Adam Westbrook’s guides and an antidote to media navel-gazing

Two editor’s picks for the price of one here – as they go hand in hand.

Firstly Marcelo Ballve on True/Slant sums up the problems of media navel-gazing, suggesting that the industry’s ruminations on its own fate may be of less interest to the general public than we give them credit for:

“It’s always going to be the case that a profession will have its water cooler talk, and with the internet, much of it is going to be public. But there’s too much of it and too much of it is seeping into spaces where a reader or viewer might simply want to be informed or told a story,” he writes.

Elsewhere, in an unrelated blog post, Adam Westbrook announces his plans to publish practical guides for journalists on video, branding, storytelling, audio, business skills and ‘making things happen’.

The 6×6 guides will start from next Monday and are intended to encourage the industry to look forward.

“People don’t want to be reminded how bad the newspaper/journalism sector is right now; they don’t want to read more introductions to articles reeling off the various nails in the coffin,” says Westbrook.

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Editor&Publisher: DailyMe’s Newstogram follows readers’ ‘tastes’

News aggregation site DailyMe has launched ‘Newstogram’ – a new piece of tech that analyses the reading behaviour of users.

The idea is that publishers will be able to use this information to serve up personalised news recommendations based on a user’s individual interests.

This basic function will be free to publishers – more complex use of the data will require signing up to DailyMe’s applications.

Full story at this link…

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City A.M.: Capital Ideas group makes bid for Observer

Following recent speculation about the future of Guardian News and Media’s Sunday title, the Observer, City A.M. reports that Capital Ideas, an investment group, has put in a bid for the paper.

The move to buy the Observer for a ‘nominal sum’ would see the title turned into a weekly news magazine and website, with fewer staff, if successful.

Capital Ideas already owns trade titles Compliance and Investing for Growth.

Full story at this link…

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Hitwise: More traffic going to content websites than transactional sites

Hitwise’s Robin Goad takes a look at trends in UK internet visits over the last three years. The figures suggest that traffic to social networking sites, news and media, and entertainment sites is outpacing that to transactional sites e.g. shopping and classifieds sites.

“[J]ust because people are using the web more, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are spending more money online,” he writes.

Full analysis and charts at this link…

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paidContent.org: ‘The fallacy of the link economy’ for news sites

Media consultant Arnon Mishkin argues that the value of linking between sites is getting captured by aggregators rather than by the news sites that they scrape and link to.

“Even in an absolute best-case scenario for producers of original content, the aggregators get at least as much traffic on linked stories as the creators of those stories because anyone who clicks on the link does so from the aggregator’s site (so each site gets a page view),” he writes.

“[E]ach aggregator gets to build a ‘front page’ to target and win over their chosen segment, or enable each user to tailor a front page perfectly suited to his or her needs. And they can do that by leveraging all the resources of the global journalistic community without paying any part of its cost.”

Looking at the link economy from the perspective of making money and getting the most out of initial traffic bursts generated by aggregators linking to a news site, Mishkin suggests three tactics:

• News sites should seek ‘an equitable economic relationship’ with aggregators and drop links if they don’t get a fair deal;
• Partner with other content providers to create their own aggregation sites;
• Look at ‘wadgets’ – a combination of content and advertising – rather than ‘widgets’ purely offering a site’s material. This would allow them to monetise some of the traffic on the aggregators site.

The AP’s recent suggestion that it will creating landing pages for members’ news content and introduce a advertising revenue share arrangement seems to go some way to meeting Mishkin’s recommendations.

Interesting thoughts in a week where user-powered aggregator Digg introduced its new ad system. The question of how much revenue aggregation sites are generating should also be considered.

Full paidContent.org post at this link…

Related: see Publish2 founder Scott Karp’s thoughts on newspapers and the link economy.

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DutchNews.nl: Regional press agency leaks thousands of telephone numbers

A leak in the security system of Dutch regional press agency GPD meant thousands of phone numbers for public figures were openly accessible.

Other personal information was also available via a Google search.

Full story at this link…

Original story by Tweakers.net (in Dutch).

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#FollowJourn: @arunmarsh/content producer

#FollowJourn: Arun Marsh

Who? Content producer/editor for LocalGov.co.uk.

What? Journalist and content producer on local government; blogger on media and beer

Where? @arunmarsh

Contact? Try his blog Truth’s Revenge.

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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• #followjourn: @chriscondron/head of digital strategy

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – joining the conversation

Commenting: Try participating in the comment debate below your articles: joining in the conversation with your readers could lead to new conversations, new ideas and new leads. Make sure they can see a way to contact you privately, too. Tipster: Judith Townend.

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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Journalism Daily: Council newspapers, INMA/OPA event and more editorial outsourcing

Journalism.co.uk is trialling a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

News and features:

• IPC titles hold steady in new ABCe report
• Comment: ‘Council newspapers: a disaster for democracy’, Mark Wallace, campaign director, TaxPayers’ Alliance
• INMA and OPA Europe partner to discuss future of news media
• Liz Nickels leaves assistant editor position to go freelance

Ed’s picks:

• City Pages: When a reporter leaves – who owns the Twitter account?
• Online Journalism Blog: Help map local blogs in the UK
• Media Release: Schibsted titles to livestream Norwegian football matches
• paidContent:UK: Getty Images VP on finding business models for cit-j photos
• Cplash: Thank you message from Laura Ling

Tip of the day:

• Twitter tips for freelancers

#FollowJourn:

• @rachcolling/freelancer

On the Editors’ Blog:

• Sheffield photojournalism students refuse exam retake
• Pagemasters editorial outsourcing spreads to the US and Canada
• Sports section revamp for Northcliffe – building a sporting community
• #bnewstip: Broadcast journalism tips from @newsleader

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Sheffield photojournalism students refuse exam retake

As reported by HoldtheFrontPage yesterday, some photojournalism graduates from Sheffield College have been told they must resit one of their end of year exams after a mistake made by their college. More than half of the students are reportedly boycotting the proposed retake.

The college recently wrote to around 20 students to inform them that they would need to resit a law paper taken on June 4 2009.

The National Council for Training of Journalists (NCTJ) invalidated the paper because of a ‘procedural blunder’, it told Journalism.co.uk. This is thought to centre around the fact that the computers used to sit the exam had access to the web. This is the first time the college has used computers for the law exam.

In a press statement given to Journalism.co.uk, Andrew Cropley, executive director of the Norton College campus, which is home to the photography, media and journalism courses, said an investigation into how this error had occurred had been launched. He emphasised that the students were in no way to blame for the mistake.

“The college will ensure that future exams are taken in strict compliance with NCTJ procedures,” added Cropley.

“The college is totally committed to getting this right. We are proud of our press photography and photojournalism course, which has a national reputation for training some of the best media photographers in the country.”

Many students are now busy in full-time jobs, some are even thought to have left the country. Paul Johnson, now working as a press photographer at the Times and Star in Workington, told HTFP: “I am supposed to be doing my NCE in November, but I don’t now when I’m going to be able to fit it all in.”

The Sheffield course is thought to be the longest running photojournalism course in the UK.

To reduce inconvenience as much as possible, the college will reimburse all travel expenses and will create individual exam dates for students. Despite this, students are forming a protest against the ordered retake including a Facebook group against the move.

A spokesperson for the NCTJ gave the following statement to Journalism.co.uk: “In fairness to all candidates, and to protect the integrity of the exams and the industry’s standards for journalism, centres must ensure candidates sit NCTJ exams under the required conditions.”

As of yet there is no further information regarding the status of the protest.

If you are affected by the exam retakes please do get in touch with either office [at] journalism.co.uk or laura [at] journalism.co.uk.

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