Friday round-up: lessons from Brazil, going straight to the source and writing like J.K Rowling

Protecting the print product when you go online

We start with a story from the WAN-IFRA editors' blog on how the southern Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora has created a proactive online strategy that will protect its print edition, a product that got 2% circulation bump last year.

Zero Hora has 210 journalists working in its integrated newspaper. Although there are specific teams allocated to print and online, these teams are fluid and journalists are expected to understand the work of others and be flexible in what they do.

Speaking to the blog Editor in Chief Altair Nobre says that as a result of the internet newspapers constantly have to strive to be more original and creative, working harder to convince people to read the paper.

The online version is designed to be very interactive. For example, the Porto Alegre region has a rather unstable climate, explains Nobre, and so Zero Hora editors invite readers to send in pictures and short reports when there are storms.

Other key factors in the paper's success come from having a "young attitude" which attracts new readers from the younger generations and having a carefully planned out social media presence.

Ben Goldacre calls for unedited source material on one website

Journalism.co.uk is one of many to highlight Dr. Ben Goldacre's suggestion for a website that would have a variety of features to improve media transparency over their primary sources for certain stories as well giving readers “unmediated/unedited access to full comments from interested parties”.

The Bad Science author (pictured) suggested the site could do the following:

• Give each news story a unique ID;
• Any involved party can add/upload a full press release or quote to that story’s page;
• Anyone can add a link to a primary source;
• Anyone can vote these up or down like on digg/reddit;
• You can register as a “trusted source” and not need to be modded up or down;
• Anyone can add a link to media coverage of that story.

Who do you write like?

Finishing on a lighthearted note, if you grew up hoping to be the next Hunter S. Thompson, there's a handy little web tool that lets you analyse your writing and see which famous scribe you are most like.

I Write Like takes a pasted bit of text and compares it to the writings of hundreds of famous authors, giving you a result in seconds.

As one college media blogger points out, the results vary wildly depending on which text you submit. For example yours truly writes like Chuck Palahniuk, H.P. Lovecraft and J.K Rowling depending on which blog post is submitted.

It's all a bit of fun for a wet Friday afternoon. Just don't come crying to me if you're told you write like Barbara Cartland.