We’ve been following the various Telegraph/Guardian online interactions this week:
Yesterday, Roy Greenslade published an anonymous email from a Telegraph hack, who wrote that he/she was more than a little bit fed up. The gist of the email was that all this multimedia-ised hub-it-up lark is to the detriment of a good, healthy working life and quality journalism.
Greenslade cautiously said he was printing the letter but that he didn’t necessarily agree with its sentiment.
Over at CounterValues, Telegraph assistant editor Justin Williams was quick to pooh pooh it. And now Greenslade has put up his response to the letter – a more negative stance this time: ‘the past is another country, think positive,’ he tells his ‘emailing friend’.
Meanwhile, in another post, Williams took a swipe at the Guardian’s system of buying sponsored links and keywords. He reckons their buying is well in excess of the Telegraph’s and the Times’.
In the comments below the post, Charles Arthur, the Guardian’s technology editor, asks how many subsidised paper subscriptions the Telegraph has: ‘Is [buying sponsored links and keywords] a worse or better investment than subsidising paper subscriptions, do you think?’, he writes.
Charles Arthur is a keen Twitterer and I’ve just located Justin Williams on Twitter; all that Tweeting in agreement can be a bit boring: how about getting the discussion going in Twitterland? It’s a shame this didn’t get going earlier, with it being (unofficial?) ’speak like a pirate day’ - that would make it fun.
Can’t wait for next week’s ABCes…
Tags: Charles Arthur, Justin Williams, Roy Greenslade, seo, The Guardian, the Telegraph, The Times, TwitterDo you trust the telephone more than the internet, might have been a more valid question than that asked by media company Metrica’s UKPulse survey this week, when it questioned respondents on what they thought were the most trustworthy forms of media.
According to their press release (to which there is no link on the Metrica site), the study asked 13,000 UK adults whether they trusted the internet more than newspapers.
So far so good – it’s an important question. But in the company’s analysis of the results, it compared the internet with news sites.
“The internet in general has gained four percentage points, with 34% of UK adults now saying they trust its content. News sites as a specific online media type though do fair [sic] a lot better with 54% - more than national newspapers!”
That’s like comparing the percentage of people who trust the printed pages of books, with the percentage of people who trust Bill Bryson. It’s simply not a useful comparison.
The internet is the publishing medium, and is not comparable to TV channels or newspapers, which are editorially directed. The internet is the technology by which material is reproduced (in some cases the same material as that appearing in newspapers). When people said they trusted television they weren’t talking about their television sets, rather the channels they watch.
By and large, news site content is the same as the content of newspapers, so it seems bizarre that people trust online news sites more. What is even more baffling, is that blogs fared worse than news sites for gaining people’s trust. But, these very news sites have blogs.
I need persuading that any kind of fruitful analysis can be gleaned from this rather badly thought out study. When someone comes up with relevant and comparable categories then this type of study would be extremely revealing.
For example, do people trust a well-known newspaper journalist’s blog more than an unknown blogger’s?
Furthermore, as Adrian Monck points out in the comments on Roy Greenslade’s blog:
“The problem with trust polling is that it says nothing about the reliability of the media, whilst giving the appearance of providing an answer…”
Greenslade himself asks us about the significance of the increase in trust in UK media, but I think the real question to be asked here is how to profitably analyse people’s trust in different types of online media.
Does anyone know of any good studies conducted on people’s trust in new media? Or how best to measure the media’s reliability?
Tags: Adrian Monck, Bill Bryson, online media, printing presses, Roy Greenslade, United KingdomThe winds have slowed down to a tropical storm, but the Gustav blogging continues.
The mainstream media is reporting on the blogging phenomenon as well as the actual hurricane: the Chicago Tribune looks at the decision-making power of blogs and FollowTheMedia comments that the hurricane may stop print, but not the web.
Meanwhile, over at Poynter, NPR’s Andy Carvin examines the role of social media in Gustav coverage.
As we posted yesterday, this was one for the Twitterers and they tweet on as people assess the damage. A quick twitter local search shows how the twitterers regard the media professionals…
Pictures can be found easily on this Flickr search and over at gustavbloggers.com they reflect that it wasn’t as bad as they feared. Meanwhile, to prepare for reportage of the next natural disaster, the Blog Herald offers its disaster blogging tips.
Tags: Hurricane Gustav, mainstream media, media professionals, Roy Greenslade, twitter local searchA Page 3 girl widget for RSS feeds, launched by The Sun on Friday, has beaten previous download figures for Sun apps after only three days, the newspaper has said.
The Keeley Hazell application (see below) was built using Adobe Air - a new piece of technology, which allows one widget to be built that will be compatible with both PC and MAC systems.
Further editorial developments are planned for the site over the next few weeks to build on changes to the site navigation and page design introduced last week.
The homepage is longer and features a panel on the right-hand side showcasing breaking news, ‘most read’ and ‘most discussed’ articles.
In addition, users are now taken directly to the article after clicking on a homepage headline, rather than visiting the section homepage.
The changes to the homepage have received criticism from media commentator Roy Greenslade, who asked if the revamp was a reaction to the Daily Mail’s recent relaunch.
However, Danny Rogers, The Sun’s editorial manager (online), said the new features were the result of long-running development.
“It has nothing to do with the Daily Mail. This has been going on for the last six months,” he told Journalism.co.uk, adding that the changes were aimed at displaying content in a more accessible and user-friendly way.
Tags: Adobe, Danny Rogers, Roy Greenslade, The SunGavin O’Reilly, chief operating officer of Indepenent News and Media (INM) and president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), has responded to criticism of the publisher’s digital strategy by media commentator Roy Greenslade.
INM has adopted a ‘platform agnostic’ policy for growing its media, O’Reilly wrote in a comment responding to Greenslade, and is not investing in print at the expense of online.
“[T]he O’Brien saga is a distraction from the stark reality facing a company that has put its faith in the longevity of newsprint and averted its gaze from the digital future. It has invested online, of course, but it is way behind many other newspaper companies,” Greenslade wrote, likening INM to a ‘digital ostrich’.
According to O’Reilly, the facts speak for themselves:
INM online revenues grew by 111.5% last year and its 100 websites attract 12 million monthly unique users.
Reports of a ‘volatile’ advertising situation, he added, are not a result of print vs online or structural shifts within INM, but a result of the wider economic downturn.
Tags: advertising situation, Gavin O'Reilly, Indepenent News, online revenues, Reilly Gavin O'Reilly, Roy Greenslade, WAN, World Association of NewspapersThe Nashua Telegraph’s decision to publish a 15-minute video of Sidney Blumenthal, aide to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, while he was in police custody has been criticised by media commentator Roy Greenslade.
Writing on his blog, the former editor of The Daily Mirror said the video was ‘embarrassing, humiliating and overly intrusive’.
“To show the footage of a person undergoing ritual humiliation while in police custody is a disgraceful act. It serves no public interest whatsoever,” he wrote.
Damon Kiesow, managing editor and online editor of the Telegraph, told Journalism.co.uk that the decision to publish the video was ‘typical practice’:
“During the course of our coverage we have published booking photos, police records and court documents related to the case. This is typical practice for us. In fact the story with the video also included a PDF containing nine pages of records including the sentencing document.”
Far from seeking to ‘humiliate’ Blumenthal, Kiesow said the paper - and other US media - had previously been accused of covering up his arrest by not reporting it immediately to protect Clinton’s election campaign.
“The Telegraph has been publishing video on the Web for almost three years. During that time we have published numerous court-related segments including police interviews and court hearings.
“Some have been very graphic and painful in detail but were published due to a significant local interest in the stories.
“The Nashua Police Department only recently implemented the technology that makes it possible for us to gain access to booking videos. Blumenthal is the second booking video we have requested, the first was not published due to technical difficulties on our end.”
Publishing the video was not an attempt to cast aspersions on Blumenthal, but was intended to give readers the opportunity to make up their own minds - with all the information provided.
“I think Roy Greenslade frames the question ‘why publish’ in exactly the wrong way, and by doing so pre-supposes both the answer and the potential public reaction to the video. In fact, this was the first story in our coverage that garnered any positive reader comments for Blumenthal.
“Obviously those predisposed to support or oppose Blumenthal will interpret it as they want. But it is not our place to try and guess what those interpretations are. We felt in this case, and in general, that supplementing our reporting with source documents is the best way to let readers make up their own minds.”
Is there an issue here about the medium: is multimedia content such as this more intrusive, as Greenslade suggests, and therefore arguably less in the public interest? Or does it better serve the readers by giving them all the information available?
Tags: Damon Kiesow, Hillary Clinton, Journalism.co.uk, Nashua Police Department, Roy Greenslade, Sidney Blumenthal, The Daily Mirror, the Telegraph, United States
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