photo: Wootang01 / flickr

Imagine you are just finishing a story or blog post and suddenly realize that some crucial piece of information is missing.

Or maybe you only notice now that you forgot to take a picture of one of the people you interviewed.

Something is missing that you should have arranged to get early in the research process that you can no longer get at this late hour.

We’ve probably all experienced such nightmares. Yet they are so easy to avoid with a little bit of careful planning.

by Ugaldew

Producing a good photograph isn’t necessarily about the equipment you use. A camera is just a tool. It’s also about the composition, framing and perspective you choose. Here are 10 tips which will help you produce better photographs.

1. See things differently

Perspective is what really makes a difference between a snapshot and a professional photo. Move your feet! Crawl under things, get on top of them, look for interesting angles.

Whether editing your own online writing or articles prepared by others, it’s a good idea to make sure you haven’t overlooked any details before you publish.

Here’s a practical checklist of questions to ensure you’ve covered all the bases when it comes to solid journalistic style and user-friendly online presentation.

Image courtesy of verbeeldingskr8 / Flickr

Content curation helps journalists keep abreast of the latest developments in their beats. It also means that journalists become personal “human filters” for their audiences, offering them more value and insight into what is being posted on the web.

Content curation is not new. In fact, this is something journalists have always been doing by organizing information and presenting it to the public. Still, content curation is new. The role of journalists is shifting from gatekeepers to sense-makers and gate-watchers, says German journalist, Internet expert and DW-AKADEMIE trainer Markus Bösch. That’s where curation comes into play.

By curating content, journalists can embrace new tools which will make their voice heard as well as discover new research possibilities on the web. To get attention, reporters don’t have to produce exclusive content any more. They can also offer their expertise and serve as “human filters” that their audiences can trust.

There are different services to create individualized maps that you can embed in websites or blogs. One of them is UMapper, which allows a number of features like setting markers, adding text and photos. You’ll find step-by-step instructions on how to get started with UMapper in this video.

Unfortunately, you can’t add video to markers with UMapper. But you still may want to check this site out because it offers a lot of other interesting features.

For instance, you can create a map quiz using UMapper’s “GeoDart Game” template. Or you can create a twitter map that shows latest tweets containing a selected hashtag or keyword. To see how that’s done, check out this article.

Creating a personalized Google map

The people at Google have summarized the basic steps of how to create a map and embed it into a blog or website very well, so I’ll just copy and paste their instructions here. I hope they won’t mind.

To create or edit a map:

1. Go to Google Maps.
2. Click My Places > Create new map. If you want to open an existing map, check it in the left panel and click Edit.
3. Add a title and description for your map. You can make your map public or unlisted.
4. Use the icons in the the top right corner of the map. These include:

Select button Selection tool. Use this to drag the map and select placemarks, lines, and shapes.

Placemark button Placemark tool. Use this to add placemarks.

Line tool. Click this button to select a tool to draw lines, shapes, and draw lines that automatically snap to roads.

Note that these tools do not appear until you create or edit a map (see step 2).

Once you are finished, click Done.

If you prefer, you can also watch this video that will take you through the process.

Embedding your map in a blog or website

When you have created your map, you need to embed it in your blog.

* Click the embed symbol in the top right corner of your map.
* You should now get a pop-up with HTML code you can copy and insert into a new blog post
* If you would like to customize your map so that it fits the width of your blog’s text column, click “Customize and preview embedded map” below the box with the HTML code
* You should now see a new pop-up that offers different map sizes and a custom option.
* Click “Custom” and change the width and height as you like it. You can see how the preview of your map changes accordingly.
* You may want to zoom in or out using the arrows until the map in the preview window looks just the way you want it to appear in your blog
* When you’ve got the preview looking exactly right, scroll down to the HTML code.
* Copy and paste the code to embed the map in your blog or website.
* Done. Congratulations

By Thorsten Karg (with a little help from google)