usually use the network, a wide range of multimedia tools in front of us, these multi-media tools is an integral part of digital newsroom. In fact, our network is a comprehensive multi-media tool. When I search on some information about environment, I would like to connect the Internet firstly, and then enter a number of related words, such as climate, location, interesting place, ect. Then choose to connect the information I need, and then through Photoshop and FrontPage to edit and revise, at last, they will be used on my blog. Of course, I need many multi-media tools. For example: word, PowerPoint, flash etc. These will make journalism more digital.

(2) The effects and benefits of using multi-media
1. Vivid images, easier to understand. Through using a number of multi-media software, editing images, text, animation and sound, the article will be written as well as vivid, and it will be better to remember in the reader's mind.
2. Contains large amount of information. An ordinary CD-ROM can accommodate 10,000 on the books. People can access to a large number of effective message in a short time through the network.
3. InteractiveMulti-media technology allows electronic media to disseminate information interactively. Information receptor as well as the information releaser, the receptor and releaser could exchange information in same platform. This is last media can not do.

Therefore, the new media will change the way people's lives. Development and application of digital newsroom brings a new sense and experience to journalism.

Reference: http://kexie.stu.edu.cn/list.asp?id=83

How to use Windows Movie Maker?

Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software, included in Microsoft Windows. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie.

After that, you can share your results with friends and family by Web, e-mail, personal computers or CD, or DVD. You can also save the movie to the video on the camera in television or play.

Supported formats for saving movies• Windows Media Video files:. Wmv• Windows Media Audio files:. Wma• DV / AVI video format:. Avi

Windows Movie Maker is a easy tool to edit video.

Next Power of Digital -- Mobile Phone

With the development and improvement of science and technology, so the media is from the firstly print time to the lastly diversified and new media time. According to the traditional set off way about media, newspaper, radio, TV and Internet were called the First, Second, Third and Fourth Media. The Internet has already set down the chair of “the Fourth Media”, so all people focus on the next actor.

3G mobile phones have a lot of new functions, they contain the newspaper, radio, TV and Internet. Through these new functions, people can make telephone calls, work and entertainment on mobile phones. The mobile phone is “the Fifth Media” which make a deep influence after Internet.

Mobile phone’s main characteristics are: rich variety of the content and form of the information source; spreading widely and dispersed; the process of spreading information is convenience and quickly; the cost of spreading is cheap and the function is strong. The cost of mobile phone’s spreading is cheaper than others. And the important point is there are many interesting and useful functions in mobile phone.

Reference: http://www.toyours.com/smartphone/iphone/20090619/7556.html

Digital strategy of News Corporation

In order to get more profit, many large media company began to enter the online industry, and they put a lot of money to make sure the position on online. Of course, as one of the large company, News Corporation also made effort on it.

Because the internet is in the ascendant and "Media Empire" News Corporation is full of vigor and it moves the strategic stress into the internet. News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said that the next few years, the News Corporation will have an increase of 10 billion dollars, continue to expand business of networks and strive to become the” outstanding" in this field. News Corporation’s investment which is used to develop the internet will increase to 20 million. The group believes that in view of the rapid growth of Internet advertising and changing of the people's viewing habits, the News Corporation has to adjust to the wave of change.

Fox Interactive Media was founded in July 2005 and has acquired several Internet companies. In addition to these enterprises, News Corporations found that the combination of relevant content and quality is most powerful, it makes truly profitable. Murdoch thought that the challenge over the coming month is to establish a common navigation between these enterprises and existing webs. It allows users to switch to-and-fro various attributes. The objective of the conglomerate is to make up for the shortages and provide the best internet experience at any time.

Reference: http://ent.enorth.com.cn/system/2008/10/30/003749894.shtml

4 business models for online business

The development of science, technology and digital created the Internet and the Internet economy. As a kind of journalism products, the Internet's economic model has a certain difference with other journalism products. Internet economy is more interactive, personalized, virtual sex and globalization. Internet economy is not only confined to the audience and advertising, and there are other ways to obtain profits.

There are four business models for online business :

Profitable way 1: C2C (consumer to consumer) model
C2C stands for consumer to consumer. This model is mainly in the form of personal auction. The world famous C2C sites are eBay, Google and yahoo. The operation of such sites is hard. It is hard to establish credibility and the cost of operation and promotion is very high.

Profitable way 2: online ads
It is the common way to make profits from online ads. It has diversified forms, for example banner, logo, flash multimedia animation, online video and so on. From the view of charging, now charging based on click rate is very popular. Search engine like Google and BaiDu mainly take advantage of such ads. In 2005 the revenue of Google is 3.1 billion dollars, most of they originate from this kind of ads.

Profitable way 3: online retailing (B2C)
When talk about the online retailing, the initial response is Amazon. Amazon is the biggest online retail store in the world. Last year the revenue of Amazon was more than 6.9 billion dollars. Usually the online retailing has two ways to operation: one is to distribute your own products through the internet, another way is to build retail platform and help other people to sell their products through your site.

Profitable way 4: B2B
B2B stands for business to business. That’s to say the business between manufactory. Common parlance, the buyers and sellers ate both businesses. They make use of internet and different business net platform to complete the process of deal. This can help enterprises to reduce costs.

How to create your own blog with Blogger and Wordpress?

Blogger is a good platform to create your own blog. It is quite easier, and the Blogger provides many interneting digital tools for you to make your blog unique.

This is a first workshop for using Blogger -- create your own blog. In addittion, I will share my other experience of working with Blogger.

Wordpress is another good platform for people, and it is more professional.