Alison Gow
I edit the Daily Post in North Wales, ride motorbikes and ski. Not at the same time...
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Posts
- May 19, 13
- May 19, 13This comment on a HTFP story about the continuing Daily Post Right to Tweet campaign (of which, more here) made smile ruefullyMany of the commenters on articles about the campaign (and thanks, HTFP, for being so supportive) take the view we're wasting our time or that live tweeting is actively bringing about the End Of Newspapers.
I disagree with them (of course!) but it's not worth the time or energy to start a dialogue there - I'd rather explain to our readers why they should care.
But we should all care; it's not about press freedom, it's about personal freedom and resisting the default "no" issued way too often when the world evolves, and institutions struggle to keep pace with it.
And I have a problem with the complacent nay sayers (I'm looking at you, 'Kendo Nagasaki' and your ilk). And, although this has changed massively in the past two or three years, there are still some working in newsrooms and still acting as though industry change has been created with the sole intention of making their lives more difficult, chewing over that resentment like it's gum.
Still,the Green Ink Brigade of unknown letter writers is a part of the fabric of the newsroom. Most of them have shifted to email but there are still the treasured letters that arrive from Planets Unknown, like this (he writes to us at least once a week and appears to use a stencil):
I think if he/she ever stops writing to us, we'll be a bit worried.
And it's possible to take a lesson from the GIB. After all, if colleagues in your newsroom think you're showing GIB tendancies for wanting to do crazy things like, oh, run a story on the website before it's been in the newspaper, I'd suggest you don't let T H E B A S T A R D S get you down... - May 12, 13
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This is a new paper by Francois Nel (Director: Journalism Leaders Programme, UCLan) on Business model innovation and integration in the British local newspaper industry. Makes fascinating reading.
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15 Steps For Changing Newsroom Culture - 10,000 Words
Bullet point advice for making change happen is always useful. "It’s not about frivolous, pie-in-the sky ideas. It’s about rapidly testing new ideas to start building toward new standards. You are building the future through experiments. Experimentation is just as important as those mission-critical roadmap projects"
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- http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2013/04/the-begrudging-death-of-the-social-media-superstar/
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Is Your Social Media Editor Destroying Your News Organization Today? | The Awl
Of all the things calculated to irritate, the Social Media Gobshite is in my top 5. When something happens they feel the need to have ALL THE WORDS - but with zero self awareness and maximum fatuousness. See also http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2013/04/the-begrudging-death-of-the-social-media-superstar/ "Over the last few years, most media companies have taken on social media editors, lots of them young-ish, lots of them "digital natives." (Some neither, of course!) Many of their jobs are construed as helping newsrooms do social media best: working with writers, working with official social media accounts, those kind of things. Some of them are more like lone Internet addicts. At the more "straight news" outfits, most of them play it pretty straight. Some of them misplace their resources: for instance, there was a big vogue for media organizations moving onto Tumblr. And then everyone found out that, while it was nice to have a stand-alone Tumblr publication, that it literally didn't do a single thing for a news organization. Didn't bring traffic, didn't bring non-Tumblr attention: they operate in a black hole, essentially. If you like reblogs of your gifs, great! But this was a thing news orgs had been sold on. At lots of media organizations, decision-makers don't know where to start with social media. And lots don't know where their social media editors should stop and start in their work."
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Harriet Harman urges overhaul of media ownership rules | The Guardian
I don't know what to make of a minister who holds at least 4 jobs - MP, deputy leader, shadow deputy prime minister and shadow culture secretary - complaining about a newspaper owner having his finger in too many pies.
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Tweeting your way into prison | David Banks
Good points, and useful examples (including ones from my neck of the woods) from David Banks on the social media legal pitfalls "We are all publishers now, but mainstream publishers know the law, and even they get into trouble reasonably often. Setting up a Twitter or Facebook account is the work of moments and if memory serves does not entail a run-down of the legal pitfalls that await the unwary."
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- May 05, 13
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Educating the competition out of journalism | AndyDickinson.net
Andy Dickinson asks some searching questions of news organisations and J-schools. Got me thinking - and clarified some thoughts I had about the issue.
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5 qualities of innovative leaders in today’s media | Poynter.
What qualities distinguish successful leaders in media today? asks Poynter. And then Tom Rosentiel answers the question... "The strongest pull in the news industry, as in any disrupted business, can be to preserve the part of the business that, though shrinking, provides the biggest share of revenue. Innovators, such Clark Gilbert at Deseret Media, know this is a seductive mistake and focusing most of your energy on preserving what is shrinking is a strategy for slow death. The innovators I see behave differently. While they work to preserve the legacy, they focus more energy on the part of their business that is growing, even if it’s small. They work on how to create the space and the forgiveness in the company to do that."
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Police are in a quandary over the naming of suspects | David Banks | Media | guardian.co.uk
At what point did the police decide to stop naming (or confirming the names) of those charged with offences, asks David Banks. I'm with him - it's just another chip away at the ability to report what's happening. "With the recent upsurge of calls for offenders to remain anonymous until convicted, it is worth noting that if Stuart Hall had not been named when he was arrested, he might never have been brought to court. None of his victims knew one another. "And now one police force is refusing to name people who have been charged. There is a huge danger of secret justice replacing rights of the public, and indeed defendants, back to Magna Carta. It is time someone put a stop to this frightening trend.""
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- May 04, 13This is Conwy Castle. It's also the view across the river from my office. Nice, huh? It's a rare morning that I don't drive over the hill towards this and reflect on how lucky I am.So, the Daily Post is recruiting at the moment - we need a business journalist (of which, more here) and a Head of Audience Engagement (that job ad is here).Trinity Mirror's CEO Simon Fox said recently: "Without audience, we have nothing". And that's where the HoAE job mentioned above comes in.It is essentially a new role for the Daily Post; previously there was a social media and online communities editor role for North Wales and Cheshire, but the remit was just huge, and it didn't really encapsulate what the North Wales newsroom needed.So now we're looking for an audience champion, purely focusing on North Wales - a networked journalist dealing in engagement rather than platforms, and who personifies the Audience First approach.If you fancy coming to work with us in North Wales, you've got til next Friday to apply...
- May 03, 13Chartbeat is an amazing tool. Compelling even. Today, watching the real time traffic on our site, it was obvious people were consuming the 'live' news on the site more than anything else.
Visitors were following updated story of the 'locus in quo' jury visit to Machynlleth as the April Jones murder trial continued, the live coverage of the Anglesey elections, and the more general breaking news live blog.
This was how early afternoon traffic looked -
Later in the afternoon, when the court proceedings ended for the day, it looked like this...
Meanwhile, this was the Most Read widget
Local elections covered live, and covered well, are compelling content and give good dwell time on - more than 3 minutes each - per page in this case (Anglesey, by the way, bucked the turnout trend - a breakdown of the island's voting showed: Seiriol 56.1 Talybolion 48.7 Twrcelyn 53 Ynys Cybi 45.7).
Readers of the breaking news live blog typically went on to next read the Anglesey election live blog, and then visited several April Jones articles via the jury visit article).
Since it launched last October, our live coverage has gone down well with readers, but has had some parts of the industry (people who comment on industry websites, mostly) looking in askance.
The common theme of those unconvinced by the blog is to question where the merit - or the money - is.
Personally, I think that's obvious; it's what readers value and want.
We cover stories live, readers stay on our site for longer, are more likely to hop around the site more, and potentially use the social sharing - and that keeps advertisers interested. (Hint: Don't ask where the money is, ask where the audience is. We have to make sure the money-generators are in the same space...)
Last Spring, as I settled into the job and got down to meeting people, a common complaint was that the website wasn't updated enough - or at all on a Saturday.
Now, 12 months on, as I continue to meet people, if the conversation turns to 'what do you think of the Daily Post?'' nine times out of ten the live content will be highlighted, favorably, at some point.
I love the live element of our role, and how it has helped - and continues to help - us change the way we work to meet what the audience wants.
And, of course, with Chartbeat showing us there are 250-odd people whiling away their day following the real-time updates of a local council election, it means we can make better informed print decisions around our coverage- and promote that coverage accordingly to the online readers.
- Apr 21, 13
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The 5 Stages of Disruption Denial
Disruption is an apellation that's flung around a great deal. Music is a disrupted industry... media is a disrupted industry... But handles get in the way of actually stopping and understanding what that means. Newspapers are in a state of disruption - the dictionary defninition is To throw into confusion or disorder or To impede progress. Disruption is not a bad thing - confusion and disorder can be catalysts to change - but that second definition 'impeding progress' is happening way too much. Tied inextricably to fear of change, disruption within print media is one of the biggest impediments we face. This, from HBR, breaks down disruption into 5 stages, and applies them to something straightfoward - Twitter. (who would have called Twitter straightforward five years ago?!). I recognise all of these stages; the trick is to get past them " Too often however, our response is to ignore and forget change, to fake our way through it, to pretend an engagement and a mastery we do not have. And that's bad. That means we are not getting better at change, but steadily worse. We are denying disruption, instead of adapting to it."
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Mathew Ingram reflects the pros and cons of newsgathering a live event on social media. "there were plenty of fake news reports to go around on Monday, from reports of suspicious vehicles to the arrest of alleged perpetrators — just as there were during superstorm Sandy and the school shootings in Connecticut. But does that invalidate Twitter as a news source? And should the service try harder to filter out bad information and highlight verified news reports? I think the answer to both of these questions is the same: No."
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The newsonomics of recycling journalism | Newsonomics
Ken Doctor tackles the delicate subject of Content Marketing and asks why so few newspaper organisations are investigating whether it offers revenue opportunities for them. "As news companies rediscover the power of their own content, there is new revenue to be gained. How much, not whether to seek it, will be the major question."
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- Apr 15, 13
- Weirdly, I was talking to someone about scale, innovation and why markets need start ups and big companies, and then read this piece on Medium on the same theme... " in the gilded age of Instagram and Summly acqui-hires we have simultaneously demonized big companies and glamorized start-ups to the point where the innovation challenges and opportunities in both environments are wildly mis-represented. Start-ups are indeed the lifeblood of our innovation economy but we also need some of our best and brightest to take on the leadership challenge of innovation within larger companies"
- Yes, yes, yes. When will employers, training schools and the NCTJ recognise that fact? Answers on a postcard please... "Candidates should describe their success conceptualizing and building news apps, data visualizations, and interactive graphics. If you are a visual storyteller, someone who sees the narrative in numbers, and thinks in code, this is your opportunity to make a mark. Expect your journalism skills to be as important as your programming skills. This editorial position will ask you to tell stories differently and inspire others to do the same. The work will require advanced experience with HTML5, CSS, JavaScript (jQuery); an understanding of responsive design and proficiency with interaction design and user interfaces; familiarity with mining and manipulating data and Web scraping. Light Ruby or Python helpful. Basic requirements: College degree Minimum of 2 years programming experience Advanced command of HTML5, CSS, JavaScript (including jQuery) Light Ruby or Python for data mining, Web scraping Comfort with data analysis Understanding of responsive design Familiarity with Final Cut Pro and Adobe InDesign"
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- Apr 12, 13I try not to start posts off with "when I was a young reporter..." but, well, here goes:
When I was a young reporter the word 'spokesman/woman' didn't really appear in local papers.
It was part of my weeklies paper training that you included the names of whichever person was speaking on behalf of an organisation, rather than using the 'spokesman' title, and using that anonymous identifier was frowned upon.
Generally, it would get sent back by a sub with arequestorder to add the name.
Anyway, it struck me, this week, as I leafed through my paper, that doesn't seem to be the case any more, and I wanted to do something about it.
It wasn't a dig at press officers or media managers, it wasn't a point-proving exercise, it certainly wasn't a campaign.
But I think if someone is representing, especially from a public body, they should be named - after all, they are in TV or radio news broadcasts, when they stand up and do their thing.
I also think it's good journalism to name the people you quote.
But somewhere along the way we've stopped doing that with the people representing companies and organisations.
I know subs are in short supply these days but training isn't lacking - has 'spokesman' become the norm because there are just so many of them now?
So, in the words of Carrie Bradshaw, I got to wondering: When did we stop naming spokespeople in our articles? And why do we think readers don't need to know the name of the messenger?
And then I asked Twitter for some thoughts.
There were quite a lot of responses, from hacks, ex-hacks and people working in PR, so they're collected in the Storify below. If you've got some thoughts to add to the debate, for or against, I'd love to hear from you. - Apr 07, 13
- Friend and colleague Ed Walker has posted about his decision to get serious with Blog Preston's Facebook page. Although this is about his hyperlocal site, it's good advice for anyone who has a Facebook page for their brand or themselves, and gives detailed insights on how Ed grew his page's reach and engagement. Very useful.
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- Apr 04, 13UPDATED: This is a really old post (from 2010 in fact). I accidentally republished it today while going through the back end of my blog to find posts on local news reporting, to research something for a conference. Quite how I managed to plagerise myself I don't know. So, if this sounds like I'm repeating myself, I really am. Sorry.Read more »
Sir Ray Tindle was speaking at the Local Heroes conference last week and, from Twitter, I detected a lot of love in the air for what he was saying, but it was only when going through my rss reader today that I got the full gist of what he was saying.
His take on the future of newspapers is fairly optimistic; he doesn't believe the gloom, and he has some basis for making that bold claim: Tindle Newspapers - which totals 230 titles - has weathered the recession with its journalistic workforce intact.
But the line from his talk that really caught my eye was when he cited the Tenby Observer as an example of hyperlocal publishing. That was my first paper, and unless things are very different now, I would say the adulation should be a little tempered. - Apr 02, 13
- David Higgerson considers some of the (myriad) ways online comments cause difficulties, including giving those characters who prefer not to be held to account by journalists a way to avoid them.... "Unlike a residents association website, newspapers carry with them a reputation of providing news and information you can trust. They’ve traditionally provided a forum for discussion – the letters page – where the rules were simple: Keep it clean, keep it polite, and tell us who you are. Thanks to legal rulings around who is responsible for comments if a website pre-moderates them, the rules for commenting online are effectively non-existent: No obligation to keep it clean, no obligation to keep it polite, and, often, no presumption that real identities must be revealed."
- A robust (justified) dismantling of the 'we don't have the staff' defence.
- Nice bit of dogged determination to get a story out. The amount of times FOIs run into brick walls is very frustrating.
- Heather Champ talks about her time with Flickr in its early days, how the company instilled the Web 2.0 ethos in its employees, and what she thinks about the way things have changed. It's a short Q&A that reveals a lot about the company and online users. " I'm pretty horrified by the current state of life online when it comes to privacy, community, what we share, our photos, and how our images may be used now, or in the future. I would hope that companies would really take stock of the decisions that they're making and what the long term implications are."
- "“Strategy lives in delivery – not in meetings” – Leisa Reichelt" This is from Martin Belam's liveblog of Confab 2013. This point, by Leisa Reichelt, is one of the most strikingly memorable - and true - things I've come across for a while. For anyone who has ever said they want "a more strategic role" or to "become more involved with strategy making" this, more than anything, sums up what matters. Crafting strategy is a pretty straightforward thing compared to the implementation of it. Delivering strategy in the Real World is one of the most challenging, difficult things, a manager can face.
- I found Erin Caton's writings on Medium, and I think she's great. This piece, about how to be a good member of the web community, is spot on "It’s like technology has become a shield that bars emotion from our interactions, allowing a person to passively sit by while the unspeakable happens"
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- Apr 04, 13I had a bit of a think before adding to the Allyson Bird 'Why I Left News' discussion. If you haven't read it, the link will take you to a post that obviously comes from the heart about a decision that has caused her a lot of anguish and consideration.
However.
Days later, this paragraph is still sitting very badly with me:"I can’t imagine anyone outside of an affluent family pursuing a career with so little room for financial growth. And I wonder: Would that well-to-do reporter shake hands with the homeless person she interviews? Would she walk into a ghetto and knock on a door to speak with the mother of a shooting victim? Or would she just post some really profound tweets with fantastic hash tags?"
Right up until that paragraph it was a sympathetic and poignant post about leaving journalism. But it lost me here.
There are plenty of J-students out there, from both ends of the economic scale, slogging their way through school, creating university newspapers, producing multimedia work for their portfolios, and scrubbing up for work experience.
They know anyone who posted fantastic hashtags but came back without the story would have the career lifespan equivalent of a mayfly.
If you're in or contemplating journalism as a career you'll be aware the job market is dwindling and the pay and hours are far better in other trades.
People leave journalism all the time for all sorts of reasons. The pay, disillusionment, the shift towards multimedia, the backlash of said shift, the cutbacks... that's typical of the workforce in a disrupted industry.
People also left when journalism was a very good living indeed, with an expectation that expenses were works of fiction, lunches with contacts lasted all afternoon, and features meetings included a nice cab sav in the office library.
Over the weekend, some other assumptions were made about why someone left journalism. You should read the repercussions of that, here.
I've worked with graduate trainees from wealthy backgrounds who were just keen to get a byline and do a good job - I'm sure we all have.
I sent one to a hellhole estate where readers had found drug needles in the local playground to do the story. I expect it was her first experience of major scale poverty and deprivation as a way of life, but she pitched in to clean up while interviewing the mums and came back with a good story. She accrued even better contacts - they thought she was great.
But journalism - in the UK, anyway - isn't just attracting the Trust Funded (I don't think it ever did, to be honest).
It's not a pursuit of the middle classes; most of my first year as a full-time journalist was spent wearing my mum's skirts and blouses - and I didn't even have college debts to blame because I didn't go.
Neither did being broke make me a paragon of empathetic reporting. When I got sent to do my first 'flea infestation in council house' story - that hardy perennial of early summer newsdesk calls - I was horrified to find myself perched on a couch in a sitting room where the walls were covered in living black wallpaper.
I was quietly happy the occupier did not offer to shake my hand. I developed my photos, filed my story, it went in the paper and that was all my employer expected of me.
Go out, get the story, file it on time; rinse and repeat.
If you can do that, rich or poor, you'll be a good journalist.
- Apr 02, 13
- The Financial Brand loves its Google Alerts, and it is Not Happy that they are broken with no fix in sight. In this information packed post, it sets out why we should all be concerned about the latest Google glitch "Google has lost touch with its core business model: search. Searching the internet is what Google is was known for, it is was what Google (once) did better than everyone else. But Google has become distracted with “Shiny New Syndrome,” wasting tremendous amounts of time and energy (yours and ours) on ideas that fall way outside the search model."
- Capzles is a user-friendly, free timeline developer. You can enter text and multimedia, and create a flashy timeline in a variety of preset designs. www.capzles.com/ (Caveat - it's Flash-based. Not friendly for iThings)
- Andy Carvin's insights into how he builds an online network - really useful tips for any journalist.
- WaPo imposes a 20 pages a month limit metered paywall. As (just about every) other commenters have pointed out, this is surely more of a saggy picket fence than a paywall. "The Post has been the most prominent of the anti-paywall US papers, and the last without one, excepting USA Today (all eyes now are on The Guardian). Its resistance spurred unhelpful commentary like Mathew Ingram’s July 2012 “Why the Washington Post will never have a paywall” piece. “Never,” in this case, turned out to be eight months."
- "As PR becomes ascendant, private and government interests become more able to generate, filter, distort, and dominate the public debate, and to do so without the public knowing it. "What we are seeing now is the demise of journalism at the same time we have an increasing level of public relations and propaganda," Robert McChesney said. "We are entering a zone that has never been seen before in this country.""
- From the Guardian. Does what it says on the tin.
- The annual PEW report on American journalism is out - and it makes uncomfortable reading if you work in the industry.
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- Apr 02, 13I've been reading the latest Pew report on American Journalism 'The State of the News Media 2013' (overview here).
It's a piece of work that, for those of us in print or broadcast. won't inspire a great deal of joy.
But, among the standout points highlighted by Pew was something that's being increasingly discussed in my networks: The mainstream content vacuum and the rise of PR and Brand Specialist journalism.
This is what Pew says:"Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to. At the same time, newsmakers and others with information they want to put into the public arena have become more adept at using digital technology and social media to do so on their own, without any filter by the traditional media. They are also seeing more success in getting their message into the traditional media narrative."
Pew's survey says newspapers aren't carrying the news they want, and our former customers - readers, advertisers, companies and individuals wanting to promote their stories - are more adept than ever at getting their own message across (I pondered the growth industry of brand journalism in a post last year).
Pew also notes the 2008 research from Robert McChesney and John Nicholas examining how PR machines have accelerated to fill the spaces vacated by news-producing journalists.
McChesney and Nicholas wrote that in 2008, the year Nick Davies published his expose of churnalism and fact-failure in mainstream media and in particular the national press, Flat Earth News.
Since then, churnalism has slipped into popular definition as 'press releases, wire stories and other forms of pre-packaged material...used to create articles in newspapers and other news media' and it's logical to conclude the phenomenon is more rife as a result of the PR and specialist company writers who are filling the breach.
There's a website created by the Media Standards Trust to compare press releases against press articles, to show how much 'churn' has been applied.
I'm not sure that definition is exactly right, however. Also, many good journalists opt for a press office role. They push an agenda and you, as the news outlet recipient, know that. Come to that, the Sun's Trevor Kavannagh - an award-winning journalist - also pushes an agenda - that of his employer.
Mouseprice puts out handy quarterly updates using Land Registry Data - it's checkable, relevant data and it's useful for readers; if a national title runs that, with some additional content from, say, estate agents and basic cross-checking I guess you have to call it churnalism. Many readers would call it interesting.
PR firms always call media ahead of Budget day, offering 1st person opinion pieces from local experts. Every features desk in national and regional print press knows the national slimming club press offices proffer real life stories of mums who have shed 10 stone and discovered a new passion for kite surfing.
It's not lazy journalism; a journalist has done the work of putting together quite a lot of the information required - they just happen to work in a press office.
Bad journalism leads to churnalism and flat earth news. There are so many examples, but the one that sticks with me is Blue Monday aka the Most Miserable Day of the Year.
Unchecked and incorrect information, widely reported; the worst kind of pr nonsense until Dr Ben Goldacre questioned the data, and everyone in the media shuffled their feet awkwardly.
Journalists from the BBC down were a party to that and there is no way the BBC was short of resources - cash or journalists - in 2005 when Blue Monday first surfaced.
Maybe no one questioned it because the press release included an equation created by Cardiff University scientists attached to it and boffins, of course, are never wrong.
On the plus side, as a result of that incident any a press release with an equation is viewed in the same light as green ink letters. So, every cloud and all that...
Flat Earth News also says churnalism exists becauseNo reporter who spends nearly 95 per cent of the time crouched over a desk can possibly develop enough good leads or build enough good contacts
But that was published back in 2008 (using research from 2006), when social media as a mass communication and collaboration tool had yet to explode.
Five years on, Andy Carvin spends 95% of his time crouched over a desk - look, he says so right here with great detail - and he is considered one of the finest journalists of his generation, curating information, repackaging content, interrogating the data it contains, and publishing with confidence.
His network is online, his face-to-face chats are via Skype or Google+ Hangouts, he uses Twitter and Facebook to source information, make contacts, and then checks his sources.
No one is going to accuse Carvin of churnalism - he's a curator, a writer and (according to his bio a real-time information DJ; I'm assuming that last part is ironic...) although he has been called a 'one-man Twitter news bureau'. Not a bad epithet.
So many reporters are now having multiple conversations on Facebook threads with multiple contacts, all at the same time about potential stories. I guess it's the most open display of journalist conversation with sources - maybe most evident at a regional, local and hyperlocal independent level - that has ever existed.
Basic fact checking takes hardly any time on social media; the biggest danger is the rush to beat the competition.
Be right or be first? The answer's obvious and you can never get an audience's trust wholly back once it's gone.
Anyway, the whole idea of churnalism and the rise of PR, Brand Journalism, Spin or whatever is Relevant To Mah Interests as I'm attending the Polis Journalism Conference on April 5, where the theme is Trust.
I'm taking part in the 'Churnalism - How to Avoid It' panel session.
Keynote speaker is - who else? - Nick Davies, and for all those who sigh at the prospect of yet another hashtag for an expensive conference drops into their Twitter stream this one is completely free (registration is here).
Maybe I'll see you there?
- Apr 02, 13
- This Gawker article deals with the Nate Thayer/Atlantic fallout but also poses a number of questions that pertain more towards the 'free interns' debate. When does work experience become free labour, and how far should you go to prove yourself in your chosen profession before that profession thinks you're worth remunerating? "... it's then incumbent upon all of us to recognize that this is the culture we breed when we offer to pay writers nothing or next to nothing, thereby immediately eliminating anyone who needs a paycheck in order to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads. Some writers may be able to hustle double-duty for a while, filing short stories during the day while waiting tables at night until their big break hits. But the field will still be overpopulated by people who came into it with money and security behind them"
- A Branch discussion in which a number of writers debate the pros and cons of writing for free, the value of a piece of work, and how circumstances can influence whether they seek payment or not. Interesting range of views.
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- Apr 02, 13
- "If the industry has come to learn anything from the Great Recession, it’s that we produce a product, a product that needs to be marketed just as well as — if not better than — any other product. This year’s 10 Newspapers That Do It Right are all prime examples of how newspapers can flex their marketing muscle to take back their place in the community, produce the high-quality products that readers demand, and update their sales tactics to accommodate the needs of modern advertisers. "
- According to a study, uncivil comments can not only polarize readers views but lead to a change in how they intrepret the story... I think the expectation is that we all twitch our skirts in a panic over the findings - but it's not that much of a revelation to learn that our own views can be affected by the forcibly expressed views of others, is it? "In a study published online last month in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, we and three colleagues report on an experiment designed to measure what one might call “the nasty effect.” We asked 1,183 participants to carefully read a news post on a fictitious blog, explaining the potential risks and benefits of a new technology product... Then we had participants read comments on the post, supposedly from other readers, and respond to questions regarding the content of the article itself... "the results were both surprising and disturbing. "
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- Apr 03, 13The Daily Post's Right to Tweet campaign continues to roll forward (we even made Roy Greenslade's blog) but since we've launched it there have been a number of other instances of newspaper journalists and councillors falling foul of the 'can we/can't we' ad hoc approach.
Some of the recent examples can be found here (Hounslow) here (Oldham) here (Rotherham) and a number of Welsh councils, according to the director of the Electoral Reform Society,
Among the councils named by the ERS was Anglesey. However, good news on that front:COUNCILLORS on Anglesey are being encouraged to take to Twitter and Facebook to engage with communities – while the press and public will also be free to tweet from meetings.
You can read the full story here; the vote does have to be cast to set the plan in stone, but it's a really positive step forward and one that sets a standard for others. Da iawn, Ynys Mon. Hopefully we'll see others following in your footsteps soon.Anglesey council is drawing up a social media protocol for members which sets out how elected members should interact with people on social media but warns “inappropriate” use could end in a standards hearing.A draft report for the island authority also states it will permit the use of social media by the public and even allow for people to film proceedings on smartphones [my italics - purely because I'm so delighted to read such a sentence] as long as they do not disrupt the meeting. - Apr 02, 13
- From The Atlantic's piece on an article by Emily Bazelon' - a good glimpse inside the beast that is Facebook "Sullivan cycled through the complaints with striking speed, deciding with very little deliberation which posts and pictures came down, which stayed up, and what other action, if any, to take. I asked him whether he would ever spend, say, 10 minutes on a particularly vexing report, and Willner raised his eyebrows. "We optimize for half a second," he said. "Your average decision time is a second or two, so 30 seconds would be a really long time." (A Facebook spokesperson said later that the User Operations teams use a process optimized for accuracy, not speed.) That reminded me of Let's Start Drama. Six months after Carbonella sent his reports, the page was still up. I asked why. It hadn't been set up with the user's real name, so wasn't it clearly in violation of Facebook's rules? "
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- owboarding society was recorded in 2011 – months before Mr Swain was elected as student union president.
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- Useful round up of case examples detailing where, how and why some Twitter users have fallen foul of the law. From BBC Magazine
- Being reactive, rather than planning campaigns, is the way of the advertising future apparently. I watched the Superbowl live, and saw how Oreo turned a power cut into a masterstroke of social advertising - it's interesting that of all the huge advertising campaigns planned for the event, Oreo is the most memorable for me, and it was done with a simple photo. "The rigid campaign-based model of advertising, perfected over decades of one-way mass media, is headed for extinction. For messages to be heard in 2020, brands will need to create an enormous amount of useful, appealing, and timely content. To get there, brands will have to leave behind organizations and thinking built solely around the campaign model, and instead adopt the defining characteristics of the real-time, data-driven newsroom — a model that's prolific, agile and audience-centric. "
- This is an absolutely brilliant resource - lots of different sites and tools for journalists, which have also been helpfully rated. A real keeper.
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- Apr 02, 13
- A while ago, someone who shall remain nameless said to be, about a colleague, "he'll never change". It seems to me that is about the most insulting statement you can make about another person - and also the most inaccurate. People change all the time; the issue is more about how they feel about that change, whether it impacts well or poorly on their outlook, whether it's a temporary condition, and how they deal with it. And then there's the self-awareness aspect. Do you know how you react to change, and how open to change are you really? This isn't an analogue/digital consideration - it would be a massive change, for me, if a paywall went up on dailypost.co.uk. I don't like paywalls, I don't believe they work; how would I cope with that change? Anyway, John Paton, CEO of the Journal Register Company, deals with all these issues in an excellent piece on the Global Editors Network site. Worth a read. "Everyone says they are open to change, everyone says they are willing to make the necessary changes with the technology shifts. But there is a big difference in recognizing that you need to change and actually changing. There are these momentous debates going on in the news community claiming that the demand for new technological innovations are cheapening journalism, and user generated content and social media are cheapening the quality. I think those kind of discussions are based on a false premise, which is that everything used to be better. The question I would pose is “Are you truly adopting change and bringing your skills, passion and dedication to using these new tools to make journalism better?” If you are not, you better get out of the business."
- Nieman Journalism Lab considers the pros and cons would-be buyers of the Boston Globe face. A really interesting read. "Make no mistake: 2013, as your friendly newspaper realtors would tell you, is a great time to sell. The last 18 months have seen the greatest volume of deals in the last five years. And, why not: There’s a mildly up economy, all-access is bolstering revenue optimism, and heck, the Oracle himself, Warren Buffett, is buying newspapers by the dozen. The only problem for sellers is that prices haven’t moved much up."
- Elsewhere in my Diigo bookmarks is a poignant blog post by Mimi Johnson about her husband, Steve Buttry, quitting journalism and how relieved his decision made her. Of course, nothing is forever - even quitting journalism - Steve has returned and become probably one of the best-known people transforming the industry today. But this post by Abigail Rieley, a long-standing court reporter, is worth a read. It's hard to fall out of love with something you have known all your life - maybe she'll find a trial separation was all that was needed... "After almost twenty years I’m getting out of journalism. Years ago, when I was planning on following in my parents’ footsteps and becoming an actor, I eventually decided against it because I knew the pitfalls all too well. There was no idealistic cushion against the hard times I knew damn well would come. I’ve reached that stage with journalism. I’ve always been a news journalist but I’ve been letting my objectivity slip for a while now. I don’t think there’s any getting it back. I thought I’d be a hack till the day I died but not anymore. I find myself dreaming of a job outside the media, away from newsrooms, away from filing copy. I just don’t love it any more and that’s probably the point to say goodbye."
- Interesting question from Martin Belam, who ends his post with the view that he'd love the opportunity to research the WHY of this more deeply. Good point. "The big mystery for the publishing industry though is just why iOS users are so much more engaged and valuable to their businesses than Android users"
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- Apr 02, 13
- This is an interesting question from the Post and Courier, Charleston. Do you notify someone if you're going to use their tweet? Industry sites sometimes embed my tweets and I get a surprise when I see them - but I take the view that I've said it in public and so it's fair enough. But what about when it's friends posting tributes on a Facebook wall that happens to have a public profile? These get ripped off all the time. As to whether we should ask people if they post on a newspaper's Facebook wall if they mind being published, I think not, although the Daily Post does tend to say 'we'll publish a selection' when posting something soliciting feedback.
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- Apr 02, 13
- The Daily Post website is getting Facebook sign-in later this year for comments. So... this , from TechCrunch, was an interesting read: " The bullies and asshats left our comments sections, but so did everyone else. Now, several years later, after dozens of endless meetings and conference calls, we’ve decided we’re going to try out Livefyre instead of Facebook Comments. "Frankly, our trial with Facebook Comments lasted way too long at too steep of a cost. Sure, Facebook Comments drove extra traffic to the site, but the vast majority of our readers clearly do not feel the system is worthy of their interaction."
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- Apr 03, 13The issue of tweeting in the council chamber has caused some debate lately, and I'm happy to hold my hand up as someone who helped the discussions along.
I've also been ridiculously busy at work, and so there hasn't been much time to blog about local authorities and their varying views on anyone - press, public, councillor, officer - tweeting during the business end of proceedings.
To recap, the Daily Post* sent a reporter to cover a budget meeting at Wrexham Council and it became apparent that a Twitter rule - in place for more than a year but unenforced, in our experience - would prevent real time reporting, and thus impact on our rolling news liveblog.
The standing orders dictated:"Proceedings at meetings may not be photographed, videoed, sound recorded or transmitted in any way outside the meeting without prior permission of the chair".
I've covered council meetings since I was a trainee reporter. I have watched (genuine list alert) snoozing councillors reflex-vote, tantrums worthy of two-year-olds, recommendations voted through because the reporter sat next to me called out "move progress!" and a mayor utter the warning: "Allegations have been made about me, and if I find out who those alligators are..."
I've watched councillors make the most moving, impassioned pleas on behalf of their electorate, block economically-sound but culturally-wrong recommendations, make principled stands against cutbacks or planning outrages, and conduct cut-and-thrust debates that made a democratic difference.
None of the above - good or bad - needs to be reported retrospectively. Google 'council chamber live stream' and see all the authorities who let the electorate watch the democratic process as it happens
Wifi, Ustream and a will to make it happen - that's all our councils need to make a significant contribution to the transparent, open government.
Being more open means more scrutiny, and potentially more criticism, but it also means more feedback, interaction and opportunity to talk to people.
I don't know why some councils embrace opportunities for transparency and others shy away from it. The subsequent fallout is never edifying - at best, it means the kind of nonsense the Daily Post is trying to negotiate a path through, at worst, well, all sense of perspective is lost.
Anyway, there was quite a lot of coverage, not least in the Post, and we've got a Right to Tweet campaign running now that is calling for consistency across public bodies, rather than ad hoc interpretation of constitution rules...
The Twitter ban incident (hashtagged as #twitterban but never to be referred to as #Twittergate) was covered in various media; among the articles were these here and here and here.
We even made the chief executive's weekly email to staff (instantly leaked to the Press, of course):[Twitter policy] can of course change in time as the Council further embraces technology, it doesn’t however, change as a knee jerk reaction to an editor who it appears only communicates with her readers via “twitter”.
The annoying part of that comms is, of course, the "twitter" bit. It's a PROPER NOUN, for heaven's sake, and don't get me started on the quote marks...
Ways to wind up in Rotten Boroughs, No.348
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I don't seek out Twitter spats but I do feel strongly that if reporters and the public can use mobile devices to transmit information from court, there is no reason why they should seem permission to do so from public meetings.
Guidelines can be useful (maybe 'switch off your phone's volume' or 'ensure your behaviour doesn't distract others') but if the Attorney General doesn't think the decision rests with his judges, then why should it rest with committee chairmen?
So, it's an issue we aren't letting subside - there's a Daily Post campaign underway now as a result of us being refused tweeting rights during one council meeting - and the problem is spreading.
Louth Leader reporter Sam Kinnaird was thwarted in a bit to amend Louth town council's standing orders to allow live tweeting, this week and tweeted that fact.
Two councillors backed it out of the whole full council; I see from the report the Mayor took the view that journalists should 'have the courtesy to do it from the foyer'.
Quite how the dignity of the chamber is offended by someone quietly sending texts from a mobile phone escapes me.
In other Lincolnshire news, Boston Borough Council has also banned tweeting of its full council meeting today.
The Boston Standard report saysThe borough authority currently only permits people to use Twitter during cabinet meetings and says its constitution will have to be changed to allow the social media site to be used to provide live updates from other meeetings.
Constitution, You'll find it in the dictionary under S for Smokescreen.
Twitter is viewed as an appropriate communications tool by the House of Commons - possibly not a bastion of courtesy but certainly the seat of democracy, and tweetin' since 2011 - and at the Senedd.
Welsh Secretary Dvaid Jones believes in it, Obama couldn't wait to tell the world he's secured four more years...
I just wish our locally elected representatives would try to catch up.
* Yes it's a personal blog, but work inevitably bleeds into it sometimes. Like it says here, these ramblings are not the opinions of Trinity Mirror. - Apr 02, 13
- "What do we know about Google+? Google launched it in June 2011, amid much fanfare; the problem was that it looked very like a social network - in which you'd put people into Circles to indicate their intersection with your interest. So you could have a "family and friends" Circle, and perhaps a "Work" Circle, and a "Hobby" circle. "
- "A judge has found that two news organizations improperly used images that a photojournalist had posted to Twitter in one of the first big tests of intellectual property law involving social media."
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Info
- Summary
Editor particularly interested in in developing digital strategies to engage audiences and promote compelling journalism, data curation/presentation, and innovative, interactive story-telling.
Specialties: Journalism, digital journalism, blogging, engagement, social media, communication,.Experience- Jan 2011 - PresentEditor, Daily Post, www.dailypost.co.uk / Trinity Mirror Group PLC
Editor of the Daily Post newspaper and www.dailypost.co.uk covering North Wales, part of the Trinity Mirror North West and Wales division
- Feb 2011 - Mar 2012Editor, WalesOnline.co.uk and Wales on Sunday / Media Wales
- Feb 2009 - Jan 2011Executive Editor, digital, Trinity Mirror Merseyside / Liverpool Daily Post & Echo
Executive Editor, digital, for Liverpool Echo, Liverpool Daily Post and Merseyside weekly titles
- Jun 2007 - Feb 2009Deputy Editor / Liverpool Daily Post
- 2004 - 2007news editor / Liverpool Echo
- 2002 - 2004news editor / South Wales Argus
- 2001 - 2002acting news editor / Portsmouth News
Education-
2011 - 2012University of Central LancashireMaster's degree in Journalism Leadership
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2007 - 2008University of Central LancashirePost graduate qualification in TM Journalism Leaders Course (post-grad)
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Interests:journalism, social media networks, skiing, motorcycling
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Posts
Rumor has it that online presence is everything. The image of who you are on the Internet is who people assume you are in real life, and you get to own and craft that image yourself. But, what happens if you surrender that image to someone (or something) else, and how you’re represented is at…
Ceiling ship
The Norwegian church at Cardiff Bay has a beautiful model ship sailing in its rafters.- Let there be video...
Cross-posted from Vimeo CASSINI MISSION cabbas http://bit.ly/lnGGH6
via ifttt - Groupon buys Whrrl... Whrrl closesVoucher giant Groupon has bought Pelago, the company behind geo social mobile app Whrrl, with the ensuing result that Whrrl is shutting “for now”.Or, as they put it:
“The opportunity to take the collective brain power and technology of our two companies and point them at a phenomenon already at huge scale is virtually impossible to refuse.
“What does this mean for Whrrl? We’ve made the decision to close the curtain on Whrrl for now. Think of it as the end of the first act of a long and complex play. You would be right to expect that the ideas underpinning Whrrl and many of the inventions contained within may reemerge under the Groupon banner.”
Gas explosion in Cardiff
Explosion at an industrial site off Rover Way in Cardiff. Locals said a gas pipe blew up about 8.30am, but it was still blazing away when I drove round there. Lots of smoke - and lots of people watching it burn.
- More ripples in the Twitter API clampdownInteresting email from 140kit team, not least because I didn’t realise TwapperKeeper - where you can archive your own and, export and download tweets - was affected.
However, there are still good people out there; 140kit has come up with a workaround that satisfies new Twitter guidelines, and helps non-coders access once-freely available data:“…we plan on re-structuring this system to a point where it is trivial to download a scratch copy of our service, test one’s own analytics locally, then send the analytical process to the site for vetting, which would be a simple process. If the language you work with isn’t included in our system yet, we’ll add it. If you don’t know how to code, tell us the general algorithm and we’ll code it if we have the time and resources.”
The email below explains it in more detail but I was particularly struck by the last few pars on why 140kit was established:“[we] realized that if we generalized the process of data collection and analysis, we could open the door to doing very meaningful comparative analysis of datasets, which in turn could help us actually figure out A. If Twitter matters, B. If it does, what its impacts are, and C. What this implies for the internet and social networks as a whole. We have never been in this for money - we have never looked for funding, this has never been our job, and our systems were given to us by the Web Ecology Project and are hosted at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. We have one machine we pay for, which in May will be coming out of our own pockets (the machine was purchased for a year as part of a class Ian and I slapped together at Bennington College). We are solely interested in the data and its implications, and this is a labor of love. We are more than happy to continue on this project”
Cool people.
————— Forwarded message —————
From: 140Kit Team
Date: Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 12:29 AM
Subject: 140kit: Regarding Twitter’s API ChangeHello,
You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for our service, 140kit, sometime in the last 8 months. We are writing you to inform you about the current state of data exports, as well as our solution to the problem currently being presented.
A few weeks ago, Twitter caused some news by publicly stating that no more whitelisted IPs would be granted for any purposes - this essentially ends any REST based data collection for new researchers (doing collections of tweets based on User names, for instance, requires this access). Within a few days, they also sent a letter to TwapperKeeper, another major data collector, which compelled their leadership to turn off all export services as of March 20th. The same has basically happened for all other collectors, including ours. In short, the time where a researcher could export a full, unfiltered, unadulterated dataset, is completely over.
The particular section of the TOS that is violated by export clearly states (Section I.4.a., at http://bit.ly/9LD7XQ):
I. Access to Twitter Content
4. You will not attempt or encourage others to:
a. sell, rent, lease, sublicense, redistribute, or syndicate the Twitter API or Twitter Content to any third party for such party to develop additional products or services without prior written approval from Twitter;
Where Twitter Content is defined as: All use of the Twitter API and content, documentation, code, and related materials made available to you on or through Twitter
Meaning that 140kit, as a service, cannot provide the datasets wholesale, where they use products/services basically to mean anything, even academic reports. For many of our users, this effectively shuts them out of the ability to research the platform. If one doesn’t know how to code, its very difficult to do this alone - this problem is compounded when you don’t have the access levels needed to research a given subject. We at 140kit have more than enough access, however, and still retain the right to keep our data, so we came up with a novel solution, which Twitter has agreed to.
On our site, we have a library of analytical process, which in turn have their own online viewers, and a few of which contain their own exports. All of our services, from CSV export to gender analysis, runs via a modular library of analytics which have their own administrative structure. We built this system with a view that someday, we would open up our system for researchers to build out their own analytics, add them to our site, and all researchers would have access to these processes as well. We wrote our project in Ruby, but want to make this plugin system work with any language, which should actually be quite easy.
Over the next few months, then, we plan on re-structuring this system to a point where it is trivial to download a scratch copy of our service, test one’s own analytics locally, then send the analytical process to the site for vetting, which would be a simple process. If the language you work with isn’t included in our system yet, we’ll add it. If you don’t know how to code, tell us the general algorithm and we’ll code it if we have the time and resources.
In this way, as the library increases, we will be able to answer more of the most core questions researchers are interested in, and at a certain threshold, all the important questions will have their analysis on the site already. Since we can keep our data, we would be able to re-calculate analysis on any previous dataset. In short, we can’t give you the exports of data, but we can answer any question you want answered. It’s not the best solution, but it will save many projects from the grief of doing this alone.
This project was started in October 2009, between two people, myself (Devin Gaffney)and Ian Pearce. We were profoundly interested in analysis I was doing about the Iran Election, and realized that if we generalized the process of data collection and analysis, we could open the door to doing very meaningful comparative analysis of datasets, which in turn could help us actually figure out A. If Twitter matters, B. If it does, what its impacts are, and C. What this implies for the internet and social networks as a whole. We have never been in this for money - we have never looked for funding, this has never been our job, and our systems were given to us by the Web Ecology Project and are hosted at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. We have one machine we pay for, which in May will be coming out of our own pockets (the machine was purchased for a year as part of a class Ian and I slapped together at Bennington College). We are solely interested in the data and its implications, and this is a labor of love. We are more than happy to continue on this project, and are glad you have used our service. Our hope is to be more on the ball with tickets, issues, and other problems as we go through this re-structuring, and come out of this making analysis even easier for people. Thank you for reading this admittedly long e-mail - A more full description of the current situation is located on our front page currently, if you need any more details. For any other questions, feel free to personally reach out to us or contact us via this email account.
Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/ddarvF
Thanks much,
Devin Gaffney and Ian Pearce
- Let there be video... (plus an update on testing ifttt)
Cross-posted from Vimeo How to do Time-Lapse Photography Scott Bourne http://bit.ly/gNEl0j
via ifttt* Update: This was a test post - I’ve just got an ifttt invite and this was the first thing I activated (when testing new apps, I leave the social media I used most til last, in case the app turns out to be spammy or causes problems - I don’t use my Vimeo site much).So, iftt is pretty cool I think. The premise is: If this, then that - as in, if I like a video on Vimeo, ifttt autoposts it to my Posterous along with whatever information I chose to carry across (in this case, the title of the film, the author, and a link to it). Unfortunately it also stops Posterous x-posting that link to wherever I might have preset Posterous to post to (what a tongue-twister!) which I hope to find away around once I understand the app a little better.I also hooked Flickr to Facebook (as in, if I upload a photo to Flickr, iftt posts it to Facebook - although I could have chosen any multiples of Flickr happenings to trigger a reaction on another site) to show the title, short url link and a description in my Facebook status, and now I have 18 other tasks I can set ifttt to, as and when I want toSo, initial thoughts on iftt are that not only is it a decent app, it’s a genuinely useful one. If you want to try it, be warned, it’s in beta and you have to register for an invite - mine took a couple of days to come through. I’ve also got two invites - let me know via Twitter and I’ll distribute on a first come, first served basis. - Links for 19/12/10 (bookmarking in a post-Delicious world)My world shifted on its axis last week with the news Delicious was closing. That state of affairs has now moved to to Delicious is not closing, it’s simply breaking up with Yahoo, and has won custody of the dog, or something,Whatever. The upshot is that my trust in Delicious as the guardian of my social bookmarks has been irrevocably damaged and I’m not getting into that kind of exclusive relationship again. Yup, I’m going to be a social bookmark butterfly. I will still use Delicious, but its not my sole site.First step, I exported my Delicious bookmarks using the export option on the site, and once I had them safely stored on my desktop I uploaded them to Diigo. I’m already a member of mento.info but that’s a bit flaky and the panicked stamped of homeless Delicious bookmarks from the entire world has shut down Mento - possibly forever, I really don’t know.So I’m now bookmarking here but I’m also experimenting with a weekly round-up of the links that interest me most to my Posterous, which cross-posts to my blog and posts the links on Twitter. I also use Xmarks for bookmarking and synching across sites, but that’s had its own ‘closing/not closing’ issues of late, and also doesn’t fit the bill as a straight swap. My other sites are Publish2 and Cliquset but I have to remember to use them - Delicious was always the first click I made. Now that’s over I guess I’ll be using these sites more too.Links for 19/12/10The Journalist of the Future… “Here are 7 journalist archetypes (and an eighth that I can’t quite square) to better capture the journalist of tomorrow. This isn’t a scientific exercise. The archetypes are based on personal observation and on looking at some of the thousands of journalist profiles…”Related articles
Digital post-pubescence for traditional media:“I wish this whole web thing happened a long time ago so that we’d be recovered from the damage it did” (I remember saying to a colleague that the changes in the newspaper industry were fascinating and would make excellent research papers in years to come; it’s just hard to live and work through it. So this comment struck a chord with me. But I’m still not buying that the iPad is the answer to all our problems.)
Lifestreaming visualised: Lifestreaming visualisedLovely infographic website built by Ben Sekulowicz-Barclay to visualise his social media activity over a year. Interesting idea - Ethics statement contained in online bio of Walt Mossberg, co-executive editor of All Things Digital: “…I am not an objective news reporter, and am not responsible for business coverage of technology companies. I am a subjective opinion columnist, a reviewer of consumer technology products and a commentator on technology issues…”- How to Backup/ Export Delicious Bookmarks (nirmaltv.com)
- 6 alternatives to Delicious (onsoftware.en.softonic.com)
- “Delicious to Google Bookmarks: Redux” and related posts (persistent.info)
- Deliciously Disastrous: Diigo Has 30 Million Delicious Bookmark Imports (techie-buzz.com)
Zemanta helped me add links & pictures to this email. It can do it for you too. - The future is ours – 2020 Vision What will the media look like in 2020? An opportunity for senior editors to outline their vision for the media in the future.The future is ours – 2020 Vision What will the media look like in 2020? An opportunity for senior editors to outline their vision for the media in the future. Chaired by: Alastair Stewart, Presenter, ITV News
John Mullin, Editor, Independent on Sunday
Maria McGeoghan, Editor, Manchester Evening News
Douglas McCabe, Press and Online Analyst, Enders Analysis
Jodie Ginsberg, Bureau Chief UK and Ireland, Reuters Alastair Stewart… Appetite for information is healthy as ever but people are finding different sources free to them but costly to us. Douglas McCabe…
Diversity - whether platform, audience or commercial opportunities Internet growth has not peaked, television consumption goner but newspapers circulation dropping at accelerated rate from 2003.
Deloittes survey - people who love newspapers have increased that love in the past two years
Ofcom survey - 2% would save print over all their media products. He also referenced the lack of newsagents and said that would only continue. (This seems to be a recurring theme from people talking; maybe everyone should consider running “save your newsagents” campaigns!) “there isn’t a single media company not going through this - every medium is but news is going through more rapid change.
Times - quality audience pitch
Mail - quantity audience pitch Jodie Ginsberg…
Publishing is not about the number of stories we publish it is about how we engage people - that js through fast relevant actionable and engaging content. Chatroom/comment deb age between audience and journalist is important - combining facts, data, analysis and comment in an intelligent way. Maria McGeoghan…
Ugc… We have to be aware of the power of ugc. Community editors, media teams in schools, proms - we put a panel in print and online and got 800 pictures.
Data journalism is very important and will be doing more in the future. Figures that you can use.
We need to ask audiences more about what they want. We have asked all our weekly titles to vote for their own mastheads. People lover court lists but also want the divorce lists back so we are looking into that. [That raises the question of public interest or interested public. I can hear the irate calls to news desk now…]
Partnering with local journalism college to give students a break into print is the next plan. John Mullin…
Confidence has taken a dip over the last ten years. We have seen tighter budgets tougher management falling revenues and circulations
But we are producing much better products. We should remember that We allowed ourselves to be intimidated and let younger tech savvy cohorts set the agenda; because the consumer is king or queen, the role of an editor was diminished, we believed.
That has started to change now. Journalists as we would recogniser them are much more to the fore than previously and are taking charge.
I don’t know the future but without confidence in our abilities we will not get there. Dominic Ponsford of Press Gazette asked if the Enders prediction about 2014 newspaper closures was still fair. D Mc… “No, it is pessimistic, it is always a risk when you talk about number of closures. The structural changes in newspaper industry were underrated. Business will do everything possible to survive.” Alistair Stewart ” the people who will be around in 2020 are not in this room today - they are the small start ups.” He also raised the issue that no one was really taking about convergence of media businesses. Richard Tait, head of Cardiff School of Journalism What they bring with them is of great value because they can use the skills they have learned and the skills of the editorial envelope around them to develop themselves and stories in new ways. We need more focus on how the technologies will transform journalism. John Mean, editor Hull Daily Mail, asked what could be done to halt Enders decline graphs
DMc … “The advantage regionals have id the vast majority of the news you cove is unique to you. Flood the market in any way that you can to meet the demand.”
MM… “There are interesting things happening all over the country. The audience issue is very interesting but getting money out of that audience is where we have to look.”
Sent from my iPad - Notes from Winning Online and In Print session at Society of Editors conference 2010: Presentation and Q&A with Martin Clarke, Publisher, MailOnlineNotes from Winning Online and In Print session at Society of Editors conference 2010 Presentation and Q&A with Martin Clarke, Publisher, MailOnline MailOnline 10% of traffic via Facebook; it is second biggest referrer to the site after Google. Re sending links via Facebook: “The costs of serving page to someone who doesn’t come back is marginal but if she gets six links in a week she will probably become one of our online readers. I don’t know why the web go for monthly users - it means nothing compared to daily users. We are reaching millions more than we used to and reading content from a paper they don’t normally buy is not going go make them less likely to buy it.
“Many are male readers the mail would not have reached without a free website. Newspapers with the healthiest websites have the healthiest circulation in print according to Jim Chisholm’s research.” He quoted stats from Comscore regarding visits, time on site, pages per person, sessions per person in the Daily Mail v the Times for September - showed massively greater response from Mail users who access the site for free. “Mobile will be a revolution that dwarfs what has happened on the web. But before we get carried away with the iPad we should remember html5 brings all the glossiness of app. There is a good chance that in a few years time the apps we love will have become redundant, but they may have helped people understand that while the tethered wry on their desk is free the mobile wry on their tablets is not.”
On the future of print “There will still be a DM pin print when I collect my pension. I am 46.”
“Papers have permanence and prestige” - eg. The Daily Beast merging with Newsweek. “We won’t win any design awards bug we designed the site around the content. We get 12,000 or more comments a day.” Web traffic includes a regular visitor from Nth KOrea. Is KIm Jong Il a LAdy GaGa fan? Comments moderation: “we have a hybrid system wife as many as where are comfortable with are unmoderated. Other stories that are contentious we moderate from the get-go.”8 Wouldn’t discuss the Baskers question.
If you try to integrate journalists too much you end up with a crap website and a crap newspaper. Better to have people getting out of bed thinking ‘how do I do the best for the web/newspaper’. What works for us won’t work for everyone. What you can’t do is ignore it. Find a way to make it work because it won’t go away. Should newspapers link to competitors websites on stories? “we link out on some stories and we will do more in future I think as the web matures. If you don’t link they will find it themselves anyway. Sent from my iPad - Some notes from Society of Editors conference What is our Audience sessionWhat is our audience - Chaired by: Steve Hewlett, Presenter, The Media Show, BBC Radio 4
Jim Chisholm, Media consultant and analyst
Mike Ironside, Chief Executive, National Readership Survey
Stewart Purvis, Professor of Television Journalism, City University London Jim Chisholm’s claims:
People spend 30 mins reading a paper and 3.8 minutes reading online news sites e every day; This is why Murdoch’s paywall will fail.
Sites that cater for female audiences perform better than those that do not.
Times lost six percent of circulation share when the Tories were in power. Guardian achieved gains under Thatcher
Understanding audience behaviour is key to success. “The key lesson is loyalty and frequency our customers do not come to us often enough.
People are reading less and we are getting four pages per user per visit and that is not enough.
Are people who pay more valuable? Regarding the Times pay wall he says it will fail - “there are ten papers competing for an audience and people will get information free elsewhere.” He stated there was no statistical evidence that the Internet has damaged circulation more than any other element although subsequent links tweeted contradicted this.
(But I would say it is accepted industry fact that things such as rain, holidays, bad sport results etc all get blame for loss of sales. Internet is just another factor.) Ereader could have a big impact on readership. People read paper online five mins but on iPad twenty five minutes. US paper (which he would not name) found if it sells subscription onto ereader conversion level and agreement levels are higher. People with ipads more likely to respond positively to a call from Circulation dept suggesting they try print subscription.
Mike Ironside National readership survey is used mainly by commercial divisions, not by editorial. Paying for one off research is not the answer. Readership survey more useful he says. “ABCs, 15-24 and young people are reading more, the quality sector take-up is good, but they are not regular readers - they buy print when they want. We know upmarket readership is more disloyal. “Advertisers want to carry their craft skill into internet but that is not available right now. Most of Internet income is search. That needs to improve. “Why do newspapers have racing pages - four pages no one read?”. (He should have answered the calls when the Liverpool Echo dropped it’s print racing card - lots of upset punters).
Re. Female readership online- Readership profiles have equal split - Daily Mail has female bias but one element is not the solution. iPad subscription/app take-up: “These people are early adopters justifying the cost of their iPad purchase. Now is easy - it will get harder as products become more widely used.”
“People consume media in generalities - they don’t know what channel they are watching, or what site they are on; it’s just tv and the web.” Stewart Purvis
“Of 16 hours a day we are awake, seven hours are spent digitally but they are also media multitasking. “YouView is an example of media stacking - most converged content yet available. Non traditional channels will be accessed - search, apps, tv, iptv etc. Local tv debate… People want to make it but without the regulatory aspects of normal tv - YouView will allow that to happen.” Bundling - half of people now bundle, compared to quarter five years ago. Content v convenience - if you don’t have premiership football you are stating from behind. Is the choice between having your local paper or not? That would be a buyer decision.
He cited an (unnamed) Long Island media company offering cable and paper but said it did not seem to have worked.
Local media ownership rules - “never met a local paper owner who want a radio station and Vice versa. No harm in relaxing rules was the general feeling. People have not sought to be cross media locally.” Sent from my iPad Listening to Bowie tribute at Derby Square stage. Nice to have sunshine for Mathew St Festival #matst
- Refining social network use: a links round-upThere have been three different insights todayinto how people are refining the way they use their online social networks. Admittedly, two are connected but I still think it’s interesting when you start to see the first pebbles begin to tumble. Whether it’s a proper avalanche or merely a small shift in the ground I don’t know yet but I’ll be watching to see how it develops. 1: From Leo Laporte’s blog: Moving from Buzz and Twitter back to blogging “I ignored my blog and ran off with the sexy, shiny microblogs. Well no more. I’m sorry for having neglected you Leoville. From now on when I post a picture of a particularly delicious sandwich I’m posting it here”.2. From Paul Carr on TechCrunch: Closing down netowrks, locking down Twitter - “A million blogs withered and died as their authors stopped taking the time to process their thoughts and switched instead to simply copying and pasting them into the world, 140 meaningless characters at a time. The result: a whole lot of sound and mundanity, signifying nothing”.3. On Mark Krynsky’s Lifestreaming blog: Is Likestream starting to takeover from Lifestream? “Over the last few months I had shifted my thoughts from the methods we aggregate and display our personal lifestream data to better ways to consume the data we are all putting out there..we’ve started to see a huge surge in tools and services that allow us to share objects we like socially and we’re seeing large numbers of users adopting them”.I’ve also noticed a lot more locked Twitter accounts among users I follow (or from people who have started following me) and, of course, the hoo-ha over Facebook Places rages on. Is there a growing backlash against Too Much Information? If so, I suspect it’s all a little late for that.
- Journalists and customers service: News Rewired conferenceI’m at the News Rewired (#newsrw) conference organised by journalism.co.uk today. It’s only the second session of the morning but there seems to be a real underlying theme for me: you can have all the tools and great content in the world but if you don’t look after your customers you may as well give up now. MSN’s Peter Bale revealed in his opening keynote that the portal site now has an editorial code of conduct that can be viewed by users, and this tone was continued in the mobile session I sat attended.
Both Michael Targett, of Flightglobal, and Miriam Warren, of Yelp, made constant reference to the need to listen to feedback from audiences and to react positively to criticism and learn from it. The session I’m in now is building online buzz and Tony Curzon Price of OpenData is saying journalists are not very good at blogging because they aren’t used to the interaction with audiences.
I think that’s a sweeping generalisation but the theme continues… Sent from my iPod - Publishing addresses of police officer defendents - a little help from the High Court
When a police officer is in the dock, you can practically bet your house on an attempt by their brief to get the accused’s name/address/case details concealed. So anyone who has fumed from the press bench and attempted to catch the clerk’s eye to lodge a protest as lawyers representing serving police officers try to stop public information being reported, will probably rejoice at this precedent-setting decision made by the High Court.
Media Lawyer reports on the case of two senior police officers, who were facing trial on criminal charges, and made a failed attempt to overturn a decision by magistrates that their addresses should be given in open court and published.
Surrey Police Chief Superintendent Adrian Harper, Divisional Commander for East Surrey, and Superintendent Jonathan Johncox, of the West Surrey division, sought an order under section 11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 for their home addresses to be withheld from the public, and for the media to be banned from reporting them, when they appeared before magistrates at Aldershot in August last year on charges connected of misconduct charges relating to alleged speeding offences.
The magistrates refused to make the order, and the men’s addresses were read out in open court. But on the evening of the hearing the two officers obtained a temporary injunction from Mr Justice Jack banning publication of their addresses. They also applied for Judicial Review of the magistrates’ decision, and an order continuing the ban imposed by Mr Justice Jack.
But the Administrative Court rejected their application, saying that they had failed to show any justification for interfering with the principle of open justice.
Lord Justice Pill said: “There is, in my judgment, a burden on the claimants to establish not only that the derogation they seek is in the circumstances a very limited one but also that there is a justification in the particular case for interfering at all with the principle of open justice.
“In my judgment, they have failed to do so … If there is a risk, it would not in the circumstances be enhanced by publication of addresses. On the information the claimants give, any approach to them is likely to be a targeted one which would not be deterred by the need to discover a home address.
“While the charges against the claimants are serious they are unlikely to provoke that response by vigilantes which occasionally occurs in some categories of offence, for example, charges involving abuse of young children.
“Moreover, it is inconceivable that these or other police officers would be deterred from performing their duties if it is known that their addresses would be disclosed in circumstances such as the present. I would accept that the proper performance of police duties is, for present purposes, an integral part of the administration of justice but I can see no adverse impact in this case.”
Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights was not engaged, he said.
Neither was there any procedural defect in the way in which the magistrates had dealt with the application - the issues were clear, and detailed reasons for their decision were not required, Lord Justice Pill said, adding: “On analysis, I would have found it very surprising if they had reached a different decision.”
Mrs Justice Rafferty agreed. The application for judicial review was refused and the order made by Mr Justice Jack discharged.
* Honourable mention in despatches to Guy Vassall-Adams, of PA, who argued at the hearing that it was for those seeking to defeat or limit the open justice principle to prove the necessity of doing so, and ‘a person’s address was an integral part of his identity’.
R (Harper) and R (Johncox) v Aldershot Magistrates Court, with the Press Association, Surrey and Berkshire Media, and the CPS, Hampshire, as interested parties.
Full details from Media Lawyer are here
