#followjourn: @djbentley – Daniel Bentley

#followjourn: Daniel Bentley

Who? Currently studying journalism at the University of Central Lancashire – you can read his CV here.

Where? Daniel blogs on the media with a particular emphasis on useful information for trainee journalists. He’s even set up an online resource of tips and tools for students.

Contact? He’s @djbentley on Twitter.

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 laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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NYTimes: Online newsrooms are killing young journalists’ spirit

Competition in the online newsroom and that battle for traffic and page views, is causing journalism ‘burnout’ in young reporters, according to a report by the New York Times.

In his article, which sets a scene more likely to be found in the sales world in years gone by, Jeremy Peters writes that competition in online newsrooms has reached fever pitch. As a result could we risk ‘killing off’ young reporters under the pressure of a media world where numbers matter?

Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news – anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all display a “most viewed” list on their home pages (…) At Gawker Media’s offices in Manhattan, a flat-screen television mounted on the wall displays the 10 most-viewed articles across all Gawker’s websites. The author’s last name, along with the number of page views that hour and over all are prominently shown in real time on the screen, which Gawker has named the “big board”.

Is this all just a case of friendly competition to encourage the best work? Or is online journalism by mainstream media at risk of becoming more and more a case of quantity over quality?

Read the full article on the New York Times here…

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Newspaper magnate Lebedev: “I should be ready to go to jail”

He likes to eat papaya for breakfast, wants to set up an investigative journalism foundation and wakes up every morning prepared for arrest – welcome to the world of newspaper billionaire Alexander Lebedev.

Speaking to the Sunday Times for its ‘A Life in the Day’ feature, Lebedev, says his ownership of three British newspapers – the Evening Standard, Independent and Independent on Sunday – prompted some “absurd” suspicions at the start.

When I bought the Evening Standard and the two Independent titles, people thought I was some kind of Trojan horse for the Russian government. That’s absurd. I bought them because I truly believe in newspaper and a free press. An independent press that holds those in power to account is a vital part of a democratic society.

In fact he claims his “dream” now is to set up a foundation that will finance journalistic investigations into international corruption.

The free media can change the world. My idea is for some of the biggest titles around the world to pool resources to uncover the schemes and money flows used to sustain massive corruption.

But, he warns, life in the media elite is a risky business.

I sleep like a log and rarely dream. But as a big businessman in Russia who sees things differently from those in power, I tell myself every night and every morning that I should be ready to go to jail. The risk is always there.

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Innovative Interactivity (II): Interactive iPad app lets you choose your own story

Tracey Boyer looks at Touching Stories, an application developed for the iPad by two US, interactive design studios, which has been used to create a series of documentary films.

In the free app, directors Sean Ehringer, Erich Joiner, Tom Routson, Geordie Stephens and Jason Zada shot four short interactive documentaries and combined them into one storytelling interface called Touching Stories. The end result? An exhilarating choose-your-own-adventure where “you will be able to peel back more layers of the story by how you interact.”

Full post on Innovative Interactivity at this link…

Video below courtesy of Vimeo:

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Arkansas Business: US TV journalists fired over YouTube news spoofs

Arkansas Business has the story on four employees – three reporters and a photographer – at Central Arkansas TV station KARK, who have been fired after posting two spoof behind-the-scenes videos of life in their newsroom.

The “profanity-laden” videos have since been removed from YouTube, but Arksanas Business has one at this link.

Full story on Journalism in the Americas at this link…

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‘I became the scapegoat for their blunder’, says Sunday Mirror journalist over England dressing room story

The journalist accused of organising the security breach of the England football team’s dressing room during the World Cup, has called his arrest a “sick joke” in a first-hand account of the events.

Sunday Mirror reporter, Simon Wright, gave his story in an article for the tabloid, insisting he legitimately bagged an interview with the intruding fan, Pavlos Joseph, after the story had broken.

Every journalist at the World Cup wanted to interview the fan. And I was fortunate enough to get to him first. Even colleagues on other national newspapers were sending me kind texts telling me I’d had a great hit and that the beers would be on them.

I still had a satisfied glow as I flew out of Bloemfontein on my way back to Cape Town a week later. England had crashed out of the tournament against Germany and in two days I would be at home with my family. Or so I thought.

But before he could fly home, Wright was charged with “defeating the ends of justice” as well as an offence under the Immigration Act. He suggests that he was arrested as a scapegoat for the authorities’ failings with security.

They said I had “harboured” Pavlos from the police – yet they had known who he was and where he was from the moment he had been led out of the England dressing room.

Wright adds that reports that he had been seen on CCTV with Joseph in the players’ tunnel before the fan entered the dressing room were false:

The false claims were reported all over the world and my professional reputation was tarnished.

The truth is that Pavlos’s sister in London rang several newspapers in Britain just a few minutes after he’d rung home to tell her what he’d done after the England-Algeria game. My news desk woke me at 3am in the morning and gave me Pavlos’s number. I rang him instantly and we arranged to meet a few hours later, when I was able to persuade him to talk exclusively to me. That was the first time we had ever met.

Read the full story here…

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – multiple searches across social media

Research: Addict-o-matic – a great site for conducting multiple searches on one topic across a range of news and social networks. 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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YouTube grant programme – a step closer to Google as a publisher?

Last week YouTube announced its new Partner Grant Program:

The goal of YouTube Partner Grants is to act as a catalyst by infusing additional funds into the production budgets of a small group of YouTube partners who are at the forefront of innovation. Funds from YouTube Partner Grants will serve as an advance against the partner’s future YouTube revenue share.

Any partners are eligible – including news organisations – and some of the features on offer, such as tracking user engagement and subscriptions, would be particularly attractive to news channels on the site.

Parent company Google has long maintained that it is not a publisher, but could investment via partnerships with publishers and producers of video be a step away from this defence?

A spokesperson for Google gave Journalism.co.uk a short, definitive answer – no.

Our specialty is certainly not creating the content. We leave that to the experts. But we’ve seen some amazing content creators rise up over the years to get audiences that rival network television. Our goal with Partner Grants is to give these folks who are often doing 360 degrees of the content creation, production and marketing process, additional funds that they can use to buy better cameras, invest in more talent, or beef up their marketing. We look at this as a small first step in the broader evolution of partners on YouTube, but a giant leap forward in the evolution of online video.

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‘Apptop publishing’ technology targets bloggers and independents

London-based Publisha has launched a new product and coined a new digital media term in one fell swoop – the company is targeting bloggers and independent digital publishers with its ‘apptop’ publishing device, designed for distributing content across a range of mobile devices and social networks.

Essentially it provides one content management system to create a basic website, Facebook ‘articles’ tab on your fan page, an iPad and smartphone application and is developing analytics, Twitter integration and an ad-serving platform.

“Publisha offers a new way of bringing content to readers. Unlike PDF readers, we’re not trying to replicate print magazines, but rather focus on offering a service to bloggers, writers and publishers who don’t want the constraints of a traditional magazine layout. Publisha allows even small teams to easily publish across multiple digital platforms, gain readers effectively and monetise their work in a complete ecosystem,” says Publisha’s CEO Ian Howlett in a release.

But the company is particularly interested in Facebook applications – it sees these as a way for specialist and more niche publishers to find readers with common interests and open up a network. Creating news feeds to Facebook fan pages is at present rather unintuitive and clunky – tools like Publisha could offer an easier way around this, though more customisation would be a plus. See it in action on the Facebook page for US bridal magazine Bodas USA:

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#followjourn: @heidiblake – news reporter

#followjourn: Heidi Blake

Who? News reporter for the Daily Telegraph

Where? Blake joined the Telegraph in 2009, before which she had stints with the Press Association and the Yorkshire Post. Her Telegraph articles are collected at this a link. In 2007 Blake was named Journalist of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards. Her contributions to University of York student website Nouse are collected at this link.

Contact? @heidiblake

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 laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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• #FollowJourn: @jonswaine/reporter