Facebook fans – quantity or quality?

Should newsrooms and web journalists be cultivating as many Facebook fans as possible or concentrating on building the right kind of connections?

There are pros and cons to both, according to Journalistics. More fans equal more visitors to your site and more conversations. However, quality fans mean better conversations – potentially leading to better stories.

Full post on Journalistics at this link.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – computational journalism reading list

Jonathan Stray has put together this extensive reading list on ‘computational journalism’, from data journalism and visualisations to resources on measuring public knowledge and tracking the spread of information. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

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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NMA World Edition: AOL buys the Huffington Post – the video

An unique take on the recent Huffington Post buyout from the Taiwanese Next Media Animation .tv (hat tip @psmith).

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Roly Keating on the BBC’s online archive plans

The director of the BBC’s archive, Roly Keating, has explained more about the corporation’s major project to build a permanent online archive of broadcast material from Radio 4, Radio 3 and BBC Four.

Journalism.co.uk reported yesterday that the BBC Trust had given the all-clear for the project to go ahead.

Keating, a former controller of BBC Two, said in a blog post that the goal was to make the best of what the BBC had to offer searchable, linkable and shareable for years to come.

“In the online age the task of making more of the wealth of [the corporation's] fantastic archives easily accessible to audiences is an inseparable part of the BBC’s mission as a public service broadcaster,” he wrote.

“Once published every one of these programmes will become part of a standing resource at the heart of BBC Online, linkable to by others inside and outside the BBC, re-usable by future producers and editors for new propositions as yet undreamt of, and discoverable through open search by anyone pursuing an interest in the topic of the programme.

“And as media becomes ever more social, individuals will find their own personal treasures in the collection, and popularise them among their friends and networks.”

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The Lawyer: Harrow Council considers making all FOI data public

Harrow Council is considering plans to proactively publish all information that would be released under an FOI request, reports the Lawyer.

Harrow has seen a 160 per cent increase in the number of FOI requests over the past two years, and Peart believes the move would almost eliminate the cost burden of dealing with FOI requests.

It is estimated that local authorities ­collectively spend £34m handling requests each year.

Full report on the Lawyer at this link.

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OJR: Promoted tweets – the AdWords for live news?

Al Jazeera has started paying for tweets to promote its English-language Egypt coverage in the US.

Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog compares the move to newspapers using Google Adwords to drive traffic to their sites – except that the sponsored tweets can be replied to and re-tweeted just like any other.

Twitter’s media team says Riyaad Minty, head of social media at Al Jazeera English, is operating the campaign like a news desk.

It also claims that Twitter has helped drive Al Jazeera site traffic up by 2,500 per cent in the last month and that the English language version is on course to triple its number of followers.

See the full story on Online Journalism Blog at this link.

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NUJ: Bolton strike on, Sheffield strike off

Journalists at the Newsquest-owned Bolton News voted yesterday to strike in protest against an ongoing pay freeze.

Twenty-one NUJ members took part in the ballot, with 16 voting in favour of strike action, the union said in a release.

NUJ deputy general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said: “Newsquest and its American owners have been relentless in their pursuit of higher profits at the expense of journalists.

“The growing anger amongst journalists throughout the group and their determination to bring the company to the negotiating table is clear.”

Newsquest has suffered a series of strikes in recent months as a result of its ongoing pay freeze and relocation of production staff.

The company brought the pay freeze to an end at the end of last year with a 2 per cent pay offer, but only for certain titles. In contrast, staff across titles in Wales, Gloucestershire, and the South Midlands were recently asked to take a week’s unpaid leave in order to help control costs.

Meanwhile, NUJ members working for Johnston Press in Sheffield have called off planned strikes after reaching a deal with management over plans to cut production jobs at a centralised “editorial hub” in the city.

The Sheffield hub produces pages for a range of Johnston Press titles in Sheffield, Doncaster, Chesterfield and North and Mid Derbyshire and South, West and North Yorkshire.

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Journalisted Weekly: Hosni Mubarak, Fernando Torres, and Cyclone Yasi

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about.

It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations.

Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

for the week ending Sunday 6 February

• Ongoing popular protests in Egypt covered across press
• Football (Association and American) hogs the back pages
• Massive Afghan bank fraud and China-Zimbabwe investment hardly covered

Covered lots

• Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, refusing to step down immediately but entering negotiations with opposition groups, 743 articles
• Footballer Fernando Torres, making his Chelsea FC debut against former club Liverpool, 152 articles
• The Super Bowl, in which the Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25, 115 articles
• Cyclone Yasi hitting the already flood stricken coast of Queensland, 114 articles

Covered little

• Controversy over suspected $900m loss at Kabul Bank, 9 articles
• A 14-year-old is flogged to death in Bangladesh, accused by Islamic clerics of having an affair with a married man, 8 articles
• China reportedly poised to invest $10bn in Zimbabwe’s ailing economy, 1 article

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

• David Cameron: 517 articles (-16% on previous week)
• George Osborne: 161 articles (+72% on previous week)
• Nick Clegg: 139 articles (-18% on previous week)
• Tony Blair: 121 articles (-45% on previous week)
• Gordon Brown: 103 articles (-13% on previous week)
• William Hague: 99 articles (+212% on previous week)
• Ed Miliband: 93 articles (-48% on previous week)
• Theresa May: 73 articles (+43% on previous week)
• Vince Cable: 71 articles (+122% on previous week)
• Jack Straw: 60 articles (-62% on previous week)

Celebrity vs serious

• Jeremy Clarkson, making offensive comments about Mexicans on Top Gear, 45 articles vs. WikiLeaks cables revealing a secret US-funded anti-radicalisation campaign in Britain, 7 articles
• Christina Aguilera, fluffing her lines at the Super Bowl, 22 articles vs. Formula 1 driver Robert Kubica, severely damaging his hand in a rally crash, 20 articles
• Sally Bercow, wife of the Speaker John Bercow, poses for magazine photos, 31 articles vs. a care worker in Bern, Switzerland admits to abusing 114 disabled adults and children over three decades, 4 articles
• Keira Knightley, with new boyfriend rumours, 31 articles vs a climber who fell a thousand feet and survived with minor injuries, 10 articles

Who wrote a lot about…’Omar Suleiman’

Richard Spencer – 10 articles (Telegraph), James Hider – 7 articles (The Times), Ian Black – 7 articles (The Guardian), Tom Chivers – 6 articles (Telegraph), Colin Freeman – 6 articles (Telegraph)

Long form journalism

• 4,583 words: ‘Storm over the Nile’ – Matthew Campbell, Sunday Times, 6th February 2011
• 3,902 words: ‘Benefit fraud: spies in the welfare war’ – Amelia Gentleman, The Guardian, 1st February 2011
• 3,548 words: ‘Road to redemption’ – David James, Sunday Times, 6th February 2011

More from the Media Standards Trust

News about the joint Media Standards Trust/Cardiff University local news project, including an ITV Wales programme, available on our website

The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

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Telegraph: IPTV joint venture YouView delayed until next year

YouView, the IPTV joint venture billed as the new Freeview, is to miss its July target launch date and will go live in early 2012 instead, the Telegraph has revealed.

YouView chief executive Richard Halton said it was important the development was “not rushed”. When it launches, the box will offer a seven-day TV catch-up service and other on-demand web TV services. Analysts are concerned that the delay means the product will already be obsolete by the time it is ready.

Screen Digest head of broadband Dan Cryan told the paper: “With more and more TV catch up services, such as the iPlayer, coming to the living room TV set using the browser, YouView risks becoming irrelevant.”

The initiative is a joint venture between the major terrestrial broadcasters, BT, TalkTalk and transmissions giant Arqiva.

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Mashable launches new personalised news service

Technology site Mashable has launched a new personalised news service: Mashable Follow.

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore says the move is part of a shift away from a “purely editor-driven news site” to becoming a “true news community that seeks to engage our readers in the news process”.

Beyond personalization, we believe that curation is the next great wave in news, and empowering our community to choose the news of the day is the ultimate aim of the Follow project.

Full story on Mashable at this link.

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