Exciting experiment or nothing new? Bloggers’ take on Huffington Post UK

Arianna Huffington is launching the UK version of her American blog-orientated news site the Huffington Post this week, and the move has sparked debate in the blogosphere.

Huffington launched the Canada arm last month, but Huffington Post UK will be the site’s first foray outside of North America, with a French version set to follow soon.

Speaking to Ian Burrell for the Independent, Paul Bradshaw, professor of online journalism at City University comments about the difference between UK and US media landscapes that may require a different approach.

“It’s going to be hard for The Huffington Post to communicate what they stand for,” says Bradshaw, who is not inclined to blog for the site. “In the UK they are known as the site that sold to AOL. In the US they might have been known as the site that offered an alternative voice but there’s a different media landscape over here.”

In the same piece, Brian Cathcart, who teaches journalism at Kingston University, adds:

“They will need some new ideas, some really inspired appointments, and to discover some talent. It doesn’t seem that the existing model in the US would offer us anything terribly exciting and new over here.”

Paul Bradshaw may not be persuaded to write for the site but blogger and podcaster Neville Hobson is. In a post titled On board with The Huffington Post UK, Hobson writes that he relishes being part of “a grand experiment”.

So what’s in it for me? To a great extent, I see it as being part of a grand experiment, contributing my opinion and commentary on topics that interest me and that will be published in an online medium that has huge scale and reach. It offers an opportunity for such opinion and commentary to reach many people who, frankly, would be unlikely to visit my blog.

It also means that I’ll be writing for a mainstream medium. That traditionally means you need to be a journalist, which I’m not. I don’t know yet who any of the other bloggers are who’ll be writing for the UK edition, but my guess is that a majority will not be journalists.

Overseas expansion does of course mean a clutch of new hires, but Bobbie Johnson of GigaOm views the operation as “low-risk”, and points to several reasons why.

Well, first, that Huffington Post UK is looking — on the surface, at least — more like a reworking of the current AOL UK operation than a brand new entity. That’s a low-risk strategy, but as I’ve previously argued, it might take more to make an impact in a highly competitive media market like Britain.

Secondly, it’s interesting that this team consists almost exclusively of young journalists, with very few of the high-level, experienced hands that Huffington has made a great play of luring over in the United States. There’s no equivalent, for example, to the likes of political heavy-hitter Howard Fineman, brought over from Newsweek, media reporting veteran Michael Calderone from Yahoo or award-winning reporter Trymaine Lee from the New York Times.

I asked my Twitter followers what they thought of the project, and received a variety of responses.

Adam Tinworth, Editorial Business Manager for Reed Business Information pointed out the possible disruption created by the launch.

Graphic designer and student journalist Jonathan Frost was very enthusiastic.

While subeditor Paul Wiggins was rather more succinct.

Finally, if you want to get involved in blogging for the Huffington Post when it hits UK shores, food journalist Andrew Webb has helpfully published the full requirements on his blog.

For now you can follow their progress via the dedicated Twitter account @HuffPostUK, whose first tweet had a distinctly non-UK feel to it.

Image of Arianna Huffington by Knight Foundation on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Disclosure: Joseph Stashko is a blogger for Huffington Post UK.

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Krishnan Guru-Murthy: ‘It is partly our fault’ response to Ed Miliband interview

By now most of you will have seen Ed Miliband’s interview where he gives almost identikit answers to questions posed by BBC, ITV and Sky News journalists.

Now Channel 4′s Krishnan Guru-Murthy has blogged about the episode, in which he criticises politicians’ tactic of repetitive responses in a post titled Changing the Rules of the TV Interview.

There’s nothing new about it, politicians have been doing it for years and it is partly our fault in the media for letting them get away with it for so long.

I’ve had politicians from every party try a variation of the loop on me. Somebody in political PR training school obviously told them that if you’re doing ‘a clip’ for the news and you want to make sure the media only use what you want them to then only say one thing.

He then goes on to suggest a way in which television interviews can be conducted with more transparency.

So perhaps it is time for a new deal between television and politics. Perhaps an interview should just be an interview without any rules. Or perhaps when politicians only agree to be clipped or pooled we should make it clear, when they repeat themselves they should be challenged on camera and when they refuse to debate with other guests we should say so.

You can read the full post at this link.

ITV’s Damon Green, who was part of the pooled interview, also added his thoughts on Friday, remarking that “if we are not allowed to explore and examine a politician’s views, then politicians cease to be accountable in the most obvious way”. You can read his take on the interview here.

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MediaGuardian: BBC seeks to prevent stars leaking information on Twitter

Senior BBC executives are campaigning for actors, writers and other talent to be prevented from Tweeting about the details of their work, Media Guardian reports.

An anonymous senior executive cited in the report claims that “conversations have started” about adjusting contracts to protect the broadcaster from stars revealing confidential details of forthcoming programmes.

The move reportedly follows recent leaks including Sophie Ellis-Bexter disclosing that she would be appearing on Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s new comedy Life’s Too Short alongside Sting, and Stephen Mangan’s revelation that drama Dirk Gently had been recommissioned and Armando Iannucci’s similar announcement about The Thick of It.

A spokesperson for the BBC said today: “We have clear guidelines for personal and professional use of Twitter and social media, all available online. Most talent tweeting fall under the personal usage bracket, and are advised by their agents/producers and we encourage them to read our guidelines.”

Full report on Media Guardian at this link.

The current BBC Twitter guidelines can be found at this link.

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#followjourn: @jamescrabtree – James Crabtree/journalist

Who? James Crabtree

Where? James is the Financial Times’ comment page editor and a trustee at MySociety.

Twitter? @jamescrabtree

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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Fox News Twitter account hacked, claims Obama is dead

Fox News has apparently fallen foul of hackers, with its @foxnewspolitics feed being used to spread false rumours about Barack Obama being shot and killed.

Earlier this morning, the account announced: “Just regained full access to our Twitter and email”, before embarking on a series of tweets that announced fake details about Obama’s death.

The most recent tweet bids Joe Biden good luck as the “new President of the United States”.

It remains unclear whether Fox News has regained control over the account.

Gizmodo have reported that @TheScriptKiddie and @ScriptKiddi3s (both now suspended) have claimed responsibility for the attack.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – How to get started with Final Cut Pro X

Final Cut Pro X was released 10 days ago and there are handy video tutorials over on the IzzyVideo site to help you get started in editing video using the software.

There are 26 free videos on Final Cut Pro X covering topics such as colour correction and transitions.

The getting started video is at this link.

Tipster: Sarah Marshall. 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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The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 24 June-1 July

The top 10 most-read news stories and blog posts this week on Journalism.co.uk were:

1. ‘Is there a better way of doing this?’: Johann Hari responds to plagiarism accusations

2. Media Standards Trust calls for inquiry into Johann Hari’s Orwell Prize

3. #su2011: New online open newsroom a hit for Swedish newspaper

4. Centaur Media scraps print editions of Design Week and New Media Age

5. Orwell Prize Council begins investigation into Johann Hari

6. #su2011: Forget hyperlocal, the future’s ‘hyperpersonal’

7. Mea culpa? Johann Hari apologises for ‘error of judgement’

8. Seven jobs at risk as Scottish newspaper publisher goes bust

9. #su2011: iPad creates new demand for evening news

10. Bloggers showing ‘plenty of interest’ in writing for HuffPo UK

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Why news sites should consider adding the LinkedIn share button

TechCrunch has revealed LinkedIn is now sending the site more referral traffic than Twitter.

Much of the traffic appears to be down to referrals from LinkedIn Today, a collection of articles shared by your connections – including via Twitter – but a quick look at the number of clicks a LinkedIn share button is acquiring suggests it is well worth adding.

TechCrunch’s post goes on to reveal this amazing fact:

The biggest stat of all is that a year ago, traffic coming from LinkedIn was 1/50th what it is today on a monthly basis.

So what changed? As far as we can tell, this is all about LinkedIn Today, the social news product the service launched back in March. It was around that time that was saw the first big bump in terms of traffic coming from LinkedIn. In March, it roughly doubled from February. Then April was pretty flat — it was still much higher than previously, but not growing. Then in May, traffic went up 5x. And in June, it more than doubled from that. The growth has been astounding.

Of course what’s perhaps most interesting about that is that LinkedIn Today is powered by Twitter. Twitter shared links determine what shows up on LinkedIn Today, but the traffic does not go back through Twitter.

Even more surprising is that the biggest traffic driver to TechCrunch is Facebook.

The truth is that if this were October of last year, you would have been right in thinking that Twitter was our top referrer in terms of social websites. But since that time, Facebook has far surpassed Twitter in terms of traffic coming our way each month. In fact, Facebook.com is now sends nearly double the traffic that Twitter.com does. This is probably due to the fact that last November, we added Elin, our excellent community manager, who curates and engages with people from our feed on Facebook. I also suspect it has to do with the rise of the like button. Ever since it was released last year, Facebook has been steadily referring more readers our way.

Speaking on today’s Journalism.co.uk #jpod on how journalists can best use Facebook pages Jack Riley, head of digital audience and content development at the Independent, explains how the Independent has seen an impressive growth in traffic to its news site via Facebook and how social referrals have overtaken traffic generated by search.

Riley states:

Just as we saw with the Google wave of the digital media revolution when everyone optimised their sites for search and SEO became a huge industry in its own right, now everyone is having to optimise their sites for social.

In the podcast Riley explains that this means adding open graph tags to articles so they are optimised for Facebook sharing.

But if your next step in social is adding LinkedIn share, here is how to add the button by copying and pasting a simple line of code.

TechCrunch’s post on its social traffic is well worth reading and is at this link.

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#jpod: How journalists can best use Facebook pages

In this week’s feature podcast Journalism.co.uk’s technology correspondent Sarah Marshall looks at how journalists can use Facebook pages to connect with sources and readers and increase traffic to news sites.

• Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook’s new journalist programme manager explains how pages can be used for showcasing their work;
• Visiting professor at City University, London and part time course leader for the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City Paul Bradshaw tells us what he has learnt from a month-long experiment of using his Facebook page as a blog;
• Jack Riley, head of digital audience and content development at the Independent, explains how the news site has cracked the Facebook code with a 430 per cent rise in referrals from Facebook to its website.

Podcast: Download

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#followjourn: @mightyscoop – Joel Goldman/journalist

Who? Joel Goldman

Where? Joel is deputy editor at Metro Radio and newsreader on Tony Horne in The Morning.

Twitter? @mightyscoop

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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