Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the “Journalism Next” by Mark Briggs category.
Chapter 9: Data-Driven Journalism and Digitizing Your Life
Image via Wikipedia
Digital life is based upon a gratuitous amount of information and data; therefore, managing the data is the most critical part of digital life in journalism. Organized data not only helps journalists retrieve their memories from certain events via computer-assisted reporting, but also helps keeping in contact with colleagues and people of interest, and even coming up with new story ideas. Data-driven journalism excels in the following areas: depth, customization, searchability and long shelf life. The areas of management ranges from:
- Emails
- Contacts
- Digitally stored contact lists expedites search
- To-do lists
- Calendars
- Notes
- Productivity tools
- Word processing
- Spreadsheets
- Presentations
- Images
- Databases
- Project management
- Web or graphic design
- Collaboration with colleagues
Besides Google and Office Live, there are a variety of productivity tools that one can start with
- Instapaper: Saves web pages to be read later
- Remember the Milk: To-do list manager
- Oh don’t forget: Reminder tool that uses SMS
- Evernote: To-do list and note taking utility that can also record audio using cell phone
- Jott: Audio to-do list
- Dropbox: Collaborative cloud file storage
- Backpack: Organizer that is used for document sharing, plus notes, task lists and calendar
- Basecamp: Team project manager
- Socrata: Database and spreadsheet-managment
- MindMeister: Brainstorming helper that uses mip-maps
Often these services use cloud-computing method — in which the user accesses the third-party server outside of his or her own computer to use the service. This method requires internet connection at all times, but it is also convenient that the user does not need to always bring the storage required for the project.
The ability to share data is also a critical advantage in data-driven journalism. Several large news organizations such as the New York Times, the BBC, NPR, and the Guardian utilize application program interface (API) to allow anyone to borrow their data and build tools for their webpages. The API helps circulation of the digital ecosystem, bringing up full potentials of any data provided. Some of examples include interactive maps that geographically explain certain stories.
Chapter 10: Managing News as a Conversation
Questions and challenges for the modern journalism:
Image via Wikipedia
- How to maintain objectivity or credibility
- Legal and ethical issues with publishing freedom for everyone
- How to gather the audience
With social networking tools and blogs embedded on news sites, conversing the news is possible. One can converse through comments or social networking (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.). This can enable tremendous ways to communicate and collaborate with the audience, despite potential problems due to anonymity. The benefits to news as a conversation include:
- Transparency
- Immediate feedback
- Spread of news through word-of-mouth marketing
The 1-10-100 rule for participatory online communities:
- 1 percent of the user community — including the journalists on news sites — actually create content
- 10 percent of the user community will “synthesize” the content by posting a comment, e-mail, blog post or a link from a separate site.
- 100 percent of the user community will benefit from actions of the first two groups.
Some of successful Web sites that utilizes user-generated communities are Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube. User-generated communities do not cost money. However, it takes a great amount of time, energy and resources to build the sufficient community for the purpose. Major tasks for creating user-generated communities include:
- Evangelizing the brand
- Soliciting the content
- Moderating comments, blogs and other user submissions
- Solving user problems
- Staffing booths at weekend events
- Running contests to drive traffic
Some of ways to keep your user-generated communities clean and safe:
- Don’t editorialize
- Consider if public disclosure of someone close to you may become embarrassment to them.
- Monitor offensive postings
- Know your legal responsibilities
- Correct errors
Chapter 8: Telling Stories with Video
Thanks to the emergence of cheap video cameras and free video-editing softwares, video journalism has become easier than ever. Even without purchasing over $35,000 worth equipments that used to be requirements, anyone can produce high-quality videos and upload in Web. It has become so easy that millions around the world frequently upload videos. In mid 2009, YouTube reported that 20 hours of videos were uploaded on their server every second.
Image via Wikipedia
As a beginner in video journalism, what kind of mindset should we have?
Perfection is not necessary. Just do it and make as many mistakes as you can.
Of course, it is always better to produce the perfect video that we think of. However, quick and less polished videos tend to attract more viewers, because of it s natural atmosphere and intimacy it provides to the viewers. Even professional video journalists intently give imperfections in their videos, such as shakes or interruptions by others in the video, to emphasize certain aspects in the story.
The following video is a footage of the protest in Egypt, which also captured the reporter being attacked by protesters in the middle of turmoil:
As shown, the imperfect handling of camera and the sudden attack on the reporter well delivers the atmosphere of the scene.
Different approaches for different projects
- You will never know what will happen while filming a breaking news video. Although you will often not have access to the closest to the scene, capturing witnesses and surroundings of the scene can also make a good video.
- Breaking news stories can also be connected to the press conferences to help audience analyze the situation.
- Compilation of highlights can shorten the length of the video with the most available information delivered to the audience
- A documentary video gives you more freedom. However, it requires more planning and resources.
There are three kinds of shots — wide shots, medium shots and close-ups. It is better to mix your shots to give your video a variety. It is recommended to use “five-shot sequences,” which consists of five different consecutive shots to keep the audience focused on the video.
Stand-up is often necessary in reporting breaking news or covering major sporting event. The below are some tips for planning your video:
Image via Wikipedia
- Keep your content short, but always be ready to provide something little extra for the audience
- Even when reporting breaking news, always write a script and warm up
- Be stable in posture and breathe easily
- Use some hand gestures to make yourself look easy on camera
Camera
- High definition or standard definition
- With abundant resources and technologically knowledgeable staffs, don’t be afraid to use HD
- If your resources are limited with amateur staffs, it may be better to use standard definition
- Media type
- DVDs have many limitations, including slow writing speed
- Solid state media, such as flash memory cards, have faster access time and more flexibility
- Video-editing software
- Make sure the video format captured by a camera is compatible with the editing software you will be using
- Some programs do not work with DVDs or with new AVCHD format
- Accessories
- Tapes and batteries for longer running time
- Microphones to capture more delicate sounds
- Tripod when the video is to be captured in a stable setting
- Headphones to make sure the audio is being recorded clearly
- Lighting to be used in darker environment, or to change the tone of color of the scene
How do you shoot a video?
It’s simple. Follow these steps: Focus, zoom and adjust the exposure. Aim for solid clips rather than dramatic, spectacular clips. Be selective when to run your camera to save your runtime, and avoid panning and zooming in the middle of the video to prevent the audience from feeling dizzy watching your clips. Keep your voice silent to avoid putting unnecessary, or often unpleasant sound effects in your video, and follow the rule of thirds.
Rule of thirds: When framing your video, the most important subject in the frame should be aligned on one of four axis points in your imaginary nine-square grid within the frame.
Editing
- Keep it short
- Choose your own fitting editing software, ranging from free softwares such as Windows Movie Maker and iMovie, to professional, pricy softwares such as Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, Corel VideoStudio, Cyberlink PowerDirector and Pinnacle Studio.
- Publishing can be done via YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv and Metacafe.
Chapter 7: Making Audio Journalism Visible
Some might say audio journalism is not as exciting as video or Web journalism, and will die along with newspaper. Despite this belief, because of its distinct taste and unique content delivery, audio journalism is strong and will be strong as long as there are listeners who seek its essence. For example, 14 million downloads podcasts from NPR and visits its website every month. The key to success is encouraging show hosts and reporters to engage personally to their audience, therefore allowing the audience to enjoy the intimacy with them.
Image via Creative Commons
- Flexible to work with many different devices — file size is usually smaller than video files
- Opens up imaginations for the listeners
- Can be consumed while commuting
- A reporter can literally bring readers to the story
- Tone of voices, expressions, intonation and pauses can be reserved
- Atmosphere of the scene can be brought to the audience
- Podcast — Episodes can be uploaded without establishing difficult schedule
- Breaking news can be packaged in a quick audio report
How can you use audio journalism? The recipe may vary depending on the goal and the subject. However, generally audio journalism can be used with the following:
- Interviews
- Choose your location — pick a place that’s quite and has good acoustics
- Gather natural sound — search for sounds that will help describe the setting
- Prepare your subject
- What part of the story will audio play?
- Who is the audience?
- How long will the interview be?
- What kinds of questions will be asked?
- How much editing will be done?
- Watch what you say — keep quite while the subject is talking
- Delayed recording — ask the subject to repeat their answer
- Mark the best spots
- Voice-overs
- Write a script — be prepared
- Warm up — practice
- Find operative words — words that convey the story
- Keep it conversational
- Natural or environmental sound
- imported sound clips, including music
Devices range from cheap compact recorders to $500 recorder with stereo recording. It is recommended to use a recorder that can upload its files directly to the computer so that the recordings can be stored securely. Also, use telephone recorder for over-the-phone interviews. It is also recommended to record the interviews in WAV format, which is an uncompressed format, so that tweaks that are made after the recording will not drastically reduce the quality of the sound. Input volume level is suggested to be set at about 70 percent of its possible level.
For the better recording for quiet subjects, external microphone can be used to amplify the sound. Headphones can be used to examine the quality of the recording as the recording is being done. While recording, make a note for each 10 minutes of the recording in the notebook. This will save time for browsing through the notes and recordings during editing.
Image via Wikipedia
Editing
MP3 is the most balanced audio format that is widely used by many different media players, while conserving high quality sound with small file size. Widely used professional audio editing programs are: Avid’s Pro Tools, Adobe Audition and Sony’s Sound Forge. However, for the most of users, free audio editing programs such as Audacity should suffice their needs.
Besides cropping and cutting pieces out of audio, Audacity offers a variety of effects:
- Fade: A gradual increase or decrease in volume of audio
- Cross-fading: A mix of fades with one track level increasing with another decreasing
- Establishing music: Use of song clips to set tone
- Segue: Smooth transition between tracks
- Transition: Connecting different tracks
Chapter 6: Visual Storytelling with Photographs
“Show, don’t tell.”
Journalists are told of this phrase many, many times. Rather than describing the scene of news happening, it is better to find ways to take the audience to the scene. Photographs has been the most effective way to connect the audience with what the writer actually saw, and has evolved the most with the emergence of digital media. Nowadays, anyone can publish photos with just a few clicks — making the photojournalism more readily available to anyone.
However, equipments do not immediately make an amateur photographer a professional photojournalist. There are basics of how to operate the camera and how to work with the subject for the best outcomes.
Tips for starters:
- Take as many pictures as you want
- Immediately see if the picture you just captured is what you wanted
- Upload the pictures and show to friends and family
- Edit the pictures — crop them, enhance them, toning them, etc.
— Pixel: Abbreviated form of “picture element”, pixel is the visual representation of data in a digital image or graphic
There are standard resolutions used in each medium. On computer screens, pictures are shown in 72ppi (pixels per inch), therefore the photos should be compressed to 72ppi to be uploaded on Web. Thus, printed newspaper uses 200ppi and glossy magazine uses 300ppi.
Ownership, Copyright and Fair Use
Photographs are easy to be shared digitally. They also can easily be infringed of copyrights. Basically, don’t steal. Images found on search engines such as Google or Yahoo may be protected by the fair use clause of the U.S. Copyright Law, but users must be aware that the search results are not limited in the U.S. Use Creative Commons to search images that are legally approved for the fair use.
Two Kinds of Digital Cameras
- Point-and-shoot: Compact cameras that are easy to use and more affordable. Most of them are equipped with lens and flash
- Digital SLR (DSLR): Professional-level cameras that are equipped with larger image sensors — up to 10 times larger than point-and-shoot cameras. Most of them can have lens and flash replaced. They are more expensive and more complex to use.
How to Use Digital Camera
- Camera modes: Usually the camera is equipped with a dial to select camera modes such as the following: portrait, sports, landscape, low-light or automatic mode.
- Zoom: Point-and-shoot cameras offer optical zoom and digital zoom and DSLR cameras use optical zoom. Digital zoom affects the image quality while the optical zoom does not.
- Flash: There are usually automatic, red-eye reduction and manual modes. Flash can also be adjusted for the angle of the light.
- View/delete: This function lets the photographer browse through the pictures that were captured and decide which to keep and which to not.
Lighting is the most important aspect in photography. There are three ways to provide lighting:
- With natural (or ambient) light only — guarantees the best image quality, especially in cloudy and partly sunny days.
- With flash only.
- In mix of natural light and flash.
Image by Illusive Photography via Flickr
To take better photos, practice the following:
- Hold the camera steady
- Fill the frame — try to fit the head of the subject to the top of the frame
- Focus on one thing — focus on the subject’s eyes to produce the sharpest portrait picture
- Get closer — don’t be afraid to move all around the space to catch the best angle for the photograph
- Go vertical — when the subject is vertically oriented, flip the frame to fit the subject
- Shoot action — capture the action at the shutter speed of 1/500th second.
Mug Shots
Avoid flash and strong sunlight. Use the flash as the last resort. Pick the right, neutral background. Position the subject away from the walls. Make sure there is no pole-like subject “growing” out of the person’s head.
Working with Digital Photographs
Store them well. Always remember to backup your pictures to prevent loss in case of computer failure, bad memory card, etc.
Manage them well. Categorize your photos and store them in separate folders. It will make the photos quickly accessible when you need them, without browsing through hundreds of pictures.
Edit them well. There are tons of options out there: iPhoto, Windows Photo Gallery, Piknik, Snipshot, Picasa, Flicker and Photoshop.
- To learn how to use Photoshop, visit www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing for guided assistance to edit photos.
There are a few simple steps to follow when publishing your photos:
- Never post original photos. Edit them for the better.
- Crop the photo to omit unnecessary parameters.
- Resize to fit your needs
- Compress the resolution to fit your needs
- Tone and color-correct
- Save a Web version — compress your photos to 72ppi and save them as separate files. Posting pictures in higher resolution will result in slow loading time of your Web page.
- Keep it simple — if all you need to do about your photo is to crop, use simpler applications such as Piknik. This will save time in editing.
Publish Your Photos Online
- Wrap text around photo
- Use intuitive alternate text. It will optimize your post for search engines, as well.
- Remember that it is only a link to a photo — storing images in image-hosting websites will make the process more efficient
- Use a screenshot and a link
Even with all the technological knowledge, however, creativity and fearlessness makes one a great photographer. And it takes a lot of practice.
Chapter 5: Going Mobile
In New York Times in 2009, John Markoff wrote “the four billion cellphones in use around the globe carry personal information, provide access to the Web and are being used more and more to navigate the real world.” The mobile technology already has evolved enough to create a whole new field in journalism: mobile reporting. Due to its flexibility and wide availability, mobile reporting fills the gap of coverage where professional journalists cannot fill in. Mobile technology is an essential tool for journalists, but it is also hard to adopt with its jet-fast evolution.
Mobile Journalism
- Those who practice mobile journalism are often referred as “backpack journalist” or a “mojo” (mobile journalist).
- Among one billion mobile phones sold in 2008, 100 percent offer text messaging, 92 percent have a Web browser, 90 percent have a color screen, and 71 percent can send and receive “picture messaging” and 63 percent have a camera.
- Despite these capabilities, publishing is constrained by the major telecommunication companies.
- Upcoming technologies should focus on publishing to mobile audiences to help mobile reporting evolve.
Making Mobile Journalism
Image via Wikipedia
Gadgets and services take up the most of what a journalist can do and cannot do. Depending on the needs, a journalist may equip with simple devices such as smartphones — Blackberry, iPhone, etc, or carry a variety of camera, tripod, audio recorder, microphone and a laptop.
The main point of mobile journalism is being available anytime, anywhere. Keep your luggage simple, and be ready to pull out your device whenever you need to.
◊ How to choose what to report
- Will the audience benefit if we can take them there?
- Will the journalism be better if it’s done with urgency?
- Can this event be effectively communicated with the given device?
- Will sound reporting or video footage, turned around quickly, help people understand the story?
◊ Some of stories that can be reported mobile:
- TrialsSpeechesBreaking news of all types — fires, shootings, natural disasters, wilderness rescues, plane crashes, and auto accidents
- Public gathering such as protests
- Sporting events
- Grand openings of shops or restaurants
As there are always many types of of anything, we also categorize mobile journalists with their equipments.
Gearhead: A mojo, characterized with heavy backpack or a shoulder bag with electronic cords sticking out, who reports all day, everday. This person always has, or wants as many as the most recent and advanced equipments available in the world. This type of mobile journalists will need
- Laptop
- Internet connection
- Camera
- Video camera
- Tripod
- Audio recorder
- Headphones
- Microphone
- Cell phone — or smartphone, rather
Light Packer: Traditional journalists who occasionally reports immediately from the field. This person has, or wants just good enough equipments. They usually bring a smartphone that has a camera that shoots videos and pictures and a full QWERTY keyboard.
Publishing Options
There are many ways to report using mobile devices from the field. One may use Twitter or Utterli.com for microblogging, laptop or more advanced apps on smartphones for live blogging, video streaming services such as Qik or YouTube for mobile video broadcasting, or combine altogether to accomplish mobile multimedia.
Mobile Crowdsourcing
Every news organization should be ready to accept photos and videos from mobile devices for breaking news. Some news organizations, such as CNN’s iReport, has already gathered a significant amount of crowds sourcing mobile multimedia feeds for their news.
Chapter 4: Microblogging: Write Small, Think Big
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Microblogging recently exploded in popularity along with Twitter, a microblogging website where users can post updates of their ideas or events in 140 characters. It is easy to post or follow on microblogging and the contents can be used in many ways: by email, mobile device, etc. Using Briggs’s analogy, if blogging started as an online journal, microblogging started as an instant messaging journal. Microblogging includes Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Short Messaging Services (SMS) and Instant Messaging (IM).
Why is it so popular?
Anyone can write 140 characters to broadcast their own news. While the space is very limited, the users try to pack as much information as possible. Easier posting also leads to more frequent posting and ambient intimacy — which is constant connection without direct communication
Why is it important?
Image via Wikipedia
- Emergence as an important tool — users can provide important updates to the large pool of audience within seconds.
- Effective medium for breaking news — users can post updates at the moment the news are happening.
- Crowdsourcing and building community — followers build communities with common interest.
- Marketing and building your brand — microblogging enhances marketability of journalism.
Start Using Twitter
Some terms and jargons to go over:
- DM: Direct message
- @: For a reply, it precedes the Twitter ID
- RT: Retweet
- Hashtag: A label to categorize the tweet into a certain topic (ex. #weather)
It is not hard to tweet. Twitter accommodates following activites:
- Post: Just post anything in 140-character limit.
- Read: Read the messages posted by those who you follow.
- Reply: Reply to posts that interests you.
- Direct messages: Send a direct message to communicate privately with another twitter user.
The most important part of Twitter is to build your own network. First, search keywords of your interest. Browse through posts and find the ones that interest you. Follow those who posted them, and post your own news, too. Promote those who you follow. For more keyword searches, in addition to http://search.twitter.com, try Twellow.com and TwitDir.com to search for people.
Making people follow you is quite a different story. You have to contribute and promote those who you follow, and use your blogs and other materials that can promote yourself. As Sarah Evans notes, “Twitter is all about Karma. The more good you put out there, the more you receive.”
Chapter 3: Crowd-Powered Collaboration
In this chapter, Briggs discuss about new reporting methods that are being paid more focus in the U.S.: Crowdsourcing, open-source reporting and pro-am journalism.
Image by jmsmytaste via Flickr
Crowdsourcing
Also known as distributed reporting, crowdsourcing is sourcing of the large crowd of communities gathered within the internet, that often outperforms professionals. For example, Mechanical Turk by Amazon.com, Image Labeler by Google and innocentive.com by InnoCentive.
The most important advantage in crowdsourcing is the magnitude of the workforce and resources, as it allows access by any individuals to fix and tweak the information. However, crowdsourcing lacks in ability to allocate professionals to the resource; therefore, it is limited to work on simple tasks. Many people wants to broadcast their ideas and messages, but some of them may have inadequate, or simply wrong messages to broadcast.
Open-Source reporting
Open-source reporting refers to the transparent reporting method that is collaborative and open to the audience, from the development to distribution. The main achievement of this method is bringing readers and writers closer by hammering down barriers to conversation, with openness and collaboration in mind.
Unlike crowdsourcing, open-source reporting actively involves in collaborating the audience’s feedback in reporting process. The transparency it provides ensures the readers that the news service is not biased or run with certain motifs.
- Beatblogging: A traditional reporting beat coupled with social media network of stakeholders to amplify the discussion. This method allows the writer to listen to many different angles from loyal readers on a certain topic. It often involves blogs or free technology platforms.
As do-it-yourself (DIY) has become popular with home improvements and many other tasks, people also want to report their own news. Pro-am journalism is reporting made by amateurs — for example, CNN‘s iReport is one of the most successful televised pro-am news program.
Chapter 2: Advanced Blogging
Image via Wikipedia
Blog has become an essential tool for communication in my professions: school staffs, reporters, etc. People use blog to throw out their ideas in the pool of internet, and have their contents examined by the ever-growing crowd. A successful blog would be dominated by the audience, rather than by the writer. The writer would facilitate good posts and items to encourage the virtual-community to actively involve in discussion revolving the topic. Blogs not only provide a place for the virtual-community to discuss, it also powers “a growing wave of independent-journalism start-ups.)
Blog Basics
Do you want to blog? Go to www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Blog.
Blog consists off:
- It’s frequently updated in reversed-chronological order
- Each post consists of a headline and a body.
- It contains links for comments to let readers share their opinions on a certain topic.
Blogs can be published by anyone with ability to type and click, as easy as sending an email. After the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, blogs became predominant for people to share opinions about the attack and people became aware of their ability to let their voices heard throughout the globe.
Blogging involves a variety of online activity that were discussed in Ch. 1. The blogger should have streams of news available via RSS feeds in order to incorporate into the blog. Also, the blogger should explore other blogs to find out what is working for them and what is not.
There are several terms that the blogger should be aware of:
- Post: An entry on a blog, or to post content on the blog
- Permalink: A link provided in the content of the blog. It provides direct access to the related items or articles regarding a topic, or a word mentioned in each post.
- Trackback: A communication tool between blogs to help readers know who is linking each post
- Blogroll: A collection of links that show the readers what sites the blogger visits often.
- Vlog: Blog made with video.
- Moblog: Blog made with mobile device.
How to Start a Blog
- Name your blog (1 to 3 words)
- Provide a short description or a catchy phrase of what your blog is about
- Describe what you will write in your blog
- Choose a blog system (Blogger, WordPress, etc.)
- Name the URL of your blog
- Choose the theme of your blog to make it cool
- Customize your blog (Fonts, colors, templates, widgets, gadgets, CSS, etc.)
- Start posting blog posts!
How to Build an Audience
- Regularly publish high-quality posts
- Write effective headlines
- Participate in community
- Put the reader first — effectively communicate with the readers
- Organize your ideas
- Be direct — use short, declarative sentences
- Be the authority, with personality — narrow down your topic with distinctive voice and a conversational writing style
- Make your posts scanable — use typographical techniques to make each post stand out so that the readers can easily scan through your posts
- Link, summarize and analyze — attribute to the original writer as supposed.
- Be specific with headlines — don’t forget to be punchy, either.
- Have a good attitude — Don’t worry about traffic. Just write about what you’re interested in
- Use photos and screenshots to help explaining better
- Post early, post often
- Read, comment and link other blogs
Chapter 1: We’re All Web Workers Now
In the first chapter of “Journalism Next,” Mark Briggs, the author, guides through basic technological terms and jargons that are essential for journalists. Beginning with briefs on etiquettes, how it is important not to attach large digital files in emails, because large files can affect the transactions between email servers.
Briggs then explains basics of the internet: How web servers work, how a URL (uniform resource locator) can route to the correct IP address, and how web browsers interpret and display contents on the computer screen in conjunction with plug-ins and extensions.
When viewing a website, the computer processes the content in the following three steps to display on the screen:
- Web browser finds Web page on Web server
- Web browser retrieves Web page from Web server, makes a copy on local computer
- Web browser displays Web page on the local computer
RSS
Image via Wikipedia
RSS is the abbreviation of Really Simple Syndication, which helps efficiently delivering new information available on personally selected websites right on the user’s screen without repeatedly performing the same task of searching through the website. RSS plays a significant role in internet traffic, as 30 to 70 percent of traffic to news sites are directed by instant routing utilities, including RSS.
FTP
FTP, which is abbreviated form of File Transfer Protocol, is used to transfer large digital files that email cannot deliver. FTP is also used as the primary method for uploading and publishing a website. FTP generally consists of the following items: account name, host, login and password. Once logged in, files are sorted out in folders as if navigating a personal computer, and files can be downloaded by clicking on the name of the files.
HTML
Web pages can be created using HTML, a universal coding language. Although there are many tools available on the internet that enables users to create their own websites without knowing how to use HTML, such as Blogger, WordPress or Facebook, learning HTML will help when a Web page needs a troubleshooting or more in-depth editing.
HTML, however, is limited in its designing capability. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheet, fills this gap in HTML and helps Web designers to create websites that look prettier. CSS consists of rules and logics to declare the style of fonts and other elements.
Extensible Markup Language, abbreviated as XML, is commonly used in RSS feeds and uses tags to describe the content. Compared to HTML, XML provides simple set of contents for fast information transaction.
