Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Adam Tinworth

Top five UK journalism blogs and Tweeters in 2009 (and who to watch in 2010)

Judith Townend — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:35:33 +0000

With the proviso that journalism blogs and bloggers come and go, we have selected our own personal favourite journalism bloggers and tweeters. These are our absolute must-reads. We realise this is a somewhat subjective exercise, so please add your own in the comments below, or via Twitter to @journalismnews.

Top five UK journalism blogs and Tweeters of 2009

As chosen by John Thompson, founder, Journalism.co.uk:

Best to follow on Twitter:
@GordonMacmillan, @malcolmcoles, @adamwestbrook, @paulbradshaw, @mikebutcher, @marcreeves

Best blogs:
Malcolm Coles, Jon Slattery, Adam Tinworth, OJB, Adam Westbrook (pictured below, left to right)

As chosen by Laura Oliver, editor, Journalism.co.uk:

Best to follow on Twitter:
@georgehopkin, @nigelbarlow, @MrRickWaghorn, @gordonmacmillan, @psmith

Best blogs:
Sarah Hartley, Alison Gow, Adam Tinworth, Martin Belam, Jon Slattery (pictured below, left to right)

As chosen by Judith Townend, senior reporter, Journalism.co.uk:

Best to follow on Twitter:
@gingerelvis, @samshepherd, @badjournalism, @jowadsworth, @digidickinson

Best blogs:
Jon Slattery, Martin Moore, Charlie Beckett, The Media Blog, Sarah Hartley (pictured below, left to right)

As chosen by the Journalism.co.uk team:

Five blogs to watch in 2010

The Media Blog: Fairly new on the blogging scene and quick off the mark.

Psmithjournalist.com: the former paidContent reporter has gone freelance. Watch this site.

Angry People in Local Newspapers: very funny and simply done.

Marc Reeves: former Birmingham Post editor, with new projects on the go.

Hannah Waldram: recently trained at Cardiff; experimenting with hyperlocal news and online technology.

Five Tweeters to watch in 2010

@timesjoanna, for her excellent social media and online journalism links.

@michaelhaddon, former City student with an interest in political online media; now working at Dow Jones.

@joshhalliday, at the centre of the UK student journalist blogging conversation; lots to look at on his own blog.

@coneee, the NUJ’s first full-time blogger member, currently completing an MA at City University.

@marcreeves, for the latest on what the former regional editor is up to.

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FollowJourn: @adders/RBI head of blogging

Judith Townend — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:30:24 +0000

#FollowJourn: Adam Tinworth

Who? Head of blogs for Reed Business Information.

What? A blogger from the early days, Tinworth monitors the media industry and its digital developments via social media.

Where? Follow him via his blog, or Twitter account.

Contact? Via Twitter: @adders.

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 judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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Newsinnovation London: Audio from the event

Laura Oliver — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:49:38 +0000

Journalism.co.uk had a great day at Friday’s inaugural Newsinnovation event hosted by the Media Standards Trust (MST).

As well as discussing the MST’s plans with the Associated Press for a new industry standard for story metadata, sessions covered the use of data for newsgathering and storytelling, hyperlocal publishing and communities and open source technology.

Have a read of Adam Tinworth’s posts on the event; watch Kevin Anderson’s video vox pops on the future of news; and check out Martin Belam’s handy list of links that were circulating during the sessions.

Below is some rough and ready audio from a few of the talks from the event:

The Guardian’s Simon Willison on its MPs’ expenses crowdsourcing experiment

Will Perrin on ‘hyperlocal’ and Talk About Local

My Football Writer’s Rick Waghorn on local online advertising system Addiply

Toby Moores and Reuters’ Mark Jones on social media, news and politics

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Strange Attractor: Journalists and ‘audience entitlement’

Laura Oliver — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:41:38 +0000

Sparked by a comment from Adam Tinworth on Twitter, Kevin Anderson unpicks the idea that some journalists/news organisations believe they have both a right to an audience and deserve an audience.

“It’s the height of institutional arrogance and self-importance, and it’s obvious to anyone who even has one foot outside of the bubble of institutional journalism that this is the case. But therein lies the rub. For many journalists, we never get outside of this bubble. I think it’s one of the reasons that journalists are bewildered by the fact that viewership and readership numbers are declining,” he writes.

Full post at this link…

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Comment: The NUJ and new media – ‘bloggers rejoice in lower standards’

Laura Oliver — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:32:14 +0000

It was with some astonishment that I read the following comment from the chair of the UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) professional training committee, Chris Wheal, on Adam Tinworth’s blog:

“The NUJ fails to maintain standards in blogs because bloggers themselves rejoice in having lower standards.”

Tinworth had written about his discovery in his blog’s referrer logs that an email exchange within the NUJ under the subject ‘effing blogs’ had led someone to his website.

Wheal points out some flaws in the original post, as he sees them – in particular an alleged witch hunt surrounding one of the recipients of the email.

Personally I don’t believe a witch hunt was Tinworth’s aim – he was, as Suw Charman points out in the post’s comments, writing about what he observes.

Aside from that it’s hard to engage/respond/take on board what Wheal is saying when the tone gets your back up in the way it does and makes sweeping statements like the above.

He goes on to say that the NUJ is currently looking at Yahoo Pipes and new Webvision CMS – great, talk to your members, many of whom are also bloggers, about it.

But do this in a way that respects the ’social’ aspect of social media and learn that blogs like Adam Tinworth’s are intended as open conversations.

Wheal says he wants the NUJ training committee to engage with bloggers to raise standards – this is a lesson in how not to do it.

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B2B flight website tries out video blogging with ‘Runway Girl’

Judith Townend — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:44:47 +0000

The first video-cast from FlightGlobal.com – the website of various flight B2Bs including Flight International, Airline Business, ACAS, Air Transport Intelligence (ATI) and The Flight Collection – (hat tip: Adam Tinworth).

‘Runway Girl’ aka Mary Kirby starts off optimistically: “the world of in-flight entertainment and connectivity is getting so exciting that it absolutely demands that we start putting a little bit of video down…”

First update: Cingular Wireless and their application to the patent office. She welcomes constructive criticism. It will be interesting to see how much success it has for the publication.

First video below:

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Steve/Adam responds: a more sober YouTube offering

Judith Townend — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:11:51 +0000

Yesterday we watched the (ex?) Birmingham Mail’s ‘Adam Smith aka Steve Zacharanda’ rather funny (if ill-advised) video zipping all over the place, and waited to what happened…

It seems (via Adam Tinworth’s blog) that Smith/Zacharanda is handling the whole thing pretty well (he was already leaving his Trinity Mirror permanent job anyway…) Meanwhile Media Monkey plays the cynical card… Anyway, judging from the comments below the videos, and on the blogs, he’s got a lot of support behind him (give him a knighthood, someone writes).

So for the record, Smith says he didn’t cut and paste from the BBC, he is sorry if he damaged the reputation of the company, and the Birmingham Mail is a ‘fantastic organisation, staffed by people who really care’.

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Social Media Journalist: ‘Social networks are an echo chamber rather than a way of being exposed to anything new’ Adam Tinworth, RBI

Oliver Luft — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:33:46 +0000

Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Adam Tinworth, RBI.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Adam Tinworth, and I’m currently head of blogging for business publisher Reed Business Information.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I’m a Twitter addict, and am constantly keeping up with the discussions there, either on my laptop or my iPhone.

More stories “break” to me through Twitter right now than any other sources. It’s so quick and easy to publish out with it, you can get news to people before you’re even on the second paragraph of a traditional news story.

I couldn’t live without my RSS feeds. I’ve been an RSS junkie for long enough that I predate Google Reader. I keep my subscriptions in Newsgator, so I can access them in NetNewsWire on my Mac, FeedDemon on my work PC, and the iPhone web version on my, well, iPhone.

While once upon a time I was a heavy forum user (and a Usenet/Mailing List guy before that), most of my conversational reading is in the blogosphere now.

I find the much stronger sense of a huge range of personalities you get on people’s blogs much more appealing than the handful of dominant personalities that tend to dominate forum-like discussion places. And I speak as someone who has been one of those selfishly dominant personalities in the past. I also occasionally flirt with social networks (note that that’s “flirt with” not “flirt in” ), but find them limited and frustrating.

That said, both Seesmic and Flickr, which have strong similarities with forums, are sites I wish I had more time to explore the true potential of.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
Honestly, I think we’re only just scratching the surface of how blog-based CMS could completely change the way we deliver news to interested people.

I suspect that the news sites of the future will have much more in common with blogs that than monolithic sites with clunky, slow back-ends we build right now.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
Facebook (and social network sites in general). I think they’re interesting “walled garden” communication tools, but their strength is also their weakness: they only expose you to the thoughts and recommendations of those you already know.

They are something of an echo chamber, in which existing relationships are reinforced, rather than a way of being exposed to anything (or anyone) new.

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Criticism from blogosphere for journalist’s interview with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg

Laura Oliver — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:36:03 +0000

Business journalist Sarah Lacy’s interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the SXSW conference is being torn to shreds by bloggers, because of Lacy’s anecdotal style and rambling questions.

Lacy’s response: an angry message to Twitter (flagged up by CNET) shown below.

Lacy’s interview is now being touted as teaching material for journalism professor Jeff Jarvis’ classes. On his blog, Jarvis says Lacy’s biggest mistakes were not knowing or listening to her audience and her treatment of Zuckerberg – who apparently had to interrupt her ramble to suggest she asked a question at one point.

A post on Adam Tinworth’s blog details the lessons that should be learnt from this interview, namely: ‘engage, know your occasion, do your research and don’t confuse yourself with the story’.

Well said – these are basic interview skills, but Tinworth’s post highlights how these rules should be applied in a new media environment. He points out that despite working in a social media area, Lacy has ‘no direct means of replying that isn’t mediated by others’.

Lacy’s credentials as a business reporter covering technology for BusinessWeek and author on the subject of Silicon Valley and Web 2.0 should have stood her in good stead for this interview.

But it seems her reputation was not sufficient to endear her to or engage with her audience or the blogosphere – after all the interview wasn’t supposed to be about her…

UPDATE – Lacy gives her reaction to the interview in a video response (from Omar Galagga)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wyrny8PP-M]

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