Online news story

Search begins for Ipswich Men’s Shed site
 Paul Smeaton

IPSWICH men will soon have their first ‘Mens Shed’, a place to hammer, saw, sand and build things, and it’s all in the name of mental health.

Members of the Forest Community Mens Shed in Belrose Sydney

 After securing funding, local government support and donations of used tools and equipment, Coalfalls’ counsellor Dean Olafsen is now on the hunt for a shed to house the region’s newest men’s club.

Mr Olafsen said the sooner the Ipswich shed was up and running the better it would be for the local community.

 “We have support from council and organisations such as Lifeline and we have funds so now what we really need is a shed to operate out of,” he said.

“I’ve known of groups that had 150 members before they had a shed so the need for these facilities is definitely out there.”

Judy Carrow yesterday donated a collection of woodworking tools to Mr Olafsen fulfilling a wish of her late husband, John.

Mrs Carrow said her husband had become a keen woodworker in retirement and was set to become a mentor for the shed before being struck down with cancer and passing away earlier this year.

“John rang Dean from hospital prior to his cancer operation and said whatever the outcome of his treatment was he wanted the men’s shed to have his tools,” Mrs Carrow said.

Mrs Carrow joked about why she felt the sheds were so important for retired men.

“It’s for old farts to have somewhere to go after they have retired so they stop stalking their wives,” she quipped.

“Many of these men held important positions while they were working and these sheds allows them to define themselves after their working life is done.”

Melissa White from the Australian Men’s Sheds Association said the organisation now had 630 Mens Sheds operating Australia wide.

Ms White described the group’s mission as “health by stealth”.

“A lot of men run a mile if you tell them they have to deal with their issues so we sort of sneak up on them and help them without them knowing it,” she said.

John Greatrex established the Fassifern Community Men’s Shed at the Boonah showgrounds in February and said it had been great for local men.

“We (men) are brought up to be stoic and this gives us an outlet to talk about the serious issues such as physical and mental health,” he said.

 “We have in excess of 25 members and get around 12 on a regular basis to our Monday and Friday meetings.

*Permission to use above image received 8/10/2011 from Project Coordinator, Tim O'Sullivan Lions Club of Frenchs Forest Mob:- 0418 191 121

The best Jobs in the world

I think it would be remiss of me to finish this series of blogs without paying tribute to the recently passed Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Like him or loathe him, Steve Jobs was a visionary. He conceived technologies that are so entwined in our every day lives it's difficult to know how we could now live without them. His ability to make his products intuitive for the casual user opened up advanced technology to even the most technically deficient user.

His "I" technology has led to a mass adoption of smart phone and tablet technology. Today with an IPhone in you pocket you could travel to almost any corner of the world and use the map application to find you way around. You could use the currency converter to see how much things cost, surf the web to book a hotel, download a phrase book for almost any language. The list is almost endless. I travelled Europe in 2003 and these ideas would have seemed almost ridiculous.

That is the impact of a true visionary like Steve Jobs. I hope Apple continues to innovate and test the boundaries of what we believe can be done.

RIP Steve Jobs

It's all about the game.

As a sports lover I often find myself planning my weekends and sometimes weekdays around the sports broadcasting calender. Football, cricket, basketball, golf, you name it I love watching it on the box. Alas work and University often gets in the way of this passion and I'm forced to leave the picture box behind and plant myself behind a monitor of a different kind. In the past this meant I would miss my favourite sports and have to catch up on the replay at a later time.

BUT NOT ANYMORE - thanks to the live sports blog.

Quite simply I love them. The beauty of the medium is you can flick back and forth between what you're supposed to be doing and what you would rather be doing without missing a beat. One of my all time favourites is text commentary of international cricket on foreign soil through cricinfo.com. The quality of the match description on this site is second to none. The operators capture the information and colour of the event and in many ways I prefer it to the pictures. Take the NSW v Royal Challengers semi final in the ICC as an example. Not only do you get a ball-by-ball description of the action you get to experience the personality od the commentators as well with quips like: Gautam: "Even with Dilshans outstanding spell, NSW are 65 after 8.. Which means the rest of the bowlers have gone for more than 11 an over... phew.. what did Dilshan have for breakfast?" 

Other sports sites offer similar content or even different but equally engaging. The AFL website has a Match Centre application that tracks the movement of the ball on the field and by hovering over the the area where the ball is you get a description of the player involved and how the play unfolded. In addition it has statistics, previews, fan engagement. In many ways it's also better than the TV.

So as you can see I love live sport online because the action never stops, oh yeah - and I can do it while I work.

SEO is the go

Search Engine Optimisation is a key to any successful news site. There's no room for snappy headline writing here, it's all about keyword searching and page hits. To test the most successful sites I decided to conduct a quick experiment to see whether any news sites were perennial winners online.

The conditions of the experiment are:
1. New news via the AAP wire on October 6. (3 stories only)
2. My interpretation of the three key words people would use to search.
3. Top 3 results on Internet Explorer search engine.
4. No additional parameters will be added to the search  field except "pages from Australia"

Search 1: The death of Apple founder Steve Jobs

Search words used: Steve, Jobs, dead (simple enough)

And the results are:
1. The Herald Sun - Steve Jobs dead at 56: his lifetime of impact on the world of technology
2. News.com.au - As it happened: Apple announces founder Steve Jobs dead

3. The Camden Advertiser - Steve Jobs dead: Apple confirms former CEO loses fight (go Camden)

Search 2: Campbell Newman referred to the CMC for not declaring financial interests.

Search words used: Campbell, Newman, CMC

And the results are:
1. Sydney Morning Herald - 'Desperate' Labor turns to CMC: Newman
2. Brisbane Times - Newman vows to co-operate with CMC
3. The Australian - Campbell Newman has 'nothing to hide', the LNP says

Search 3: Qantas baggage handlers call off strike action

Search words used: Qantas, strike, baggage

And the results are:
1. Trading Room - Qantas baggage strikes called off

2. International Business Times - Another Round of Qantas Baggage Handler, Ground Crew Strike on Friday
3. Herald Sun - Qantas workers call off nationwide strike planned for tomorrow


Results:
 
Eight separate news organisations filled the nine possible positions with only the Herald Sun achieving more than one entry. While there is more to SEO than just the headline it is noteworthy that almost all of the headlines listed contained either two or all of the key words of the story (IMHO).
 
So what can we draw from these results?
 
Not much really except "Get the headline right or Pay the Price"
 

Get it right or pay the price

One thing that the online world had done to journalism is make it much easier to share our mistakes with the globe. Previously if a paper made a mistake in a print story and was found out, a correction was printed the following day and that was often the end of it.

No longer do we enjoy such anonymity.

Case in Point: The Tale of 30,000 pigs.

Early this the The Bulletin in Rockhampton ran this story both in print and online

The story focused on a comment from a farmer to a journalist that he had lost 30,000 pigs into the Dawson River during January's floods. Unfortunately the journalist failed to probe the incident more thoroughly and later found out the farmer had actually lost "30 sows and pigs" down the river rather than 30,000. It seems neither sub-editors or chief editors felt the detail needed to be checked either leading to the embarrassing faux-paux.

Needless to say the paper printed a correction the next day but has been the butt of many jokes online thanks to the power of online communication.

Media Watch enjoyed the mistake.

But they were not alone, Huffington Post  had a laugh at the Bully's expense as did a multitude of bloggers across the globe.

The correction even got a mention in  media release from the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.

The moral of the story, and I'll quote Johnathan Holmes of Media Watch, "If a number seems really and truly amazing that's probably because it's wrong".

Part two of the moral, in my own words, "there is nowhere to hide from your mistakes in an online world."

Am I captain James Cook or what?

A key to any productive webpage is ease of navigation. For news sites this is potentially more critical because of the stiff competition for readership. I decided to view a number of webages and compare how easy it was to find some of the things that I regularly look for when visiting a news webpage.

I chose to look at what I thought would be news leaders in Australia, Britain and USA. I have limited it to a leading broadcaster and newspaper in each location.

The contenders are:

Australia: ABC and The Australian
Britain: BBC and The Times
USA: CNN and New York Times

In the online world all news organisations are equal. Or at least, they start that way. Consumers may originally gravitate towards trusted brands but will quickly shift focus if those sites are hard to navigate.

The newspaper sites are a prime example of a confused understanding of an online presence translating to a difficult to navigate page. The New York Times site is perhaps the best example. It lays out with the traditional print masthead but fails to adopt simple principles of online navigation such as easily understandable and accessible tabs across the top of the home page. While The Times and to a lesser extent The Australian also maintain the traditional print mastheads, they at least have attempted to help the viewer by adopting fairly simplest tab systems on the home page. All three sites though lack a dynamic or interactive feel that offers viewers a point of difference to competitors.

Conversely, the broadcaster sites are instantly more dynamic. They embrace the multimedia nature of the online environment by using more colour and video content on the home page. The ABC site is probably the most simplistic in its layout but the pop-up menus that appear when you hover over the top tabs make it very easy to find your preferred path. BBC and CNN could take a leaf from the ABC site by adding this function to their simplistic top tabs.

RSS feeds are something I look for on all news sites and these sites vary wildly in their access to RSS.

ABC: Very poor in my opinion, not accessible on the home page at all. You need to navigate through the news tab first then scroll to the bottom of the page where the RSS symbol is still not present. 2/10
BBC: Much better than the ABC, still not present on the BBC home page but due to the scope of the organisation that's acceptable. Thankfully when going to the news homepage it is instantly noticeable at the top right hand side of the page clearly marked with the RSS icon. 7/10
CNN: Has the RSS feed on the home page but you need to scroll to the bottom of the page and have a magnifying glass to find it. 4/10
New York Times: Again the feed is at the bottom of the page but at least had the easily recognisable symbol. The site has missed a clear opportunity to place it next to the Twitter and Facebook icons on the top right of the page. 6/10
The Times: See CNN description 4/10
The Australian: A bit of a strange one here. It sits about 2/3rds of the way down the page on the right hand side. They have gone to extreme lengths to offer 12 separate feeds on the home page. In my opinion it's over the top and positioned strangely. Users look at the top then tend to scroll to the bottom so may miss it all together. The inclusion of 12 feeds suggest it's important so why not put a single icon at the top right of the page and people could choose the feeds from a dedicated page. 5/10 (mostly for effort).

Pay radio???

Pay television is a stable in today's media landscape but there has been very little discussion about online pay walls for broadcast content. A local case in point is the radio coverage of AFL football in Australia. Until 2010, fans outside of Victoria could live stream football commentary via the webpage of the broadcasting radio station. This essentially allows a global audience to access a local product and in turn contributes to growing the game and game revenues.

The decision by the AFL in 2011 to construct pay walls in front of this coverage is an interesting development. All traffic attempting to access live streaming of commentary online is now redirected to the "AFL Match Centre" where content is then available under a user pays system. Previously users could access the broadcasters webpage and live stream the same content local audiences were listening to via their radio: SEN or ABC Grandstand. Now users find a continual loop message redirecting them to the Match Centre site.

I believe this decision raises interesting questions about content that is essentially free to some consumers and charged to others based on the distribution platform. Whether this is legal or not I'll leave to others to decide but I think it highlights the evolutionary nature of the online environment. There is one thing I'm sure about. The AFL is a trailblazer in the sports administration field in Australia so it's only a matter of time until NRL and Rugby fans will have dig deep to listen to their favourite games as well.

Note: links will illustrate my point during live coverage times of AFL games.