Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » online team

Online Journalism Blog: #skypic – how one Twitterer got Sky to pay for his Twitpic

Laura Oliver — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:20:36 +0000

Really good round-up from Paul Bradshaw on the Online Journalism Blog of the case of Joe Neale, whose photo of a crime scene at Waterlook station was used by Sky News after Neale posted it to Twitter.

Neale’s picture, which he submitted via Twitpic, was used by Sky for the story a couple of weeks ago without his knowledge.

Using Twitter to raise the issue – and maintain pressure on Sky – and backing himself up with TwitPic’s terms of service, Neale has now been contacted by Sky, who have agreed to pay for use of the image.

Fascinating to see Neale’s correspondence with Sky in the open via Twitter/the use of the service to campaign. The ultimately positive response from the Sky News Online team is also interesting and counter to the original act of using the photo – which suggests that mainstream media organisations still see social media as a free pool of content – as a comment on the OJB post suggests.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Greenslade: ‘Putting my hyperlocal money where my hyperlocal mouth is’

Judith Townend — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:49:17 +0000

A nice hyperlocal story in which Journalism.co.uk plays a wee bit o’ a role.

A few weeks ago a good discussion got going at the Frontline Club on the future of regional media.

Roy Greenslade, journalism professor, blogger and resident of Brighton said:

“It’s for the good of the whole community that it [a local newspaper] acts. That loss is something people won’t necessarily be fighting for because they don’t know they’re losing it. We as journalists – that’s our job – it’s for us to ensure that we try and fight to save it.”

In the audience, next to your very own Journalism.co.uk contingent (we didn’t quite out-number the ex-Press Gazetters) sat Jo Wadsworth, who started as web editor of the Brighton Argus in February.

Now – as context – Jo Wadsworth had corrected one ‘Weige’ on Greenslade’s blog a little while back. Weige had it on ‘good authority’ that the Argus didn’t have an online team. Oh yes it does, retorted its new web editor.

Fast-forward a few months: Greenslade’s comments at the Frontline got Wadsworth thinking. Wouldn’t it be good to get him to put his hyperlocal money where his hyperlocal mouth was, she cheekily joked to Journalism.co.uk afterwards. Go on… we egged her on. J.co.uk, for one, had been impressed by his local butcher knowledge over a drink in the bar afterwards.

So, today comes this announcement from Roy Greenslade:

“So, dear readers, since I happen to live – at least part of the year, anyway – in the city of Brighton and Hove, I am planning to become the community reporter for the Kemp Town area of Brighton.

“Now that’s what I call going back to basics.”

Jo Wadsworth had this to say to Journalism.co.uk: “We were talking after the Frontline event about Kemp Town, where I’ve just moved to, and it became very clear he was passionate about the neighbourhood he’s lived in for many years. From there, it was an obvious step to take to invite him to be our newest community correspondent – and the first, I hope of many more.”

And Greenslade? His patch is not exactly defined yet, he told Journalism.co.uk, but he has started to form some ideas.

“I hope to take up topical issues raised by the people who live in what is a very diverse community, whether it be the proposals to develop the marina and the Blackrock shoreline or the continuing annoyance of litter and rubbish on the streets. And I expect to open a dialogue with the city’s councillors who represent the area. What do they do? Who are the community police officers, and how do they operate?

“I want to highlight some of the characters who one sees on the streets and in the shops. I also plan to deal with some of the rich history of the Regency houses, which were originally homes to the titled, the famous and well-heeled. Though there are many blue plaques in this area, for example, many the names mean nothing to current residents. Who was Harrison Ainsworth, for instance, the man who once lived in the Arundel Terrace house where I have lived for 38 years?

“I guess I might get into arts and culture too, with the Bombay Bar as one obvious prospect.”

We’ll keep you posted with the link to Greenslade’s content when it goes live. Journalism.co.uk, also residents of Brighton, will definitely be making the most of his local contribution.Similar Posts:

BBC Trust says news website must review fact checking procedure

Laura Oliver — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:03:11 +0000

The sourcing and fact checking process for stories on the BBC News website must be addressed by management, the BBC trust Editorial Standards Committee has recommended.

The committee made the suggestions as part of its response to a complaint about an article on the site, which pointed to inaccuracies in the report on Congressman Joseph P Kennedy II’s marriage to Sheila Rauch.

During the complaints procedure, the online news team conceded to oversimplifying the story and admitted that this could mislead the reader.

More worringly the online team offered this reason for not having avoided the errors in the article in the first place:

“…we are writing for a general audience. While an online story can in theory be of any length, we do have constraints on our time and resources to devote to each story. Put simply, our staffing simply doesn’t allow us to go into the detail you [the complainant] outline in your email correspondence.”

The complaint about the article, which was published in June last year, was partially upheld by the committee, as the online team did amend the piece.

However, the Trust said the web team ‘should have acted more quickly in its responses to the complainant to ensure the story was corrected sooner than it was.’

The committee also resolved to write to management at the corporation to request a review of sourcing and fact checking of articles before publication on the website.

For full details of the recommendations read the committee’s findings.Similar Posts:

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Norway’s leading news sites strategies for attracting online audience

Kristine Lowe — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:07:23 +0000

Kristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. This week Online Journalism Scandinavia looks at how Norway’s leading news sites attract their audiences.

Schibsted-owned VG’s recipe for success is to give people the diet they had no idea they craved
Norway’s public broadcaster, NRK, wants to make it easier for lazy users to take shortcuts

Frozen pizza with champagne
Schibsted’s idiosyncratic take on newspaper website design recently received mention in this excellent article by the Press Gazette (also check out Mark Comerford’s and Espen Andersen’s thoughts).

However, its VG title is perhaps in a class of its own. It’s Norway’s most read news site with 2.7m unique users and a staggering profit margin of 42 – 45 per cent for the last three years. So the way it structures content is just as, if not more, important and also needs emphasis.

“VG has the world’s ugliest website, but the great thing about it is that it lets you discover things you did not know you were interested in. Other news sites divide their content in neatly defined sections, but we believe that people will drink champagne with frozen pizza if given the choice,”said Torry Pedersen, editor-in-chief of VG online.

“That, if given the choice on the same page, people will want to read both a well argued piece on file-sharing and a story on Britney Spears’ latest escapades.”

To get even more readers to its content VG has also developed Norway’s second biggest social network, Nettby, with 657,000 members. It’s roughly half the size of Facebook in Norway and Schibsted is already in the process of exporting it to its operations in Sweden and Spain.

The world’s laziest anarchy
Despite VG’s dominance, public broadcaster NRK has almost doubled its online traffic in the last year with a 42 per cent increase in unique users – from 651,000 in the first week of 2007, to 1.1m in the fist week of 2008.

(Traffic numbers for both sites from TNS Gallup, which only counts traffic generated by Norway’s 4.7m citizens)

Part of this traffic rise can be attributed to the NRK take on how to best alert people to content they might find interesting.

“The web is the world’s laziest anarchy: people choose the least difficult path. With this in mind, we are working to be present where people are and give them the opportunity to discover us there, which means on Facebook, YouTube and other such places,” said Eirik Solheim, a media developer with NRK’s online team.

“There are three ways to deal with what is happening with social media. You choose not to be present; you choose to make your own services that can compete with Facebook, as VG has been successful with; or you choose to be present where people are to increase familiarity with your brand and strengthen distribution. We see the last option as a great opportunity,” said Bjarne Andre Myklebust, head of NRK’s online division.

Two takes on serendipity
Both news groups’ strategies play to the serendipitous nature of the web, but while VG’s approach is designed to keep readers hooked by satisfying old and newfound appetites on its site, NRK wants to increase your chances of accidentally stumbling across its content.

No doubt, NRK wants those accidental users to linger. So if it keeps its promise to open up more of its archives and make more and more of its content freely and easily available in the places – beyond its own websites – where people hang out online, it will be interesting to see which is the more successful strategy.Similar Posts: