By taking advantage of the ScribbleLive open-source API, Global News customized the look and feel of their liveblog, incorporating slick real-time content into their responsive site.

Both CBC and Radio-Canada added a real-time element to their static coverage of Hadfield’s safe return by embedding a liveblog into their posts.

Perhaps to highlight his famous ‘stache, the Toronto Star paired live streaming and live blogging to document Hadfield’s journey home.

And back in February, the Toronto Sun used a liveblog to run a contest where five lucky inquisitors could have their questions answered by Hadfield himself. My favourite is definitely “Would it be possible to have a baby in space?” Makes you think.

The post Chris Hadfield’s real-time return appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

• Ferguson’s last home game by Press Association

Last week, Alex Ferguson — a man who has managed Manchester United for 26 years — dropped the bombshell that he was retiring at the end of the season. Cue an outpouring of grief from the red half of Manchester (and the rest of their global fanbase), relief from their rivals and respect from everyone. On Sunday, Ferguson managed his last game at Old Trafford. PA’s real-time coverage captured the occasion, combining reports from the match itself with the reactions from social media from the great and the good of the sporting world. The liveblog also featured pictures and trivia from Ferguson’s reign, ensuring that the historic nature of the event wasn’t lost.

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• Live Chat with Kim Dotcom by NZ Herald

One of the best things about Q&As is that readers are able to engage directly with the participant; to ask the questions they want and receive answers that are unfiltered. When these sort of Q&A sessions go well, they turn out like this one with Mega founder KimDotcom from the New Zealand Herald: clean, easy to read and—thanks to an interesting interviewee—pretty enlightening. They’re a great resource for the publication too: they can generate hype and traffic before, during and after the event, as well as a whole load of engagement. As the session was nearing a close, NZ Herald thanked their readers for their ‘hundreds’ of questions. Kim Dotcom seemed pretty thankful too.

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• Amanda Berry Press Conference by The Globe and Mail

Sometimes a story is so powerful that it doesn’t require much from the journalist at all—just a clear tone and the ability to relate the facts in a dispassionate manner. That’s precisely the case here at the police press conference following the discovery of the three women in Cleveland who had been missing for a decade. Readers have an insatiable appetite for information in stories like these and the best the journalist can do is relate the facts as they come. No embellishment needed.

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• Coverage of the Giro D’Italia by liveupdateguy

There’s something about cycling that provokes such fanaticism that it makes other sports look like little league, and that’s why sites like liveupdateguy (or LUG, as it’s affectionately known) exist. Charles Pelkey has years of live reporting experience under his belt, and it shows in his tireless coverage of this year’s Giro D’Italia. Every raceday has its own liveblog, and they are all embedded on the same page, one above the other, allowing fans—and I mean the true fanatics—to follow the action or relive the race from the very beginning. The content from each day is filled with detailed maps, infographics and racer times which are all bound together by Pelkey’s knowledgeable, slightly tongue-in-cheek analysis.

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• Bad Teacher by La Stampa

For National Teacher’s Day, Slate launched a game with the hashtag #BadTeacher. With the end of year exams approaching in Italy, the national daily, La Stampa, took inspiration from its North American colleagues and launched a similar initiative — #profcrudeli — on its own site. La Stampa invited readers to share stories of their worst experiences with teachers. And what did they get? Well, what you would expect: a lot of reader comments and tweets outlining some pretty fishy pedagogic behaviour. They provided a space on their site and their readers responded.

The post ScribbleLive Spotlight: Amanda Berry, Alex Ferguson and Kim Dotcom appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

From the first game, Boston.com syndicated out their coverage of the Bruin’s first round in the NHL playoffs through the Scribble Market. Seeing their coverage, the Toronto Star wanted to reciprocate the favour by offering their coverage to their southern Stanley Cup rivals through Scribble’s LiveSyndication.

Using raw feeds, the two organizations have been sharing content with each other without having to syndicate in every chirp and insult. The two organizations are able to pick and choose which of one another’s elements to pull in, including photos, text posts and social media aggregation.

Here are some screenshots of the coverage thus far:

The post Rivalry on ice, teamwork in the newsroom appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

Once you register for a free SoundCloud account, you can begin uploading your audio files. Once they’re up, you can grab the iframe code they provide, put it into the Basic field in the backend of your liveblog and it will automatically render as a player. Couldn’t be simpler, right? Right.

Here’s an example of a liveblog I put together about a radio documentary I made in journalism school (seems like a lifetime ago).

Have you used SoundCloud in an interesting way? Let us know!

The post Tech Alert: SoundCloud appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

• May Day Protests by Rbb

Labour Day (or May Day as it is sometimes known) is synonymous with workers marching for their rights around the world. And in a Europe crippled by austerity, this year’s protests were bigger than most. In Germany, the event often grabs headlines for other reasons, as Neo-Nazis try to hijack May 1st to spread their own message. Their often small marches are met by more vociferous anti-fascist protests (see above), and this year’s Berlin event was captured brilliantly by the team of local reporters at Rbb. Protests are generally good subjects for real-time content as there is always a lot of visual stimuli, but Rbb’s smart mix of images, videos and audio files captures the mood particularly well. Vive Multikulti!

• Austin BBQ tour by Dallas News

Before I begin, a quick caveat: I’m a sucker for tours, trips, voyages or pretty much any recreational displacement covered in real-time. If you’re a big news organisation, these quirky events are a great way to show a more personal side of your newsroom while allowing your readers to ‘bond’ with your journalists.

This is a very cool example of a great real-time format, as we get to follow the BBQ Posse travel across Texas searching for the best barbecue in the land. By bringing together photos, tweets and original commentary, they’re enabling their readers to travel with them. What’s even better is that they ran a Q and A within the ongoing event and sparked discussions about favourite restaurants, cuts of meat, etc… Do their readers appreciate it? “Thank you guys! I’ve really come to love your insight and opinions! Not to mention the juicy pictures!” Yes they did.

• Chat about Dreamtown Finder from Boston.com

Just because you don’t have some hot-shot movie star or sportsman in your newsroom, doesn’t mean you can’t run a Q and A. If one of your staff has written a particularly good article, produced a stirring photo essay or created an amazing app, organize a Q and A with them.

That’s what Boston.com did with the creators of their Dreamtown Finder, an app which recommends places to live in Massachusetts to people, depending on data they’ve entered. This sort of event is a fantastic way to further promote your content while giving your readers some behind-the-scenes insight into your newsroom.

• Humanitarianism in the network age by Thomson Reuters Foundation

It can sometimes be a headache getting all the right people together in one room, but if you’re running a Q and A with ScribbleLive, that’s no longer a problem. For their live chat about humanitarianism in the digital age, this publication had 5 experts and a moderator all contributing simultaneously from various offices around the world. Vsevolod Makhov, head of Red Cross Emergency Humanitarian Center in Ekaterinburg, Russia was featured, so was Jacob from Souktel.org in Palestine and Kate from the IFRC in Southeast Asia.

Once everyone had taken their virtual seats, the discussion began. And an interesting discussion it was too, one that flowed nicely and was easy for readers to follow. As it wrapped up, there were “great discussion” and “thank you”s all round. “Well done the organisers, thanks to all” about sums up the tone.

• Charity ice hockey game for Alzheimer’s

This is a fantastic example of how close to sporting action you can feel when following ScribbleLive coverage, whether it’s a fundraising event or a championship game. The writer has made great use of the video-recording function, creating instantly accessible clips of interviews of players and the ice-hockey action. In seconds you can record and upload a video to the event — there’s no better way to get your audience close to the action — so close you can almost smell the sweat.

The post Scribblelive Spotlight: BBQs, May Day protests and Humanitarianism appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

Articles

Articles are accessed from the Scribble Dashboard. You can add original content as you would for posts in an live event (including text, photos, videos, tweets and Facebook posts). You can pull content from any other live event currently being run in your account, editing it or formatting as you wish. This presents a multitude of opportunities to compile the best content from your various events to elegantly show how a story developed over an entire day.

Because they don’t need to be attached to an event before they’re ready, Articles can be used to ease new ScribbleLive users into the platform and, generally, into the whole concept of real-time content.

The Twitter-news loop

Articles were created in conjunction with Twitter in order to strengthen the solid relationship news and social media already share: their symbiotic push-and-pull creates an information loop that benefits you and your readers by providing the latest updates and insights. With Articles, we’ve enhanced your ability to pull in tweets, share your narratives via Twitter and alert Twitter users that you’ve used their tweets in a post. Additionally, we’ve improved how tweets look in ScribbleLive: by adopting Twitter cards, tweets you pull in look just as they would on Twitter. And photos brought in from Twitter are bigger, bolder and more brazen than ever, guaranteeing that they grab your readers and keep them there. Plus, you can now preview Twitter pics in the social search bar, ensuring you only grab the best ones for your story. (Note: when manually searching for tweets directly inside a live event, they will be pulled in as resembling user comments, not Twitter cards)

Reimagine your stories

There are static articles, which become out of date quickly, causing readers to jump from site to site looking for the latest news. There are liveblogs, which promise paragraphs and sentences of stories in development. But what about the stories in between? How do you promise your readers that what they’re reading is everything they need to know right now? Articles serve those stories that need to be tweaked after publishing, by allowing live updates that automatically change it: readers never have to refresh the page to get the latest version of the facts.

Multiple editors can access the same story, pulling content from any live events they’re running to add dynamic multimedia on the fly, without worrying about formatting.

Think about it: imagine you have a liveblog covering the Boston bombings. In it, you have the nuggets of many stories: an interview with a victim’s family, a dissection of the bomb, a profile of the suspects. Each one began as a paragraph in your event and with Articles you can easily spin it off into another story: each one with the liveblog underneath or as a standalone piece of content to share with readers.

Workflow + internal/external communications

Social strategists and communications teams: Articles will prove to be a substantial time saver. Whether there’s a change in your management team, a new strategy you’re implementing across all brands or a critical situation you need to keep all employees aware of, create an Article and publish it across each white label or event associated with each one of your subsidiaries. Add any rich content you’d like, such as video, PowerPoint slides or any iframe and edit your Article as the story develops — those edits will be published in real-time, across each channel, with the click of a button. And straight from the back end, choose whether you’d like to tweet it out to the public or embed it on another site.

Improve productivity

So, you’ve covered something in real time. Why duplicate your reporting efforts when creating a ‘traditional’ story after the fact? With Articles, you can create dynamic stand-alone posts with content you’ve already created in any liveblog. Grab the relevant tweets you found, create pull quotes from text you wrote during the event and make slideshows using the photos that were published in real-time. Plus, add text around all of these elements to provide any necessary context.

Picture galleries

Picture galleries are among the most popular pages on a news website and it couldn’t be simpler for these two tour de forces to work together. If people want the synopsis of an event in breath-taking images, give it to them. It takes very little work from your end (simply drag and drop). And with an Article, you can publish a slideshow on top of your real-time event or on a completely different page to drive traffic. By pulling images from the existing liveblog, you can create a visual timeline of the story. As the story develops, so can the slideshow.

Social media round-up

We live in a world of social media but most of your audience probably doesn’t have time to sift through all the chatter that occupies the various sites in any given day. Save them energy and curate the most important updates from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram by crafting an Article from a pre-set raw feed or simply search and drag and drop. Tailor this best-of post to the interests of your particular community, a particular page or even a particular story you’re running.

Share your message

If you want to remain at the top of your game, you need to ensure that your stories are reaching your audience. Combine the best aspects of quality and quantity and share your posts as widely and wisely as possible. After your Article is created, you can connect it to multiple white labels, post it to a liveblog, embed it within your own site or present it as a stand-alone piece. This plethora of publishing empowers you to extend your reach, your voice and your message.

Organize your white label

The events listed on your white label main page are now better organized, making it easier for your audience to find the content they’re looking for. Separate tabs have been created for: Live events, All events and All Articles:

Have an interesting idea for Articles? Let us know by tweeting us @scribblelive. Questions? Email support@scribblelive.com

The post Introducing Articles: revolutionizing how to tell stories in real-time appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

• Anzac Day by ABC News

Real-time content doesn’t have to just be a way to cover events happening at break-neck speeds; it is also equally well suited to slower, commemorative stories as ABC’s coverage of Anzac Day 2013 demonstrates. The event is a way to pay tribute to Australians and New Zealanders who have served and suffered in wars and peacekeeping missions. The coverage is full of powerful images and videos that celebrate life and commemorate death, prompting really positive feedback from readers: ‘What a great way to cover this event. What great people they were… Watching this in the Caravan on the Laptop. Very cool.’

• Ask an Astronaut from Public Insight Network

Lots of people dream of becoming an astronaut, some of them talk about it, but very few act on it. Abigail Harrison is one of those very few; the 15-year-old is aiming to become the first person to walk on Mars and as a result makes a very interesting subject for a Q and A, alongside her mentor from the European Space Agency, Luca Parmitano. On top of the regular text interaction — which they brightened up by asking people sending in questions to also send photos of themselves – they hosted a Google Hangout on the page so their readers could watch the interview live.

• Police Shooting by Repubblica

As the events in Boston demonstrated, journalists running liveblogs need to be prepared for anything. Readers following the real-time coverage of the new Italian government being sworn in never expected a recently unemployed 49-year-old man to open fire in the Palazzo Chigi and seriously injure two policemen. Neither did the journalists, but they were able to react quickly and capture the chaos. The swearing in was already taking place when the shooting happened, so the rest of Repubblica’s coverage featured the peculiar combination of the madness outside and the ceremony inside.

• CBA7 Conference from IIED

This example goes a long way in showing just how dynamic and interactive a liveblog of a conference can be. Following the events at the seventh conference on community based-adaption, the International Institute for Environment and Development strikes a good balance original content and reaction from around the Internet (predominantly Twitter). Even better, however, is the way they have filled their coverage with interviews of the key players at the conference. Here they have used YouTube videos, but it would’ve been equally possible to film the videos and upload them directly using the webcam function.

• International Journalism Festival

If you think that covering a five-day festival filled with dozens of speakers discussing a multitude of topics is too much, think again. A team of journalists (featuring one of Scribble’s own) and photographers liveblogged this year’s journalism festival, updating the feed with the highlights from the talks by the star-studded (journalistic) line up. The coverage was put in the Syndication Marketplace and picked up by a number of professional and collegiate publications, showing how the Marketplace can be used very effectively to increase any sort of story’s reach.

It also demonstrates once again the aforementioned point that with ScribbleLive’s real-time platform, you are well equipped to tackle unexpected twists in a story. Yoani Sanchez (pictured) was met by angry protesters when she was speaking, scenes that were captured and transmitted first by the livebloggers already on the scene.

The post ScribbleLive Spotlight: Top 5 Events of the Week appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

Picture this: high-quality photos appearing on your website, in real time. Sound like a pipe dream? Think again.

With a wireless SD card, photos can be instantly taken off your DSLR and transferred to a laptop or mobile phone. From there, they can then be uploaded to your live event via the ScribbleLive mobile or desktop app, or via email.

The card itself emits a wireless signal which is used to transfer the photos from camera to device, which means photographers can file directly to your liveblog from the field — whether they’re at the scene of breaking news, a press conference or corporate event.

The post Tech Alert: Wireless SD cards for real-time photography appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

Coverage of these events will dominate this week’s Spotlight as we run through the best real-time reporting from last week.

• Boston marathon and bombings from Boston.com

The Boston.com editorial team demonstrated incredible dexterity as the world’s eyes fell on their city for all the wrong reasons. Having prepared for the sporting event for some time (including by putting it in the Syndication Marketplace), they had to quickly change direction in order to report on the horrendous aftermath of the bombs. It was utter chaos. Pulling in tweets from official channels and eye witnesses, and combining it with their own reporting, they were able to piece together all the elements of the story that were available. As well as reporting the event, they also provided a platform for local residents to help stranded runners find a place to stay for the night. It was journalism boiled down to its essence: a service to the community.

Using the Syndication Marketplace, their coverage reached a network of media organisations around the world, crossing borders and language barriers. Having picked up the content, Italian daily La Stampa, posted a note of thanks on the top of their liveblog: “Thanks to the colleagues and citizen journalists of Boston.com for their live updates syndicated here.” It’s a sentiment that will be echoed by everyone who was kept informed during the madness of April 15.

• Watertown manhunt by Reuters

Just days after the bombing, the terrible story became surreal as a suburban Boston neighbourhood turned into a conflict zone. Reuters was there to report authoritatively on the transformation. Even in the midst of a rapidly changing breaking news story, they were able to update their liveblog with paragraphs of text showing definitively that real-time reporting doesn’t have to be confined to 140 characters. The quality of their images and their ability to curate the best information from the internet ensured that readers were glued to their screens.

• The funeral of Margaret Thatcher by Press Association (syndicated to MSN)

Last Wednesday, the UK politician who divided opinion more than any other was finally laid to rest. Her funeral, in a fitting tribute to the woman herself, sparked much debate and shut down the centre of Britain’s capital. The Press Association’s coverage kept a watchful eye over proceedings and provided a steady flow of images, videos and analysis.

• Dérapages second screen by TVA

This is a great example of what happens when media organisations provide a forum for their readers to discuss on their site rather than pushing them out to Facebook fanpages. It’s pages and pages of intelligent, impassioned debate. While they were screening Dérapages, a film about young people involved in road traffic accidents, TVA invited their audience to leave comments and share their own experiences. What followed was a lively discussion by people who had been personally affected by accidents, others with very strong opinions on the subject and viewers who had been affected by the film. “This film should be seen by everyone… A thousand congratulations…” one commenter wrote, and that’s precisely the sort of content you should have on your own pages.

• Marriage Equality Vote by New Zealand Herald

Last Thursday, New Zealand became the 13th country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, and as you can tell from the above photo, some people were pretty happy about it. MPs were debating the third reading of the bill and the New Zealand Herald decided to cover the event in real-time. Before the reading, they were publishing a cross-section of reader comments on both sides of the debate, and when the bill was finally passed, the supporters became more vociferous and used the liveblog to share their emotions on the Herald’s pages: “To my beautiful wife to be … I am the happiest woman alive : ) I love you!”

The post ScribbleLive Spotlight: Top Five Events of the Week appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.

Use Scribd to get those documents into your liveblog.

Scribd is a digital documents library that allows users to publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents in various languages. It’s website says it’s the world’s largest online library, with an audience of 90 million monthly readers.

It’s collection boasts a huge supply of works, from books and legal documents to school papers and presentations. Historical documents. Scientific data. Infographics and comics.

Check out this live event I created. I embedded several versions of free and available Scribd documents, just by copying the iframe code provided with each item.

This Tech Alert has been a long-time coming. ScribbleLive clients have been using Scribd for ages already, to supplement their live content with documents providing context. Check out this event from the New York Daily News. During the trial of Gilberto Valle, the organization ran a liveblog – the first post of which was the complaint, uploaded using Scribd. They also used the tool on US election day to inform people about poll site changes.

Last week, CPAC – Canada’s “Cable Public Affairs Channel” – also used Scribd, providing their audience with a list of resolutions at the NDP policy convention.

The tool is incredibly easy to use – just sign up for a free account and get going. Only an email address, username and password are necessary. Upload your own documents, or search through their extensive library. Their embeds are iframes, meaning they’re easy to include in your ScribbleLive events.

Keep us up-to-date! If you’ve used one of the Tech Alert tools – or are going to use it – send us a message at support@scribblelive.com and let us know!

The post Tech Alert: Scribd appeared first on ScribbleLive | Blog.