#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – freelance contracts

Freelancers: If you’re considering drawing up your own contract with a client the Professional Contractors Group has this template and tips for you. 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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dot.Rory: ‘When blogging meets policing’

The BBC technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, has followed up an incident reported on the Seismic Shock blog.

After publishing posts that accused an Anglican vicar, Stephen Sizer, of anti-Semitism, Seismic Shock’s author received a visit from two West Yorkshire police officers. West Yorkshire police has confirmed the incident:

“As a result of a report of harassment, which was referred to us by Surrey Police, two officers from West Yorkshire Police visited the author of the blog concerned. The feelings of the complainant were relayed to the author who voluntarily removed the blog. No formal action was taken.”

As Cellan-Jones says, many questions are raised: “(…) about the limits of free expression on the web, and the role of the police in pursuing complaints about the contents of a website”.

Full post at this link…

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The New York Times and the tablet

This New York Times piece on print media’s hopes for the Apple Tablet, confirms that the company is developing a version of the paper for the tablet, but adds little detail:

The New York Times Company, for example, is developing a version of its newspaper for the tablet, according to a person briefed on the effort, although executives declined to say what sort of deal had been struck.

The New York Times has, however, announced its new ‘reader applications’ division:

On Monday, The Times also announced that its media group division had created a new segment for “reader applications,” and named Yasmin Namini, the senior vice president for marketing and circulation, to head it. Executives said the timing was coincidental, prompted not by the Apple device specifically, but by the growing importance to The Times of electronic reading devices in general.

The LA Times, meanwhile, reports that the New York Times is developing a large-screen version of the iPhone app – from Apple HQ:

Apple has been slowly amassing digital reading material for the forthcoming device. A team from the New York Times has been working in Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters in recent weeks, developing a large-screen version of the newspaper’s iPhone application that incorporates video for the yet-to-be-unveiled device, according to one person with knowledge of the matter. A Times spokeswoman declined to comment.

On MacRumours.com:

The New York Times has long held a close relationship with Apple in regards to the iPhone platform, frequently finding itself featured in demonstrations at media events and keynotes. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. revealed last week, however, that he will not be attending Apple’s media event, and when pressed for comment on Apple’s involvement with the newspaper’s plans for restructuring online access, said only “Stay tuned.”

And Gawker, which had the internal memo announcing the birth of the NY Times’ ‘reader application’ division:

We’re guessing [NY Times] newsroom staff will be watching Apple’s tablet event as obsessively as any Apple fanboys later this week, if only to get details on the “continued growth in this new and important segment of” Times business.

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Talking Biz News: Dow Jones restructuring

Talking Biz News has a memo from Dow Jones & Co. president Todd Larsen, outlining how employees will be organised in its corporate restructuring, with  five separate business groups – separating Wall Street Journal print and digital:

• The Wall Street Journal in print

• The Wall Street Journal Digital Network

• Dow Jones Financial Markets (includes Newswires and products geared to financial professionals)

• Dow Jones Corporate Markets (includes Factiva and products geared to corporate markets)

• Dow Jones Indexes

Full post at this link…

(Hat-tip: the revived Editor & Publisher)

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#FollowJourn: @gordonmacmillan/social media editor

#FollowJourn: Gordon Macmillan

Who? Social media editor at Haymarket, former editor of Brand Republic.

What? Blogs and tweets regularly on social media and politics.

Where? Find his contributions over at at Harry’s place.

Contact? Follow @gordonmacmillan.

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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Columbia Journalism Review: Error prevention tools

Regret The Error’s Craig Silverman summarises three online services that journalists could use to help prevent errors: gooseGrade, Bite-Size Edit and Artificial Proofreader.

Full post at this link…

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Rusbridger’s Hugh Cudlipp lecture in a Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/. Images of Wordles are licensed .

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Alan Rusbridger: ‘I worry about how a universal pay wall would change the way we do our journalism’

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger strongly believes journalists should link to the specialist source. We’re rather fond of that approach here, so here’s his Hugh Cudlipp lecture in full. There’s a video interview at this link.

There is lots to pull out here, but key were his comments on pay walls – he doesn’t believe it makes commercial or professional sense:

[C]harging might be right for some bits of the Murdoch stable of media properties, but is it right for all bits of his empire, or for everyone else? Isn’t there, in any case, more to be learned at this stage of the revolution, by different people trying different models – maybe different models within their own businesses – than all stampeding to one model?

(…)

As an editor, I worry about how a universal pay wall would change the way we do our journalism. We have taken 10 or more years to learn how to tell stories in different media – ie not simply text and still pictures. Some stories are told most effectively by a combination of print and web. That’s how we now plan our journalism. As my colleague Emily Bell is fond of saying we want it to be linked in with the web – be “of the web”, not simply be on the web.

You can also hear Rusbridger talking about pay walls in Coventry two weeks ago: http://podcasting.services.coventry.ac.uk/podcasting/index.php?id=298

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Coventry Telegraph editor promises digital fireworks

Darren Parkin is, at 37, one of the youngest editors in the history of the Coventry Telegraph. But he is determined not to be the last captain of this mini-flagship of the Trinity Mirror empire whose alumni include Jeremy Vine of the BBC and Dermot Murnaghan of Sky News.

Parkin took over the Telegraph ship in a storm last November. He was the third in a year and the third to come and address the Midland’s major media forum – the Coventry Conversations at Coventry University. He attracted a packed house last Friday.

Fortunately for him, he is of a cheery disposition and refused to be downhearted by the task of turning round rapidly declining advertising, declining sales and fewer journalists. He advised the (student) journalists manqué too not be downhearted at the state of the industry either.

They had to learn that they were entering a rapidly changing industry and one in which multi-platform skills were at a premium. It was adapt or die, in his view. But the core journalistic skills of finding, researching and writing  were still vital even if complemented by the newer web based ones.

Parkin announced the launch of a unique internship scheme brokered with Coventry’s Journalism department. Four desks in the Telegraph newsroom will be set aside for Cov university students to be interns three days a week. Seven had already applied. As for his plans for the paper, Parkin said he was planning some fireworks for the Telegraph website with “one of two things that will make other newspapers very jealous”.

He hoped these would be available later in the year but refused, despite being pressed, to give any more detail. As for local news partnerships, he was willing to join in with the likes of BBC Coventry and Warwickshire and did not regard the broadcaster as an enemy “as at least one of my predecessors did”.

The Telegraph like other local papers, he said, needed to reconnect to the audience and do that through any platforms available. He would be encouraging his journalists to once more become active members and the scribes of their community.

Parkin started his career as a Youth Training Scheme intern on the Dewsbury Reporter 20 years ago, paid a pittance by the state. Since he has been Young Journalist of the year three times, a chief reporter on the Solihull Times and at 24, Britain’s youngest editor – of the Wolverhampton News.

Since 2005, he had been editor in chief of the well-regarded weeklies division of Coventry Newspapers. He will need all this experience if he is to guide the good ship Coventry Telegraph away from the rocks of media failure and on to a bright future – or any future.

John Mair is senior broadcasting lecturer at Coventry University and producer of the Coventry Conversations series. 

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – self-publishing guide

Self-publishing: If you’re looking to launching your own local news site, check out the Online Journalism Review’s guide to 15 criteria for picking a content management system. Dave Chase, who launched his own hyperlocal news site, acts as a guide. 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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