Social media networks are valuable sources of information but not everything that is posted, tweeted and uploaded is true. And under the pressure of breaking news, many journalists struggle to find ways of verifying the authenticity of pictures and videos on the Internet or establishing the credibility of those posting information. Luckily, help is at hand with the excellent (and free) Verification Handbook, published by the European Journalism Centre and available online.

Written by reporters and human rights researchers from leading organizations such as BBC, Storyful and Amnesty International, the Verification Handbook is jam-packed with practical information, tools and case studies. The handbook drives home why journalists need to be diligent about verifying user-generated content and also provides plenty of pointers on how news reporters can do this for themselves.

The Verification Handbook is targeted primarily at news journalists and others who cover emergencies or disasters (because humanitarian or emergency workers also need to carefully check information). After all, putting out accurate information or debunking rumors can mean life or death in emergency situations.

But many sections of the handbook are a ‘must read’ for any journalist using social media to source information – and really, that’s most of us.

“There was so much false information and rumors circulating on social media during the earthquake in Japan or during Hurricane Sandy, like the photo lifted from the movie The Day After Tomorrow,” said project manager Rina Tsubaki from the European Journalism Centre.

“We thought there was a real need for something like this.”

The handbook, which is split into ten short chapters, is particularly easy-to-read with abundant pictures and images illustrating the points in question.

Several of the chapters discuss aspects of digital verification such as “Verifying User-Generated Content”, “Verifying Images” and “Verifying Video”. There are also chapters on how to use the crowd to help finding out information and how to prepare for the coverage of disasters.

Something I found particularly useful were the case studies accompanying each section. Malachy Browne from the social media news agency Storyful, for example, gives a blow by blow description of how they verified the authenticity a video of the Boston marathon bombing (it turned out the video was shot by an athlete approaching the finishing line as the bomb went off).

The case study also shows the necessity of being absolutely confident in using the verification tools before news actually starts breaking – Storyful confirmed the video was authentic in 10 minutes flat.

This photo proved to be a photoshop fake

In another case study, Tom Phillips from BuzzFeed UK writes about what tools he used to debunk the authenticity of photos of sharks allegedly swimming up a New Jersey street during Hurricane Sandy.

“We wanted to showcase the real life examples of how people are dealing with these kinds of situations,” Tsubaki said about the case studies.

Because video is particularly difficult to verify, the handbook includes three case studies in this section – two from Storyful and one from Amnesty.

The final chapter has a great list of tools for verifying places, verifying identity and verifying images.

What really comes through over and over again in the handbook, though, is the need for journalists continue to think like – well, journalists. Even though the content is being created by someone else, you still have to establish who the person is, where they are, why they are there, and what their motives were for posting something.

The Verification Handbook is available online as well as downloadable as a pdf, ePub or Kindle version.

It is currently available in English. According to Tsubaki, Arabic and Ukrainian versions will be published within the next few months and Portuguese and Japanese versions are also to follow.

HTML is the language used to build webpages and makes it possible to display information on the internet. These days most content management systems (CMS) allow us to create stories on blogs and websites without having to get our hands dirty with HTML. But even with a good CMS, what you see is not always what you get, so understanding some basic HTML is vital for journalists who are serious about improving their digital skills.

In most cases your participants have probably seen HTML at some point in their web surfing: whether by an accidental mouse click that revealed the source of a webpage, or in the options to share and embed media such as YouTube videos or SoundCloud audio tracks.

To the untrained eye, trying to read HTML is like trying to read another language.

So the challenge for a journalism trainer is to introduce HTML in a way that doesn’t overwhelm your participants, but gives them enough knowledge to identify useful HTML terms, tags and elements so they can do some basic editing to their blog post or web article.

Pardon my French

Before we go any further, let me make a confession. My knowledge of HTML is about as good as my schoolboy French. In other words, I know enough HTML for day to day online work. For most journalists, just having some basic HTML knowledge is more than sufficient to adjust and customize text and media in webpages or troubleshoot some formatting in a blog post.

The beauty of Mozilla Thimble is it’s an easy to use editing platform for writing HTML and creating a webpage. Thimble lets you write and edit HTML and CSS in your browser, then instantly preview your work.

As you see in the screenshot below, you can write your HMTL text in the left hand side of the editor and see the preview results on the right hand side.

For many participants this is often a little “Aha!” moment and begins to demystify a technical language that is usually hidden to them.

Practical work

Before using Thimble in workshops, I suggest you prepare a few things to make sure training runs smoothly. For example:

– Checking that all workshop computers are running an up to date version of Mozilla Firefox, and/or all participants have the Firefox  browser on their laptop or netbook.
– Open a common Mozilla Webmaker account if you are planning to do a lot of HTML exercises. This saves time because everyone can log in with the same account rather than opening individual accounts during training. You can, of course, use Thimble without having to log in, but you won’t be able to publish.
– Ask your participants to have a couple of extra tabs open in their browser with either a webpage or something with a media file embed code that you can copy and paste such as YouTube.

Once all participants have opened Mozilla Webmaker and found their way to Thimble within Tools, I keep it simple and ask everyone to press Start from Scratch which opens both the Thimble Editor and the Preview page opposite. And this is when it starts to get interesting for your trainees.

Start from Scratch opens with the example of a simple webpage with a line of text saying: “Make something amazing with the web”.

You can immediately point out the basic skeleton of a webpage in the Editor such as the Head, Title and Body. Make sure everyone has the Show hints box activated. By highlighting the text of individual tags with your mouse and clicking on the ? icon, Thimble’s Show hints function provides a definition and explanation of the selected element. That’s a really useful function for participants.

I also ask everyone to try changing the words within the Paragraph tags, or to copy and paste this line and to add more text. It’s very easy for them to see that text will be displayed between pairs of angle-bracketed Paragraph tags <p> and </p> and that this technique is applied to display different types of media as well.

Other useful HMTL tags to know are:

<br> Line break (essential!)
<b>Bold text</b>
<i>Italic text</i>

For more, check out this quick reference list of HMTL.

Perhaps the most common use of HTML for your participants will be embedding the HTML text of an image, video or audio into a website or blog. If participants have another browser tab open with something easy they can embed, for instance from YouTube, ask them to copy and paste the embed text into the editor.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/lz4ZdL5jZb4″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

It’s very easy to see what the video frame’s width and height attributes are, and when participants paste it into the editor they can experiment with adjusting the frame size.

Seeing the big HMTL picture

Once they get the idea of identifying and adjusting these basic tags and attributes of media, you could even ask participants to copy and paste the HTML text of a full webpage into the editor – just so they can see what it looks like and how they can make some edits.

I find our own onMedia Blog is a simple example to use in training.

When everyone has the webpage open, I ask them to do a right mouse click and select View Page Source from the dropdown menu. Firefox will then open a new page revealing the HTML and CSS of the selected webpage. Ask your participants to select all, then copy and paste this text into the Thimble editor.

In Thimble your participants will now see both the HMTL and a preview of the copied webpage. I suggest they experiment (play!). For example, try changing the text within the blog’s Title Text ( in this case located on Line 135):

The great thing is they can directly see changes they make to the HTML text in the Preview. And by having a point of reference of something important in a webpage such as the Title, your trainees will be able to start looking around for other elements they can adjust, be it articles or captions or menus.

Mozilla Thimble is free to use and there are loads of resources on the Webmaker site for teaching web literacy skills.

Author: Guy Degen

Gone are the days of simply typing up your story and submitting it for proofreading, or signing off from a program and disappearing into the ether.

With the ever increasing developments in multimedia and visual storytelling; data journalism and visualization; online security; finding sources on social media; and, publishing stories to different platforms, there’s only so much a humble textbook can keep pace of in modern journalism.

And while traditional text books (and eBooks) are important, as well as MOOC’s (massive open online courses), following blogs authored by big thinkers in journalism is a great way to learn essential skills, discover new trends and join the conversation on the future of our profession.

DW Akademie’s Natalia Karbasova has dived into the English speaking journalism blogosphere for onMedia and has surfaced with 13 blogs you should bookmark and read regularly.

Online Journalism Blog

This is an absolute must-have for your bookmarks. Paul Bradshaw runs the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University and has authored a number of books online journalism and the internet, including the Online Journalism Handbook and Scraping for Journalists. As the name of the blog already suggests, Bradshaw writes on all things online, including digital security, data journalism and citizen journalism. You can also follow useful links he bookmarks on his Delicious account.

Data Driven Journalism

Here you’ll find all you need to know about data journalism, from news and analysis to best projects. The “Resources” section includes information on useful tools including OpenRefine and QGis as well as handy tips such as searching Instagram by time and location. There’re also useful posts covering colour theory and mapping.

Mirko Lorenz blog

Mirko Lorenz is a German information architect and data journalist and posts a lot of useful links in five categories: data, journalism, storytelling, websites and people. This is a great source of curated information for journalists, with useful tips and best practices from all over the world.

10,000 Words

This is a blog devoted to the overlapping issues in journalism and technology. Now, don’t be afraid of this. Technology in this case means everything digital. For instance, social media, useful apps and crowdfunding. But you can also find blog posts on some traditional topics like interviewing techniques.

Teaching Online Journalism

Mindy McAdams is well known among journalism educators and students as the author of the Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency. As the name suggests, McAdams’ blog focuses on how to teach online journalism. For example: how to make a blog out of your syllabus or a step-by-step guide on how to teach web video. Mindy McAdams tips are valuable as she tests out all the tools, apps and software she recommends. It’s a great blog not only for journalism trainers, but also for students and working journalists seeking to learn new skills.

Journalism.co.uk

Updated daily, journalism.co.uk is a very useful source of information on UK and global media, trends in journalism and skills. For example: learning how to use Google in a better way; exploring the social strategies of leading publications as The Economist; or, searching for the latest job offerings. The journalism.co.uk team also keeps track of new apps relevant for journalists and redesigns of news websites.

International Journalists’ Network

This is a good blog for journalists entering the industry. Here you will find news covering the latest developments in newsrooms from all over the world, best practices as well as jobs, competitions, internships and scholarships for journalists.

The Future Journalism Project

The Future Journalism Project describes itself as “a multiplatform documentary exploring the present state, current disruption and future possibilities of American journalism”. Contributors to this blog discuss the challenges and opportunities for the future of journalism. Short texts are spiced with quotes and links to exciting media projects. You’ll find news about social media, data visualization and other topics. There’re also some useful interviews with prominent reporters and media managers on the start page.

Mediashift

Mediashift is an American media focused blog ofering useful insights into the digital media revolution. The feature I especially appreciate are short link list with things you need to know.

The Buttry Diary

Steve Buttry is doing a nice job on his blog by blogging and letting guest authors blog on journalism and newsroom management, promotion of journalist’s work and – last but not least – organisation of data journalism workflows in the newsroom.

Nieman Journalism Lab

This is a project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. You will learn all you need to know about the future of journalism and the latest apps and tools for journalists.

ReadWrite

This is a blog which will help tech-savvy journalists. Although it doesn’t introduce you to the secrets of writing a report or exploring a data base, it helps you stay updated on the latest technology issues – for instance, which smartphone could beat Apple’s new iPhone 5S – an important question for mobile journalists. Other blogs dealing with technology and worth investing a couple of minutes a day are The Next Web and The Verge.

The Functional Art

This isn’t really a blog for all journalists but rather for those most interested in visualizing information and data journalism. Alberto Cairo teaches Information Graphics and Visualization at the School of Communication at the University of Miami and is the author of The Functional Art: an Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization. As you’d expect, Cairo blogs a lot about the latest visualizations and his posts are very useful for not only discovering what’s good, but also understanding what’s not so good in the world of information graphics and visual media. This will help develop your knowledge and skills for orderly presentation of information. Cairo is launching another free online course on data visualization in October.

Adapter and MPEG Streamclip are handy to have  in the digital toolbox

“What software can I use for converting and compressing files?”

It’s a question trainers are often asked on broadcast and multimedia courses involving a lot of work with audio and video files.

Adapter and MPEG Streamclip are a good starting point. Both are free and work on either a PC or a Mac.

These tools are particularly useful as video or audio Swiss Army knives – between them they can handle just about any sort of file and convert or compress it to whatever size or format you need.

And both tools let you create a batch list if you have a lot of files to convert or compress at the same time.

Adapter

Adapter is good for a straightforward process, say converting WAV audio files to mp3, especially if you have a lot of files to convert.

It also offers some interesting options for video converting, especially if you need to put your video file on a mobile device. For example iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Nokia and even to Nitendo Wii and Sony Play Station.

Before converting the file, Adapter will also display an estimate output file size.

MPEG Streamclip

This is a tool that anyone working with video should have, even just as a back up piece of software. It’s useful if you are uploading video to sharing platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo (check their suggested upload settings), or if you have to compress a file to send back to the newsroom via FTP.

Trainers are also often asked are: what’s a good video format that offers high quality but small files, and what settings should I use for compression?

Video compression should be a precise science, but often it needs a little bit of trial and error to determine the best settings that work for your production needs and for the equipment you are using. The easiest answer is check with your newsroom or master control room first for their preferred settings. But, compressing a file using the H.264 encoder to produce a .mp4 video file is a standard practice.

Using H.264 at a data rate of 12000kbps with AAC Audio at 256kbps is going to produce a high quality video file, but it’ll also be quite big. If you need to produce something smaller to upload to YouTube or send over lower bandwidth internet, then you could try going down to 4000kbps.

Author: Guy Degen

By far the book that is always most sought after, if I refer to it during a workshop, is Rick Thompson’s Writing for Broadcast Journalists (Routledge, 2010).

It’s an excellent reference book, especially for news writing and language.

Thompson has packed this very travel-friendly volume full of useful examples of news scripts and different writing techniques for radio and television. My much thumbed second edition also has a chapter on online journalism and social media.

Yes, this book is very Anglo-centric and many of the examples are drawn from UK broadcasters, particularly the BBC. Workshop participants within the broadcast footprint of the BBC World Service will probably nod with approval. Our American journalist cousins might take issue with the section devoted to Americanisms, but some of us (including this Antipodean journalist) might say this is a good thing!

Advertisement in Lilongwe, Malawi (Photo: Guy Degen)

Writing for Broadcast Journalists is of course a book about language and using good English. If you cringe at weasel words such as “stakeholders” or “facilitate”, or hollow phrases such as “capacity building” or “scaling up”, (particularly when they are lobbed into interviews by development types) you’ll find the book’s appropriately titled appendix Dangerous words a good reference for jargon, cliches, journalese or misused words to avoid. I think Dangerous words also makes for a lively topic for discussion during a journalism workshop.

You can preview the book via Google here. And, do let us know if you have a good journalism reference book to recommend.

Author: Guy Degen