My 'interesting reads' roundup (weekly)

• The Year of Mobile really is coming: Mobile broadband to overtake fixed line by 2015

  According to Ericsson, mobile data traffic will grow 12 times between now and 2018, driven largely by video. Mobile is soon going to be as big as fixed line internet access and it won't be long before it is the primary way audience access the web.  

  tags: mobile broadband

• Sri Lanka: Using Google Earth as a storytelling tool | Media news | Journalism.co.uk

  "By using just two satellite images from Google Earth, taken two months apart, a citizen journalist has been able to tell the story of the end of Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war." Great read; follow the links for an even more detailed analysis on the original source

  tags: google earth storytelling journalism

• Journalists, this is your time | Media, disrupted

  Hell, yes. 

  tags: journalism future of news advice

• Free Arbitration Could Cost Local Papers Thousands of Pounds, MPs Told | newspapersoc.org.uk

  This has all the potential of becoming the straw breaking the camel's back for the regional newspaper industry. Worrying that it's still dragging on as a viable proposal. "The industry and its advisers anticipate that allegations of code breach or trivial complaints of the type currently resolved by the editor direct or by the PCC, will be put forward as legal claims for compensation and applications made for arbitration. Even if struck out at the first stage by an arbitrator, such claims will still incur costs for the publisher. It is estimated that around 1000 claims a year would affect the local newspaper industry, with additional claims encouraged by the publicity surrounding the new regulator and its arbitration system and by the professional advice which clients would receive."

  tags: arbitration cost journalism

• Freelance publishers axed from Local World hyperlocal sites - Journalism News from HoldtheFrontPage

  It caused controversy when the scheme was launched ('Journalism on the cheap' was the most trumpeted cry) but the local Northcliffe sites really did seem to gain traction with their communities, I think it's sad to see the site champions being let go, and I doubt users will be happy to lose that point of contact, Community news is not about creating a vacuum for people to fill, and I suspect the people who ran these sites also helped give them a little bit of soul.  "A group of 25 freelance community publishers who helped run a network of hyperlocal sites for Local World have left their roles after the publisher decided it now had enough users to sustain itself. Local World has now ended the freelance contracts it had with 25 community publishers"

  tags: hyperlocal journalism

• Cheaper but edgier: Steve Matthewson on WAN-IFRA in Bangkok

  "The point is just that the grand solutions implemented by big Western publishers, that were the bread and butter of such conferences in the past, are seldom the workable, modest, affordable and inspiring solutions the rest of us are looking for." Steve also points out the La Presse app cost R380m and three years to develop. I am absolutely open-mouthed at this. What the hell were they doing for that time and money? Gold plating their laptops? 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.