Entrepreneurial journalism – how Newcastle University is shaping up

In an industry facing fewer jobs and more journalism graduates, the concept of the entrepreneurial journalist (an idea freelancers will be familiar with) is growing in popularity.

Earlier in the year, Birmingham’s City University launched MAs in Online Journalism and Freelance Journalism with a strong focus on entrepreneurship and enterprise.

“We will be exploring new business models and I think that is the chief difference. We’re certainly not relying on the existing structures,” Online Journalism MA course leader Paul Bradshaw said in March.

“Ultimately the industry is crying out for this and there’s clearly a demand for it.”

So it was good to hear from Newcastle University‘s David Baines and Dr Ciara Kennedy at Friday’s Association of Journalism Education (AJE) conference about the institution’s plans to bring more of these skills into journalism training.

The university has already introduced business and entrepreneurial training to other disciplines using its Solvers programme – next year will see the same crossover with the journalism school.

The aim? To teach ‘a new world view, the benefits of an entrepreneurial life, knowledge of how to and the start-up process, networking skills’.

Speaking about the changes, Baines said elements of the traditional freelance journalist would be developed – for example, expanding journalists’ business skills, such as negotiating payment for work.

“To be self-employed is not necessarily the same as being enterprising,” he explained.

“Do journalists want to be a business? They want to be journalists. We’ve a long standing tradition of journalistic values being established against business values.”

The idea of entrepreneurship will be embedded in the curriculum with students expected to bring more than just starting points for their projects to the table, with ideas to develop them beyond the course.

One area that these skills will feed into – hyperlocal publishing and journalism, says Baines: “Hyperlocal – isn’t that a business model that a couple of our graduates could take on? They could take on local papers on their own terms and do it better than them.”

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Digital Spy: Tiscali director of TV says broadcasters should pay for online content distribution

The Tiscali director of television, Simon Hunt, has said that broadcasters should pay for the online distribution of their content because they already pay distribution charges for other platforms, Digital Spy reports.

“Hunt said [in an interview with Digital Spy] that consumers will increasingly want to view TV content over the internet and so this should be viewed as another distribution platform that must be paid to use.”

Full post at this link…

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Editor&Publisher: Time spent on top 30 American newspaper web sites down significantly

“The amount of time people spent at the top [US] 30 newspaper websites is stuck in neutral if not reverse: more than half saw significant falloff in May,” Editor & Publisher reported yesterday.

“The list is for May Nielsen Online data for the top 30 newspapers’ websites ranked by unique users. Nielsen (owned by E&P’s parent company) defines the average time spent per person at a site during the month.”

Full story and stats at this link…

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Alex Wood: What does the #IranElection Twitter trend tell us?

Use of Twitter by mainstream media outlets has been much discussed in regards to recent reportage from Iran. Multimedia journalist Alex Wood provides a blog post with some good links and thoughts about hashtags and information spread. Particularly interesting is this part:

“[D]ig a little deeper into the statistics, and you find that over 50 per cent of tweets about IranElection are not first hand information. Twitter allows users to repeat other people’s tweets and send them on to their friends, who can then go on and repeat this to their friends. There is no control mechanism for fact or fiction and misinformation can spread quickly, especially in times of conflict.”

Full post at this link…

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Jay Weintraub: ‘Flogging’ through fake news sites

Jay Weintraub, an internet advertising market strategist, has previously written about ‘Flogs:’

1. Fake blog
2. First-person advertorial phrased in a way that makes it look like an authentic story, presented in a format similar in look and function to blogs

Now he takes a look at what he calls the ‘Flog v2′ – ‘Fake News Sites / Fake News Articles’.

“Instead of telling a personal story using a fake person in a blog format, they tell the story from the point of view of a reporter or journalist. It doesn’t have the same level of personal connection as the ‘mom’, but treating the above like a formula, they increase the level of authenticity to compensate.”

Full post at this link…

(via via @drewbroomhall)

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Telegraph.co.uk: Guide to the full MP expenses database

Telegraph.co.uk has now published a searchable database of all MPs’ expenses. It reports:

“The searchable database will include exclusive documentary evidence as well as detailed figures assembled over recent weeks as part of an exhaustive investigation into Parliament’s expenses claims system.”

“In the coming weeks, the database will be extended to include the uncensored documentation for the claims, including receipts and correspondence with the Parlimentary authorities, of all MPs.”

Full guide at this link…

MPs’ expenses database at this link…

More to follow from Journalism.co.uk on users’ experiences later today. How have you found using the data provided by the Commons, the Guardian and the Telegraph? Drop judith at journalism.co.uk a line, or via Twitter to @jtownend.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Middle East media news feed

Media trends: If you’re interested in media news relating to the Middle East, Spot on PR has created a delicious account rounding up the best stories and commentary on the region. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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BeatBlogging.org funding ends September 1

Pat Thornton reports that funding for the site he edits, BeatBlogging – part of the NewAssignment.net project will cease on September 1.

“The fate of BeatBlogging.Org is undecided for now. I can at least assure you that the site will not be going away, as it is too strong of a new media brand to let die or even languish,” he writes.

“Being the editor of BeatBlogging.Org has been a great ride. I’ve learned a lot about how beat reporters are adapting to the web, how social media is changing journalism and where journalism is heading.

“Working with NYU’s Jay Rosen has been a great learning experience. It’s very invigorating to work with someone who is interested in answering, “what’s next?” And in journalism, that’s the No. 1 question we all must answer.

“What’s next for me? I don’t know yet. I hope to be able to contribute to the search for journalism next.”

Full post at this link…

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AJE: BJTC and NCTJ – a necessary, but unlikely, marriage?

“Just don’t mention the m-word – ‘merger’,” whispered my neighbour at Friday’s Association of Journalism Education (AJE) conference before we entered the final session on the role of the accrediting and qualification bodies and the future of journalism training in the UK.

Efforts to bring the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) and Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) together under a Joint Journalism Training Council forum are ongoing and having spoken to interested parties before, Journalism.co.uk has been told that while a single accrediting body is desirable, the two groups are very different beasts, with different structures and remits.

According to panellist at the event and BJTC secretary Jim Latham, the next meeting between the two bodies is scheduled for this week.

“We [previously] allowed ourselves to become distracted by some issues that shouldn’t have got in the way (…) There should only be one accrediting body, but the devil is in the detail,” conceded Latham.

Going forward, less focus will be placed on the differences between the groups – in particular the NCTJ’s revenue streams – and what can be done jointly.

Both BJTC and NCTJ representatives on the panel where cautious about giving a merger date.

“I think Jim and I are largely in agreement about a single body. How we’re going to achieve that remains open to debate,” said Joanne Butcher, director of the NCTJ.

Demand for a single accrediting body was challenged by some members of the audience, support by others.

“The world has changed the definition of what a journalist is. Convergence isn’t the future, it’s already happened,” said Tim Luckhurst, professor at the University of Kent’s Centre of Journalism.

“I only wish we could have one gold standard body (…) It cannot happen quickly enough. It needs to have a single set of exams. The NCTJ wants to make its mark – one way it could do this is by setting a single gold standard for journalism.”

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Notes from an award-winning blog: the Brit who scooped the European prize

Last week Etan Smallman won the first ever European blogging conference, the European Journalism Centre’s ‘Th!nk About It’ competition.  Etan blogs at studentjournalist.wordpress.com. Photos from the finale can be viewed on his Flickr stream at this link.

For a country that is sneered at by almost all of its European neighbours for its remote, aloof and imperious attitude towards the European Union, I, a humble Brit, was pretty proud (not say totally shocked) to be crowned the winner of the first ever European blogging competition at its finale in Rotterdam this week.

What’s more, I was by no means the only Brit to triumph at the awards ceremony of ‘Th!nk About It,’ a competition that aimed to get young people talking about the European elections that took place to almost no other fanfare at all earlier this month. In all, four out of the five British participants took home awards – not bad for a country that was derided as ‘ignorant’ at the very same event.

When I sent off a brief email in December to apply to take part in the first project of its kind – a pan-European contest that I dubbed ‘the blogging world’s Eurovision song contest’ – I had very little idea of what I was letting myself in for. Five months, and 39 self-penned blog posts later, to my surprise and delight, I have won the entire competition, beating 80 other competitors from all 27 EU member states – and collecting a top of the range Mac laptop for my efforts.

In January, we all assembled in Brussels for a free trip to meet each other and launch the contest – organised by the European Journalism Centre (EJC), and part funded by the European Commission. They weren’t doing things by halves, with speakers including the BBC’s venerated Europe editor, Mark Mardell, and the FT’s Brussels bureau chief, Tony Barber.

Four-and-a-bit months on in Rotterdam, there was a mood of celebration. Wilfried Rütten, director of the EJC, said that the competition had achieved so much, he was embarrassed by its success. The EJC said it did not have any expectations at the outset and that the project had helped engage young people in European politics.

But aside from the back-slapping and self-congratulatory Euro-love on display in Rotterdam, how successful has the project actually been? This is where it gets tricky. The hard numbers are certainly impressive; these are a few that have been bandied about:

• Nearly 600 blog posts
• 2,316 comments
• Around 5,000 trackbacks from external websites
• Over 2.7m hits
• 14,000 Google links

However, the original figure of 81 bloggers taking part is actually one of the most damning. Despite a higher than 1 in 3 chance of coming away with a prize (ranging from iPhones to laptops and Flip cameras) – and two free trips on offer – a significant minority lost interest as soon as they returned to their home countries. Is that a desperate indictment of the EU and its ability to relate to its citizens? I’m inclined to conclude that it is more of a comment on the level of interest and commitment shown by some, who failed even to complete the minimum of one blog post per month to remain in the competition.

Turnout at the EU elections was horrendously low; but even the most ardent new media enthusiasts would be unlikely to claim that blogging should have changed that. A more important question is how many people from outside the Euro bubble actually popped their ear up against out blogging wall. My fear is that we were just an echo chamber; albeit a large, active and impressively innovative one.

However, compared to numerous EU inititatives in the new media arena, Th!nk About It was a roaring success. Its 2.7m or so hits in four months compare extremely favourably to the EU’s public flop of a European television station, EUTube, which notched up a dismal 2.2m viewers in the two years since its launch.

Charlie Beckett, director of media think tank POLIS, criticised the project several months ago: “Irrelevant of new media, I don’t think it is fair to expect bloggers talking in different languages in different media markets to cross boundaries and change political climates,” he said.

That is perhaps true, but nonetheless, actually getting representatives from every EU country talking together – and about the EU, of all things – is undoubtedly an ambitious start. And it does seem that this is only the start, as a quick glance at the current website will attest.

The site has undergone a quick re-brand since the awards ceremony, and the competition is now branded: ‘Round #1′. This could be just the beginning…

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