A clash of cultures: The integration of user-generated content within professional journalistic frameworks at British newspaper websites

This study examines how national UK newspaper websites are integrating user-generated content (UGC). A survey quantifying the adoption of UGC by mainstream news organisations showed a dramatic increase in the opportunities for contributions from readers. In-depth interviews with senior news executives revealed this expansion is taking place despite residual doubts about the editorial and commercial value of material from the public. The study identified a shift towards the use of moderation due to editors’ persistent concerns about reputation, trust, and legal liabilities, indicating that UK newspaper websites are adopting a traditional gate-keeping role towards UGC. The findings suggest a gate-keeping approach may offer a model for the integration of UGC, with professional news organisations providing editorial structures to bring different voices into their news reporting, filtering and aggregating UGC in ways they believe to be useful and valuable to their audience. While this research looked at UGC initiatives in the context of the UK newspaper industry, it has broad relevance as professional journalists tend to share a similar set of norms. The British experience offers valuable lessons for news executives making their first forays into this area and for academics studying the field of participatory journalism

Live Blogging- Digital Journalism's Pivotal Platform? A case study of the production, consumption, and form of Live Blogs at Guardian.co.uk

This article describes and analyses the production, consumption, and form of Live Blogs at a popular UK newspaper website and contributes to related debates in journalism studies. Qualitative research interviews with journalists and editors, a reader survey, content analysis, and web metrics were used to obtain data about production practices, product outcomes, and the consumption stage of the product lifecycle. The study finds that Live Blogs are a popular daily component of the news site, used increasingly to cover serious breaking news. Although rarely authored exclusively on location, they may utilise more original sources than traditional online hard news formats. Their frequent updates mean factual verification is cursory, but compensatory factors, including their attribution practices, contribute to a positive evaluation of their objectivity by readers. Live Blogs—with their timeliness, navigational simplicity, and bite-sized content units—suit readers’ consumption of news in the workplace. Live Blogs may increase online news readers’ interest in public-affairs content, and their inclination to participate. This study contradicts some existing scholarship on sourcing practices, content preferences, and immediacy in online news, while supporting the observation that news is increasingly consumed at work. It makes the novel suggestions that Live Blogging is uniquely suited to readers’ at-work news consumption patterns and that the format provides journalists with a means to manage the competing demands of their elite and mass publics

Deep-space navigation with differenced data types. Part 3: An expanded information content and sensitivity analysis

An approximate six-parameter analytic model for Earth-based differential range measurements is presented and is used to derive a representative analytic approximation for differenced Doppler measurements. The analytical models are tasked to investigate the ability of these data types to estimate spacecraft geocentric angular motion, Deep Space Network station oscillator (clock/frequency) offsets, and signal-path calibration errors over a period of a few days, in the presence of systematic station location and transmission media calibration errors. Quantitative results indicate that a few differenced Doppler plus ranging passes yield angular position estimates with a precision on the order of 0.1 to 0.4 micro-rad, and angular rate precision on the order of 10 to 25 x 10(exp -12) rad/sec, assuming no a priori information on the coordinate parameters. Sensitivity analyses suggest that troposphere zenith delay calibration error is the dominant systematic error source in most of the tracking scenarios investigated; as expected, the differenced Doppler data were found to be much more sensitive to troposphere calibration errors than differenced range. By comparison, results computed using wideband and narrowband (delta) VLBI under similar circumstances yielded angular precisions of 0.07 to 0.4 micro-rad, and angular rate precisions of 0.5 to 1.0 x 10(exp -12) rad/sec

Precision X-band radio Doppler and ranging navigation: Mars Observer interplanetary cruise scenario

This article describes an error covariance analysis based on a Mars Observer mission scenario; the study was performed to establish the navigation performance that can potentially be achieved in a demonstration of precision two-way X-band (8.4-GHz) Doppler and ranging with the Mars Observer spacecraft planned for next year, and to evaluate the sensitivity of the predicted performance to variations in ground system error modeling assumptions. Orbit determination error statistics computed for a 182-day Doppler and ranging data arc predicted Mars approach orbit determination accuracies of about 0.45 micro-rad in an angular sense, using a conservative ground system error model as a baseline. When less-conservative error model assumptions were employed, it was found that orbit determination accuracies of 0.19 to 0.30 micro-rad could be obtained; the level of accuracy of the assumed Mars ephemeris is about 0.11 micro-rad. In comparison, Doppler-only performance with the baseline error model was predicted to be about 1.30 to 1.51 micro-rad, although it was found that when improved station location accuracies and Global Positioning System-based tropospheric calibration accuracies were assumed, accuracies of 0.44 to 0.52 micro-rad were predicted. In the Doppler plus ranging cases, the results were relatively insensitive to variations in ranging system and station delay calibration uncertainties of a few meters and tropospheric zenith delay calibration uncertainties of a few centimeters

Synchroscan streak camera imaging at a 15-MeV photoinjector with emittance exchange

At the Fermilab A0 photoinjector facility, bunch-length measurements of the laser micropulse and the e-beam micropulse have been done in the past with a fast single-sweep module of the Hamamatsu C5680 streak camera with an intrinsic shot-to-shot trigger jitter of 10-20ps. We have upgraded the camera system with the synchroscan module tuned to 81.25MHz to provide synchronous summing capability with less than 1.5ps FWHM trigger jitter and a phase-locked delay box to provide phase stability of ~1ps over 10s of minutes. These steps allowed us to measure both the UV laser pulse train at 263nm and the e-beam via optical transition radiation (OTR). Due to the low electron beam energies and OTR signals, we typically summed over 50 micropulses with 0.25-1nC per micropulse. The phase-locked delay box allowed us to assess chromatic temporal effects and instigated another upgrade to an all-mirror input optics barrel. In addition, we added a slow sweep horizontal deflection plug-in unit to provide dual-sweep capability for the streak camera. We report on a series of measurements made during the commissioning of these upgrades including bunch-length and phase effects using the emittance exchange beamline and simultaneous imaging of a UV drive laser component, OTR, and the 800nm diagnostics laser.Comment: 26 p

The negro in California before 1890

Because so little has been written concerning the Negro in California and because the dynamic and romantic sequences in the development of this country have always interested me, I have become interested in knowing what part the Negro, free and slave, played in this panorama of events. Were there Negroes with early expeditions? To what extent did they migrate to the West when gold fever had become a nation-wide epidemic? Did they find gold? Where did they settle? What did they do? What difficulty did they encounter politically, socially, and economically? These are questions that have filled my mind, and to which I shall endeavor to find the answers

Letter from A. F. Thurman to T. B. Larimore

Letter from A. F. Thurman to T. B. Larimore. The three-page handwritten letter is dated 14 November 1912. A transcript of the correspondence is included in the item PDF