Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » Charles Arthur

#DataJourn: Royal Mail cracks down on unofficial postcode database

Judith Townend — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:16:39 +0000

A campaign to release UK postcode data that is currently the commercial preserve of the Royal Mail (prices at this link) has been gathering pace for a while. And not so long ago in July, someone uploaded a set to Wikileaks.

How useful was this, some wondered: the Guardian’s Charles Arthur, for example.

In an era of grassroots, crowd-sourced accountability journalism, this could be a powerful tool for journalists and online developers when creating geo-data based applications and investigations.

But the unofficial release made this a little hard to assess. After all, the data goes out of date very fast, so unless someone kept leaking it, it wouldn’t be all that helpful. Furthermore it would be in defiance of the Royal Mail’s copyright, so would be legally risky to use.

At the forefront of the ‘Free Our Postcodes’ campaign is Earnest Marples, the site named after the British postmaster general who introduced the postcode. Marples is otherwise known as Harry Metcalfe and Richard Pope, who – without disclosing their source – opened an API which could power sites such as PlanningAlerts.com and Jobcentre Pro Plus.

“We’re doing the same as everyone’s being doing for years, but just being open about it,” they said at the time of launch earlier this year.

But now they have closed the service. Last week they received cease and desist letters from the Royal Mail demanding that they stop publishing information from the database (see letters on their blog).

“We are not in a position to mount an effective legal challenge against the Royal Mail’s demands and therefore have closed the ErnestMarples.com API, effective immediately,” Harry Metcalfe told Journalism.co.uk.

“We’re very disappointed that Royal Mail have chosen to take this course. The service was supporting numerous socially useful applications such as Healthwhere, JobcentreProPlus.com and PlanningAlerts.com. We very much hope that the Royal Mail will work with us to find a solution that allows us to continue to operate.”

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We have not asked anyone to close down a website. We have simply asked a third party to stop allowing unauthorised access to Royal Mail data, in contravention of our intellectual property rights.”Similar Posts:

#FollowJourn @charlesarthur/technology editor

Helen Quinn — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:34:38 +0000

#FollowJourn: Charles Arthur

Who? Technology editor at the Guardian.

What? Arthur was previously technology editor at the Independent, writing about technology, science and the environment before going freelance. Now he edits the Guardian’s weekly technology supplement and site.

Where? @charlesarthur and www.charlesarthur.com

Contact? Via Twitter or his blog.

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura [at] journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.Similar Posts:

MediaGuardian: ‘Technology journalists are the ones to watch’

Judith Townend — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:31:44 +0000

In this morning’s MediaGuardian, technology journalist Charles Arthur says that technology journalists are the pioneers of new gadgets, and the ones in the industry to keep an eye on:

“[I]f you want to find out how you’re going to be working in a few years’ time, watch the technology journalists.

“[The BBC's technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones] tends to be in the forefront of trying new technologies – from email to the web to Skype to cloud computing to iPhones to Facebook to Twitter.”

Full article at this link,,,Similar Posts:

Tapping/hacking/blagging – the terminology

Judith Townend — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:31:32 +0000

Media reports refer to both ‘phone tapping’ and ‘phone hacking’ when discussing the Guardian’s investigation into the use of private investigators by News International journalists.

But what exactly were the PI activities alleged to have taken place at the request of journalists?

Phone hacking. This is the term the Guardian uses in its reports, which includes a number of alleged activities. It reported: “Hacking into messages on mobile phones is covered by the same law which now regulates phone tapping and other forms of covert information-gathering, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, known as RIPA.” There is no public interest defence for breaking this law. Activities alleged by the Guardian include:

Hacking into mobile phone voicemail accounts, the crime NOTW journalist Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were convicted for in 2007.

Illegal hacking ‘into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills’.

Guardian tech editor Charles Arthur describes how, in further detail at this link, voicemail hacking can be done very simply – via the four digit pin code.

However, new methods could now be in use by PIs (no specific allegations made). Arthur quotes a senior security analyst at McAfee: ‘a number of products [are] out there which claim that they will let you listen to someone’s mobile conversations, forward their SMSs and tell you the numbers they have dialled’.

In addition, Arthur reports, ‘it might be feasible to clone the connection between a Bluetooth headset and phone so an eavesdropper could connect to the phone while its owner was briefly out of earshot. A hacker could get numbers and contact information’.

Phone tapping. Assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, John Yates, in his statement yesterday, referred to the Mulcaire and Goodman case. He said:

“Our inquiries found that these two men had the ability to illegally intercept mobile phone voice mails, commonly known as phone tapping.”

However, the term ‘tapping’ can also indicate other kinds of interception of communications systems e.g wire tapping / obtaining post. In this BBC Q&A from 2006 it is stated that there are three ways a mobile phone can be tapped:

“This can be done either at the handset, or during the conversation – which is illegal and very expensive – or through the mobile phone company which connects the device.”

Blagging. The Guardian reports that this could include obtaining access to confidential databases, such as telephone accounts, bank records and information held by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, which is covered by a different law, the 1998 Data Protection Act: “Section 55 makes it an offence to gain unauthorised access to such data, punishable by a fine. However, unlike RIPA, this offence carries a public interest defence.”

The Guardian reports on a series of ‘dark arts’ methods used by PIs, including:

Obtaining ex-directory landlines, tax records, social security files, bank statements, mobile numbers, people’s addresses or people’s phone bills and medical records.

Conning BT, the DVLA, mobile phone companies and other organisations into handing over private details.

Similar Posts:

Essential journalism links for students

Judith Townend — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:56:59 +0000

This list is doing the rounds ‘100 Best Blogs for Journalism Students – Learn-gasm‘… and we’re not on it. Nope, not even a smidgeon of link-love for poor old Journalism.co.uk there.

The BachelorsDegreeOnline site appears to be part of e-Learners.com, but it’s not clear who put the list together. Despite their omission of our content and their rather odd descriptions (e.g: Adrian Monck: ‘Adrian Monck writes this blog about how we inform ourselves and why we do it’), we admit it is a pretty comprehensive list; excellent people and organisations we feature on the site, our blog roll and Best of Blogs mix – including many UK-based ones. There were also ones we hadn’t come across before.

In true web 2.0 self-promotional style, here are our own links which any future list-compilers might like to consider as helpful links for journalism students:

Journalism.co.uk for industry news, events and developments

Journalism.co.uk Editor’s Blog for the titbits, tips, trade tools, recommendations and daily editors’ picks.

TNTJ blog: Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists

Insite: an advanced internet research skills.news blog by Journalism.co.uk’s consulting editor and trainer, Colin Meek.

Journalism.co.uk training section and forums.

And here are some blogs/sites also left off the list which immediately spring to mind as important reading for any (particularly UK-based) journalism students:

Organisations

Global Voices Online – essential for anyone interested in press freedom issues (Co-founder, Ethan Zuckerman’s blog, is here)

The Frontline Club blog, as above.

European Centre for Journalism (EJC)

WEF Editors’ Weblog and SFN blog.

Crikey.com: news from down under that’s not Murdoch, or Fairfax produced.

Press Review Blog (a Media Standards Trust project) – it’s a newbie, but already in the favourites.

Centre for Journalism from the University of Kent

The UK National Union of Journalists news site and its president, Jeremy Dear’s, blog

AllMediaScotland.com

The Independent’s Media section

NY Times’ media section

FT.com media section

Press Gazette’s Peter Kirwan/The Wire

BBC Editors’ Blog

BroadcastNow.co.uk

StinkyJournalism: it’s passionate and has produced many high-profile stories

Wired Journalists

Index on Censorship

Demotix blog

Reporters Without Borders

Committee to Protect Journalists

International Federation of Journalists (though we’ve had problems accessing their site or feeds lately)

British Journalism Review (now in its 20th year)

Individuals

Craig Silverman’s Regret the Error

MST director, Martin Moore’s blog

Clay Shirky

CurryBet – Martin Belam’s links are canny, and provocative and break down the division between tech and journalism.

Malcolm Coles – for SEO tips and off-the-beaten track spottings.

Dave Lee – facilitating conversations journalists could never have had in the days before blogs.

Joanna Geary – as above

Marc Vallee – photography freedom issues from the protest frontline.

FleetStreetBlues: an anonymous industry insider with jobs, witty titbits and a healthy dose of online cynicism.

Alison Gow for a view from the regionals

Sarah Hartley previously as above, now with more online strategy thrown in.

The e-Grommet for links.

Charles Arthur – for lively debate on PR strategy, among other things

Shane Richmond’s blog at the Telegraph.

MarkMedia (view from Scandinavia)

Kristine Lowe (as above)

Media Culpa (as above)

Richard Sambrook, BBC big cheese and excellent blogger

Justin Williams, Telegraph assistant editor

Matthew Buckland, media views from South Africa

Steve Buttry

Craig McGill – bridging journalism and PR.

Writing this has only brought home further the realisation that omissions are par for the course with list-compilation, but it does inspire us to do our own 101 essential links for global online journalists – trainees or otherwise. We’d also like to make our list inclusive of material that is useful for, but not necessarily about, journalists: MySociety for example.

Add suggestions below, via @journalismnews or drop judith at journalism.co.uk an email.Similar Posts:

Charles Arthur: ‘The long tail of blogging is dying’

Laura Oliver — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:52:45 +0000

Arthur picks up on a trend made apparent by anecdotal evidence and research, and Technorati data on the Guardian’s own blogs, that the long tail of blogging is dying as bloggers turn to different, easier platforms.

So are blogs being replaced – and by what?

“Facebook’s success is built on the ease of doing everything in one place. (Search tools can’t index it to see who’s talking about what, which may be a benefit or a failing.) Twitter offers instant content and reaction. Writing a blog post is a lot harder than posting a status update, putting a funny link on someone’s wall, or tweeting. People are still reading blogs, and other content. But for the creation of amateur content, their heyday for the wider population has, I think, already passed. The short head of blogging thrives. Its long tail, though, has lapsed into desuetude,” writes Arthur.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Charles Arthur: There’s room for both the Davids and the Goliaths

Judith Townend — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:14:59 +0000

The Guardian’s technology editor shares his thoughts on the current process vs product; blogger vs MSM discussions, sparked by a critical NYTimes’ piece about technology blogs.

Charles Arthur describes his own epiphany, made when he stepped back to ask himself why he disagreed with Jeff Jarvis’ view. While it offends him ‘in some visceral fashion to think of publishing stuff that I really believe isn’t correct,’ there’s room for different players to make different rules for themselves and live alongside each other, he says.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Fallout from Jarvis’ ‘perfection vs beta culture’ post

Judith Townend — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:09:05 +0000

Jay Rosen, said that yesterday’s New York Times’ piece on the ‘truth-be-damned approach’ of Tech blogging ‘did not bother’ him.

Not so for fellow NY journalism professor, Jeff Jarvis. His Buzzmachine post on ‘Product v. process journalism: The myth of perfection v. beta culture’ is currently doing the link rounds and has sparked a number of debates. For example:

A Twitter row between Jarvis and the editor of the Sunday Business section of New York Times, Tim O’Brien: Blogger here; MSM here.

A response from the Guardian’s Tech editor Charles Arthur, in regards to a criticism of UK tech reporting. One commenter, Wessell van Rensberg, remarked underneath Jarvis’ post: “I live in the UK and the Guardian’s weekly tech edition is paltry in terms of its tech coverage. Both in terms of scope and quality.”

Arthur responds:

“Flattered, I’m sure. Haven’t noticed your name in the letters pointing out what you think we should be covering; don’t know if you’ve commented on our many blogs (Tech, Games, PDA) that cover tech. We do have lots of insightful commenters (which I think is what you mean instead of ‘commentators’.)

“Hard to know quite what you want. For instance: TCrunch says Apple is going to buy Twitter. As soon as possible I point out, on the Guardian blog, why that’s absolutely not happening. It turns out it isn’t happening. Which is more useful?

“And I’ll also point out that when TCrunch does get it wrong, such as on Last.fm ‘passing data to the RIAA’ – a story denied by all sides, where it would be illegal for Last to pass the data (UK data protection act forbids) – TC deletes comments pointing that out. Do you really trust it?”

Now, might there be room for a response on that point? Come on, TechCrunch fight your corner!

Journalism.co.uk is quite enjoying its ringside view, but – on a side point – is there a neater way of viewing Twitter debates, than the links suggested by Jay Rosen?Similar Posts:

TBC at high noon? Telegraph-Guardian spats

Judith Townend — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:17:01 +0000

The latest ‘Twackdown’ seems unlikely to be the end of the Telegraph-Guardian or, to be absolutely fair, Guardian-Telegraph frictions.

After all, in just under an hour we’ll know who is top of the ABCe pops for this month…

So, this week’s Twitterfall spat from Malcolm Coles: ‘That Shane Richmond / Charles Arthur Twackdown in full’.

Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur has the last word [to date] in a comment beneath the post: “I’d only point out that this was a far more multidimensional discussion than this portrays.”

Another row a’brewing with this? The Guardian reports ‘anger’ at the Telegraph over Guido’s Spectator article.

(And while we’re on Guido, it’s interesting to note that Guido himself was in the Guardian building this week – via Jon Slattery)

Update: In the March 2009 ABCe audit, as released at midday, the Telegraph tops the table of six national newspaper titles with the highest number of unique users, followed in second place by the Guardian.Similar Posts:

#DataJourn part 3: Useful and recent links looking at use of data in journalism

Judith Townend — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:35:37 +0000

Perhaps we’ll expand this to a Dipity timeline at some point (other ideas?), but for the meantime, here’s a list of a few recent and relevant links relating to CAR and use of data in journalism to get the conversation on Twitter – via #datajourn – going. NB: These are not necessarily in chronological order. Then, the next logical step would be to start looking at examples of where data has been used for specific journalism projects.

‘#DataJourn: a new conversation‘, Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog

‘Q&A with an information architect, aka CurryBet aka Martin Belam’, Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog

‘Hackday at the Guardian’, Guardian.co.uk

‘Guardian’s Open Platfrom – some thoughts from the blogs‘, Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog

”Facts are sacred’: Guardian frees content and data for developers’ use’, Journalism.co.uk

‘Online Journalism Scandinavia: ‘Computer programming is journalism’, Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog (by @kristinelowe)

‘If I had one piece of advice to a journalist starting out now, it would be: learn to code,’ Charles Arthur’s personal blog.

Similar Posts:

#DataJourn part 2: Q&A with ‘data juggler’ Tony Hirst

Judith Townend — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:31:01 +0000

As explained in part one of today’s #datajourn conversation, Tony Hirst is the ‘data juggler’ (as titled by Guardian tech editor Charles Arthur) behind some of the most interesting uses of the Guardian’s Open Platform (unless swear words are your thing – in which case check out Tom Hume’s work)

Journalism.co.uk sent OU academic, mashup artist and Isle of Wight resident, Tony Hirst, some questions over. Here are his very comprehensive answers.

What’s your primary interest in – and motivation for – playing with the Guardian’s Open Platform?
TH: Open Platform is a combination of two things – the Guardian API, and the Guardian Data store. My interest in the API is twofold: first, at the technical level, does it play nicely with ‘mashup tools’ such as yahoo pipes, Google spreadsheet’s =importXML formula, and so on; secondly, what sort of content does it expose that might support a ‘news and learning’ mashup site where we can automatically pull in related open educational resources around a news story to help people learn more about the issues involved with that story?

One of the things I’ve been idling about lately is what a ‘university API’ might look at, so the architecture of the Guardian API, and in particular the way the URIs that call on the API, are structured is of interest in that regard (along with other APIs, such as the New York Times’ APIs, the BBC programmes’ API, and so on).

The data blog resources – which are currently being posted on Google spreadsheets – are a handy source of data in a convenient form that I can use to try out various ‘mashup recipes’. I’m not so interested in the data as is, more in the ways in which it can be combined with other data sets (for example, in Dabble DB) and or displayed using third party visualisation tools. What inspires me is trying to find ‘mashup patterns’ that other people can use with other data sets. I’ve written several blog posts showing how to pull data from Google spreadsheets in IBM’s Many Eyes Wikified visualisation tool: it’d be great if other people realised they could use a similar approach to visualise sets of data I haven’t looked at.

Playing with the actual data also turns up practical ‘issues’ about how easy it is to create mashups with public data. For example, one silly niggle I had with the MPs’ expenses data was that pound signs appeared in many of the data cells, which meant that Many Eyes Wikified, for example, couldn’t read the amounts as numbers, and so couldn’t chart them. (In fact, I don’t think it likes pound signs at all because of the character encoding!) Which meant I had to clean the data, which introduced another step in the chain where errors could be introduced, and which also raised the barrier to entry for people wanting to use the data directly from the data store spreadsheet. If I can help find some of the obstacles to effective data reuse, then maybe I can help people publish their data in way that makes it easier for other people to reuse (including myself!).

Do you feel content with the way journalists present data in news stories, or could we learn from developers and designers?
TH: There’s a problem here in that journalists have to present stories that are: a) subject to space and layout considerations beyond their control; and b) suited to their audience. Just publishing tabulated data is good in the sense that it provides the reader with evidence for claims made in a story (as well as potentially allowing other people to interrogate the data and maybe look for other interpretations of it), but I suspect is meaningless, or at least of no real interest, to most people. For large data sets, you wouldn’t want to publish them within a story anyway.

An important thing to remember about data is that it can be used to tell stories, and that it may hide a great many patterns. Some of these patterns are self-evident if the data is visualised appropriately. ‘Geo-data’ is a fine example of this. It’s natural home is on a map (as long as the geo-coding works properly, that is (i.e. the mapping from location names, for example, to latitude/longitude co-ordinates than can be plotted on a map).

Finding ways of visualising and interacting data is getting easier all the time. I try to find mashup patterns that don’t require much, if any, writing of computer programme code, and so in theory should be accessible to many non-developers. But it’s a confidence thing: and at the moment, I suspect that it is the developers who are more likely to feel confident taking data from one source, putting it into an application, and then providing the user with a simple user interface that they can ‘just use’.

You mentioned about ‘lowering barriers to entry’ – what do you mean by that, and how is it useful?
TH: Do you write SQL code to query databases? Do you write PHP code parse RSS feeds and filter out items of interest? Are you happy writing Javascript to parse a JSON feed, or would rather use XMLHTTPRequest and a server side proxy to pull in an XML feed into a web page and get around the domain security model?

Probably none of the above.

On the other hand, could you copy and paste a URL to a data set into a ‘fetch’ block in a Yahoo pipe, identify which data element related to a place name so that you could geocode the data, and then take the URL of the data coming out from the pipe and paste it into the Google maps search box to get a map based view of your data? Possibly…

Or how about taking a spreadsheet URL, pasting it into Many Eyes Wikified, choosing the chart type you wanted based on icons depicting those chart types, and then selecting the data elements you wanted to plot on each axis from a drop down menu? Probably…

What kind of recognition/reward would you like for helping a journalist produce a news story?
TH: A mention for my employer, The Open University, and a link to my personal blog, OUseful.info. If I’d written a ‘How To’ explanation describing how a mashup or visualisation was put together, a link to that would be nice too. And if I ever met the journalist concerned, a coffee would be appreciated! I also find it valuable knowing what sorts of things journalists would like to be able to do with the technology that they can’t work out how to do. This can feed into our course development process, identifying the skills requirements that are out there, and then potentially servicing those needs through our course provision. There’s also the potential for us to offer consultancy services to journalists too, producing tools and visualisations as part of a commercial agreement.

One of the things my department is looking at at the moment is a revamped website. it’s a possibility that I’ll start posting stories there about any news related mashups I put together, and if that is the case, then links to that content would be appropriate. This isn’t too unlike the relationship we have with the BBC, where we co-produce televlsion and radio programmes and get links back to supporting content on OU websites from BBC website, as well as programme credits. For example, I help pull together the website around the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet, which we co-produce every so often. which gets a link from the World Service website (as well as the programme’s Facebook group!), and the OU gets a mention in the closing credits. The rationale behind this approach is getting traffic to OU sites, of course, where we can then start to try to persuade people to sign up for related courses!Similar Posts:

#DataJourn part 1: a new conversation (please re-tweet)

Judith Townend — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:27:53 +0000

Had it not been published at the end of the workday on a Friday, Journalism.co.uk would have made a bit more of a song-and-dance of this story, but as a result it instead it got reduced to a quick blog post. In short: OU academic Tony Hirst produced a rather lovely map, on the suggestion (taunt?) of the Guardian’s technology editor, Charles Arthur, and the result? A brand new politics story for the Guardian on MPs’ expenses.

Computer-assisted reporting (CAR) is nothing new, but innovations such as the Guardian’s launch of Open Platform, are leading to new relationships and conversations between data/stats experts, programmers and developers, (including the rarer breed of information architects), designers, and journalists – bringing with them new opportunities, but also new questions. Some that immediately spring to mind:

How do both parties (data and interactive gurus and the journalists) benefit?

Who should get credit for new news stories produced, and how should developers be rewarded?

Will newsrooms invest in training journalists to understand and present data better?

What problems are presented by non-journalists playing with data, if any?

What other questions should we be asking?

The hashtag #datajourn seems a good one with which to kickstart this discussion on Twitter (Using #CAR, for example, could lead to confusion…).

So, to get us started, two offerings coming your way in #datajourn part 2 and 3.

Please add your thoughts below the posts, and get in touch with judith@journalism.co.uk (@jtownend on Twitter) with your own ideas and suggestions for ways Journalism.co.uk can report, participate in, and debate the use of CAR and data tools for good quality and ethical journalism.Similar Posts:

MPs’ travel expenses disparity highlighted by Guardian Open Platform projects

Judith Townend — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:36:22 +0000

Tony Hirst, the independent developer who launched some of the first projects using the Guardian’s Open Platform, has again used the Data Store in an innovative way – leading to a new story about MPs’ expenses for the Guardian.

Hirst’s use of Google Maps shows that there are differences of up to £20,000 in neighbouring MPs’ travel expenses.

Hirst describes his work here which he developed after he discovered that the expenses data was being released via Data Store. Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur wrote about Hirst’s initial efforts and said “what we need now is a dataset which shows constituency distances from Westminster, so that we can compare that against travel…”

Hirst clearly couldn’t resist the challenge.

Similar Posts:

Craig McGill: Pitch by Twitter, says Guardian’s Charles Arthur

Judith Townend — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:53:48 +0000

Craig McGill discusses the Guardian’s technology editor, Charles Arthur, request that PRs pitch only by Twitter, via a public ‘@’ if they are not able to direct message him (you have to be mutually following each other to do that). Arthur has removed his email details from Gorkana in an attempt to reduce the clutter in his inbox.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Q&A with an information architect (aka @currybet aka Martin Belam)

Judith Townend — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:29:16 +0000

Martin Belam, of the CurryBet blog, has recently been appointed as ‘information architect’ for Guardian.co.uk. Journalism.co.uk asked him what he’ll be doing for the site…

For those who don’t know what you do, fill us in your background and the new gig…
[MB] I was at the Hack Day that the Guardian’s technology department ran back in November 2008, and the talent and enthusiasm that day really shone. I’ve really enjoyed the freedom of working as a consultant over the last three years, much of the time based either in Crete or in Austria, but the opportunity of coming to work more permanently for an organisation as forward-thinking as the Guardian is being with initiatives like the Open Platform was too much to resist.

So, an ‘information architect’ what does that mean and what are you doing?
Information Architecture has been defined as ‘the emerging art and science of organising large-scale websites’.

All websites have an inherent information structure – the navigation, the contextual links on a page, whether there are tags describing content and so forth. It is about how people navigate and way-find their way through the information presented on a site.

What I’ll be doing at the Guardian is influencing that structure and functionality as new digital products are developed. It involves working closely with design and editorial teams to produce ‘wireframes’, the blueprints of web design, and also involves being an advocate for the end user – carrying out lots of usability and prototype testing as ideas are developed.

Is it a full-time role?
I’m working four days a week at The Guardian, as I still have some other commitments – for example as contributing editor for FUMSI magazine – although already it feels a bit like cramming a full-time job into just 80 per cent of the time!

It’s not happy times for mainstream media brands: where are they going wrong?
I don’t think it is only mainstream media brands that are suffering from the disruption caused by digital transition, but we do see a lot of focus on this issue for print businesses at the moment. I think one of the things that strikes me, having worked at several big media companies now, including the BBC and Sony, is that you would never set these organisations up in this way in the digital era if you were doing it from scratch.

One of the things that appealed most about joining the Guardian was that the move to Kings Place has brought together the print, online and technical operations in a way that wasn’t physically possible before in the old offices. I’m still very optimistic that there are real opportunities out there for the big media brands that can get their business structures right for the 21st century.

What kind of things do you think could re-enthuse UK readers for their newspapers?
I think our core and loyal readers are still enthusiastic about their papers, but that as an industry we have to face the fact that there is an over-supply of news in the UK, and a lot of it – whether it is on the radio, TV, web or thrust into your hand as a freebie – is effectively free at the point of delivery. I think the future will see media companies who concentrate on playing to their strengths benefit from better serving a narrower target audience.

Do you see print becoming the by rather than primary product for the Guardian – or has that already happened?
I think there might very well be a ‘sweet spot’ in the future where the display quality on network-enabled mobile devices and the ubiquity of data through-the-air means that the newspaper can be delivered primarily in that way, but I don’t see the Guardian’s presses stopping anytime soon. Paper is still a very portable format, and it never loses connection or runs out of batteries.

Your background is in computer programming rather than journalism, will the two increasingly overlap?
I grew up in the generation that had BBC Micros and ZX Spectrums at home, so I used to program a lot as a child, but my degree was actually in History, which in itself is a very journalistic calling. I specialised in the Crusades and the Byzantine Empire, which is all about piecing together evidence from a range of sources of varying degrees of reliability, and synthesizing a coherent narrative and story from there. And, of course, I’ve spent most of this decade blogging, which utilises ‘some’ of the journalist’s skill-set ‘some’ of the time.

Whilst I’d never suggest that journalists need to learn computer programming much beyond a smattering of HTML, I think there is something to be gained from understanding the software engineering mindset. There are a lot of tools and techniques that can really help journalists plough through data to get at the heart of a story, or to use visualisation tools to help tell that story to their audience.

One of the most interesting things about working at the Guardian is the opportunity to work alongside people like Kevin Anderson, Charles Arthur and Simon Willison, who I think really represent that blending of the technical and journalistic cultures.

You’ve spoken out about press regulation before; why do you feel strongly about it?
In a converged media landscape, it seems odd that Robert Peston’s blog is regulated by the BBC Trust, Jon Snow’s blog is regulated by Ofcom, and Roy Greenslade’s blog is regulated by the PCC.

At the moment, I believe that the system works very well for editors, and very well for the ‘great and the good’ who can afford lawyers, but does absolutely nothing for newspaper consumers. If I see something that offends me on TV, I can complain to Ofcom. If I see an advert that offends me in the street, I can complain to ASA. If I see an article in a newspaper that I think is wrong, inaccurate, in bad taste or offensive, unless I am directly involved in the story myself, the PCC dismisses my complaint out of hand without investigating it.

I don’t think that position is sustainable.

The last thing I want to see is some kind of state-sponsored Ofpress quango, which is why I think it is so important that our industry gets self-regulation right – and why I believe that a review of how the PCC works in the digital era is long overdue.Similar Posts: