#ijf11: Be accessible, be realistic, Guido Fawkes advises small news outlets

Accessibility and community are key to having an impact as a small online news outlet, political blogger Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) told the International Journalism Festival this morning.

Some of my best stories come from my readers.

If I want to contact the Sunday Times investigations editor, I can maybe ring the switchboard but I probably won’t get through.

I have my phone number and email address on my site. Alright, you won’t get though to me directly, you’ll get an answerphone, but I will get back to you.

And there is the promise of a free T-shirt if I use your information.

Staines cited the recent example of an image of David and Samantha Cameron looking terrifically glum waiting for a Ryanair flight to Malaga.

The image was sent to Staines by a reader, and within an hour he had published it and sold international syndication rights, making enough money to fund the blog for a month.

The blog shared the money with the photographer, he hastened to add.

Another important factor is being realistic, he said, knowing what you can and can’t do.

The Guido Fawkes blog is a two-man operation, and “can’t spend a long time investigating a corporation across five continents”.

The way we approach it is much more tabloid, more hit and run, but we will keep coming back to a subject and wear at it to get results.

We’re not worried about getting scooped as long as we keep at the story.

He put that need for realism in sobering financial terms when he said that he had bid £10,000 – as much as he could – for the MPs expenses disk, but came up against the Telegraph, which bid £100,000.

Since its modest beginnings, started “on a whim” in 2004, the blog has landed “one politician is jail, a few fired, a few resigned”, Staines claimed. “Oh and a few special advisors, I forget about them”.

Not all of them perhaps, The Guido Fawkes blog was responsible for a story about William Hague sharing a room with a young special advisor, who resigned as the story spread like wild fire across the nationals.

Compared with larger, more established news organisations, Staines’ disregard for the need for double checking the facts was another advantage, he said.

Newspapers have to have double sourcing and verification, Whereas I’m more likely to take a flyer and a risk with the lawyers.

For that very reason, another important source of stories for Staines is political journalists who have had stories spiked by their editor for not standing up, but who want to get it out.

That’s great, when that happens, because I get all the credit and they get nothing.

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#ijf11: Charles Lewis on the ‘interesting ecosystem’ of non-profit news

There are more than 50 non-profit journalism organisations operating today in the US, which leads the rest of the world in investigative journalism funded by private donations.

A sizable number of them – eight at last count – were founded by veteran US journalist Charles Lewis, including the Center for Public Integrity (CFPI), which has gone from his bedroom to having more than 40 staff and a budget of more than $8 million.

Lewis now runs the Investigative Reporting Workshop (IRW), which employs 14 staff, a third of which are students.

He said that the IRW was purposely “trying to mix the generations”, adding that having young people around vastly increases the organisation’s capacity to innovate.

Like the CFPI, the workshop also has a none-too-shabby budget of $2.2 million a year.

But speaking on an International Journalism Festival panel today on how small online news outlets can have an impact, Lewis said that millions of dollars and scores of staff were not a prerequsite for doing in-depth investigative work.

There is a non-profit in San-Diego that is doing this kind of work and they have two  people. They have done five impactful investigations.

One of the ways you do that is data. In San Diego they took the response times of ambulances in the city, and looked at how they differed over certain areas. This came from one dataset and one guy did it, over a few months.

Great journalism can be done by a few people.

Speaking to me after the session, Lewis said that with the rise of non-profits there was an “interesting ecosystem emerging” in US news.

Listen to more from Lewis on the future of that system and in the US and the future of the relationship of non-profits and traditional mainstream media:

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• New York Times: AP to distribute non-profit journalism
• MediaShift: “Collaboration the key to future of investigative journalism”
• Nieman Journalism Lab: For-profit model can’t support investigative journalism, says Len Downie
• Non-profit news site ProPublica goes live
• What next for the UK Investigations Fund?

#media140 #jpod – Day two round-up with interviews

Journalism.co.uk attended the media140 conference in Barcelona this week, which looked at social technologies in journalism.

In this podcast senior reporter Rachel McAthy runs through the main events of the second, and final day, of the event.

Her first day round-up can be found here.

The podcast below features interviews with Catalan journalist and academic Dani Madrid about the media coverage of the Japanese earthquake and media140 founder Ande Gregson, reflecting on the two-day conference.

Podcast: Download

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• #followjourn: @andegregson – Ande Gregson/founder of media140 Worldwide
• #media140: Full coverage from media140 2011
• New Japanese website for Bloomberg
• #jpod in depth: A look at threats to press freedom around the world
• Journalism.co.uk forays into podcasting: follow here

Sunday Sport founder expected to relaunch paper

The founder of the Sunday Sport is believed to be buying back the title, which went into administration on 4 April.

David Sullivan, who is joint chairman of West Ham United, launched the Sunday Sport in 1986, following with the Daily Sport in 1991.

He sold the two titles in 2007, for £40 million and is now believed to be buying back the Sunday paper for less that £1 million.

A former Sunday Sport editor told Journalism.co.uk Sullivan’s team spent some of yesterday looking for new offices for the Manchester-based title, which is expected to relaunch on 8 May.

Administrators for the Sport titles, BDO, told Journalism.co.uk no deal has been completed and they are “still talking to interested parties”.

It is thought the Daily Sport is not part of the deal.

If no buyer is found for the daily, it will be the first national daily to shut since Today closed in 1995.

Sullivan bailed out Sports Media Group, which owned the titles, in 2009, with a £1.6 million loan, but did not offer more money to save the titles earlier this month when the papers shut with the loss of all 80 jobs, administrators said.

A relaunched Sport would see Sullivan look to win back readers, who have been welcomed by Richard Desmond’s title the Daily Star Sunday since the Sunday Sport’s closure.

A message on the paper’s masthead using the Sport’s typeface has been used by the Daily Star Sunday for the past two weeks.

National Union of Journalists negotiator Lawrence Shaw said he “would welcome any newspaper start up” but warned the sale could still leave freelancers owed large amounts of money.

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• Sky News: Express and Mail owners discuss merger
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‘Questions need answers’ from NotW, says PCC chair

The chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Baroness Peta Buscombe, has said there are “serious questions which need answers” by News International after “their own internal inquiries were not robust”.

In a letter to a lawyer who successfully sued her for libel in relation to the phone-hacking investigation, the chairman condemns all those at the News of the World who have been involved in hacking.

The chairman yesterday wrote to Mark Lewis, a lawyer for some of the celebrities and public figures who believe they are victims of hacking, stating that the committee set up by the PCC to review phone hacking is robust.

Giving evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport committee last year, Lewis said he was told by DS Mark Maberly, a Metropolitan police officer, that 6,000 people may have had their phones hacked by the News of the World.

Buscombe later said in a speech at the Society of Editors conference that Lewis had misquoted Maberly, prompting the libel claim which saw the chairman publicly apologise in the High Court and pay damages to Lewis.

Lewis, of  Taylor Hampton Solicitors, wrote to Baroness Buscombe earlier this week and she has now responded.

“Let me be clear about my position on phone hacking, which has been consistent throughout.

“It is a deplorable practice, and an unjustifiable intrusion into an individual’s privacy,” she said in the letter.

“The commission has always said that it is a breach of the Editors’ Code.

“As I said to the Independent in February this year, it brings shame upon the whole journalistic profession. I condemn all those at the News of the World who have been involved in it.”

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• Will inquiries find PCC a chocolate teapot, or a serious ‘mediator’?

BBC CoJo: When a super injunction is not a super injunction

Writing on the BBC College of Journalism blog, Judith Townend says sometimes journalists cry ‘super injunction’ when they mean privacy injunction.

A super injunction is one whose very existence cannot be reported – as in the cases involving Trafigura (2009) and Terry (2010).

As media lawyer Mark Thompson explained in a footnote on the Inforrm media law blog last year: “The ‘super injunction’ part of the order is the restraint on publication of the existence of the proceeding.”

Townend also explains the recent case of ZAM v CFW, despite media reports to the contrary, did not involve a super injunction.

Contrary to what you might expect, it appears that there are very few privacy injunctions against the media directly.

The public judgments suggest that the injunctions are often against blackmailers, and it is rarely contended that there is a public interest in the publication of the information.

Townend also has a compiled a list of the number of privacy injunctions here on the Inforrm’s Blog.

There appear to have been 11 privacy injunction hearings in the first three months of 2011, seven of which resulted in ‘public’ – although not always ‘published’ – judgments and two in which judgment is awaited.

She goes on to say there is a need for more information.

So where does all that leave us? While journalists should continue to raise questions about ‘super injunctions’ and the use of anonymous injunctions restricting the media’s ability to report court proceedings, there is a more pressing need for raw information direct from the courts.

The full BBC CoJo post is at this link.

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• Richard Wilson: ‘No one knows how many secret super-injunctions are currently in force’
• Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger on Trafigura’s ‘own goal’
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• Kelvin MacKenzie: Online makes mockery of super injunctions
• Trafigura update: Jack Straw to examine use of ‘super injunctions’

#Followjourn @alexwoodcreates /journalist

Who? Alex Wood

Where? Alex is a journalist at BBC World and co-founder of Not on the Wires.

Twitter? @alexwoodcreates

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 sarah.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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• #followjourn @lindseyhilsum – Lindsey Hilsum/journalist
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• #followjourn: @thistlejohn – Paris Gourtsoyannis/freelance journalist
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#media140 – Top tips on managing your online identity

The final session of media140 looked at building an online identity.

Throughout the session plenty of useful tips and pieces of advice were imparted by the speakers – Ricard Espelt, co-founder of redall.cat and Gemma Urgell, journalist, blogger and consultant for redall.cat – and delegates alike. Here’s a collection of some of the thoughts shared:

• Ask yourself who you are and how you are going to be seen, and want to be seen.
• Have a good attitude, it is not only what we do ourselves it is what we say and what everyone else says about us.
• You can control what you say, you can’t control what other people say, so you have to take that into account.
• Should be transparent, need to be unique, you can adapt your own identity.
• Be conscious about what you use it for, you have to remember it will still be there tomorrow.
• We make mistakes and we learn from them on the net. If you see someone else make a mistake on the net you should learn from that too.
• Main attitudes– transparency, common sense, share your knowledge, be humble, be constant/current, be updated.
• If you have a specialism – use it to find your own community.
• Use lists on Twitter to find and follow sources.
• Broadcast journalists – use online platforms to offer extensions to short broadcasted news snippets, add depth.

But there were a couple of points of disagreement, too, such as audience statistics.

While some encouraged the use of analytics and audience statistics, others felt a better representation of audience feedback is in the comments left behind and the focus should be on quality of content, rather than quantity to increase statistics.

If you have anymore to add please do so using the comments below.

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Debate: Will other reporters follow Tindle’s and strike over quality?

Journalists at Tindle newspapers in north London are striking over the declining quality of the nine newspapers written by just three news reporters.

They complain they cannot leave the office to cover court stories, council meetings and are delivering a poor product to readers.

They are saying “enough is enough” and downing tools for a full two weeks. Nine editorial staff will walk out from Tuesday.

Tindle has said it will aim to produce the Enfield papers during the strike. Father of the chapel and features editor of the north London papers Jonathan Lovett speculated that they would do this by asking staff from other regional centres to cover.

So are the striking Tindle nine bravely leading the way to stop “churnalism” and deliver a better quality product for readers or are they standing on a picket line for two weeks only to ask the impossible of a company which has been hit by declining sales and advertising?

And, of course, cuts and declining quality is not just happening at Tindle newspapers.

It’s not just Tindle’s arts pages that are cut back, reporters who are over worked and council meetings that are ignored.

The last three years have seen cuts in regional newspapers across the country.

Jobs have been lost, subs’ posts have disappeared, production has moved way beyond the area where the spellings of councillors’ names and villages are known, football reports have been written a long way from the pitch and change pages have been reduced.

So can the quality of regional newspapers be upheld by industrial action taken by the reporters who write them? We would like to know your opinions on this issue.

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Newsquest staff to vote on strike action over ‘subbing hub’

Nearly 80 Newsquest journalists are to vote on whether to take strike action in protest over plans to axe 14 subbing jobs in Darlington and York.

Newsquest plans to create a subbing hub in Bradford, which is 70 miles from Darlington, where the production of the weekly papers will take place.

The sub-editing of the dailies, the Northern Echo in Darlington and the Press in York, will remain at the existing locations.

Four jobs will be created in Bradford as subbing operations move during the next six months.

Members of the National Union of Journalists at Darlington, Durham, Northallerton, Bishop Auckland and York will take part in the ballot, which closes on 3 May.

“Newsquest needs to convince us, their staff and in all probability themselves, that this plan can work but management has shied away from that debate. At some point Newsquest will have to stop the cuts and start taking all their staff with them – in all senses of the words,” NUJ northern and midlands organiser Chris Morley said in a statement.

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