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.

Tags: business to business, multimedia, Paul Potts, Press Association, website

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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.

Tags: Bradford, Fleet Street, National Media Museum, Press Association, Walter Cattermole

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Editor&Publisher: What alternative to AP for US newspapers?

As more newspapers in the US drop their partnerships with the Associated Press, E&P asks if emerging news collaborations, with the likes of the Press Association and Politico, can replace the papers' long-standing relationship with the agency. Full story...

Tags: Associated Press, Editor&Publisher, Press Association

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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.

Tags: blogging, blogs, Peter Barron, Peter Mullen, Press Association, The Northern Echo

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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’.

Tags: API, BBC, developers network, Ian Forrester, Journalism.co.uk, pa, personalised search functions, Press Association, senior producer

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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.

Tags: Alison Kervin, integration, John Bingham, Kate Devlin, Nigel Reynolds, Patience Wheatcroft, Press Association, Richard Gray, Roger Highfield, sports desk last month, sports interviewer, Steve Jones, Sue Mott, Telegraph.co.uk, the Daily Telegraph, the Telegraph

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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.

Tags: Journalism.co.uk, mixed media, Press Association, Standards, The Express, Victoria Hoe, Video, web video team

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Breaking news coverage on Twitter of fire in East London

London-based twitterers have broken the news of a huge fire in East London.

Tweets describing the spread of a black cloud of smoke in the Stratford area of the city are the first reports of the incident - before any accounts online from the mainstream media.

The first tweet Journalism.co.uk saw on the fire came from the Guardian’s head of blogging Kevin Anderson shortly before 12:30pm. Anderson has also posted pictures to Flickr and at 12:45pm posted an entry on the events to his Guardian blog.

Again according to Twitter The Press Association has now put up pictures of fire.

Sky News are now showing live coverage on the site and a quick search on Google News suggests Sky was the first mainstream media to file on the story at 12:34pm. Sky seem to have been the first news organisation on the scene and are now providing regular updates and a map pinpointing the location of the fire.

A ticker across the top of the BBC News site promises “more soon” reporting a “large plume of smoke” rising from a fire in East London”.

A brief report on Reuters also appeared at 12:39pm.

Tweets from Martin Stabe, new media correspondent with the Press Gazette, say the smoke cloud is now covering PG’s offices based in Underwood Street. (As Martin points out in a comment below, the cloud appeared to be covering the PG’s offices, but was actually further away. Still, he updated his Twitter accordingly and very quickly.)

Was anyone covering it earlier than the Twitter correspondents mentioned here?

UPDATE: reports are that the fire began in a disused bus depot - here’s a view of what the site looked like before it started.

Tags: BBC, google, Journalism.co.uk, Kevin Anderson, London, mainstream media, Martin Stabe, Press Association, reuters, Sky News, The Guardian, Underwood Street

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