Wannabe Hacks blog looking for new recruits to take the reins

Wannabe Hacks, a blog started less than a year ago by five young hopefuls starting out in careers in journalism, is looking for new quintet of aspiring journalists.

Applications open for the second generation on Wannabe Hacks on Monday 1 August when the current Hacks – the Intern, the Student, the Freelancer, the Maverick and the Chancer – will hand over the reins and take a more hands off approach to the site.

Last autumn, when five journalist hopefuls were starting out on their different paths but all with their eyes on one career, the group began to blog about their experiences. After an early mention in the Media Guardian and a savvy use of social media, the blog became a source of information and inspiration for other trainee journalists.

Where are they now?

• Ben Whitelaw is the Student. Whitelaw spent the past year studying for an MA in newspaper journalism at City University London and now has a job at the Guardian. He is content co-ordinator at the Guardian Professional Networks, a selection of B2B websites about public services.
• Matthew Caines is the Freelancer. He is a freelance journalist with the Guardian (housing and society) but also writes for various lifestyle and fashion e-mags.
• Nick Petrie is the Intern. He is now working for the Telegraph as a community manager.
• Tom Clarke is the Chancer. He also spent the last year studying for an MA in newspaper journalism at City University.
• Alice Vincent is the Maverick. She spent three months in New York, as an intern at NYLON magazine and is now working at Wired magazine in London.

Writing on Wannabe Hacks today, the five say the application process will be open for two weeks from Monday (1 August).

There are full details of who should think about applying on the site.

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#followjourn: @emmabarnett – Emma Barnett/journalist

Who? Emma Barnett

Where? Emma is digital media editor at the Daily Telegraph. Her blog is at emmabarnett.org

Twitter? @emmabarnett

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can 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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The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 16-22 July

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

1. LIVE: Rupert and James Murdoch give evidence to MPs on hacking

2. Daily Mail and Sun fined £15k for contempt of court

3. News of the World whistleblower found dead

4. Phone hacking: Rebekah Brooks arrested and bailed

5. Voluntary redundancies as Future Publishing focuses on digital

6. Observer seeks to distinguish ‘Operation Motorman’ from the phone-hacking scandal

7. Tips for journalists wanting to engage with 20m Google+ users

8. New file format allows journalists to create interactive infographics

9. John Yates called back to home affairs committee

10. Jon Snow receives degree 40 years after expulsion

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• Observer: Readers’ editor defends paper’s use of private investigator
• Comment is Free: Phone hacking – select committee must move quickly, says Paul Farrelly
• Timeline: Phone hacking and the end of the News of the World
• How not to get your phone hacked
• FT editor criticises Fleet Street for ‘conspiracy of silence’ over phone hacking

‘Embarrassed bosses’ stop strike breaking with work experience, NUJ claims

Johnston Press bosses in South Yorkshire, who reportedly asked a 16-year-old teenager to cover the news desk during a strike, have asked the work experience student to leave, the National Union of Journalists has claimed.

The teenager, who has just completed his GCSEs, had come to the group’s Selby Times for work experience but, when the strike to protect jobs and quality journalism began at the Selby Times, Doncaster Free Press and South Yorkshire Times on 15 July, management extended his engagement to get the paper out, the union has said.

He was put to work writing news stories – despite having originally asked the paper to do his work experience on the sports desk, the NUJ said.

Rival title the Selby Post reported the story.

NUJ negotiator Lawrence Shaw told Journalism.co.uk he believes “embarrassed Johnston Press bosses” asked the work experience teenager to leave after the paper went to press on Wednesday.

Around 25 members of staff are striking indefinitely, leaving the editor, sports editor and, at the beginning of the week the 16-year-old on work placement, Journalism.co.uk understands.

“In more than 10 years of being a union representative I have never seen a more determined group,” Shaw said.

Asked to confirm or deny the claims both the editor of the Selby Times and Johnston Press’ head office in Edinburgh declined to comment.

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Audio: Norwegian journalist describes explosion

In the audio below we speak to Norwegian journalist Kristine Lowe about the explosion in Oslo this afternoon (22 July). Lowe was working in the VG newspaper offices located opposite a government building seriously damaged when the attack took place.

The newspaper offices were also damaged in the attack, she told us.

Read our report on the explosion here.

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#jpod in depth: Reporting the phone hacking scandal

This week #jpod looks at the way the phone-hacking scandal has been reported in recent weeks and the legal restrictions now in play, given recent arrests by police investigating allegations of wrongdoing.

On Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported figures from an Ipsos Mori poll which claimed just six per cent of voters were concerned about phone hacking, while Unicef called on the press to move the news agenda on. However, BBC director general Mark Thompson said today (22 July) the broadcaster’s research showed a different story.

In this podcast we speak to director of the Media Standards Trust, Martin Moore, about what the trust’s research has shown about the volume of reporting on the topic, and why he thinks the scandal has, at times, dominated the news agenda over other reports.

We also speak to media law consultant David Banks about his thoughts on the media coverage so far and the legal restrictions facing the media as cases become active.

Podcast: Download

You can sign up to our iTunes podcast feed for future audio.

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#followjourn: @owen_ed – Ed Owen/journalist/editor

Who? Ed Owen

Where? Ed is the editor of DaddyBeGood.com, a website for men with children.

Twitter? @owen_ed

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can 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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openDemocracy: What does the term ‘hack’ now mean for journalists?

Writing on openDemocracy, Nicola Hughes, who is also known as DataMinerUK, has questioned what the use of the term ‘hack’ and its related synonyms mean for journalists following the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Hughes explains how journalists scrape data.

The people who are part of this community (I flatter myself to be included) are ‘hackers’ by the best definition of the word. The web allows anyone to publish their code online so these people are citizen hackers. They are the creators of such open civic websites as Schooloscope, Openly Local, Open Corporates, Who’s Lobbying, They Work For You, Fix My Street, Where Does My Money Go? and What Do They Know? This is information in the public interest. This is a new subset of journalism. This is the web enabling civic engagement with public information. This is hacking. But, unlike other fields of citizen journalism, it requires a very particular set of skills.

Hughes goes on to explain how journalists “need to get to grips with data to get the public their answers” and ends with a plea saying the News of the World affair should not define ‘hacking’.

In the Shakespearean sense of “That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet”, we should define journalism not by a word but by what it smells like. Something stank about the initial inquiry into the News of the World. Nick Davies smelled it and followed his nose. And that’s the definition of journalism.

The full post is at this link

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Forbes: Times and NY Times paywall figures compared

Forbes reports on encouraging subscriber stats for the New York Times, the second set of figures released since it went behind a porous paywall in March.

Since then, the paper has amassed some 224,000 digital-only subscribers. Another 57,000 subscribe to replica editions delivered on e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook. On top of that, there are the 100,000 people getting e-subscriptions sponsored by Lincoln.

Jeff Bercovici goes on to compare the NY Times with the Times.

The Times of London launched its own, very different pay model about nine months before the [New York] Times. (Briefly: the Times [of London] has an impermeable paywall, while the New York Times uses a metered system that allows non-subscribers 20 free pageviews a month.) It only recently hit the 100,000 mark. The Times of London is smaller, but not all that much so: it has a weekday circulation of about 500,000 and a Sunday circulation of 1.2 million, versus 900,000 and 1.3 million for the [New York] Times.

Importantly, the [New York] Times managed to add a new leg to its business without significantly cannibalising its existing web audience. [The site] averaged 33 million unique visitors per month in the second quarter, in line with its average for the preceding 11 months, said CEO Janet Robinson on a call with analysts.

Forbes’ full post goes on to explain the challenges facing the New York Times.

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Guardian and Citizenside team up for Tour de France photos

The Guardian is gathering spectators’ photographs from the 2011 Tour de France by partnering with citizen media agency Citizenside.

The Tour de France 2011 page of the Guardian’s website features a slideshow dedicated to sharing the experience of being a spectator.

Citizenside is paying the citizen photographers using fund from the Guardian, editor-in-chief of Citizenside Philip Trippenbach told Journalism.co.uk.

The slideshow includes shots from local eyewitnesses from every stage of the race and spectators are encouraged to post pictures by a series of geo-targetted campaigns.

The Guardian has so far used 645 spectator photos from Citizenside, averaging 38 photos per stage for the first 17 stages of the Tour de France.

In a release, Philippe Checinski, co-founder of Citizenside said:

We’re very excited to be providing our members with such a great opportunity to share their experiences of the Tour de France. It’s not every day that locals from those remote towns get their own photos published on the fifth most visited news site in the world.

Matt McAlister, director of digital Strategy at the Guardian, added:

Working with Citizenside has given us a chance to explore some new ways of partnering with other communities and platforms that share our approach to openness.

Other stories on Citizenside are at this link.

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