New Statesman: Hugh Grant turns the tables on the phone hackers

Hugh Grant secretly recorded a conversation with former News of the World deputy features editor Paul McMullen, during which the reporter claimed that former NotW editor Rebekah Brooks “absolutely” knew about illegal phone hacking.

The revelation appears in an article Grant has written for the New Statesman, which is guest-edited this week by the actor’s former partner Jemima Khan.

Grant, who believes he was himself a victim of phone hacking, ended up talking to McMullan when his “midlife crisis car” broke down in a Kent village just before Christmas and he was forced to accept a lift from the reporter, who was following him.

He was Paul McMullan, one of two ex-NoW hacks who had blown the whistle (in the Guardian and on Channel 4′s Dispatches) on the full extent of phone-hacking at the paper, particularly under its former editor Andy Coulson. This was interesting, as I had been a victim – a fact he confirmed as we drove along. He also had an unusual defence of the practice: that phone hacking was a price you had to pay for living in a free society. I asked how that worked exactly, but we ran out of time, and next thing we had arrived and he was asking me if I would pose for a photo with him, “not for publication, just for the wall of the pub”.

I agreed and the picture duly appeared in the Mail on Sunday that weekend with his creative version of the encounter. He had asked me to drop into his pub some time. So when, some months later, Jemima asked me to write a piece for this paper, it occurred to me it might be interesting to take him up on his invitation.

So Grant returned to the the Castle Inn Pub in Dover wearing a hidden microphone, and the fruits of his chat with McMullan will be published in this week’s New Statesman. An edited version is at this link.

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Nieman: New data on the Daily suggests social media decline

Joshua Benton at the Nieman Journalism Lab has been analysing the success – or as he believes the decline – of Rupert Murdoch’s iPad only US newspaper, the Daily, by monitoring tweets sent directly from the app.

This post is interesting, not only as an insight into possible problems at the Daily, but for some of the techniques and tools Benton uses for his analysis.

No one outside News Corp. and Apple has a reliable way of knowing how often people read the Daily. But there is one way in which the Daily’s app interacts with the public web — through Twitter sharing. On nearly every page in the app, there’s a sharing button in the top right that allows the reader to share a link to the story on Twitter or other social networks. (A few pages, like the table of contents and user-customized pages, aren’t sharable.)

Benton has used PostRank, a Canadian social media indexing service that analyses how individual web pages are shared through social media.

It’s easy to think of a tweet as just 140 characters, but there’s a lot of metadata around that little snippet of text: when it was tweeted, who tweeted it, how many followers she has, what date she joined Twitter, and more. Amidst all that data is information about where each tweet was generated. Did it come from Twitter’s web interface, or from the official Twitter BlackBerry app, or a third-party app like Echofon or TweetDeck? That’s in there.

And thanks to Twitter’s requirement that app developers register with its API to allow in-app tweeting, that means you can track every time someone tweets from within the Daily.

The data doesn’t look good for the Daily. Its activity on Twitter seems to match my own perceptions of how they’re doing — an early rush of excitement; a decline as people lost interest and the app struggled with technical problems; a plateau once the tech got sorted out; and then another decline once the app started charging users.

Nieman Lab’s full post is at this link.

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paidContent: Sulzberger: $40m estimate for paywall cost is ‘vastly wrong’

Arthur Sulzberger has said Bloomberg’s report stating the development of the New York Times’ paywall cost between $40 million and $50 million is “vastly wrong”, but refused to say what the switch to paid digital content did cost, according to a post on paidContent.

Sulzberger also declined to offer any numbers when it comes to subscribers, saying it was too soon but that the company would provide some details eventually. At another point, asked about complaints that the pay plan is too complex, he urged people to be patient. Noting that the company was able to tweak the system between the launch in Canada and the US-global launch 10 days later, Sulzberger said: “We’re going to learn, adapt, make it simpler. But I don’t agree that it’s too complex. It’s new. Let it breathe for a little bit before you make judgment.”

paidContent’s full post is at this link.

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TheMediaBriefing: You may not like it, but Mail Online is a digital innovator

Daily Mail website Mail Online took home the digital innovation award at last night’s Press Awards, much to the dismay of some. Is it innovative? Or just successful? Does it matter?

Media Briefing editor Patrick Smith stands firmly behind the award, and explains some of the reasons in an interesting post on the Media Briefing blog.

Soap stars on the beach isn’t Pulitzer prize-winning stuff, but the content from the paper is in the middle of the front page and you can click on that if you want too. There is genuine news here: the bank worker fired a Facebook post comparing here £7-an-hour wage to a boss’s £4,000-an-hour, for example, plus lots of middle market news mainstays you would expect such as tax and immigration. Mail execs reportedly claim only a quarter of traffic is driven by “showbiz” stories.

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Journalisted Weekly: Cricket, Fukushima, and Moussa Koussa

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 3 April

• Fukushima and cricket covered the front and back pages
• Defection of Libyan foreign minister revisits Lockerbie anger
• A rape accusation against Gaddafi forces and Mubarak’s house arrest got little coverage
• Journalisted weekly introduces new section ‘Arab spring’

Covered lots

• The Cricket World Cup, with India winning the final by 6 wickets against Sri Lanka, 312 articles
• Fukushima nuclear plant, with Japanese officials scrapping mission to save its crippled reactors as seawater radiation levels rise, 199 articles
• Gaddafi defector, Moussa Koussa, denied UK immunity amidst public scrutiny of his alleged role in the Lockerbie bombing, 141 articles

Covered little

• Former Springbok player Joseph Ntshongwana, accused of murdering 3 people in a revenge attack for the rape of his daughter, 8 articles
• Libyan law student Iman al-Obaidi, facing defamation charges after bursting into a Tripoli hotel to tell journalists she had been raped by pro-Gaddafi soldiers, 5 articles
• Former president Mubarak, and his family, placed under house arrest by Egypt’s military council, 4 articles

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

• David Cameron: 509 articles (-7% on previous week)
• Ed Miliband: 203 articles (-8% on previous week)
• Nick Clegg: 194 articles (+68% on previous week)
• George Osborne: 193 articles (-76% on previous week)
• William Hague: 171 articles (-2% on previous week)
• Tony Blair: 91 articles (-15% on previous week)
• Ed Balls: 85 articles (-7% on previous week)
• Gordon Brown: 82 articles (-53% on previous week)
• Michael Gove: 72 articles (+13% on previous week)
• Andrew Lansley: 66 articles (+97% on previous week

Celebrity vs serious

• Prince Harry, training ahead of a trek to the North Pole, 72 articles vs. 20 UN staff killed in Afghanistan by a mob protesting a US Koran-burning, 36 articles
• Britney Spears, launching her new album, 49 articles vs. renewed Eurozone crisis, with Irish banks receiving £21bn and Portugal under bailout pressure, 28 articles
• Mohamed Al Fayed, revealing his Michael Jackson memorial outside Fulham FC, 23 articles vs. BP, set to return to the Mexican Gulf amidst potential manslaughter charges from last year’s rig explosion, 17 articles

Arab spring

• Libya and Colonel Gaddafi, 519 articles (-32% on previous week)
• Syria and President Bashar Al-Assad, 79 articles (+27% on previous week)
• Yemen and President Saleh, 46 articles (-133% on previous week)
• Gaza and Hamas, 24 articles (-129% on previous week)
• Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, 15 articles (-223% on previous week)
• Turkey and Prime Minster Erdoğan, 14 articles (-114% on previous week)
• Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah, 7 articles (-57% on previous week)
• Egypt’s military council, 6 articles (+17% on previous week)
• Kuwait and Emir Al-Sabah, 6 articles (+83% on previous week)
• Iran and President Ahmadinejad, 5 articles (0% on previous week)
• Jordan and King Abdullah, 3 articles (-167% on previous week)
• Oman and Sultan Al-Said, 2 articles (+100% on previous week)
• The West Bank and President Abbas, 2 articles (-200% on previous week)
• Iraq and Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki, 2 articles (+200% on previous week)

Who wrote a lot about…’Ivory Coast unrest’

David Smith – 11 articles (The Guardian), Aislinn Laing – 7 articles (Telegraph), Monica Mark – 5 articles (The Times), William Wallis – 5 articles (Financial Times), Marco Chown Oved – 4 articles (The Scotsman), Pauline Bax – 4 articles (The Guardian

Long form journalism

• 4,995 words: ‘The plan to save Ed Miliband’ – Johann Hari, The Independent, 1st April 2011
• 4,307 words: ‘How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs’ – Ed Vulliamy, The Observer, 3rd April 2011
• 3,088 words: ‘Linda Norgrove’s parents are paying tribute to their daughter’s life by continuing her work’ – Catherine Deveney, The Scotsman, 29th March 2011

More from the media Standards Trust

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s new site Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Churnalism.com ‘explore’ page is available for browsing press release sources alongside news outlets

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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Facebook launches page for journalists

Facebook has launched a new page for journalists to help them “find sources, interact with readers, and advance stories,” a post by the social media company has announced.

The page, which has racked up more than 5,000 ‘likes’ since it was launched yesterday, also promises to “provide journalists with best practices for integrating the latest Facebook products with their work and connecting with the Facebook audience of more than 500 million people”.

Facebook cites what it sees as “great examples for how Facebook can be used as a reporting tool”.

NPR uses Facebook to source stories
The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof reported from his Facebook Page while on the ground in Cairo
Ian Shapira of the Washington Post recently used Facebook as a powerful storytelling advice

Facebook is also launching a series of meet up groups around the world, kicking off in California later this month.

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Alan Rusbridger on relationship with WikiLeaks: ‘things are quite difficult’

Last night Journalism.co.uk was at the Press Awards, where the Guardian was named Newspaper of the Year. At the ceremony the paper was praised specifically for its its coverage of the WikiLeak’s releases.

We caught up with Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger at the end of the awards, who said that while the current situation with WikiLeaks is “difficult” there will be more revelations to come.

I think WikiLeaks was the stand out story, not only nationally but also globally. I think it had a global impact and I think it will be historically significant. I can’t think of another story in my lifetime where a story created by a newspaper has become the most discussed thing in every capital city around the world. That was the stand out story.

At the moment things are quite difficult between WikiLeaks and the Guardian, because they just are, partly due to the communications. It’s very difficult to keep relation with people if you never see them and the only way of communicating is through encrypted text messaging.

I think there will be more revelations to come and I think lots of papers are going to be developing their own mini versions of WikiLeaks. One thing WikiLeaks has taught us is the importance of working out how to get information securely and publish securely and I think that’s been a valuable lesson for us all.

You can see the full list of winners from the Press Awards here.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – audience engagement

The Online Journalism Review’s Robert Niles has posted this useful post on community engagement, offering advice for news publishers on how to go about attracting a larger number of audience members who your customers want to reach. 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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NCTJ to launch new competition to find ‘Stars of the Future’

The National Council for the Training of Journalists is running new a competition in partnership with regional newspapers to mark its 60th anniversary.

The competition will be open to 16 to 18 year olds who want to see their work in print to submit a 200 word news story to their local newspaper for judging.

A single winner will then be selected by members of the NCTJ board and the winning student will be awarded a cash prize, work experience and careers advice.

Full details of the competition, which opens for entries on 18 April, is at this link.

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Daily Sport: ‘No one was expecting such a rapid closure’ says NUJ

Staff at the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport, which ceased trading on Friday, were surprised by the papers’ swift closure, according to the National Union of Journalists.

NUJ negotiator Lawrence Shaw told Journalism.co.uk, referring to a recent job advert for a sports editor, the fact the company was still recruiting “signalled” it was unexpected.

“Everyone knew there was a debt and there have been problems but everyone was under the impression the worst was over,” Shaw said.

The editorial team had been through a “quite painful” restructure of subs and designers within the past year, he explained, but recent reports suggested a bounce back for owner Sport Media Group.

Shaw spent the day with staff in the Manchester offices yesterday. “It was strange to see page plans from Friday lying around like it was just frozen in time,” he said. “It is terribly sad to see the loss of the only national newspapers produced outside of London.”

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