Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Citizen journalism

DigiDave: Redefining journalism, cit-j and ‘honest communication’

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:36:23 +0000

David Cohn, founder of crowd-funded news site spot.us, discusses why it isn’t necessarily journalism and newspapers that we should be saving, but ‘honest communication’:

“Journalism as a word is loaded because of the ministry it invokes. The profession that, since Watergate, has laid claim to it. That ministry is now a diaspora. Much like after the Gutenberg revolution the ministry lost its authority in interpreting the bible. Martin Luther showed us how. In reaction many journalists cling even tighter to that word,” writes Cohn.

“What we need to preserve isn’t newspapers. I’d argue it isn’t even ‘journalism’ as we understand it. What we need to save is something else. Something more fundamental. The ability for communities to be informed with honest information and then to mobilize based on that information.”

Full post at this link…

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MediaWeek: YouTube connects news organisations with cit-j video

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:21:11 +0000

YouTube has launched an open-source platform for news sites, YouTube Direct, to let them solicit content from the video-sharing site’s users.

YouTube Direct has already been trialled on some news sites, including Politico and Huffington Post, as ‘a virtual assignment desk’: news organisations can use the tool to request video content and then decide what clips they use.

Full story at this link…

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Brighton Argus recruiting police community bloggers; PCSO Sam Justice among them

Judith Townend — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:13:32 +0000

It’s nearly an entry for the Radio 4 ‘Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’ Late Arrivals game, and definitely a candidate for PopBitch’s ‘Favourite’ feature: PCSO Sam Justice is among the new police community support officer bloggers recruited by the Brighton Argus.

As reported very speedily by Sarah Hartley this morning, Newsquest’s Brighton Argus plans to use community police officers to cover local beats for its hyperlocal network.

“I’m hoping the contributions to the site will start becoming really varied, a mixture of people hoping to cut their journalistic teeth, the community figures who have always reported on their neighbourhoods in some shape or form, and those who want somewhere to get their voices and stories heard,” web editor Jo Wadsworth told Journalism.co.uk.

And if she’s looking for more contributors, Journalism.co.uk would highly recommend checking out Channel 5’s Brighton Beach Patrol, featuring some wonderful characters we’ve been looking out for ever since [show pictured left].

Wadsworth has been building up the community correspondent network for a while: around six months ago, students from Brighton Journalist Works were brought on board. Students upload weekly vox pop video interviews with members of the public and three students run a weekly fashion blog.

Earlier in the year she recruited – with a little egging-on from Journalism.co.uk – Guardian media blogger Roy Greenslade as a Kemp Town community correspondent, whose latest post can be viewed here.

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Non-profit Texas Tribune launches

Judith Townend — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:09:45 +0000

“[I]f our nerves are shot, we’re excited, elated, enthralled (…) For those of us who willingly quit good jobs with big media companies to join an untried journalism start-up with an untested business model, this site, this thing, is the expression of our ideals, the realization of our dreams, and the validation of our faith,” said the editor-of-chief of the new non-profit Texas Tribune upon launching yesterday:

“What we intend to accomplish with the Trib – what we mean to do on an ongoing basis – is right there in our stated mission: to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern,” wrote Evan Smith:

“We’ll do this through our original reporting, published on this site and in the pages of and on the web sites of our syndication partners, and our various on-the-record events, which will always be open to the public: an annual ideas festival, a weekly conversation series, a college tour, and the like. In true twenty-first-century fashion, we’re approaching the task of storytelling across multiple platforms: text, audio, video, blogs, databases, mobile, social.

“We’re treating you, the reader or viewer or listener or user, as if you’re the customer, and we’re busily puzzling through how best to meet your various demands. Our goal is to maximize your ability to personalize your experience; as we move to day five and day ten and day thirty, we’ll be adding new and innovative ways to do just that.”

Full post at this link…

The publication has also produced this YouTube video:

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#polcasm: Policing 2.0 – citizens and social media

Judith Townend — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:41:23 +0000

Now this is an agenda worth looking at: the NPIA Citizen Focus and Neighbourhood Policing Programme is holding a conference in Coventry (the journalistic place to be in October Journalism.co.uk can vouch) today on ‘Policing 2.0: the citizen and social media’. The introductory document can be found at this link. Among the attendees are hyperlocal pioneers Will Perrin (@willperrin) and Nicky Getgood (@getgood).

Follow tweets here, and Journalism.co.uk will follow up on what was said later:

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Non-profit investigative journalism centres around the world: a list

Judith Townend — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:09:25 +0000

Jessica Weiss’ piece about ‘Investigative 2.0′ on the International Journalists’ Network, flags up that there are now more than 50 non-profit investigative journalism organisations around the world:

“The first three nonprofits dedicated to investigative journalism were all American: the Fund for Investigative Journalism (1969), Investigative Reporters and Editors (1975), and the Center for Investigative Reporting (1977).

“Now, there are more than 50 worldwide, and more than half of those are since 2000. Global networks such as ICIJ – made up of 100 journalists in 50 countries, and currently looking to expand – are providing the platform for reporters to connect for cross-border investigations. Local and regional centers, such as Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism; the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism, and the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR), connect journalists for reporting, networking, conferences, trainings and more. FAIR is sponsoring Africa’s first big investigative reporting conference later this month in Johannesburg.”

You can find a list of excellent resources on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists page at this link.

Using the Center for International Media report on strategies for support for investigative journalism, with the first survey of nonprofit journalism centers worldwide, the consortium (led by the Center for Public Integrity) has produced a list of over 35 around the world:

Africa
Forum for African Investigative Reporters

Ghana Center for Public Integrity & Focal Media

Asia
Nepal Center for Investigative Reporting

Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

Eastern Europe
Balkan Investigative Regional Reporting Network

Bosnia Center for Investigative Reporting

BTC ProMedia Foundation, Bulgaria

Bulgarian Investigative Journalism Center

Investigative Journalists of Armenia

Media Focus — Center for Investigative Reporting, Serbia

Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism

Former Soviet Union
Caucus Media Investigative Center, Azerbaijan

Investigative Journalism Center of Moldova

Latin America
ABRAJI — Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism

Center for Journalism and Public Ethics, Mexico

Chilean Center for Investigative Journalism and Information
Consejo de Redacción, Colombia

Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), Peru

Middle East
Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, Jordan

United States
Center for Investigative Reporting, San Francisco

Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C.

Fund for Investigative Journalism, Washington, D.C.

Investigative Reporters and Editors

ProPublica, New York

Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University

Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Columbia University

Western Europe
Centre for Investigative Journalism, London

Danish Association of Investigative Journalism

European Journalism Centre, Netherlands

Finnish Association for Investigative Journalism

Foreningen Gravande Journalister, Sweden

Investigative Reporters Network Europe

Norwegian Foundation for Investigative Journalism

Pascal Decroos Fund for Investigative Journalism, Belgium

SCOOP, Denmark

Swiss Investigation Network

Dutch-Flemish Association for Investigative Journalism (VVOJ)

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Jon Bernstein: Where now for accountability journalism?

Jon Bernstein — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:33:24 +0000

Clay Shirky believes the demise of most newspapers to be inevitable, not a recessionary blip but a structural certainty. The long-term, digital future is bright but the short-to-medium term outlook is bleak for our news media.

Who, he asks, is going to pick up the mantle of accountability journalism? Shirky, New York University professor and one of the most insightful voices on digital media and its impact on news journalism, paints the following picture.

The newspaper is unsustainable for two broad reasons. First, as an advertising-supported business it has overcharged and under delivered.

This was all very well when it was the only show in town but once its recruitment business got monstered by Monster and its classifieds delisted in favour of Craigslist, the party was clearly coming to an end.

Secondly, he says, the newspaper always lacked coherence.

While people remain interested in expert editorial judgement and serendipity, they are not thirsting for the ’single omnibus publication’. The future is content unbundled, often delivered by members of the audience disseminating links via social media.

And why is this bad news for anyone except the proprietor, the publishing magnate and the benefactor?

Because, says Shirky, it leaves a vacuum where once newspapers acted as a bulwark against the excesses of commercial and political classes. In place of accountability you have ‘casual, endemic, civic corruption’.

Shirky believes new models will eventually fill that vacuum but not soon enough to replace the old, decaying model.

And where will these new forms come from? Broadly through commercially viable alternatives to the newspaper; through organisations funded by donation, endowments or taxes; and through social production, aka the crowd.

It is the latter two where we are starting to see some interesting ideas emerge. And here are a few places – from either side of the Atlantic – you may want to look to see what the future of accountability journalism may look like:

Propublica:

An independent, non-profit newsroom, ProPublica boasts the ‘largest news staff in American journalism devoted solely to investigative reporting’. Thirty-two working journalists to be precise.

Supported entirely by philanthropy, it offers the fruit of its labour free of charge – and it either self-publishes or hands it over to large media outlets.

ProPublica also has a ‘distributed reporting’ unit, which aims to draw on the energies and expertise of the pro-am crowd. It’s headed up by Amanda Michel, formerly of Huffington Post’s OffTheBus.

Huff Po, meanwhile, has its own Investigative Fund while the Center for Investigative Reporting pre-dates ProPublica by a three decades.

Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

Coming soon, the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) gets to work in November and will open for business in 2010.

The model is production house, not publisher and, unlike ProPublica, it intends to sell stories into magazines and newspapers. It will be led by Iain Overton, formerly of More4 News (and an ex-colleague).

BIJ’s was created by the people at the Centre for Investigative Journalism and it will also draw on the recently launched Investigations Fund. It is able to get off the ground thanks to a £2m endowment from the David and Elaine Potter Foundation.

Spot.us:

Pioneers of ‘community funded reporting’, Spot.us has a very Web 2.0 business model.

Users of the site create news tips inspired by specific issues they are interested in that have yet to be reported. Spot.us journalists turn those tips into story pitches and small donations (increments of $20) are sought before the investigation is undertaken. The finished piece is freely available to anyone, big or small, to republish.

Only if a news organisation wants the story on an exclusive basis must it pay, in this case at least 50 per cent of the cost of the investigation.

Help Me Investigate:

Brainchild of Paul Bradshaw, a senior lecturer in online journalism at Birmingham City University, this is another example social production.

Launched with an initial focus on Birmingham, Help Me Investigate describes itself as ‘a community of curious people, and a set of tools to help those people find each other, and get answers’.

Recently completed investigations have sought discover why a new bus company is allowed run a service on the same route and same number but at a higher price; which Birmingham streets are issued with the most parking tickets; and how much Birmingham council spends on PR.

Jon Bernstein is former multimedia editor of Channel 4 News. This is part of a series of regular columns for Journalism.co.uk. You can read his personal blog at this link.

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LA Times: Spot.Us expands to Los Angeles

Judith Townend — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:27:51 +0000

Spot.us, the crowd-funded journalism venture that launched 10 months ago in San Francisco with funding from the Knight Foundation, has expanded to Southern California as its second market, the LA Times reported yesterday.

Full story at this link…

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Cit-J site Allvoices adds Twitter info to help verify news stories

Helen Quinn — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:42:37 +0000

Citizen journalism site www.allvoices.com has introduced live event and location-specific Twitter data into its reports, the site announced in a press release yesterday.

The site will now display the latest tweets relating to news stories by location (city, country and region). Around reports from its users, it will include Twitter updates relating to that particular event or news item.

For ‘mainstream’ news reported on the site, Allvoices will now include aggregated tweets relating to those reports to show the conversation around the news.

The addition of the Twitter data will help the site vet stories for authenticity, Allvoices explained. It will be used to provide additional context and rank reports in Allvoices’ ‘Breaking’ and ‘Popular’ news categories. The integration will also add a real-time element to the site’s news stories.

The Twitter data will supplement the existing vetting procedure, which pulls together related content from mainstream news and user-generated sources, like videos, blogs and pictures, to attempt a ‘360-degree view of the news’.

“Twitter alone as a source for news doesn’t have the ability to tell a full story. Allvoices delivers the full story for a report plus a deeper understanding of the conversations going on around that event. What’s great about the system we’ve built is that it can take virtually any data source and apply it to user-generated and mainstream news reports,” said Dr Sanjay Sood, chief technical officer for allvoices.com, in the release.

In May this year the site introduced an incentive scheme for its contributors.

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Signals intelligence journalism: using public information websites to source stories

Judith Townend — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:56:21 +0000

Useful information is more widely and easily available than ever and the increasing amount of online data released by the government and others can help improve the originality of journalists’ work.

Look to VentnorBlog – the hyperlocal online effort based in the Isle of Wight which Journalism.co.uk commended during the Vestas protest coverage – for some inspiration.

[For those unfamiliar with the story, locals had been protesting against the closure of the wind turbine factory in front of national, local and hyperlocal media. Despite a long and well-publicised campaign in August 2009, Danish company Vestas has now pulled out of manufacturing on the Isle of Wight but protests and attacks by critics in the press continue. A national day of action to support redundant Vestas workers has been planned for Thursday, September 17.]

Last week, using the Area Ship Traffic Website, AIS, VB was able to report where two barges held by an agent – NEG Micron Rotors – who used to own the Vestas’ factory were due to head. They would be used to move the blades from the factory, which are so huge that they can only travel away on the water on special vessels.

The correspondent who tipped off VentnorBlog knew that the wind turbine blades can only be transferred from the riverside to barge when it is high tide and across a public footpath so, using the information on the AIS site, concluded that the barges would be moved in a specific time slot.

As a result Vestas protesters asked supporters to join them at the Marine Gate on the River Medina. Of course VentnorBlog got down there to take some pictures.

Now let’s take that one step further: how can journalists tap into this kind of publicly available data to scoop stories?

Tony Hirst, Open University academic, Isle of Wight resident and prolific data masher, shared some thoughts with Journalism.co.uk. He said that we should look to signals intelligence for further inspiration: the interception and analysis of ’signals’ emitted by whoever you are surveying. As military historians would be the first to tell you, they can be a very rich source of intelligence about others’ actions and intentions, he explained.

“A major component of SIGINT is COMINT, or Communications Intelligence, which focuses on the communications between parties of interest. Even if communications are encrypted, Traffic Analysis, or the study of who’s talking to whom, how frequently, at what time of day, or - historically – in advance of what sort of action, can be used to learn about the intentions of others.”

And this is relevant to journalists, he added:

“For starters, data is information, or raw intelligence. The job of the analyst, or the data journalist, is to identify signals in that information in order to identify something of meaning – ‘intelligence’ about intentions, or ‘evidence’ for a particular storyline.

The VentnorBlog story, he said, describes how a ’sharp-eyed follower of movements at the plant’ knew where two barges were headed and at what time – valuable journalistic information:

“Amid the mess of Solent shipping information was a meaningful signal relating to the Vestas story – the movement of the barge that takes wind turbine blades from the Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight to the mainland.”

Do you have suggestions for sources of ’signals intelligence’ journalism? Or examples of where it has been done well?

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