Media Insider: Do Journalism Degrees Matter, How Facebook Swallowed Journalism, and SEO Tips for Blog Beginners

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s round up of journalism, blogging and freelancing stories from the week.

Photo by Tim Caynes used under CC BY-NC 2.0

Memo to Tony Gallagher: Why Journalism Degrees Really Do Matter (The Guardian)

Recently, the Sun’s editor, Tony Gallagher, spoke out against the university route into journalism, maintaining journalism is not a profession that requires academic grounding, The Guardian says. In this Guardian piece, Roy Greenslade picks apart whether Gallagher has a valid point.

The End of the News as We Know It: How Facebook Swallowed Journalism (Medium)

This is the full text of a recent lecture by Emily Bell, Humanitas Visiting Professor in Media 2015–16 at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge. Bell says social media hasn’t just “swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything.” Says Bell: “We are seeing huge leaps in technical capability — virtual reality, live video, artificially intelligent news bots, instant messaging and chat apps — and massive changes in control, and finance, putting the future of our publishing ecosystem into the hands of a few, who now control the destiny of many.”

Blogging for SEO: Five Quick Tips for Beginners (Search Engine Watch)

Blogging is one of the best ways to do content marketing, says Search Engine Watch. It’s a way to keep your face in front of current and potential customers. In this post, Matt Morgan discusses tips for blog beginners to keep in mind. Among them: Keep posts fresh and keep them coming and there’s a fine line with linking. “Every good blogger knows that a site with multiple, quality links is going to gain kudos with the web crawlers,” Morgan says. “However, due to link schemes (a practice where links are used to manipulate search engine rankings) links coming into your site (backlinks) are scrutinized by the search engine bots.”

5 of the Best: Podcasts About Data Journalism (Online Journalism Blog)

Podcasts are a good way to listen to stories, be entertained, and keep up with current affairs. Author Carla Pedret features five podcasts that discuss data. They include ProPublica, which interviews investigative journalists to talk about their last projects; Data Stories, a podcast about data journalism, from visualization to statistics; and Partially Derivative, a weekly podcast about how data has influenced the way we experience the world.

How Four of the Smallest Newsrooms in America are Using Video (The Local News Lab/Medium)

Larger newsrooms have mastered video, but local newsrooms are catching up. In New Jersey four tiny newsrooms are experimenting with the role of video at the hyperlocal level, The Local News Lab reports. These projects are very early in their testing and development, but each contain some useful ideas about how local newsrooms can test video with their audience.

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Christine Cube is an audience relations manager with PR Newswire and freelance writer. Follow @cpcube or check out her latest on Beyond Bylines on PR Newswire for Journalists.