Roy Greenslade: British journalism is in crisis and time is running out

A powerful plea from Roy Greenslade over at MediaGuardian today:

“Is anybody out there listening properly? Do enough people care? Are journalists themselves sticking their heads in the sand?

“We are not facing a momentous crisis in journalism. We are already in a crisis that is putting the central public service aspect of our role in jeopardy.”

In a follow-on from his column in the London Evening Standard in which he claimed there was possibility of charity funding to back public service reporting by the Press Association,  he emphasises the need for speedy rescue measures.

And he’s enthusiastic about non-commercial models:

“The reason I’m in favour of not-for-profit journalism, whether funded by charity or, at arm’s length, by state bodies, is that it breaks the link with commercialism.

“That’s a vital first step in the reinvention of journalism. What we need is a preservation of the old until the new emerges. We cannot afford to let the old die before the new is in place.”

Full post at this link…

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Greenslade: ‘PA’s excellent plan to launch “public service reporting”‘

Roy Greenslade offers his thoughts on the Press Association’s (PA) plans for a ‘public service reporting’ scheme in partnership with Trinity Mirror, as reported by Journalism.co.uk yesterday.

He applauds the agency for a ‘bold and imaginative’ move, which, he says, warrants public funding.

“Essentially, it will relieve newspaper editors of their current headaches in trying (and failing) to cover the whole local agenda. The nuts and bolts will be available to them. Instead, their reporters can get on with digging and delving,” he writes.

Interesting comments left on the post too, including one from Blackadder, who claims to be a former PA employee:

“To turn the PA into a fully-fledged public service will involve a root and branch upheaval of the current company, and that will never happen if profit is the watchword. They should not be given a penny of public money.”

Full post at this link…

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PA launches video wire service – added support for regional newspapers

The UK’s Press Association (PA) has announced a new service – a video wire of raw news footage.

While the association has produced video since 2005, it has never made this content available on a news wire, alongside text and pictures.

Subscribers to the service will be able to edit their own packages from the clips, a release from the agency said – making the cost of the service lower.

Regional newspapers will be offered a free trial of the service, which will feature up to 30 stories a day.

“The video wire is not only a cost-effective solution for news broadcasters, but will also support regional media players at an important stage in their development as multi-platform businesses,” said Tony Watson, PA managing director, in the release.

“As DCMS and Ofcom grapple with the issue of safeguarding plurality of provision in PSB regional television news, we believe the new UK video service could make a significant contribution to the solutions currently under consideration.”

The PA’s launch comes as potential partnerships between the BBC and local media on training and equipment are set to get the go ahead – according to this MediaGuardian report.

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Website changes for PA on its 140th anniversary

To mark its 140th anniversary, the Press Association has ‘completely overhauled its identity in print and online to reflect its position as an innovative, digital, news and information provider,’ a release said.

To signify its move from a domestic news agency to a ‘multimedia content business’, all of the existing Press Association sub-brands will now be ‘unified’.

The URL of the PA website has changed to pressassociation.co.uk and the release said that the new site ‘incorporates improved usability, multimedia news feeds, picture galleries and demo packages demonstrating the range of the company’s services,’ although most content is still restricted to paying subscribers.

“By sharpening up the brand and introducing a new website we aim to increase our brand awareness amongst B2B customers and make it easier for us to showcase our services, particularly to the digital markets,” Paul Potts, executive chairman and owner of the PA Group, said in the release.

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PA celebrates 140 years with museum exhibition

The Press Association (PA) sent us this rather lovely photo to announce a new exhibition celebrating 140 years of the agency, which will open at Bradford’s National Media Museum on October 18.

The picture from New Year’s Day 1930 shows ‘despatch manager’ Walter Cattermole, flanked by PA News messenger boys, outside the organisation’s former home in Fleet Street, London.

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Priest who wrote offensive comments about gay people on blog keeps newspaper column

The vicar who faced national outrage after he posted offensive comments about gay people on his personal blog will continue writing for the Northern Echo newspaper.

The Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, and chaplain to the Stock Exchange, Peter Mullen, has been widely criticized for posts on his blog, including: a poem about gay marriage; a suggestion that proponents of gay culture should have a tattoo across their buttocks; and a call for Gay Pride parades to be outlawed.

Nonetheless the priest will continue to write his column for the Northern Echo, which can be read online.

The Northern Echo’s editor, Peter Barron, wrote on his own blog this week that he had advised Mullen to issue an apology to the Press Association, and that Mullen would be writing another apology in the Northern Echo next week, even though the original comments were not ever posted on the Northern Echo site.

Mullen has now deleted his blog but the offensive comments can be read in this Google cache (via Zefrog).

On a side note, if you now search priest + sodomy, on Google most the results return articles about Peter Mullen. Ironic, that.

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Press Association opens up data to BBC developers

The BBC has been given free access to data from third parties for use by its BBC Backstage developers network.

The Press Association (PA) has opened up the API and data from its event listings information for no charge, Ian Forrester, senior producer for BBC Backstage, told an industry conference.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Forrester said PA had opened up its data to BBC Backstage, because they did not have a place to showcase the information themselves.

“They have this huge events database. They know they could sell certain parts of it but only a certain amount. The admin of trying to sell that stuff is too great, they may as well give it away for free, but they are also interested in seeing the creative use of this data,” Forrester explained to delegates at the Media Futures Conference.

Several data streams from within the corporation will also be made available to the network in the next few months, Forrester added.

Data from the BBC iPlayer will be opened up through BBC Backstage, he said, with plans to create personalised search functions and alerts when content is added to the player.

Following the recent addition of full text RSS feeds for the BBC’s blogs, Forrester told Journalism.co.uk that full text feeds for the BBC’s news content would be ‘a natural progression for newsgathering’.

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All change at the Telegraph: integration continues

The Telegraph has moved further towards its vision of a fully integrated newsroom with a raft of promotions, new arrivals and a newly integrated Science team.

Integrated desks contribute to both titles and the web site, The Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk, and so far business, sport, foreign and comment desks have been reshaped to fit the new mould.

The integrated science team will be headed up by Daily Telegraph science editor Roger Highfield and Sunday Telegraph science correspondent Richard Gray, with Professor Steve Jones continuing to contribute. The team will be assisted by Kate Devlin.

The changes follow the abrupt departure of Nic Fleming, Daily Telegraph science correspondent, two weeks ago.

Following the significant number of departures from the Telegraph sports desk last month, former Times sports feature writer Alison Kervin is joining as chief sports interviewer. She replaces star interviewer Sue Mott.

Other changes include Stephen Adams’ promotion to arts correspondent, replacing Nigel Reynolds who was axed last month.

The Daily Telegraph has also appointed former Press Association chief reporter John Bingham to take a senior reporting role.

Further changes are expected as the integration policy continues to roll out.

There has been talk of strike action over management decisions to axe staff members, which included the Telegraph Media Group’s decision to remove the entire reader relations desk as well as individual journalists over the last few months.

Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft resigned in September 2007, reportedly over the integration strategy.

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Reflections on the life of a videojournalist

Having spent April 1 shadowing the two-person web video team at the Express and Star, I came away with:

• 3 minutes 41 seconds of video footage
• 14 minutes of audio
• 54 photos

After a day spent gathering the material I then spent approximately two days editing it for the piece on the site, entailing two slideshows with audio (40s and 48s), one audio clip (6mins 49s) and one video clip (2 mins 20s).

Okay – so I’ve not been specifically trained as a multimedia reporter, which might not make me the fastest when it comes to editing. But essentially two days work resulted in one feature.

Similarly, on the Express and Star’s team, videojournalist Victoria Hoe spent two hours boiling down 16 minutes of footage into a 1min 50s final package.

The Express and Star’s set up with a dedicated video team trained on a Press Association videojournalism course means that it’s time well spent: they put up around 20 videos a week – many shot, edited and published in the same day – and are using the medium in a variety of ways to add value to other areas or stories on the site, as well as for standalone pieces.

But not all publishers have such well-established roles and departments and, having now experienced it first hand, trying to be an all-in-one multimedia reporter/editor/publisher is extremely time consuming.

This is why I voted for ‘Not on its own – video has to be part of a mixed media package from papers in the digital age’ in Journalism.co.uk’s poll on whether video can save newspapers.

While creating such a role may enable publishers to stretch their resources and staff to increase their multimedia content, the benefits of doing this for staff and the resulting content must be slim. As it is so time-consuming, surely it’s better to get it right?

From my day out last week ‘right’ to me means seeing video as a new way of storytelling. It can work with text, but should add something new to text articles and not just as a scripted piece to camera rehashing the article.

The VJs I spoke to said it was crucial to think visually and in sequences to ensure you get all the shots needed while on location. Think visually and video can become a great medium for explaining and representing stories in an alternative way to print.

What’s more it’s another way to reach out to your audience and new members of that readership, so if set up and executed well it will add value – and hopefully traffic – to your site.

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