More free tsunami satellite photos
December 31, 2004
DigitalGlobe is making more high-resolution satellite images available to media for free; this set is from the Banda Aceh shore in Indonesia….
Read more »
Tsunami home videos, photos
December 31, 2004
There’s a seemingly endless amount of amazing home videos and photos of the deadly tsunami and aftermath.
Collections of video on waveofdestruction.org
Scores of photos on Flickr
Know of more collection sites? Post here.
Technology defines tsunami coverage
December 31, 2004
More on how technology, the Net, tourists with cameras and mobile phones are defining how the tsunami and aftermath are being covered. “The new technology is making the old journalistic saw about one tragic death at home being worth as much coverage as hundreds of deaths overseas increasingly obsolete,” said Louis Boccardi, former chief executive of The Associated Press.
Tsunami disaster reporting tips
December 31, 2004
The South Asian Journalists Association has compiled an excellent, continuously updated site with experts and journalists in South Asia, news & opinion links and ways you can help: saja.org/tsunami.html
Top CyberJournalist stories of 2004
December 29, 2004
Here is CyberJournalist.net’s annual list of the top online journalism stories of the year. Unlike past years, this year’s list is chosen by the readers, based on the most popular entries on CyberJournalist.net in 2004.
Top CyberJournalist.net Stories of 2004
1. Bloggers cover political conventions (Multiple related entries)
2. Blogs post exit polls
3. Sites create great presidential campaign interactives (Specifically: Great presidential candidate selectors and The best campaign interactives
4. Few newspaper readers visit papers’ sites
5. NYTimes.com launches blog-like features
(Also see this entry in which Times reporter Andrew Revkin discusses his blog-like diary.)
6. California paper undertakes ambitious participatory journalism project
7. Blogs still rare, but foster community
8. Could Google News be sued for libel?
9. CNN.com: More than 6 million paid video subscribers
10. NakedNews, porn goes wireless
Interestingly, the Net’s role in helping uncover the CBS News document fraud didn’t even make the top 100.
Several of the top 10 most popular entries of the year were non-news stories that are worth mentioning, as their popularity is an encouraging sign about the continuing interest in improving online journalism.
The third overall most-popular entry of the year was “101 ways to improve your news site,” not surprising since it rose to the top of the Daypop Top 40 earlier this year.
Two other CyberJournalist.net classics - originally posted about 4 years ago — also continue to be among the site’s most popular posts:
• Online Storytelling Forms
• A dozen online writing tips
• A Blogger’s Code of Ethics
Related:
• Top CyberJournalist.net Stories of 2003
• Top CyberJournalist.net Stories of 2002
• Top CyberJournalist.net Stories of 2001
Networks air amateur video
December 29, 2004
The massive scope of the disaster touched on more than six different countries, many of which have the kind of technological infrastructure that allowed vivid imagery to be transmitted before the dimensions of the disaster were actually known.
Video compression technology, fed by digital cameras and enabled by satellite and videophones, along with laptops with uplink capabilities, meant that people all over the world saw the deadly aftermath of the earthquake just hours after it ended. And by yesterday morning, real-time video footage of the tidal wave striking the shores, much of it taken by tourists on or near the beaches in Thailand began showing up on network broadcasts.
Free tsunami satellite photos
December 28, 2004
DigitalGlobe is making a number of QuickBird satellite images available to media. “Showing 60-centimeter resolution, the satellite images offer the world’s highest resolution available to the commercial industry.” This photo shows the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka slightly less than four hours after the 6:28 a.m. (local Sri Lanka time) earthquake and shortly after the moment of tsunami impact.
Powerful stuff.
View Tsunami Image
View Before Tsunami Image
View Beach Image
View Before Beach Image
View Beach 2 Image
View Before Beach 2 Image
View Large Overview Image
View Large Before Overview Image
Here is an explanation and analysis of the images.
Quake, tsunami blogger roundup
December 28, 2004
Scores of bloggers have produced compelling reports, photos and more about the earthquake and tsunami that hit Asia this weekend. Here’s a roundup of some of those reporting from Asia on their blogs (in no particularly order).
If you know of others, please post them here.
• tsunamihelp.blogspot.com
• sumankumar.com
• worldchanging.com
• petalingstreet.org
• lilianchan.blogspot.com
• lonestar9.blogspot.com
• petertan.com
• jogalong.blogspot.com
• alwayswow.blogspot.com
• 2bangkok.com
• thiswayplease.com
• blog.ceneus.com
• livejournal.com/users/ernestswhirrled
• hitme.at/muringwien
• rezwanul.blogspot.com
• bobjots.org
• applechicken.blogspot.com
• livejournal.com/users/prema
• unforseeable.blogspot.com
Bloggers launch Asia tragedy blog
December 27, 2004
A dozen Indian bloggers launched an excellent group blog today called The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, posting news tidbits and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts. The updates are frequent, and the info very useful.
These are bloggers. This is journalism. Raw, unedited, but still journalism.
Reader accounts of Asian disaster
December 27, 2004
Within hours of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Asia Sunday the BBC began soliciting and posting photos and eyewitness accounts from readers. The BBC has been publishing features like this for more than a year, but it’s noteworthy that they’re still doing this, as it shows the site and its users still find it valuable. And it is valuable.
In the case of the tsunami, the BBC has gotten thousands of e-mails. Not only did BBC get eyewitness accounts up quickly, but they complemented the BBC’s own reporting nicely, offering a more personal perspective on the human side of the tragedy than most of the other articles published on news sites Sunday. Check out, for example, this gripping first-person account the BBC published from Troy Husum, a 28-year-old Canadian on holiday in Thailand, describing the devastation as the waves hit the town of Patong. That’s 800 words, by the way — the typical length of a newspaper column.
This is an excellent example of how tapping a news site’s online community can enhance a story.
(CNN also posted an interesting list of short reader e-mails about the tsunami, and seattletimes.com is soliciting information from readers and published this e-mail a local man sent to his friends.)