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Online editorial models #05 – The Huffington Post case

The Huffington Post, created in May 2005, is the new current star amongst online media. Forget about Slate, Salon and don’t event think about old media venturing into the digital era. HuffPo beats them all.

Chasing ideodiversity in a flat world

Taking a look at my desk here at DG Comm, I can see that not much has changed since my days as an editor on European desk at a press agency. My day usually started by leafing through The Financial Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Le Monde, the newspaper institutions that are more often than [...]

When Luther came to Brussels…

Citizens have a right to know. This is pure basics of a democratic system. Without knowing what is being and has been decided, and why, you cannot participate, nor can you try to hold decision-makers accountable.

The “official viral”

Like discovering that it’s FIFA employees who blow the vuvuzelas.

Online editorial models #04: Meta-enabling journalism aka lol-journalism

Speaking lightly of serious things and seriously of light ones is not only a motto every educated French men is bound to follow – at least if he was raised by the same grand father I had – it’s also an editorial online model which prospers on Internet. To the extent that it could be [...]

Communicating poverty

How can one communicate what poverty is like? That may sound like a trite question for those who experience it first hand. Perhaps we could emulate George Orwell and take to the kitchens, streets and mines in Paris and London and Wigan and experience grinding poverty first hand. I imagine it would be quite a [...]

Time for selFB-confidence

The FB page of the European Parliament rocks, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say it. As Florent wrote on his post, we’ve the broadest EU community and the biggest Parliament’s presence on Facebook in the world. I’m honoured to work at this project, and I want to invest myself to make it bigger, nicer, [...]

Facebook: 4 reasons to hope and 7 reasons to keep going

Last Tuesday, we had a very interesting meeting with Richard Allan, the Facebook European boss for what is related to politics. I picked up some facts and statistics to give an overview of where we stand in the Facebook-galaxy.

Explaining Eurobonds to my Latvian grandmother

Amendments, oral questions, rapporteurs, draft reports… Eurocratic life is crowded with this kind of words that, once you work for a European institution, become part of your daily life. But, we have to admit that outside this “quartier européen”, hardly anybody knows or is interested in knowing what “second reading” is. So, how to write [...]

My new vocation

I left work to become a mum but little did I know that coming back to work not only would I start qualifying for the “working mum” description but also that of a juggler. Every space of time like air for a juggler has millimetres of oppportunities. But dare you miss that fraction of a [...]

Online editorial models #03 – Network journalism

There was a time networked journalism was called « citizen journalist. » Then a smart guy asked if you would trust a citizen dentist or a citizen brain surgeon and the term was dead, until it was rebranded as… network journalism.

Online editorial models #02 – Link journalism

Do you remember the first link you published on Internet? It may well have been by using Frontpage or Dreamweaver. Or a text editor in which you were coding in html – those were the days you were wild and crazy. It should come as no surprise that this very simple act – posting a [...]

Print this out: Tricks to survive “Stressbourg”

It is actually very simple to get to our office PFL F 00445A once you know it. :} I am writing this for you so you will not get lost in Stressbourg {as my friend Alberto call it} and all you need to do is to follow a few basic rules. Why? I got super-stressed when [...]

NOKIA effect

Most probably all of us know that famous advertising Nokia campaign with the slogan “Nokia- connecting people”? I would dare say the same DG Comm-reconnecting its staff … Last week on the 7-8th June our DG COMM organised a seminar on “New Media challenges” for the whole Directorate staff.  Was it a mere coincidence that [...]

Why I think social media are on the right way in the European Parliament

It’s always interesting to see who’s convinced by the use of social media for institutional communication purposes. We had a seminar with our whole directorate at the beginning of the week and it was very telling – not only because of what we said, but also because of the structure and organisation of it.

Online editorial models #1: Ours

In a small bunch of posts, I’d like to explore and share my thoughts about the current online editorial models and what they could bring to the European Parliament online editorial strategy. Yep, that will be a hazardous process in progress, with no real structure and random assertions. That’s what blogging is about, after all? [...]

To all writers and readers…

If you really want to touch the reader, first we need to start from a very beginning, none others but the writers. This is how it works…every beginning of the week I am sending out an email informing 4-5 people that have expressed their wish or that reached their turn that it’s up to them [...]

Top five EU videos

Come up with a sample of EU online videos illustrative of the best the EU has to offer in terms of online video, they said. Two or three from the Commission and two or three from Parliament. So here they are, my top five euro-vids.

Pécs, the cultural capital of Europe 2010 and more…

As one of the European Culture Capitals 2010 Pécs, this UNESCO world heritage site is getting discovered by thousands of tourists. With a calendar jam packed with cultural events, everyone will find some amusement to his/her taste. Did you know that Pécs gave the famous op-art painter Victor Vasarely to the world? And no wonder, [...]

A “big f*#king deal” in Brussels

It’s not often that the really big beasts of US politics pitch up in the European Parliament, but when they do, it’s a big deal. One US President has addressed the Parliament. That was Ronald Reagan in 1985. A far more recent visitor was the current Secretary of State, former First Lady and once heir apparent to the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, who came to Parliament for a “town-hall” meeting with young Europeans. So there was the usual excitement this week when US Vice-President Joe Biden came to the European Parliament.

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