Continue reading »]]> American tourist Kelly Jones (41) was today (Wednesday) discovered alive in a disused Church of Ireland rectory in Glencolmcille, Co Donegal.

Jones, from Charleston, South Carolina, had been missing since Friday.

A major rescue effort was launched after the alarm was raised when she went missing from Malinmore hostel where she was staying.

Local volunteers joined Garda units, the coastguard, and Donegal Mountain Rescue volunteers in the search of the rural west Donegal parish.

Ms Jones was discovered by a search team led by local Garda Odie McBride.

It is understood that local man Michael O’Garda made the discovery shortly after midday.

Ms Jones was found in a Church of Ireland rectory which is unoccupied for most of the year, and brought out – apparently unconscious – by a stretcher team of Gardai and rescue workers.

She was evacuated to Sligo regional hospital by helicopter.

Garda McBride expressed his thanks to everyone who had taken part in the search, and to local GAA club Naomh Columba who made their facilities available as a search coordination centre and provided refreshments for the searchers.

[Note: Glencolmcille is my home, and purely by change I happened to be there yesterday when Kelly Jones was found. The video above was recorded on my phone (a Samsung Galaxy i9000, for those of you interested) and featured on RTE News. Still shots from the video were also used in the Irish Daily Star, Irish Independent, and Examiner (front page).]

Continue reading »]]> Following a day of reportage on a tape in which Gardaí can be heard joking about raping a Shell2Sea protestor, garda commissioner Martin Callinan released this statement:

“An Garda Síochána will continue to work closely with support organisations for victims of sexual crime and other victim support groups to ensure that our policy and approach to the investigation of sexual crime meets, first and foremost, the needs of victims.

While we are focused on achieving a successful legal outcome for a complainant, our policy and training stresses that such cases require special care and attention because of the vulnerable and difficult situation in which victims find themselves. We have stated clearly in the past and I want to say again this evening that a positive and compassionate attitude from members of An Garda Síochána is vital. That is our clear policy. That is the message delivered in our training. That is what we expect of Gardaí.”

In recent years An Garda Síochána has adopted a number of initiatives designed to enhance our investigative capability in this area including the establishment of a Crime Training Faculty to train senior investigating officers, the training and appointment of specialist interviewers and the establishment of dedicated interview suites (for child victims). The Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Investigation Unit has built up considerable expertise and experience in the investigation of sexual crime and is available to assist and advise members throughout the country.

In stressing the resources, training and experience within An Garda Síochána for the investigation of sexual crime the commissioner stated:

“I want the message to go out to the community and particularly to victims of sexual crime that they should report those crimes to Gardaí who can take the necessary steps to vindicate and protect their rights and I want to assure them that they will be met with compassion and sensitivity”.

“]

Image: Wikimedia Commons [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Feeding_time_dark.jpg

‘Give me your name and address or I’ll rape you’: the reality of Corrib policing from Mayo Policing on Vimeo.

Continue reading »]]> “There’s no revenue model for journalism on the web.”

Or at least, so Geraldine Kennedy told Charlie Bird this morning.

Twitterfolk listening in to the show were quick to react.”Old school thinking,” said Adrian Weckler, Sunday Business Post technology editor. “Is perhaps a little too used to economics of an ageing generation.”

Mark Little pointed to an article on USA Today, suggesting someone should tell them “this interwebby news thing will never catch on.” Faced with falling circulation, USA Today is remaking itself to focus on the web.

And Dublin Observer, a hyperlocal website covering the capital, opined that “the web has no room for editors like her and no room for companies like the Irish Times as it currently stands.”

To be fair, the Irish Times website engages with its readers more than some of its competitors. Though not universal, there is a facility to comment on at least some of the articles it carries, and there are blogging journalists.

By contrast, readers are muted on the Independent and Examiner sites.

Websites make money from advertising. So I asked how the Irish Times website could be improved to attract more visitors. Below are some of the answers I received.

Continue reading »]]> A couple of weeks ago, I uploaded my first video to Youtube – a montage of photographs taken at the Glencolmcille Agricultural Show, set to a music soundtrack by Eunan McIntyre, a local musician.

Being a journalist, and living with copyright issues, I first checked with everyone that it was okay to use their work. Everyone consented.

To date, the video has been viewed over 800 times by people in Ireland, Britain, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.

In fact, it did so well, Youtube invited me to take part in their revenue sharing programme. Youtube puts advertising next to the video, and I get a cut. I won’t get rich, if I’m lucky I’ll make a few cents. But a few cents times millions of videos makes Youtube (and Google) rich.

I signed up, explained that I held the relevant copyright permissions, and forgot about it.

Until this evening, when Youtube got back to me, explaining revenue sharing was disabled because I had not shown I held the necessary rights.

You can still watch the video. Just without advertising.

So Google only cares about copyright when their own interests are at stake, otherwise they’re happy to host material without clearance?

Continue reading »]]> There’s a scene in Back to the Future III where our hero picks up a newspaper, and as he does so, the front page changes to display a breaking news story, the scene he is witnessing.

Most science fiction get the future horribly wrong, but in this case there might be a germ of truth to it.

Newspapers are terribly excited by ebook formats. Imagine a ‘paper’ with a twitter feed in one column, linking to breaking news stories. Imagine not only words and pictures, but video, often live, from press conferences or parliamentary debates.

I got a glimpse of that immediacy last weekend, keeping up with results from around the country through twitter, while at the same time blogging the Kildare results (though only after I’d first phoned in the results to ‘old media’; they pay the bills, after all.)

Twitter gives me data. But context matters, and newspapers give me context. I spent three days sending out data, and sent one important piece of information (during a Newtalk interview) pointing out that Catherine Murphy’s performance made her favourite to take a Dáil seat in Kildare North come the next election.

For Enews to succeed, it must provide context.

Continue reading »]]> Kildare (Naas) second count
Quota 2191
Distribution of votes from Cassidy (FF) and Monaghan (Ind)

Anthony Lawlor (FG) +27 = 2140
Darren Scully (FG) +39 = 2151
Paddy MacNamara (Lab) +18 = 847
Seamie Moore (Ind) +56 = 1688
Willie Callaghan (FF +112 = 1435
JJ Power (GP) +36 = 1201
James Lawless (FF) +69 = 1040
Pat McCarthy (Lab) +19 = 1838
Donal Corcoran (Ind) +49 = 786

Donal Corcoran (Ind) eliminated