A triumph for journalism? MPs’ expenses debate at the Frontline Club 7.30pm GMT

If you can’t make it in person, follow the MPs’ expenses debate at London’s Frontline Club at 7.30pm GMT here (Monday June 8):

Have the stories been a triumph of journalism or the chequebook? Guardian blogger and journalism professor Roy Greenslade chairs the discussion. From the Frontline Blog:

“With each new tranche of revelations about MPs’ expenses the Daily Telegraph has continued to put on sales and gained kudos for its good old fashioned journalistic scoop. With a story that has shaken Westminster to its foundations the Daily Telegraph has been able to set the news agenda, releasing its revelations ahead of the 10pm news bulletins. The daily diet of scoops is said to have boosted newspaper sales by tens of thousands and web traffic has also increased and no doubt will, in financial terms at least, justify the cost of obtaining the information. But what does the expenses scandal tell us about journalism today?

“On the panel we have Andrew Pierce, assistant editor at The Daily Telegraph, Stephen Tall, editor at large with the Liberal Democrat Voice, the journalist Heather Brooke, author of ‘Your Right to Know’ and Frontline favourte Roger Alton, the editor of The Independent.”

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OUseful: Gripes with Guardian’s DataStore #datajourn

Here are thoughts from Tony Hirst, one of the first adopters and success stories for the Guardian’s Open Platform, on what the OP’s DataStore is and is not doing, in terms of data curation (or gardening). He asks:

“Is the Guardian DataStore adding value to the data in the data store in an accessibility sense: by reducing the need for data mungers to have to process the data, so that it can be used in a plug’n'play way by the statisticians and the data visualisers, whether they’re professionals, amateurs or good old Jo Public?”

Hirst has a number of queries in regards to data quality and ‘misleading’ linking on the Guardian DataBlog. In a later comment, he wonders whether there is a ‘data style guide’ available yet.

If you’re not all that au fait with the data lingo, this post might be a bit indigestible, so we’ll follow with a translation in coming days.

Related on Journalism.co.uk: Q&A with Hirst, April 8, 2009.

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Fallout from Jarvis’ ‘perfection vs beta culture’ post

Jay Rosen, said that yesterday’s New York Times’ piece on the ‘truth-be-damned approach’ of Tech blogging ‘did not bother’ him.

Not so for fellow NY journalism professor, Jeff Jarvis. His Buzzmachine post on ‘Product v. process journalism: The myth of perfection v. beta culture’ is currently doing the link rounds and has sparked a number of debates. For example:

• A Twitter row between Jarvis and the editor of the Sunday Business section of New York Times, Tim O’Brien: Blogger here; MSM here.

• A response from the Guardian’s Tech editor Charles Arthur, in regards to a criticism of UK tech reporting. One commenter, Wessell van Rensberg, remarked underneath Jarvis’ post: “I live in the UK and the Guardian’s weekly tech edition is paltry in terms of its tech coverage. Both in terms of scope and quality.”

Arthur responds:

“Flattered, I’m sure. Haven’t noticed your name in the letters pointing out what you think we should be covering; don’t know if you’ve commented on our many blogs (Tech, Games, PDA) that cover tech. We do have lots of insightful commenters (which I think is what you mean instead of ‘commentators’.)

“Hard to know quite what you want. For instance: TCrunch says Apple is going to buy Twitter. As soon as possible I point out, on the Guardian blog, why that’s absolutely not happening. It turns out it isn’t happening. Which is more useful?

“And I’ll also point out that when TCrunch does get it wrong, such as on Last.fm ‘passing data to the RIAA’ – a story denied by all sides, where it would be illegal for Last to pass the data (UK data protection act forbids) – TC deletes comments pointing that out. Do you really trust it?”

Now, might there be room for a response on that point? Come on, TechCrunch fight your corner!

Journalism.co.uk is quite enjoying its ringside view, but – on a side point – is there a neater way of viewing Twitter debates, than the links suggested by Jay Rosen?

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Gorkana: Legal Technology Insider closes Twitter feed, owing to ‘high number of irrelevant tweets’

A snippet from today’s Gorkana newsletter:

“The specialist legal IT newsletter Legal Technology Insider and its companion blog, The Orange Rag, has closed its Twitter feed, owing to the fact that they were getting a high number of irrelevant tweets.”

Update: Charles Christian, the publication’s editor and publisher, writes on the Orange Rag:

“Twitter – we have pulled the plug on our Twitter feed because:

“(i) 99 per cent of the incoming tweets we were receiving were pointlessly banal beyond crass (probably the most dire, from an editor of a US magazine, was ‘airplane crashes make me feel sad, I feel sorry for the passengers’)

“(ii) [T]he technology was flakey with much of the functionality not working when required. As far as we can see, the only useful role for Twitter is as a multi-recipient SMS texting service. We’ll stick with the blog and email, life is too short to spend servicing yet another transient communications medium.”

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WashingtonPost.com: True/Slant – mapping a new relationship

Howard Kurtz takes a look at True/Slant, a website ‘that is mapping a new relationship between journalists, readers and advertisers’:

“Lewis Dvorkin, founder of the site, which officially launches today after a trial run, makes no apologies for throwing out the old model. ‘It’s tailored for the entrepreneurial journalist,’ he says. ‘We’re enabling and empowering journalists to develop their own brand.’”

Full story at this link…

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Currybet.net: Phil Spector Twitter hoax proof of ‘online honesty gap’ between bloggers and newspapers

Joanna Geary’s overt self-correction of a blog post about the Birmingham Mail and the ex-Villa player, Gareth Barry, in contrast with the mainstream media’s handling of the Phil Spector Twitter hoax, was evidence for blogger and information architect Martin Belam of the ‘online honesty gap’ between bloggers and newspapers.

Belam asks:

“Can you remember the last time you heard a newspaper executive stand up and say that ‘One of the problems our businesses face in the digital era is that we have repeatedly been caught publishing completely untrue things on the internet, and in the face of that, we then neither correct nor retract them, or apologise to our audience’?”

Jem Stone, communities executive for the BBC Audio and Music department, raises another point in the comments below Belam’s post: not all bloggers might follow Geary’s lead, he says. “Joanna is an excellent journalist who deploys blogs, tweets, social media in her work. So making those corrections comes naturally to her. But not all bloggers do this do they?”

Full post at this link…

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NYTimes.com: N. Korea sentences American journalists to 12 years hard labour

Two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labour in North Korea ‘in a case widely seen as a test of how far the isolated Communist state was willing to take its confrontation with the United States,’ the New York Times reports.

“Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were on a reporting assignment from Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former vice president, when they were detained by the soldiers.”

Full story at this link…

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Independent.co.uk: Is Martin Newland stepping down as the National’s editor already?

Update 2 9/07/09: Jen Gerson’s update: Newland is ‘up’ not ‘out’ she says. Here’s the National’s report on the changes. Newland ‘has left the editorship for a more business-focused role overseeing the newspaper as its editorial director,’ it said.

Update 8/07/09: (via @SpotonPR) AdNation Middle East reports, following speculation, (see example below) that ‘Martin Newland has stepped aside as editor of The National, he officially announced today at a newsroom meeting at the Abu Dhabi paper, according to posts on Twitter by journalists at the paper’. The article states:

“The former Telegraph editor will remain at the paper as editorial director. Hassan Fattah, currently deputy editor, will take on the Big Chair, and Bob Cowan will become deputy in his place.”

Jen Gerson (@jengerson), a tourism reporter at the paper, tweeted one hour ago:

“Newland standing aside as editor in ‘worst kept secret in Abu Dhabi.’ Wants to move into business side.”

Speculation from the ‘Feral Beast’ column in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday:

“Just a year after the launch of The National in Abu Dhabi, rumours swirl that Martin Newland is to step down. The former Daily Telegraph editor set up the English-language paper, recruiting several ex-Telegraph hacks to join him.

“(…) My mole says Newland will continue to work for the paper but not as editor. I’m told his replacement will need to be pro the Emirates government and royal family, its proprietors. Newland did not return my calls.”

Full column at this link… (Hat tip: @PaulMcNally for Press Gazette)

What appeared to be details of the National’s salaries, including Martin Newland’s, were leaked earlier this year, as reported by the Guardian’s Media Monkey. Monkey suggested that, if ‘figures are believed’, Newland took home ‘a cool tax-free annual take home of about £320,000 a year’.

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Chance to edit Travel Trade Gazette for the day

Travel Trade Gazette (TTG) is running a competition in which readers can win the chance to guest the edit for a day, on August 18.

Readers are told:”You’ll get to see behind the scenes to see how TTG is created each week, discover how stories are researched and written, and get to see the front page before anyone else!”

TTG’s editor, Lucy Huxley, is off on maternity leave: other guest editors covering her absence will include Tui’s Dermot Blastland, Thomas Cook’s Manny Fontenla-Novoa, Virgin Atlantic’s Steve Ridgway and Abta’s Mark Tanzer.

The reader prize also includes a night at a hotel, a meal, and a ‘therapeutic treatment’ (at the hotel, not the magazine…)

Closing date is June 30, 2009. Full story at this link…

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Latest Demotix deal sees widget on Telegraph website

A quick update on Demotix, the pro-am photography/video site. This week saw the launch of its image widget on the Telegraph site. It currently sits underneath the Telegraph TV box and above an advert on the right of the world news page. Le Monde, Lebanon’s Future News, and the Himalayan Times of Nepal already carry the widget.

• Read more about it on the Demotix blog and at Shane Richmond’s Telegraph.co.uk blog.

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