Nieman Journalism Lab: Only 11% original reporting on Google/China hacking story

Journalism Week: students urged to develop new skills

March 2nd, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by Leeds Trinity University College Staff in Events, Jobs, Newspapers, Social media and blogging

Leeds Trinity University College Journalism Week ran from Monday 22 until Friday 26 February. Speakers from across the industry spoke at Leeds Trinity about the latest trends in the news media, including Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger; BBC news director Helen Boaden, Sky News reporter Mike McCarthy and ITN political correspondent Chris Ship.

Two of the most influential figures in the news media spoke together on Friday at the close of Leeds Trinity University College’s Journalism Week.

BBC News director Helen Boaden and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger gave students an insight into how they see the internet and social media shaping the future of journalism.

Helen Boaden used the snow and severe weather in January as an example of how Twitter could provide lots of information, but said it could not replace what traditional news outlets and reliable brands had to offer.

“People want a big, reliable, trusted brand, not just the information on Twitter,” she said.

“Twitter was invaluable in gathering information but people wanted someone to pull it together. Finding out the facts and verifying is still essential. Social networks can be faster but mainstream journalism has the expertise. It can convey something unique.

“Today’s graduates face the dual challenges of the growth in media courses and the economic recession. To get your foot in the door you need to work hard, be flexible, and understand the job you are going for.”

She advised students to acquire all the skills they could to have the best chance of getting into the industry and spoke of the need to for them to become ‘total journalists’.

Her comments about reporters needing new skills were echoed by Alan Rusbridger who said journalists now needed to be able to curate, aggregate and link.

He cited US journalism academic Jeff Jarvis’ mantra: “Do what you do best and link to the rest.”

Rusbridger said a more open relationship with the audience meant a move towards what he termed a ‘mutual newspaper’.

“We are moving from a world where journalists didn’t like contact with their audience, to a period of experimentation with mutualisation.
The balance is changing – we can report on what people are interested in not what we think they should be interested in. This should lead to better journalism as it will enable us to get at the truth more quickly,” he said.

The web lent itself to live reporting, he said, such as Andrew Sparrow’s ‘dazzling’ reporting from the Chilcot Iraq War inquiry, or deep reporting, such as coverage by Ruth Gledhill, the religious affairs correspondent for the Times.

He cited several examples of the Guardian using social networks and the internet to obtain key information for stories, including:

Putting a complex financial document on the internet during the Tax Gap investigation and being able to get it deciphered by experts without having to pay a fee.

The G20 protests, when reporter Paul Lewis used Twitter to ask people to check their ‘digital records, a move which led to The Guardian obtaining footage of the moment Ian Tomlinson died.

Tags: Alan Rusbridger, Helen Boaden, journalism week, leeds trinity university college

US Digest: NYT buyout rumour; Student paper fights prior review; Spiderman gets the sack

March 2nd, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by Joel Gunter in Journalism, Journalism Daily, Online Journalism

NYT shares on the up after rumour of buyout

Shares in the New York Times Co. rose by more than 11 per cent yesterday, the result of a rumour that mexican billionaire Carlos Slim was planning to buy the company.

Slim’s representative has denied rumours that he is after a greater stake in the company, claiming that the billionaire is happy with his 6.9 per cent lot.

Full story at Editor&Publisher

Disney and Cablevision slug it out over ABC

Cablevision subscribers in New York have been warned by The Walt Disney Company that the local ABC signal may go blank this weekend. The cable providers are locked in a dispute with Disney, who want an extra $40 million in annual fees. Cablevision already pay Disney $200 million a year.

According to the NYT, Disney have previously charged for cable channels such as ESPN and the Disney Channel, but not for its ABC broadcast signal.

The Academy Awards will be broadcast by ABC on Sunday, and a continuing dispute would mean 3.1 million customers in New York unable to tune in.

Jay Rosen on the future of journalism education

A little follow up now to last week’s US Digest post on the new NYT/NYU East Village hyperlocal blog. Over at Nieman Journalism Lab Seth C. Lewis has posted a Q&A with NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, who hailed the class working on the new blog with him the most exciting he has worked with in 24 years.

Rosen discusses the thinking behind the collaboration, how it will cope with students coming and going, and how the model might benefit journalism education across the United States.

This project began when I noticed what the Times was doing with The Local, and thought I glimpsed a need to experiment and learn. I mean, that was the logic of what they were doing. So, the first step is to get inside the head of the potential collaborator and start with a need or interest they have. The next step was to look at what we are doing at NYU and where we wanted to go with our program, and figure out where the two circles overlapped.

Students stand ground over prior review

Fading to Black reported yesterday on an ongoing dispute at Mounds View High School, Minnesota. Student journalists working on school newspaper the Viewer have said they will stop publishing before ceding to the school’s demand for prior review of stories.

“I would like to keep our newspaper a real newspaper, not a newsletter for the district,” said Christina Xia, 18, editor-in-chief of the paper.

The school district’s case is based on a controversial story published by the paper, naming students involved in the misuse of a teacher’s photograph online. The paper apparently obtained signed waivers from the students involved and their parents, but school administrators are concerned about the legality of publishing the names.

Full story at this link.

Do you have any other skills I can put down Mr. Parker?

Finally, bad news I’m afraid. Everyone knows by now that a lot of news industry jobs are hanging by a thread. I would have thought that, in Peter Parker’s case, that thread was stronger than most. Superior in tensile strength to high-grade steel even…

But, according to CNN, the Daily Bugle photographer and alter-ego of Spiderman is to lose his job in the latest issue of the Amazing Spiderman, and face the grim reality of unemployment.

“He’s going to struggle with unemployment and trying to save the city while he can barely afford to keep a roof over his head,” said Steve Wacker, Marvel Comics senior editor.

What next? Clark Kent down the dole office? Talk about healthy competition.

I might have something ideally suited to you Mr. Parker...

Image of Carlos Slim courtesy of Jose Cruz/ABr on Wikimedia

Image of Jay Rosen Courtesy of Joi on Flickr

Image of Spiderman courtesy of HOWI on Wikimedia

Alan Rusbridger: ‘Weak press self-regulation threatens decent journalism’

March 2nd, 2010 | 2 Comments | Posted by Judith Townend in Events, Journalism, Press freedom and ethics

“Once again weakness by the regulator has led to people calling for tougher sanctions against journalism,” Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger argued at today’s press self-regulation debate in the House of Lords.

The failings of the Press Complaints Commission explained the Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s call for a renamed self-regulatory body with the power to make financial sanctions, he said.

The panel gathered at Westminster for the Media Standards Trust event (at which no member of the Press Complaints Commission was present, despite being invited) were united on one point: that increasing the PCC’s powers of penalisation was not necessarily the right way forward.

Geoffrey Robertson QC was adamant on this point: redress of grievances should be done through the courts with juries, not via the PCC; Bob Satchwell, chairman of the Society of Editors, was firmly against any governmental direction of press regulation: it should come from the public and the industry, he said.

Robertson, who has previously called for all newspaper editors to step down from the body, said the PCC was a “confidence trick that now fails to inspire confidence”.

Private Eye’s Ian Hislop was the “most trusted editor in Britain “by not having anything to do with the PCC” Robertson said, adding that most its inquiries were “utter jokes”.

Bob Satchwell, loyal defender of the mainstream press and the PCC, said that suspension of publication (one of the recommendations made by the CMS committee last week) had “absolutely no place in democracy”. “In the end the real arbiters should be the readers,” he said.

The PCC had changed a “cavalier” and “arrogant” press of yore, Satchwell said. The level of control should be up to the public and the readers, he added – not organisations like the Media Standards Trust, or the government.

Rusbridger, who laid out the phone hacking saga as a case study of PCC failure (over which he resigned from the editors’ code committee) said the body needed to either admit it couldn’t conduct proper inquiries, or undergo serious reform.

“It may be that it’s flying the wrong flag [and might be ] better to rebrand itself as a media complaints and conciliation service and forget about regulation.”

Over phone hacking and the new evidence presented by the Guardian in July 2009, the PCC had “showed a complete lack of appetite to get to the bottom of what had happened,” he said.

It inquiries into phone hacking, had been inadequate, Rusbridger said. The PCC had explained privately “that they didn’t have the resources to do proper investigations and it wasn’t within their remit. [It said] they were not set up or financed to do proper investigations”.

“To which the answer is is fine, but then don’t pretend to do investigations which are then used to exonerate people or organisations. By doing so you bring self-regulation into disrepute.”

Rusbridger argued several points in particular:

He claimed that either former NOTW editor Andy Coulson or News International executives were lying, in light of the Guardian’s allegations that four “criminal” private investigators had been hired by the News of the World in the past. It was either the case that Andy Coulson, currently director of communications for the Conservative party, was lying and knew about the activities of these private investigators, “criminally obtaining information which led directly to News of the World stories”; or, Rusbridger said, individuals within News International “knew about them and paid them [private investigators] … but protected the editor from knowing what was going on, in which case News International executives have been lying”. Those seemed to him, he claimed, the only two explanations for recent revelations.

For press self regulation to work, the press must tell the truth to the regulators, Rusbridger said. Furthermore, newspapers should thoroughly “cover its own industry,” he said, citing that the Guardian had been the only newspaper to report on the £800,000 tribunal payout to a former reporter, over bullying allegations. The PCC needed to acquire some teeth, or “be frank” about its limitations and “rebrand as a mediator”.

Tags: Alan Rusbridger, cms report, Media Standards Trust, PCC, phone hacking, The Guardian

FT.com: BBC review confirms plans to cut website and digital stations

March 2nd, 2010 | 4 Comments | Posted by Laura Oliver in Broadcasting, Business, Editors' pick

Plans to axe digital radio stations BBC 6Music and the Asian Network and to cut the BBC’s £122 million online budget by a quarter have been confirmed today as the strategic review led by BBC director-general Mark Thompson went public.

The proposals will be subject to the BBC Trust’s approval – the FT has the full breakdown.

Full story at this link…

Tags: BBC, Broadcasting, radio

paidContent:UK: FT confirms new additions to subscription model

March 2nd, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by Laura Oliver in Business, Editors' pick

The Financial Times has confirmed it will add a new day pass and weekly pass, powered by online payment system Pay Pal, as part of its online access model.

While the pass is different from the FT’s direct payment for an anual subscription, as paidContent:UK points out this isn’t quite a move to micropayments.

But FT CEO John Ridding did comment on the potential for micropayments to support an annual subscription while speaking on the new plans at the FT’s Digital Media and Broadcasting conference.

Full story at this link…

Tags: Financial Times, ft, John Ridding, micropayments, paid content, paywalls, uk

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – making Google charts

March 2nd, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by Laura Oliver in Top tips for journalists

Google chart tools: this blog post describes the tools available for making pretty and effective graphics using Google. Tipster: Judith Townend.

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

Tags: charts, google

US Digest: America goes multi-platform; Miami goes hyperlocal; NYT hits the big screens

March 1st, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by Joel Gunter in Journalism, Journalism Daily, Online Journalism

News consumption according to Pew: Loyalty wanes, social sharing rises

The United States is, according to a new study published today by Pew Research Centre’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, a multiple platform nation when it comes news consumption. The study, which looks at the different ways Americans access news on a daily basis, suggests that loyalty is on the wane and social sharing is on the rise.

In the digital era, news has become omnipresent. Americans access it in multiple formats on multiple platforms on myriad devices. The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone [...] While online, most people say they use between two and five online news sources and 65% say they do not have a single favorite website for news.

[...]

To a great extent, people’s experience of news, especially on the internet, is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news stories in their Tweets, and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads. For instance, more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails.

Three Ps stand out from the results according to the summary of findings

Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
Personalized: 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
Participatory: 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

NYT strikes video screen deal with RMG

Starting today, New York Times’ content will be displayed on video screens in five major US cities.

The newspaper has struck a deal with RMG Networks, a major owner of screens in the main business districts of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston, which will see 850 of their screens become part of the ‘NYTimes.com Today Network’.

The screens will display articles and images form the Times’ website on a 14 minute cycle, interspersed with advertising. A further 850 screens will be added to the network over the next few months.

According to the Times, their network “will be a small part of RMG, which has tens of thousands of such screens.”

The details of the financial arrangement have not been disclosed.

Further analysis of the deal from Lost Remote at this link

Al Tompkins: Everyone invited to journalism training

From the Poynter Institute today, Al Tompkins with an interesting take on broadcast journalism training.

When I train journalists at a television or radio station, I usually recommend that the newsroom invite anyone who will come — including those in the sales, promotions and engineering departments

Unsurprisingly, few take him up on the offer apparently. With times as tough as they are, who in their right mind would think the answer lay in sending the sales team on journalism training?

The idea behind Tompkins’ approach is that, with some basic knowledge, salespersons, receptionists, engineers, and others can hold the fort in the case of an emergency.

Possibly a useful model for broadcast journalism, to avoid dead air, but ‘Time to Train Everyone in Your Organisation to be a Journalist’ is a call to arms unlikely to sit well with most economical bosses. And one at risk of going down like a lead balloon in the more traditional newsrooms, I would have thought.

South Florida Times announce student collaboration on new hyperlocal section

Following in the footsteps of the NYT, weekley newspaper the South Florida Times have announced a collaborative hyperlocal project with students from Florida International University’s journalism school (via editorsweblog).

The project, Liberty City Link, aims is to improve coverage of Miami’s Liberty City area. Unlike the NYT collaborations, Liberty City Link will feature both online and in print, having a page in the print edition and a blog under the South Florida Times URL.

The Times’ announcement bills its new partnership as a way to overturn the area’s notoriously bad reputation.

News accounts about the Liberty City community, one of South Florida’s largest historically black communities, have long zeroed in on its most negative aspects, spotlighting it as a notoriously dangerous section in the shadows of the glitz of Miami Beach. But the colorful murals of black heroes on Liberty City’s buildings stand for the spirit of what is, in fact, a thriving community.

Seventeen students have been recruited to report for the new section. Neil Reisner, a veteran journalist and FIU professor, defends the inclusion of just one African-American among them:

Students learn to cover a community they’re not part of. And that as journalists it is OK to ask questions to people they don’t completely relate to, as long as they are honest about what they want to know.

Gillian Tett named new US managing editor of the Financial Times

Gillian Tett has been named US managing editor of the Financial Times today. She replaces Chrystia Freeland who joins Thomson Reuters as global editor in chief.

Full story at Editor & Publisher

The Hong Kong house that Tote Bags built

Finally, from FishbowlNY, news that, while publishers run around tearing their hair out about paywalls, payments, micropayments, even smaller payments, design and culture glossy Monocle magazine is to open a Hong Kong bureau with the proceeds from selling Tote bags.

This business model may not, however, be the saviour of publishing. So I’m sorry if you’ve gone and got your hopes up. The blurb on Monocle’s Tote bag sale page may tell you a little about their readership, and how they’ve pulled off this nifty trick. As might the price.

Whether it’s a spur-of-the-moment overnighter or a day hitting the shops, this bag can hold anything you throw in it. Inside there is a host of pockets for your wallet, BlackBerry, plus your Japan-only mobile, a detachable purse to get at that Amex card quickly, and a sizeable wash bag.

I left my Japan-only mobile on the train with my free copy of the London Weekly so the bag’s not really any good to me anyway.

Tags: Financial Times, Mobile, pew research center, south florida times, US Digest

Paywalls and entrepreneurship: Journalism.co.uk on BBC News Channel

March 1st, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by Judith Townend in Broadcasting, Editors' pick, Journalism, Online Journalism

Journalism.co.uk featured on the BBC News Channel technology programme Click at the weekend. Our founder and publisher John Thompson (@johncthompson) was interviewed about our model for providing media industry news content – outside the paywall. The programme also featured Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and City University London newspaper journalism course director Jonathan Hewett, among others.

Here’s a link to the point at which Journalism.co.uk features:

http://bbc.co.uk/i/r93qf/?t=5m59s

Tags: Alan Rusbridger, BBC News, Entertainment/Culture, Jonathan Hewett, Journalism.co.uk, Technology/Internet

#followjourn: Alistair Smith/news editor

March 1st, 2010 | No Comments | Posted by Joel Gunter in Recommended journalists

#followjourn: Alistair Smith

Who? Smith is the news editor of theatre publication the Stage.

Where? The Stage is published weekly in print in the UK, and is online at www.thestage.co.uk, where they have a mixture of news, features and blogs. You can also follow the stage on Twitter at www.twitter.com/thestage.

Contact? Follow Smith on Twitter at www.twitter.com/smithalistair

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.

Tags: #followjourn, alistair smith, the stage