Four points from this week’s Digital Editor’s Network

The bad weather led to a smaller than usual turn-out for Tuesday’s DEN get together but those of us who made it heard some quality speakers. Here’s a few points from each;

1. Mark Skipworth from The Telegraph started by banging the drum for journalism as a job choice for the student element of the audience saying now was a great time for enterprising journos looking to forge careers.Some insights into working practices at The Telegraph proved interesting for those of us already in the industry. The working day starts with a ‘web-only’- news conference and reporters now work to two different news desks. The online news editor works during the early part of the day, directing journalists busy breaking news while the old-style news editor picks up later in the day with reporters re-working the stories for print. How those two desks dovetail must provide plenty of challenges. There’s more analysis of this Harris Lecture at Alison Gow’s blog.

2. The Guardian’s blogs editor Kevin Anderson gave us something of an insight into his remarkable journey across America covering the US presidential election, in part by utilising available social media tools. Geo-tagging everything as he went, Kevin was able to produce an interactive map of the journey. His coverage totalled 50 blog posts, 1,600 tweets, 2,050 photos and covered 4,000 geo-tagged miles. DEN has been fortunate to have Kevin speak previously and I always enjoy the enthusiasm he brings to the topic and the way he can so clearly demonstrate the journalistic benefits of social media.

3. Alison Gow of the Liverpool Post and Echo was able to give us the benefit of her experience of liveblogging – something her paper seems to be leading the UK regional press pack on. Because they have done so many very different live blogs – court cases, football, the giant spider and a Royal visit to mention just a few – it was interesting to hear how different the audience’s reactions have been to each. Alison told us how users for the “social” events such as the spider and the Queen would be quick to demand (and share) pix and video while football followers wanted to give and receive opinion. Useful stuff for anyone planning to follow suit.

4. Finally, Eric Ulken was able to talk about the opportunity and experience of creating deep data content such as this amazing homicide map from his former employer the LA Times. Despite having every presenter’s nightmare scenario of  unexpected wi-fi failure, Eric was able to describe how the map had come about with a three-way mash-up of public data (the stats, dates etc of murders) , staff journalism (crime reports/blogs etc) and public contribution (tributes, comments). Eric also pointed to his bookmarks for some further examples. Lots to learned here.

A previous commitment at Manchester’s Social Media Cafe meant I was unable to attend the panel event in the evening but you can replay Robert Peston et al here.

In a deviation from the norm there also wasn’t time to share what we’re currently all doing online around the regional press – if you have a burning project just waiting to be shared, please do feel free to do so via the links otherwise – see y’all at the next one!