Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Paul Bradshaw

Let the expenses data war commence: Telegraph begins its document drip feed

Judith Townend — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:49:17 +0000

Andy Dickinson from the Department of Journalism at UCLAN sums up today’s announcement in this tweet: ‘Telegraph to drip-publish MP expenses online’.

[Update #1: Editor of Telegraph.co.uk, Marcus Warren, responded like this: 'Drip-publish? The whole cabinet at once....that's a minor flood, I think']

Yes, let the data war commence. The Guardian yesterday released its ‘major crowdsourcing tool’ as reported by Journalism.co.uk at this link. As described by one of its developers, Simon Willison, on his own blog, the Guardian is ‘crowdsourcing the analysis of the 700,000+ scanned [official] MP expenses documents’. It’s the Guardian’s ‘first live Django-powered application’. It’s also the first time the news site has hosted something on Amazon EC2, he says. Within 90 minutes of launch, 1700 users had ‘audited’ its data, reported the editor of Guardian.co.uk, Janine Gibson.

The Telegraph was keeping mum, save a few teasing tweets from Telegraph.co.uk editor Marcus Warren. A version of its ‘uncensored’ data was coming, but they would not say what and how much.

Now we know a bit more. As well as printing its data in a print supplement with Saturday’s newspaper they will gradually release the information online. As yet, copies of claim forms have been published using Issuu software, underneath each cabinet member’s name. See David Miliband’s 2005-6 expenses here, for example. From the Telegraph’s announcement:

“Complete records of expense claims made by every Cabinet minister have been published by The Telegraph for the first time.”
“In the coming weeks the expense claims of every MP, searchable by name and constituency, will be published on this website.”
“There will be weekly releases region by region and a full schedule will be published on Tuesday.”
“Tomorrow [Saturday], the Daily Telegraph will publish a comprehensive 68-page supplement setting out a summary of the claims of every sitting MP.”

Details of what’s included but not included in the official data at this link. “Sensitive information, such as precise home addresses, phone numbers and bank account details, has been removed from the files by the Telegraph’s expenses investigation team,” the Telegraph reports.

So who is winning in the data wars? Here’s what Paul Bradshaw had to say earlier this morning:

“We may see more stories, we may see interesting mashups, and this will give The Guardian an edge over the newspaper that bought the unredacted data – The Telegraph. When – or if – they release their data online, you can only hope the two sets of data will be easy to merge.”

Update #2: Finally, Martin Belam’s post on open and closed journalism (published Thursday 18th) ended like this:

“I think the Telegraph’s bunkered attitude to their scoop, and their insistence that they alone determined what was ‘in the public interest’ from the documents is a marked contrast to the approach taken by The Guardian. The Telegraph are physically publishing a selection of their data on Saturday, but there is, as yet, no sign of it being made online in machine readable format.

“Both are news organisations passionately committed to what they do, and both have a strategy that they believe will deliver their digital future. As I say, I have a massive admiration for the scoop that The Telegraph pulled off, and I’m a strong believer in media plurality. As we endlessly debate ‘the future of news™’ I think both approaches have a role to play in our media landscape. I don’t expect this to be the last time we end up debating the pros and cons of the ‘closed’ and ‘open’ approaches to data driven journalism.”

It has provoked an interesting comment from Ian Douglas, the Telegraph’s head of digital production.

“I think you’re missing the fundamental difference in source material. No publisher would have released the completely unredacted scans for crowdsourced investigation, there was far too much on there that could never be considered as being in the public interest and could be damaging to private individuals (contact details of people who work for the MPs, for example, or suppliers). The Guardian, good as their project is, is working solely with government-approved information.”

“Perhaps you’ll change your mind when you see the cabinet expenses in full on the Telegraph website today [Friday], and other resources to come.”

Related Journalism.co.uk links:

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Online Journalism Blog: ‘How the web changed the economics of news’

Laura Oliver — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:10:01 +0000

I’ll give you the headlines from Paul Bradshaw’s excellent, detailed post on how the web has changed the economics of all news media.

Atomisation of news consumption
Measurability
Mutually conflicting business models
Reduced cost of newsgathering and production
End of scarcity of time and space
Devaluation of certain types of journalism
The end of monopolies
Cutting out middlemen
Creating new monopolies
Digitisation and convergence
The rise of the PR industry
A new currency

Better still, read the full post at this link…

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Online Journalism Blog: Help Me Investigate update

Judith Townend — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:36:19 +0000

Following news that the Help Me Investigate (HMI) project will receive funding from 4iP and Screen West Midlands, Paul Bradshaw updates on the project.

The most important thing about the ‘platform for crowdsourcing investigative journalism’ is that it ‘enables users to mobilise support behind that question; and to pursue it,’ writes its founder.

“HMI attempts to address the biggest issue facing journalism: how do we save the good stuff? The persistent slow-brewed journalism that was previously subsidised (if you were lucky) by more commercially friendly instant journalism, but which stands to lose most as commercial content becomes disaggregated and reaggregated, and audiences and their activity measurable.”

Full post at this link…

Also see interview with Paul Bradshaw at this link.

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Online Journalism Blog: ‘Wolfram Alpha for journalists’

Judith Townend — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:15:33 +0000

Paul Bradshaw takes a look at new seach engine (or computational knowledge engine) Wolfram Alpha, with a journalist’s hat on.

Bradshaw finds, for example: “From a journalistic perspective, [some of its] features are a time-saver if you don’t fancy browsing through almanacs and biographies for the same facts. But that’s it. And it’s not clear where the information is coming from or how accurate it is (Karen Blakeman, whose review is worth reading, told me it gets some things wrong, ‘even chemical structures’) – that’s the advantage of Google or Wikipedia: you can evaluate the credibility of the source relatively intuitively; Wolfram, however, presents itself as the source, and where links are given in ‘Source Information’ these are often just to homepages.”

Full post at this link…

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JEEcamp: Follow the journalism enterprise ‘unconference’

Laura Oliver — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:42:01 +0000

Journalism.co.uk is attending JEEcamp today – an ‘unconference’ (e.g. any attendees can suggest the topics for discussion) about future models for journalism, focusing on enterprise and experimentation.

“JEEcamp is an opportunity for a range of people to get together to talk about how on earth journalists and publishers can make a living from journalism in the era of free information, what the challenges are, and what we’ve learned so far.”

Organsied by Birmingham City University lecturer and Online Journalism Blog blogger Paul Bradshaw, the event is a sell out – but there are plenty of ways to follow what’s going on.

There’s a liveblog of the event here.

There will be lots of twittering (see the attendees list for a rough guide of who to follow and @journalism_live) under the #jeecamp hashtag. If you tag your tweets in this way they’ll be fed through to the CoverItLive bloggers too.

JEEcamp09

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What would a UK-based ProPublica look like?

Judith Townend — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:26:32 +0000

In today’s MediaGuardian, City University of New York (CUNY) journalism professor Jeff Jarvis writes that that foundations will not take over newspapers, à la Scott Trust / Guardian relationship. He told Journalism.co.uk: “It is an empty hope for white knights to save news from inevitable change and business reality. But he says: “We’ll see foundation and public support able to fund a decent number of investigations.”

Yesterday, Journalism.co.uk published comments from New York University (NYU) professor, Jay Rosen, and ProPublica’s managing editor, Stephen Engelberg, as well as from Jarvis in a feature looking at the sustainability of ‘lump sum’ funded journalism – they all said that the point was not to look at ‘one solution’ but at a hybrid of funding opportunities (an issue picked up by Julie Starr here.)

US-based ProPublica, funded by the Sandler Foundation, for example, employs full-time journalists to conduct investigations which are then supplied to other media bodies. Journalism.co.uk raised the point with some of the NYJournalism interviewees (fuller features forthcoming) that similar foundation funding is a bit trickier to come by in the UK: just what would a UK version of ProPublica look like and could it be funded?

Would the equivalent of ProPublica work over here? Or, for that matter, something in the mould of Spot.Us, New America Media, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, or the Center for Public Integrity?

Last week the Guardian’s Stephen Moss mentioned Paul Bradshaw’s new project, HelpMeInvestigate.com in his giant G2 feature on the troubled regional newspaper industry. It’s a proposal not quite on the scale of ProPublica, which has an annual operating budget of $10 million, and it’s seen success so far, making it to third stage of the (American) Knight News Challenge 2009 and it awaits news of further progress.

How about existing organisations in the UK? There’s the Centre for Investigative Journalism with its annual summer school, but it doesn’t run and supply investigations in the way ProPublica does. There’s MySociety which can help journalists with stories, but is not designed as a primarily journalistic venture.

Author of Flat Earth News, Nick Davies, has previously told the Press Gazette (which has just announced its last issue) about his idea of models of ‘mini-media’.

“It may be that we are looking at funding mini-media or a foundation that will give money to groups of journalists if they can pass the quality threshold,” Davies said at an National Union of Journalists (NUJ) event in January, as Press Gazette reported.

“The greatest question in journalism today is what will be our ‘third source’ of funding,” Davies told Journalism.co.uk last week.

“If advertising and circulation can no longer pay for our editorial operation, we have to find this third source.

“I suspect that place by place and case by case, the answer to the question will be different, a matter of wrapping up whatever package of cash is possible, using donations or grants or sponsorship or micropayments from foundations, rich individuals, local councils, businesses, NGOs, universities – anybody who can understand that the collapse of newspapers is not just about journalists losing their jobs but about everybody losing an essential source of information.

“And in an ideal world, central government would lead the way by setting up a New Media Fund to provide seed money to help these non-profit mini-media to establish themselves and to find their particular third source.”

So could a third source-funded model work? And what shape would it take? It’s a question Journalism.co.uk will continue to ask. Please share your thoughts below.

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Online Journalism Blog: What should an MA in Online Journalism teach?

Laura Oliver — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:56:55 +0000

Ahead of the launch of a new MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University, course leader Paul Bradshaw wants to know what you think it should cover.

Full post at this link…

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Paul Bradshaw, Twitter and the art of predicting the interview

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:35:22 +0000

Prior to his appearance to talk about Twitter on BBC West Midlands’ breakfast show this morning, Birmingham City journalism lecturer and Online Journalism Blog blogger Paul Bradshaw put out a call on the service to see if he and his followers couldn’t predict what questions he’d be asked.

[You can listen to the audio of the interview at this link until February 25 2009 - Paul's interview comes in around the 2 hours 15 mins mark]

Here’s the full audio of the interview courtesy of BBC West Midlands and the Phil Upton Breakfast Show:

150 responses later and the #bbcwm tag became the seventh most popular search term on Twitter. Here’s the predicted interview (full names of Twitterers and responses can be seen on Bradshaw’s blog):

Isn’t it a waste of time?
What’s Twitter all about?
What famous people are on it?
Have there been any catfights on it?
How do you ever get any work done?
What advice can you give me on using Twitter?
Can’t these people make real friends?
Why would you want strangers knowing what you do?

And, of the five questions presenter Phil Upton got to ask, numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5. A bonus question – also predicted by Bradshaw’s followers – included ‘what’s the best tweet/tweeter you’ve seen?’. Aptly, Bradshaw used responses that had been sent by Tweeters to illustrate his answers.

Upton, who tweets at @flupton, had been following the responses to Bradshaw’s shoutout and may have used them as free research. Even if he didn’t base his questions on the #bbcwm replies there’s a strange ’self-fulfilling interview’ prophecy going on here, with questions answered before the interview has even taken place…

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Guardian releases football data; BBC creates gossip widget

Laura Oliver — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:36:10 +0000

New releases from the Guardian and BBC for fans of football and online innovations alike.

First up, the Guardian’s new Chalkboards, which give users access to player and match data as soon as the final whistle goes. There’s a competitive edge to creating your data mashups too, as the best chalkboards will be awarded prizes.

(Here’s my first attempt below from one of my favourite football matches of recent times. And yes, I do live on past glories.)

Users will be able to embed the boards on their own sites, as the Guardian hopes to encourage discussion both off and on-site.

According to a release from the title, the feature is part of Guardian News & Media’s new product development programme.

Meanwhile (and a hat tip to Paul Bradshaw’s blog), the BBC has created a widget of football transfer gossip – most significantly, it aggregates rumour links from other news sites, which is part of the Beeb’s remit to make better use of external links.

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LA Times: Micropayments – a rainbow for journalism… or a Hail Mary?

John Thompson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:09:27 +0000

The prospect of micropayments for news raises its head once again. This article follows in the wake of David Carr’s piece in the NY Times, ‘Let’s invent an iTunes for news’ which has been neatly debunked by Paul Bradshaw on his Online Journalism Blog.

Might have worked a few years back, but most agree that horse has already bolted. Full story…

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