Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Social media and blogging

Why did one blogger keep Belle’s identity secret for eight years?

Judith Townend — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:30:46 +0000

As noted by Journalism.co.uk yesterday (and before that, by the Guardian on its front page) LinkMachineGo [LMG] blogger Darren deduced Belle de Jour’s real identity as early as 2001.

But he kept quiet. Journalism.co.uk asked Darren why – and what he thinks of blogging anonymously. “I protected [Brooke] Magnanti’s identity because we were both early bloggers,” he says.

“I respected her blogging and realised that her real life and career might be ruined if I did not keep her identity a secret. Discovering her identity started out as a fun game but turned serious when I realised I was right. Especially after I saw how Zoe Margolis (Girl with a One Track Mind) was treated by the press.”

Once Darren guessed who was behind the Belle blog, he published a ‘googlewack’ on his blog (the words ‘Belle de Jour’ ‘Brooke Magnanti’ and ‘Methylsalicylate’ were published and available in Google’s index on a single page on the internet, on LMG). If someone googled ‘Belle de Jour’ and ‘Brooke Magnanti’, he would see it in his referrers for LinkMachineGo.

It was five years before someone did: “I don’t know who was behind the searches that arrived at my blog over the years. It was only two or three. I suspect other bloggers who had guessed (there are many who were in the same position I was re: guessing) or friends of Magnanti. All the hits came from Internet services used by homeowners (BT, Virgin etc).”

Then a couple of weeks ago he spotted that numerous people were searching the terms several times a day – from Associated Newspapers’ IP address. That’s when he alerted Magnanti. This, with other tip-offs, convinced her to go public on her own terms.

So what does Darren think about the mainstream media’s revelations? “The coverage has been generally reasonable apart from the Daily Mail’s. I’m very glad I emailed her after seeing what they reported.”

The incident is a lesson in online anonymity, he says: “You cannot remain anonymous or pseudonymous on the internet for long. It’s an amazing achievement she managed to last six years without being outed.”

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Consternation online for Times’ use of Edward Woodward blog tribute – Times responds

Laura Oliver — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:57:14 +0000

(via SCI FI Wire, Media Monkey and MTV)

According to reports and a tweet from the author, on Tuesday the Times printed a tribute to late actor Ed Woodward, originally written on his personal blog by director Edgar Wright, without permission:

An edited version of Wright’s blog piece was published with a byline and picture.

Twitter critics drew a comparison with Rupert Murdoch’s recent comments about search engines and aggregators as ‘kleptomaniacs’ when it came to newspapers’ content.

But today the paper has published a clarification online:

“We have been asked to make clear that Edgar Wright’s appreciation of Edward Woodward, which appeared in the paper on Tuesday, November 17, was abridged and the full version can be read here or at www.edgarwrighthere.com/2009/11/edward-woodward-1930-2009/“

Was this a response to online requests or did Wright have to go through the traditional channels? Will be interesting to know how responsive to social media commentary the Times is – we’ll try to find out.

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Biscuitgate myth revived as Cameron gets ready for Mumsnet

Judith Townend — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:54:56 +0000

Any crumbs of truth in the so-called Biscuitgate episode, when Gordon Brown allegedly refused to reveal his cuppa accompaniment of choice? Short answer: no. (myth at this link)

Unless Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts was engaged in some bizarre get-on-the-good-side of Downing Street cover-up exercise.

It was quite some ago (22 October) that Roberts clarified:

“Now I can’t say I often find myself feeling sorry for politicians but I have to admit to feeling more than a pang of sympathy for the PM over the past few days. Because the truth is that Gordon Brown didn’t follow the live chat on the screen directly – he answered the questions grouped and fed to him by MNHQ and his advisors. He didn’t avoid the biscuit question because it didn’t cross his path (as I said on Radio 5 on the day, in fact).

“Why did we do it that way? Well, there were so many questions and they were coming in thick and fast on every subject under the sun, so we reasoned that the most effective way of getting as much ground covered as possible was to group them together for him, rather than him answering random ones that he happened to notice.”

But as David Cameron gets ready to step up to the mumsnet challenge, the truth hasn’t stopped people bleating on about blimmin’ biscuits.

For more pertinent comment, visit POLIS director Charlie Beckett’s blog:

“Mumsnet, in particular, has become the destination of choice for politicians who see it as the way to reach a large and significant section of the electorate. But are there other online forums who do a similar job?

(…)

“[I]s Mumsnet the exception or, as I keep saying, the new rule? And if so, are there forums for teachers, medics or even just men?”

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Frontline Blog: 10 ways to make it as a stringer

Judith Townend — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:30:49 +0000

Foreign bureaux may be shrinking, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad for journalists, says Rob Crilly, formerly of Nairobi and now working in Jerusalem.

“The days of the linen-suited staff foreign correspondent are gone. That’s sad and probably means foreign coverage is getting patchier. But it means there are more opportunities for motivated, well-organised and professional stringers – reporters who file to multiple outlets.”

Crilly shares ten tips for making it as a stringer, covering how to learn it, bust it, read it, meet it, blog it, slum it, structure it and flog it.

Full post at this link…

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Blogger monitored Belle’s secret for eight years

Judith Townend — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:22:22 +0000

The story of LinkMachineGo blogger Darren, who deduced Belle de Jour’s identity in 2001, realising her online know-how meant she probably blogged elsewhere too… A post by Brooke Magnanti’s elsewhere (about whiskey) finally convinced him.

Darren didn’t tell Brooke Magnanti he knew who she was till several weeks ago, when he spotted that Associated Newspapers were onto her…

How? Read Darren’s post in full, but here’s a quick extract:

“During this time I published a googlewack hidden in my blog – the words ‘Belle de Jour’ ‘Brooke Magnanti’ and ‘Methylsalicylate’ were published and available in Google’s index on a single page on the internet – my weblog. This ‘coincidental’collection of links could in no way reveal Belle’s identity. But I wondered if anybody else knew the secret and felt that analysing my web traffic might confirm my long-held belief. If someone googled ‘Belle de Jour’ ‘Brooke Magnanti’, I would see it in my referrers for LinkMachineGo.

“I waited five years for somebody to hit that page (I’m patient). Two weeks ago I started getting a couple of search requests a day from an IP address at Associated Newspapers (who publish the Daily Mail) searching for ‘brooke magnanti’ and realised that Belle’s pseudonymity might be coming to an end. I contacted Belle via Twitter and let her know what was happening. I didn’t expect to hear anything back.”

Belle confirms: “FWIW Darren *did* contact me to let me know, I’d already had another heads-up but his message convinced me it was serious.”

Full post at this link…

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Robin Brown: 38 invaluable free web tools for online journalists

Robin Brown — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:02:21 +0000

This post is reproduced with permission from Robin Brown’s blog. Brown is a freelance writer and new media blogger.

The explosion of the web may have caught out newspapers and a lot of journalists, but early adopters have been able to thrive in an environment where one man’s threat is another’s opportunity.

Certainly the web has caused a lot of problems for online media and journalists, but the tools to adapt to this changing market have been provided for us.

What’s more, the vast majority of the most important ones for bloggers, journalists, editors and even PRs and marketers are easy to use and, perhaps most importantly, free.

Some of these tools are suited to building traffic, some for measuring traffic, some for sharing or collecting information and others to add value to traditional content.

Some will suit you, others will not. A couple may even be irrelevant and I will make no claims for what they will do for your traffic, brand, revenues or social life.

But these are all tools that I use, in some cases vital tools, and if you accept the idea of the modern journalist as a media Swiss Army Knife you need to constantly develop your skills and make use of the largely free tools you have at your disposal.

There are, literally, thousands of them out there and it can be confusing as to which may be of help and which – in all likelihood – will not.

These are the tools and applications I find most useful and I’ve tried to keep the apps, and descriptions of them, fairly basic. There may be some obvious ones I miss out, which just means I haven’t got round to making use of them or I don’t consider them worth flagging up for starters.

There seems to be a lot of suspicion surrounding social media and web 2.0 apps. All I have to say to that is this: they are tools; how, and whether, you use them is up to you.

The only criteria are that they’re predominantly free and they are basic, widely-available online tools or apps.

Anyway, without further ado here’s the selection. Dive in.

Twitter and related

Twitter is, to my mind, so important now for online media types that it’s got a category of its own.

Twitter
The ‘web 2.0 telegraph’ is the most fitting description I’ve seen of Twitter. Twitter is how important communicators interact with one another: promoting links, sharing information, asking for help or shooting the breeze.

If you’ve built up good contacts in relevant fields on Twitter it’s the most important tool you will use.

• See: Twitter
• See also: Robin on Twitter

Twitpic

One picture is worth a thousand words, or 140 characters. Show Twitter followers what’s got your attention by connecting up your phone to Twitpic.

You can set up Twitpic so it directly and instantly feeds to Twitter, even old mobiles can do it.

• See: Twitpic
• See also: Robin on Twitpic

Twitterfeed
If you have multiple blogs and multiple Twitter personas you need to make sure the correct blogs are feeding to the correct Twitters. Doing it manually can be pain in the backside, so automating a feed to post to Twitter is worth investigating.

There’s some debate as to whether automated posting goes against the grain a bit on Twitter. As with anything, moderation and common sense are key.

If you’re using Twitterfeed you don’t want more than a couple of automated posts a day. A deluge of links will get you unfollowed. And Twitterfeed is no substitute for proper engagement on Twitter.

• See: Twitterfeed
• See also: Twitterfeed on Twitter

Hootsuite
If you manage multiple accounts it’s simpler to manage them from the same place, rather than logging in and out and juggling usernames and passwords.

I initially used Tweetdeck but it’s awkward and buggy. Hootsuite is easier to use as it’s on a web page; simpler; customisable; and has useful add-ons like stats, URL shortening and scheduled posting.

• See: Hootsuite

Bit.ly
Essentially anointed by Twitter as the link-shortener of choice, Bit.ly is probably the best too. It will take your long link and make it into a 20-character link that won’t eat up your 140 characters in a tweet.

A simple interface and some basic metric-tracking and sharing tools are the cherries on the cake.

• See: Bit.ly

Twitterholic
Looking a bit rough around the edges now but this is the tool I used to build a following on Twitter by finding people in similar places or with similar interests to me.

It’s always easier finding people who will reciprocate if you have something in common, an area where a lot of people trying to build a group of followers fall down.

• See: Twitterholic
• See also: Journalists on Twitterholic

Social bookmarking sites

Using social bookmarking sites simply to try and drive traffic can be fruitless and potentially damaging. All have unique communities and all are different, even if they don’t initially appear to be.

If you’re representing a brand you may want to think twice before submitting ill-fitting links to Digg, Reddit and Fark. If you’re not going to engage or observe how things work, don’t bother.

Also be aware that chasing traffic, as an end in itself, can be somewhat self-defeating. Choose your bookmarking carefully.

Digg
Using Digg to its maximum potential – in terms of traffic – takes time, effort and patience. As with Twitter, it’s about building a community and using that community to promote your links.

I think Digg has a fairly narrow band of opportunities for editors or journalists. Funny, techy or sporty stuff seems to do best as Digg users tend to use it to share distracting, fun stuff.

The obscene amounts of traffic The Onion and Cracked get from Digg seems to bear this out.

Occasionally I happen to write something I think will do well on Digg, and I make sure I write a header and description that will appeal to Diggers.

A well-placed story on Digg will send you hefty amounts of traffic, and it’s good for in-bound links too. Also bear in mind the reason it’s there – it’s fun.

• See: Digg

Delicious
Of very little use for generating traffic in the way Digg and Reddit are, Delicious has probably grown into the most pure social bookmarking application.

It’s beautifully simple and, because it’s searchable, is a great repository for valuable information.

It tends to be used by people working in media, PR, programming and marketing so it’s a gold mine of peer-approved guides and information in these areas.

• See: Delicious

Reddit
Not a million miles away from Digg, Reddit has an arguably broader focus and is easier to get into for newcomers.

Reddit’s community is not to be messed with however. Get a link submission wrong and you’ll know about it.

• See: Reddit

Fark
Digg on speed, or maybe acid. Fark consists of ‘not news’ chosen by a community and as such a very difficult tool to wield with any success.

In fairness Fark is not a tool at all, but can be used as such. Many international media have successfully harnessed Fark as a tool to drive vast amounts of traffic.

A story on the front page will deliver tens of thousands of hits over a very short space of time, which often leads to servers being ‘farked’ – brought down by the deluge of traffic.

A very good understanding of the community is required, and there’s a good opportunity to sharpen up your headline-writing skills. Only the very best stories and write-ups are greenlit, but the resulting traffic can be huge.

• See: Fark

RSS, alerts and readers

Tracking the websites that are important to you, and sharing your own content with readers is an important element of the online Swiss Army Knife.

Netvibes
I say Netvibes because it’s the one I use and I think it’s smart, but any reader or personalised home page will do – they’re essentially much of a muchness.

If you’re in media or PR you need to keep up with events on a daily basis. That means browsing potentially hundreds of feeds a day.

Grabbing an RSS feed and displaying it in your reader alongside 50 others is a lot easier than going to those individual sites.

Add-ons like widgets, increased sharing abilities and clever use of APIs from other apps like Facebook and Twitter means you can potentially browse, and interact with, all the relevant bits of the web from one page.

Most have a public setting too. As a result I have a public homepage on Netvibes that displays all my various online real estate around the web.

• See: Netvibes
• See also Robin’s public page on Netvibes

Tabbloid
Takes your feeds and displays them in a newspaper format. A bit clunky, and there are a few similar tools out there, but handy if you get square eyes looking at a normal reader.

Can also be used as a promotional tool to round up your output on a regular basis.

• See: Tabbloid
• See also Tabbloid sample

Feedburner
Allows you to track and edit your RSS feeds, share links and embed ads in your feed. No earth-shattering, but provides far more control over RSS feeds.

• See: Feedburner

Google Docs
Put e-documents online, quickly, easily and – er – freely.

• See: Google Docs

Google Alerts
Track a developing story, stay abreast of any news concerning particular companies or trends orsteal a march over others on breaking news relating to your chosen keywords.

• See: Google Alerts

Twitterfeed
Again. See above for details

Multimedia

There are a hundred ways to tell a story these days. Use images, videos and music to bring yours to life.

Youtube
There are half a dozen good apps out there that will allow you to upload and share videos, but for simplicity’s sake I’ve gone with YouTube.

YouTube as a platform is only really as good as your videos, but as a tool it’s probably more versatile than you’d think.

Most obviously it provides some fantastic, free, embeddable multimedia content. If you can’t do something with that you’re probably in the wrong job.

Insight actually provides some useful metrics – the one measuring the attention span of watchers per video for one – while playlists, audio beds and annotations allow for some personalisation.

Add a customisable channel page and YouTube becomes a valuable tool in branding and hosting.

Live Stream and Vimeo may be more obvious, and going forward will come into their own, but for ‘quick and dirty’ YouTube is good enough for most.

• See: YouTube
• See also MotorTorque on YouTube

Flickr
Please be aware of what Flickr is not – a free image bank. If you’re going to use Flickr to source images you need to have a thorough understanding of Creative Commons licences, and some form of contact with individual authors.

Also, Flickr is not a link-building tool. Any links are unfollowed and business accounts are frowned on.

With that in mind Flickr can be invaluable for finding good quality images to accompany articles and is also a pleasantly simple image storage and presentation tool.

Image sets can be presented as embedded slideshows, which can be a great visual dimension to a story alongside a static image.

Flickr can also be used to create links within photographer communities and can be used to promote photographic work.

Again, its largely self-policed by one of the more righteous online communities, so ensure you know what you’re doing.

• See: Flickr
• See also Robin on Flickr

Pixlr
Essentially an online Photoshop but cheaper (free actually), faster and simpler. Great tool that’s good enough for most photo manipulation.

• See: Pixlr

MPEG Streamclip
Good tool for video file conversion and some very basic editing features. Plays virtually anything. Can also be very good at capturing online videos if that’s your thing.

• See: MPEG Streamclip

Spotify
Weren’t expecting that one were you? But any new free app should be considered for the possibilities it provides.

A few brands have flirted with playlists, and I’ve done a couple of articles involving playlists to accompany articles.

There may not be a huge amount more scope than that, but Spotify is a free resource that offers free access to millions of tracks. Who saw that coming a couple of years ago?

• See: Spotify
• See also Crucial Three article on Liverpool Culture Blog

Morgue File
A good free image-bank site. The value of a good image to accompany an article can make all the difference. If you have access to a free image bank you’ve really no excuse. Remember to add a credit and check licenses though.

• See: Morgue File

Stock Xchng
Another great free image bank, with a premium level.

• See: Stock Xchng

Mash-up and added value apps

Add value to your content with embeddable mash-ups and media that complement your content.

Dipity
Great for building timelines for events that can be embedded. Connect up RSS feeds to feed a topic or add manually.

The added value it can bring to a running story is not to be underestimated – it’s shiny and it’s useful, especially if you’re using your own content to build timelines.

• See: Dipity
• See: Dipity US car industry timeline

Google Maps
Google Maps should be subtitled ‘not just maps’. Any amount of mash-ups can be created with the API, but it’s just as easy to create interactive co-operative maps using the site itself. Also works well with Google Earth.

As with Dipity, you can add value to content and tell another dimension to a story. A no-brainer for travel reports and write-ups.

• See: Google Maps
• See: Half Map Half Biscuit

CoveritLive
The ability to cover an event live on a self-hosted platform can be invaluable. CoveritLive allows administrators to host guests, guide discussions and moderate reader comments.

While Twitter may be a more obvious platform for micro-blogging, CoveritLive can be embedded into a web page, customised and managed in terms of who can contribute. Images and video can also be embedded in the stream.

Again, it can add another dimension to traditional coverage and bring live events to life.

• See: Cover It Live

Xtra Normal
A tool that allows you to convert to text spoken by an animated character may be gimmicky, but it can be fun.

Any blogger worth their salt should be able to think of something at least funny to do with it.

If Xtra Normal had been around 20 years ago we could have had animated reports of Gerry Adams speaking to the UK via an animated avatar.

• See: Xtra Normal
• See: Worried about acid erosion? on AdTurds

PollDaddy
Encourage user feedback and drive user-generated content with a poll – it can provide valuable insight or be used to drive original content itself.

Easy to configure and embed, you can stick it in the middle of an article one day and write a follow-up the next day based on the results.

• See: PollDaddy

• See also: Widget on WordPress

Metrics, web editing and SEO

If you’re running a blog or website you want to be able to track its performance over a number of metrics. A basic understanding of SEO will benefit any journalist too.

Google Analytics
Or any decent analytics package that allows you to track, compare and dig down into various metrics.

Analytics will do all of that and more – you can’t seriously run a large website without something at least as powerful and detailed as Google’s statistics tool.

Analytics can be used at a very basic level for tracking your traffic and website performance, or can provide intricate details into what’s going on in the deepest reaches of your site if you drill down.

Makes a great pairing with Adsense.

• See: Google Analytics

Webmaster Tools
Webmaster Tools allow you to get your hands a little more dirty with the intricacies of web design and SEO.

If there are any obvious problems with the navigation and accessibility on your site, Webmaster Tools should flag them up, along with some SEO information on backlinks and keywords than may give you a different perspective on how your users – or search engines – view your site as opposed to how you view it.

• See: Webmaster Tools

Adsense
Making money from a blog or website can be something of a double-edged sword. I don’t have Adsense on any of my personal blogs, but do use it on other sites.

Simply put Adsense offers the ability to make money from your blog or site with a few clicks.

Style your ads, decide on what keywords you want to include on your ads, settle on placements and Adsense will generate code for you. Stick the code in your blog, verify your account and watch the cash roll in.

Don’t expect vast sums unless you’re doing thousands of impressions a day, and bear in mind the downside of changing your blog to a money-making device.

• See: Adsense

Google Trends
Stuck for blog topics or want to research a trend? Google Trends is a good way to track what’s popular, although Twitter Trends can be used in much the same way.

Comparing two or three different terms can be instructive if writing about brands, TV programmes or pop bands.

Trends also pairs up well with Insight, an advances search facility currently in beta, which allows you to drill down into search data over different periods of time or by region and country.

Both are probably of more use to marketers, but keyword searches and tracking can also be useful for giving a fresh perspective on an article, creating unique content, driving Adwords campaigns or simply finding out who is currently winning out of Doctor Who and Star Trek.

• See: Trends
• See also: Who is winning out of Doctor Who and Star Trek?

Website Grader
A good all-in-one tool that will grade your site against others in terms of traffic, search engine placements, page rank and a dozen other metrics.

Can provide a good introduction to basic SEO and an insight into what you may be doing correctly or incorrectly.

• See Website Grader

Platforms

If you’ve not made the leap you’ll need a platform on which to host your blog or site. Make sure you pick a good one.

WordPress
So far in front of other blogging platforms it’s not even funny. WordPress hosted or self-hosted it’s easy to figure out, has an interface so intuitive it’s almost beautiful, good support and a peerless range of plug-ins.

If you’re a journalist you need a blog. If you need a blog, use WordPress. That is all.

• See: WordPress

Tumblr
Ultra-simple blogging platform that makes the easy-to-use WordPress look like quantum mechanics.

Tumblr’s simplicity and efficiency is its greatest strength, so if you need something that works out of the box and don’t need the extra bells and whistles, look no further.

• See: Tumblr
• See also: Robin on Tumblr

Promoting yourself

Much as it pains me to say it, you need to be a brand these days, and that means at least providing people with the means to browse your skills and experience.

I use this blog to do that, but there are a couple of other tools around the web worth a look.

LinkedIn
I’m not actively searching for freelance or seeking a new job, so I’ve not got much out of LinkedIn so far.

If and when I do I’ll no doubt investigate further as this is what everyone uses. I’m not clear how much business actually gets done on LinkedIn, but for now I’ve got a page on there will the basics on.

• See: LinkedIn
• See also: Robin on LinkedIn

ReTaggr
Unsure about ReTaggr at the moment, but it does what it says on the tin – essentially an online business card.

• See: ReTaggr
• See also: Robin on ReTaggr

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Media Release: BBC appoints Alex Gubbay as first social media editor

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:12:38 +0000

While Journalism.co.uk was away conferencing, the BBC announced Alex Gubbay as its first social media editor.

Gubbay, currently interactive sports news editor for BBC sport, will take up the role in January.

He will lead ‘editorial development of user-generated content [UGC] and social media initiatives across the newsroom’, said the release, including taking over management of the BBC’s UGC hub.

Full release at this link…

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Currybet.net: Journalists in the comment box

Judith Townend — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:03:21 +0000

What happens when journalists jump in the comment box? Martin Belam picks up on the way outed sex blogger Zoe Margolis responded to Guardian commenters’ criticism after her quick post on the unmasking of Belle du Jour.

Belam writes:

“What interested me here was that I think it illustrates something about the respective culture of ‘blogger’ versus ‘journalist who has comments enabled at the bottom of their articles’.”

As information architect for the Guardian, Belam has an interesting take on the technological aspect too.

Full post at this link…

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#soe09: Live coverage online – opportunities for audience and money?

Laura Oliver — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:35:17 +0000

The benefits of using social media sites, predominantly Twitter, to cover live news events, newsgather and let the readers in were stressed by speakers from Sky News, Trinity Mirror, NWN Media and Northcliffe in a session at the Society of Editors conference today.

Sky’s social media correspondent (once titled ‘Twitter correspondent’) Ruth Barnett explained what had been learned since her role was created:

“We’d be very foolish as journalists not to be part of this interaction (…) I use it as a newswire – not one as valuable verifiable and reliable as PA, but as a good source of leads, eye witnesses and trends.

“If we can tweet our own breaking news it allows us to be proud of it, own it and direct traffic back to us.”

But there’s more to come: Trinity Mirror multimedia head David Higgerson emphasised the need to work with the audience to improve the use of tools such as CoveritLive.

“The big lesson that we need to learn is that we need to involve the audience more. If people want more passive coverage we’ve got the BBC, which is not to be critical of the BBC, but it can be hard to interact with it,” said Higgerson.

There needs to be experiments with livestreaming video into liveblogs, he added, and newspapers should start looking at the potential of tools like Audioboo. There’s no reason Audioboo, for example, couldn’t be used for more in-depth reporting, such as livecasting election results, he explained.

But the biggest challenge is finding a way to work with the ‘army of citizen journalists’:

“We need to go to them and our reporters need to be building relationships with them. If we can engage with them on local terms we can create a potent force for live news.”

But it was Hull Daily Mail editor John Meehan who suggested that liveblogging and live-tweeting could be a revenue opportunity for news groups:

“If paid content on the web is part of our salvation we have an obligation to develop services that go far beyond news and traditional reporting (…) It used to be paid-for live coverage in print (…) Covering it live on the web, real-time and interactive, may be one of the keys to earning revenue from content published online,” said Meehan, who used the Mail’s coverage of transfer deadline day in September as an example (500 posts on CoveritLive by journalists; 6,200 comments received on all-day liveblog).

“We’ve got no plans to make them pay for it, but I think we as an industry should have an eye on where we can make money from. If that many people are going to spend that much time on a service, they really value that service (…) Mainstream news is a commodity; we need to find the things that aren’t commoditised.”

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Fort Hood, citizen journalism and journalists as ethicists

Laura Oliver — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:56:06 +0000

Several long-running debates have been added to in a series of blog posts published over the weekend on the coverage on the military shooting at Fort Hood in Texas last week.

Starting with Paul Carr at TechCrunch, who discusses the value that social media and citizen journalism add to such happenings and also what role journalists or indeed cit-j’s should play in such situations – better to capture the moment or offer help?

“For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved,” writes Carr, referring specifically to Twitter updates allegedly coming from one soldier inside the Texas base.

In a rebuttal on Strange Attractor, Suw Charman-Anderson suggests that these issues have been challenging journalism and the news media for a long time:

“The discussion about the impact of social media on people’s privacy, behaviour and ethics has been going on for years, and there have been many, many examples of people using social tools in ways that can only be described as foolish.

“This is not, however, a reflection on social tools so much as it is a reflection of human nature: some of what gets done with social media is good and some is bad. This is not news, nor new.

“We do need some proper studies to see just what sort of effect these new social technologies are having, but going off on a moral panic about social tools is neither smart nor helpful.”

It’s worth reading both pieces in full and the comments left (which back up that these are long-standing points for discussion) – in particular, Howard Owens’ response to Charman-Anderson’s post:

“My response to Carr’s piece seems to be quite different than most other people’s – to me, it’s a reminder for journalists to redouble their role as ethicists. It’s no longer enough for journalist to abide by their own code of ethics, they must educate the public on news ethics, avoid falling into their own ethical lapses related to new technology, and guide ‘citizen journalists’ along the way.

“I didn’t see Carr as calling for an end to cit-j, but as a reminder that not everything with democratic media technology is an unalloyed good. We need some guidelines and thought into how these tools are used, when and where. There needs to be a greater ethical awareness among the public at large and it’s the professional journalists role to help with that process.”

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