4,553 research outputs found

    Everybody or Somebody? Assessing the impact of social media on newsroom organisational structures

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    With social media’s increasingly important role in fast-paced news, there is a need to identify the occupational and professional implications of social media specifically in terms of jobs and roles in newsrooms. This paper serves as a preliminary enquiry into what social media jobs have been created in newsrooms under which job ti-tles. It explores trends associated with this and the tasks being carried out in those roles to assess the extent to which social media is ring-fenced as a responsibility. From this it is possible to query the wider impact of social me-dia on organisational structure in newsrooms. Two main newsroom models are identified: firstly, newsrooms that place an emphasis on everyone being responsible for so-cial media and secondly, newsrooms where social media is a specified role. The study further serves to guide social media skills for inclusion in journalism trainin

    Chasing Sustainability on the Net : International research on 69 journalistic pure players and their business models

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    This report outlines how online-based journalistic startups have created their economical locker in the evolving media ecology. The research introduces the ways that startups have found sustainability in the markets of ten countries. The work is based on 69 case studies from Europe, USA and Japan. The case analysis shows that business models can be divided into two groups. The storytelling-oriented business models are still prevalent in our findings. These are the online journalistic outlets that produce original content – news and stories for audiences. But the other group, service-oriented business models, seems to be growing. This group consists of sites that don’t try to monetize the journalistic content as such but rather focus on carving out new functionality. The project was able to identify several revenue sources: advertising, paying for content, affiliate marketing, donations, selling data or services, organizing events, freelancing and training or selling merchandise. Where it was hard to evidence entirely new revenue sources, it was however possible to find new ways in which revenue sources have been combined or reconfigured. The report also offers practical advice for those who are planning to start their own journalistic site

    Collaborative Revenue Capture for Exiled Media

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    One area which has much potential for wider impact in the digital economy is the as-yet underresearched field of collaborative revenue capture in journalism. This term is proposed to describe methods to capture revenues on behalf of multiple stakeholders (potentially in competition with one another), and divide profits between them. There is evidence of this as an emerging revenue platform in media: Piano Media, a cross-publication model,where pooled premium content from different media outlets is set behind a paywall, initially launched in Slovenia and Slovakia. Or Blendle offering newspapers and magazines in the Netherlands on one website, reconfiguring a revenue model for journalism by making it incredibly easy to pay for separate articles. Another is Diversity, an online advertising network that pools many media sites together into one global advertising network of standard advertising formats andsizes, thus creating a potential global audience reach for advertisers. See for example Contributoria, a member-supported, crowdfunding, collaborative writing platform or the Banyan Project, a news cooperative owned by the community it covers for emerging examples of collaboration around revenues. By way of a test case study, this workshop explored the extent to which collaborative revenue capture can help to achieve a meaningful level of financial independence for media under threat. The long-term success of independent media in exile or restrictive environments, where the free flow of information is restricted and information producers are at risk, depends on financial sustainability, yet there is little scholarly research around revenue model development. These media function, for the most part, by grants from donor organisations which now run into millions of pounds justified by the fact that access to the diverse and credible journalism in countries such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Syria and Sri Lanka offers the opportunity to deliver much greater social and economic cohesion and political transparency. For media seeking to support the free flow of information in fragile environments, the issue of financial sustainability is complex. Both media in exile (out-of-country news outlets feeding independent information back in) and news outlets in restrictive news environments (in country providing counter information) exist in flawed market situations and often rely on grant funding. Researchers have stopped short of exploring the revenue streams of these media. Empirical data is scarce and a corresponding understanding of the funding structure of these media is lacking. One study of relevance - and from which this workshop draws its roots - fills that gap by mapping three main revenue categories of media in exile or in restrictive news environments: grant funding, earned income and donations. The major factors influencing revenue streams compared to online media startups in open markets are discussed. The author finds there is no one-size-fits-all solution and identifies the need for collaborative approaches to promote economic resilience for media under threat (Cook 2015). As such, exiled media as a vehicle for studying the potential for collaborative revenue capture could be an important indicator to the broader digital industries, which are also grappling with the possibilities for collaborative approaches. This represents an entirely new academic field approach. While the set of circumstances exiled media present are relatively unique, the approach to circumvent them - afforded by digital technologies - is highly transferable. The potential to place a stake in the greater understanding of such collaborative revenue methods showcases the UK as a leader in revenue model experimentation, an area watched with much interest globally

    Even Very Low Levels of Food Insecurity Found to Harm Children's Health

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    This publication is the first in a series of Children's HealthWatch Policy Action Briefs, which will provide a summary of our research, as well as that of others, on issues affecting children's health and well-being. This brief finds that more children are at risk for health and developmental problems due to lack of food than were previously thought. These children and their families are classified as

    Food Insecurity Rates Rise Steeply with Recession

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    Children's HealthWatch finds that the prevalence of food insecurity in a five-city sample of low-income families with young children increased from 18.5 percent to 22.6 percent between 2007 and 2008. This is the largest year-to-year change seen in the dataset since 2001. The increase is an indication of the economic hardships facing low-income families with young children. This data suggests that we are likely to see significant increases in food insecurity when the U.S. Department of Agriculture issues its own statistics for 2008 in late fall

    The spatial ecology of free-ranging domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) in western Kenya

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    Background In many parts of the developing world, pigs are kept under low-input systems where they roam freely to scavenge food. These systems allow poor farmers the opportunity to enter into livestock keeping without large capital investments. This, combined with a growing demand for pork, especially in urban areas, has led to an increase in the number of small-holder farmers keeping free range pigs as a commercial enterprise. Despite the benefits which pig production can bring to a household, keeping pigs under a free range system increases the risk of the pig acquiring diseases, either production-limiting or zoonotic in nature. This study used Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to track free range domestic pigs in rural western Kenya, in order to understand their movement patterns and interactions with elements of the peri-domestic environment. Results We found that these pigs travel an average of 4,340 m in a 12 hr period and had a mean home range of 10,343 m2 (range 2,937–32,759 m2) within which the core utilisation distribution was found to be 964 m2 (range 246–3,289 m2) with pigs spending on average 47% of their time outside their homestead of origin. Conclusion These are the first data available on the home range of domestic pigs kept under a free range system: the data show that pigs in these systems spend much of their time scavenging outside their homesteads, suggesting that these pigs may be exposed to infectious agents over a wide area. Control policies for diseases such as Taenia solium, Trypanosomiasis, Trichinellosis, Toxoplasmosis or African Swine Fever therefore require a community-wide focus and pig farmers require education on the inherent risks of keeping pigs under a free range system. The work presented here will enable future research to incorporate movement data into studies of disease transmission, for example for the understanding of transmission of African Swine Fever between individuals, or in relation to the life-cycle of parasites including Taenia solium

    Federal Programs that Protect Young Children's Health

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    An investment in children's health is an investment in our country's economic health. Infants and toddlers, whose bodies and brains are in their most rapid period of growth, are uniquely vulnerable to even shortterm deprivation. Ensuring that they have the basic physiologic building blocks for healthy bodies and minds is not only the right thing to do -- it is the smart thing to do. Research has shown that children who suffer from poor nutrition, unstable housing and inadequate home heating have a greater likelihood of poor health, a higher risk of developmental delays and, in some cases, an increased risk of hospitalization

    Boost to SNAP Benefits Protected Young Children's Health

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    The Great Recession has taken a significant toll on America's children. In 2010, 25 percent of children under age six were living in poverty, up from 21 percent in 2007

    Child Care Feeding Programs Support Young Children's Healthy Development

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    New research by Children's HealthWatch shows that toddlers from low-income families who receive meals from their child care provider - those likely to be receiving CACFP - are in better health, have decreased risk for hospitalization, and are at healthier heights and weights for their age than those whose have to bring meals from home. As the nation's only nutrition program for young children in child care, CACFP is a critical component of a comprehensive approach to child nutrition.Changes to CACFP that expand access, reduce barriers and ensure that child care providers have the resources they need to provide healthy meals are beneficial for young children's health, growth and development
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