With only two weeks left until news:rewired – beyond the story we are happy to announce live journalism Platform ScribbleLive as gold sponsor for the event. In addition ScribbleLive is also sponsoring free networking drinks after the event for all delegates and speakers.

ScribbleLive is a live content management system which enables live, progressive and collaborative journalism. Instead of embedding a widget into a page, ScribbleLive seamlessly integrates with news and media websites to generate fully indexable web pages for each story. In this way, ScribbleLive maintains the look and feel of news and media sites and supports new and existing revenue models. The service has become very popular and is already used by high profile clients including Reuters, Microsoft and the Press Association.

“We are very pleased to support such an exciting event as news:rewired,” said Michael De Monte founder of ScribbleLive.  “Live journalism has taken huge strides in 2010. We look forward to discussing these with the other attendees and looking forward to an even more exciting 2011.”

For more information on ScribbleLive‘s service please visit http://www.scribblelive.com or delegates can see ScribbleLive in action on its stall. Michael De Monte will also be speaking in the ‘digital production desk’ session at the event.

Twitter: @scribblelive

As the election fever dies down, the Not on the Wires team share and explain four online resources for reporting politics: TheyWorkForYou.com; TweetMinster; WhoKnowsWho and Google’s general election database.

Making Sense of New Politics from Not on the Wires on Vimeo.

news:rewired is proud to announce video platform Kyte as a silver sponsor for our second news:rewired event at Microsoft UK, London, on 25 June 2010.

Kyte is the modular 360° video platform with fully-integrated online, mobile and social capabilities. The platform supports a wide range of live and on-demand content ranging from user generated to high production formats. Media companies and brands use Kyte to deeply connect with their audiences whenever, and wherever they are, through cutting-edge interactive and highly viral video experiences that drive community, brand equity, and monetisation of content. Customers include Armani Exchange, ESPN, Fox News, HomeAway, MTV, Monster Energy, NATO, NBA Digital, Nokia, Tyra Banks, and many others.

Kyte’s director of strategy Sam Jones will also be speaking during the mobile session at the event. Full agenda available here.

Tickets for the event are selling fast and can be purchased here.

Courtesy of Glyn Mottershead, one of the delegates at news:rewired, here’s audio of Tony Hirst from the Open University talking about in-browser data mashing for journalists:

Tony Hirst (@psychemedia) on data mashing by egrommet

You can read Tony’s presentation at this link.

In the data mashing session at news:rewired, Open University lecturer Tony Hirst presented on ‘Playing with data – all you need is glue’. It was a fascinating talk with lots of practical detail. You can find more data teaching resources on his blog ouseful.info.

Some of the online tools he mentioned: Many Eyes Wikified, Yahoo Pipes, Dabble DB, Google Fusion Tables, the Guardian data store, and GeoCommons.

Tony encourages anyone with any questions to get in touch: via email – a.j.hirst@open.ac.uk, @psychemedia on Twitter or his blog.

If you attended news:rewired but missed some talks or you couldn’t make the day altogether, below is a round-up of coverage from the sessions:

Kevin Marsh has blogged the full notes of his opening speech.

Nigel Barlow, freelance journalist, has his thoughts on George Brock and Marsh’s openers here; and freelancer Patrick Smith has some additional thoughts from Brock on the role journalism schools can play in news publishing.

Reuters’ Mark Jones has an interview with Marsh after his speech here.

Adam Tinworth, editorial development at Reed Business Information – has liveblogged coverage of:

• the opening sessions;
• the online journalism troubleshooting panel;
• the crowdsourcing discussion;
• SoGlos.com’s James Fryer on making money;
• Greg Hadfield, outgoing digital executive at the Telegraph, on entrepreneurial journalism.

Freelancer Phyllis Stephen on Adam Westbrook’s presentation on audio slideshows.

Alex Walters, journalism student and one of our team covering the event, reports back on the heated session on crowdsourcing. UCLAN lecture Andy Dickinson posts his thoughts on the local media panel.

We’ll be posting speaker’s presentations soon and more posts from the day as we see them, but if you’ve got a write-up let us know.

The success of volunteer-driven local media depends on a platform for marginalised voices and good human relations, delegates were told.

Speaking at news:rewired’s local media breakout session, the Times’ web development editor (business), Joanna Geary, said that a hyperlocal website needs to give its volunteers a platform but also provide them with support.

“Local media is about giving voice to communities – engaging with people who don’t have a voice in mainstream media,” she said.

But offering volunteer bloggers a platform is not enough, web editors also need to provide their unpaid writers with guidance, help and a human connection.

At news:rewired, Geary discussed her experience setting up the Birmingham Post’s local blog roster.  The blogs provide residents with a platform to express views and cover events not given time in traditional mainstream media.

Guardian Local launch editor, Sarah Hartley, also spoke at the local media session.  She highlighted that, while blogs used to be uniquely used by “techie geeks”, they now fill an important role in the lives of ordinary individuals in smaller communities.

The Lichfield Blog‘s Philip John also highlighted the importance of local, community-focused blogs.  In Lichfield, newspapers are closing and blogs can spring up to fill the void in local reporting, he said.

Citizens are now able “poke the beast of authority” at the touch of a button, according to Francis Irving, senior developer at mySociety.org

In an animated talk and discussion at news:rewired, Irving laid out his vision for the future of data freedom and its presentation in the UK, including the potential for internationally available data. mySociety has plans to open its website up to FOI interests outside the UK within the next two years.

He said: “We hope to make these resources available internationally within the next couple of years. It isn’t easy as people don’t have the same attitudes to data freedom in all countries. We really need to look at Estonia for an example of how it should be done, they have one of the best Freedom of Information systems in the world.”

mySociety.org, the organisation behind Freedom of Information site whatdotheyknow.com, is committed to giving the public easy, online access to data that impacts their lives. Their efforts to synthesise complex data in a user-friendly, attractive manner have changed the way we interact with authority.

Whatdotheyknow.com has achieved such success among FOI enthusiasts that it is now estimated to be responsible for seventy per cent of all FOI requests. True to the FOI cause, every request is available for public scrutiny, making it an excellent resource for researching requests.

And Irving is adamant that many FOI officers, despite the protestations of a number of journalists, do a good job.

“The role of the FOI officer is to be your representative in an organisation, not the organisation’s representative to you. They are there to serve your interests and, thankfully, there are many people who go into the job taking those responsibilities very seriously.”

As widely reported on the #newsrw Twitter feed, things got a little heated in the crowdsourcing session at news:rewired, particularly over the issue of citizen journalism. Sitting on the panel were Kate Day, head of communities at Telegraph.co.uk; Andy Heath from pro-am journalism agency Demotix; and Ruth Barnett, Westminster correspondent from Sky news.

Andy Heath’s statement that the difference between citizen journalism and professional journalism was minimal led to shouting amongst those in attendance.

Heath’s remarks led one member of the audience, Rachel Lamb, a lecturer in journalism from Southampton Solent, to question what the incentive was for people to study as journalists.

Brett Spencer, of 5 Live, also mentioned the difficulty in trusting and verifying crowdsourced data – for example with the Fort Hood tragedy, details of which were misreported on Twitter – and said citizen journalism could not be equated “with real journalism or reporting”.

Matthieu Stefani, vice-president of French citizen journalist service Citizenside weighed in on verification, saying that agencies for citizen journalism can use available technology to verify photographs, and that in the majority of cases people were honest.

After the debate, I grabbed Kate Day, Ruth Barnett and social media expert Kristine Lowe to ask why they thought the term ‘citizen journalism’ was so contentious:

Kate Day said: “It’s a very difficult question. I think it’s difficult because human beings struggle with change.”

Kristine Lowe, said: “I think the concept of citizen journalism is ambiguous and lots of journalists feel threatened by this concept.”

According to Ruth Barnett the word itself is irrelevant. Whether those who contributed data were considered citizen journalists or contributors, it was still about the process of telling a story, she said.

Whatever the term used, and whatever the disagreements, the consensus appeared to be that crowdsourcing was a useful technique to compliment reporting.

The news:rewired team caught up with the Times’ web development editor (business), Joanna Geary, the Guardian Local’s launch editor Sarah Hartley, and The Lichfield Blog’s Philip John to hear their predictions for local media in 2010:

Joanna Geary (Qik)

Sarah Hartley (Qik)

Phillip John (Qik)