The paper’s ‘Londoner’s Diary’ column had speculated that the new World Service director job, advertised internally, was being kept open for the BBC’s News Director Richard Sambrook, allegedly annoying ‘ex-BBC types’.
Sambrook was quick to correct it on his own blog: “I’m not a candidate for the job, because … it reports to me and I will be deciding who gets it.”
“There were also fears that the BBC’s Director of Global News, Richard Sambrook, was said to be eyeing up the post himself and how he would have been a shoo in for the job. The BBC press office hotly denied my suggestion that the post was being kept open for Sambrook, claiming that as Director of Global News, the new Director of World Service would report to him and that Sambrook will be involved in appointing someone to the job himself.”
By and large, Al Jazeera is 'doing ok' in its Gaza coverage, writes Philip Stone. He takes a look at the aspects of its reporting and concludes that "its coverage of the Mumbai attacks and now Gaza shows it certainly has logistical advantages in that part of the world, and if it can only keep its reporters and anchors straight for a mainstream international audience, then it really can be a viable cable news alternative to CNN International and BBC World." Full story...
“What you have to do is to try and define what the skilled class of professional journalist actually does in that world. What makes us worth employing? We are the ones who provide accurate information: we’re not going to disappear,” he says, before asking how many bloggers can be described as authoritative.
Discussing recent journalism job losses, Mason argues that this is not the result of just the recession, but has been caused by ‘deskilling and the rise of new technology’.
Accuracy, authority and the peer review mechanism of the newsroom will safeguard journalism’s future, he adds.
“A newsroom is a real-time peer review system - that bloggers in their pyjamas can’t replicate.”
Is this really the case? Mason’s views have sparked some reactions among journo-bloggers, including Kevin Anderson and Patrick Smith:
(or, ‘how many times can we use the word ‘comment’ in one blog post’?)
Guido Fawkes got the comments going today with a post that said he is ‘mulling over’ whether to moderate comments over the holiday period. He also announces that in the new year a ‘community rating’ element will be introduced to his blog (details at end of this post).
Guido Fawkes, aka Paul Staines, referred back to November, to the Goldsmiths seminar on media ethics and a comment from the Times Comment editor, Anne Spackman, who said that TimesOnline spends ’six figures’ on pre-moderating online comments [unclear over what time period - Journalism.co.uk will follow-up soon. UPDATE 19/12: Anne Spackman told Journalism.co.uk that the paper cannot currently clarify exact details, but that a six figure bill is paid to another partner.]
Fawkes said today on his blog:
“It is certainly expensive in time, every morning Guido deletes a load of comments which have, in his rather arbitrary judgement, just gone too far.”
Journalism.co.uk was also at the Goldsmiths event and spoke to Fawkes afterwards. He told Journalism.co.uk that he doesn’t moderate comments - ‘it has to get pretty gynecological before I do’.
“I deleted the stuff about Baby P,” he told Journalism.co.uk.
“I noticed it [information about Baby P] was still on the BBC’s website. I called them up, and they said ‘we’re not taking it down because the order doesn’t apply’. I said ‘well, is it because it’s an order or because it is right or wrong?’”
Fawkes said that if he is found to be ‘in the wrong’ he’ll take something down, but added that ‘it’s very difficult to send me a writ.’
“Unless you catch me having a drink here, where are you going to send the writ?”
“There’s no bricks and mortar,” he said.
While Guido Fawkes says on his blog post that he takes a ’sticks and stones view to a large extent’, he outlines a number of changes to be introduced in the New Year:
“[Y]ou [the users] will still be able to say what you like (within somewhat arbitrary inconsistent limits) without pre-moderation or registering. However there will be incentives for those who produce better quality commentary based on a new element of co-conspirator community rating.
“Good comments will be more prominently displayed, disliked comments will be less prominent. The biggest innovation is that it will be possible for readers to set their own tolerance thresholds. Poorly rated comments will be invisible to those who set their preferences accordingly.
“If you only want to see comments judged by co-conspirators to be witty, amusing or illuminating, set your threshold to ‘Recommended’. Don’t want to read foul language? Set your threshold to ‘U’. Want to see all and any comments no matter how foul? Set your threshold to ‘XXX’.
“If your commentary is consistently recommended your comments will automatically be more prominent in the future and may even get highlighted on the frontpage.”
TC’s Michael Arrington explained the good, the bad and the ugly side of embargoed news releases:
“A lot of this news is good stuff that our readers want to know about. And we have the benefit of taking some time during the pre-briefing to think about the story, do research, and write it properly. When embargoes go right, we get to write a thoughtful story which benefits the company and our readers.
“But there’s a problem. All this stress on the PR firms put on them by desperate clients means they send out the embargoed news to literally everyone who writes tech news stories. Any blog or major media site, no matter how small or new, gets the email. It didn’t used to be this way, but it’s becoming more and more of a problem. As the economy turns south, PR firms are under increasing pressure to perform and justify their monthly retainers which range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more. In short, they have to spam the tech world to get coverage, or lose their jobs.”
Increased competition in the journalism industry is causing more and more embargoes to be broken, argues Arrington, creating ‘a race to the bottom by new sites’ and a climate in which, he says, TC can’t operate.
Certain ‘trusted’ companies and PR firms will continue to have their embargoes honoured by the site, but the hope is that by disregarding the rules firms will have to be more selective with who they break news to and clamp down on those repeat offenders breaking embargoes.
Arrington will also be posting a blacklist – now topped by TC – listing all firms and publications involved when an embargo is broken.
“They give multiple blogs a chance to review a technology in depth, instead of making it a race (…) Embargoes lead to more total coverage than exclusives (…) Exclusives are the tactic of people with weak products and of reporters who compete better in bullying than in writing.”
Journalism.co.uk receives its fair share of embargoed news and releases – and has never knowingly broken any, because we want to cultivate good relations with tipsters, companies and PR firms.
This doesn’t mean we’ll cover everything that gets sent our way. We also know other journalism news sites will be getting much of the same info and agree this can make it more of a race to get the news out.
But from our perspective: we have two full-time journalists, so having good contacts with companies and PR is vital to our expanding our newsgathering.
Reporting on our specialism - as I’m sure is the case with many other subject-specific publications - it’s increasingly apparent that the organisations/titles/companies we write about are becoming their own news sources. e.g. have their own press office, press release feed, blog/write about their own developments.
Sending an embargoed release about this info to us later isn’t a great help. Most of the time I’d rather learn about it if it’s covered in a blog-style like the BBC Editors blog or Guardian’s Inside blog.
We’re then free to dig deeper into that news if needs be and are given a direct line to the people behind it; or pass it on through another of our channels like Editors’ Pick.
Holding back the news tide with embargoes seems to go against the way information and news spreads online through links, official ‘leaks’ (as referred to above), blog networks etc.
What’s more it’s not just quote-unquote journalists covering news releases any more – is the industry expecting other writers and bloggers online to respect embargoes? It goes against the grain of the web.
Well, we could have brought you ‘Flocking Around the Twitmas Tree’, ‘We Three Nings’ or just a straightforward end of the year list (if only to add to our list of lists), but instead we chose this: your sing-along treat to round-up 2008 is the ‘Twelve Days of Online Media Christmas’ (hyperlinked to relevant stories, but bear in mind it’s a selection of picks and not comprehensive…).
On the first day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … An editor in a law court
… Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the ninth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Nine strikers strikin’
… Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the tenth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Ten blogs a-blooming
… Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the eleventh day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Eleven papers packing
… Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the twelfth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Twelve sites a-starting
… Eleven papers packing, Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks and an editor in a law court!
YouTube is getting in on the act again ahead of the World Economic Forum at Davos next month by asking users to send their video answers to the following questions:
Are you confident that global growth will be restored in 2009?
Will the environment lose out to the economy in 2009?
Will the Obama administration improve the state of the world in 2009?
Should company executives have a code of ethics similar to doctors and lawyers?
The best clips, which can be uploaded to the site’s Davos channel, will be broadcast at the forum during sessions; while the user who creates the best video, as voted for by other YouTubers, will have the opportunity to attend the event, all expenses paid, as a citizen reporter for YouTube.
In a repeat of last year’s event, a YouTube booth for attendees of the forum to upload their video responses to the debates will also be available, according to a press release.
This seems to be just one strand of the forum’s multimedia activities. It’s also represented on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and questions for press conferences can be submitted via Qik and Mogalus.
The Washington Post has teamed up with Apture to add embedded links into its news articles. Washington Post articles, video content and Google maps will be linked to using the technology, which, according to a press release, requires only a single line of code to make the links appear.
Information from WaPo’s Congressional Votes Database will be linked to congress and senate members’ names when they appear in articles, as part of the new design.
WaPo content will now be available to other media and political sites that sign up to Apture. Articles already allow readers to view who’s linking to that content in the blogosphere.
Yesterday I picked up a discussion on Facebook, via a friend, about media coverage of the Ghanaian elections (voters went to the polls yesterday, and votes are being counted now, if you missed it, by the way) why had there been so little election coverage on the Western networks? Very little on CNN; very little on BBC.
“I was hoping, only hoping that for just a fraction of a moment the media cameras and the pens will slip from Mugabe’s Zimbabwe onto Ghana. Just a bit of positive reportage on Africa! That’s all I was hoping for. But I guess that’s not sensational enough for the Western media. ‘Ghana peacefully elects a new President’… that’s not headline stuff! It simply does not sell,” wrote Maclean Arthur.
“Perhaps, Ghana does not exist on their radar screen. Ghana, like the rest of black Africa will only pop-up on their monitoring screens when over 1,000 people have butchered themselves or over 300,000 people are dying of starvation, or over 500,000 people are displaced by a civil war,” Ajao writes.
Over on Facebook, others were quick to join in the criticism and call for more African specific coverage, in the form of an African television network.
That’s exactly what Salim Amin wants to set-up, in a bid to counter existing coverage (or lack thereof) with a proposed all-African television network, A24, as I have written about on Journalism.co.uk before. Amin told me in September:
“Everything we get is negative out of Africa. 99 per cent of the news is genocides, wars, famine, HIV.
“We’re not saying those things don’t occur or we’re going to brush them under the carpet, but what we’re saying is there are other things people want to know about. About business, about sport, about music, environment, health…
“Even the negative stuff needs to be done from an African perspective. African journalists are not telling those stories – it’s still foreign correspondents being parachuted into the continent to tell those stories. We want to give that opportunity to Africans to come up with their own solutions and tell their own stories.”
However, Amin is still searching for suitable investors that won’t compromise the ideals and aims of the channel. In the meantime, A24 exists as an online video agency.
The pitiful global coverage of the Ghanaian election reinforces the need for better and wider spread African news coverage, that isn’t just the stereotypical coverage we’re so used to, as Maclean Arthur referred to on Faceboook as ‘the usual images of dying children with flies gallivanting all over their chapped lips.’
The BBC has made good on its October promise to launch 
