Tag Archives: Stephen Moss

Guardian staffer on paywalls: Unprofitable news businesses are ‘enfeebled and vulnerable’

Interesting response from Guardian staffer Stephen Moss to MediaGuardian blogger Roy Greenslade’s post on the News of the World’s plans for a paywall announced yesterday.

Greenslade argues that Rupert Murdoch is “indulging in information protectionism” and with the Times’ and Sunday Times’ paywalled websites has removed the titles from online conversations.

Moss responds in the comments:

Have the Times “dropped out of the national conversation”, whatever that absurdly woolly phrase means. There seems to have been huge discussion (e.g. on Twitter) about their Populus poll findings and Clegg’s incendiary piece on welfare in today’s paper, so they seem still to be absolutely in the ‘national conversation’.

And the fact remains that news orgs have to try to make some dosh. It’s not enough to say paywalls don’t work; you – and the industry – have to come up with a package that does work, which in my view will mean protecting certain print products, paywalling some (tho (sic) by no means all) online material and building networks around information-gathering interest groups which can be monetised by donation and/or through the sale of ancillary products and services. There is no one big answer; there are a range of answers which will add up to a profitable business. And a business that isn’t profitable – and this includes the Guardian – is enfeebled and vulnerable.

Full blog post and comments at this link…

Journalists compete for Oxford poetry professorship

Two journalists are among the nominees competing for the University of Oxford professor of poetry post in 2010, in the contest’s first online elections (in which only holders of Oxford degrees can vote).

One, the Guardian writer Stephen Moss (@benonix on Twitter), says he was inspired to enter following last year’s national coverage of the episode resulting in Ruth Padel’s resignation. It highlighted the “absurdity” of the process, he says. Moss’ candidate statement – in which he admits he has only published about 6 poems and that “a literary friend at college” described his poetry as “the worst he’d ever read” – says he will “give the stipend away to needy poets and writers, and to good literary causes”.  Additionally, he promises to set up a new two-week poetry festival in Oxford. An extract from Moss’ statement:

So why I am standing? It’s a good question. The idea came to me over a curry at the Hay Literary Festival last year. News of Ruth Padel’s resignation had just broken, and I was struck by the sheer absurdity of the process – the curious electorate, the media’s fascination with poetic politics, the odd idea of an elected poet. It intrigued and delighted me and, perhaps foolishly, I decided I would stand. Once you enter the race, your campaign develops a life of its own. I wrote a rather good poem for National Poetry Day (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/07/national-poetry-day-moss-poem if you want to read it), my name was mentioned in a few places, and suddenly one is a “real” candidate. I asked my rivals to start spreading scurrilous rumours about me, so I could pull out in a huff, but they preferred to stay magisterially aloof from such tittle-tattle. So momentum, the Big Mo which is supposed to determine political campaigns, took its course and here I am, standing naked (metaphorically speaking) before you.

His journalistic rival is Roger Lewis, a biographer and author of the Seasonal Suicide Notes, whose statement can also be found on the Oxford site dedicated to the contest. Writing in the Times, Lewis says:

When I heard that the dons were sewing it up to elect either 77-year-old Geoffrey Hill or 75-year-old Michael Horovitz to the chair of poetry at Oxford, my heart sank. I’m sure they are nice old codgers, but I’m afraid I find their work serious-minded to the point of pain and obscure of purpose. But then I believe Alan Bennett is more worthy of the Nobel prize than Harold Pinter, as it is surely better to laugh at life than to lament it.

I can’t do anything about nabbing a Nobel, but I can stand for election in Oxford and lead a rebellion against sour academics, and with my mortarboard tossed into the ring, this is now happening. I have been nominated for the chair of poetry and I hope I don’t come ignominiously last.

Members of the Oxford Convocation are now voting until 16 June – and the winner is due to be announced two days later.

The Internet Manifesto translated by its critics

The German Internet Manifesto, initiated by Sascha Lobo, Mario Sixtus, and Thomas Knuewer and supported by 12 named others – including the Guardian’s Mercedes Bunz – lays out 17 commandments for ‘how journalism works today’ (translated into several languages via http://www.internet-manifesto.org/).

However it has its critics, as well as its fans.

Take Stephen Moss, Guardian journalist (G2 thinker-in-residence, or  naturalist?) for example. Writing under his colleague Mercedes Bunz’s report he leaves a comment in response to Boombox:

boombox 09 Sep 09, 2:06pm:

“It’s funny how the people keenest on “journalism manifestos” never actually do any.”

stephenmoss 09 Sep 09, 4:59pm:

“That’s so unfair boombox. Sascha Lobo has been doing remarkable reportage from Kabul, Mario Sixtus has penetrated the tribal areas in Pakistan and filed a 200,000-word report on how Al-Qaida operates on his blog, and Thomas Knuewer is no doubt even now exposing commercial exploitation in the developing world, local government corruption in Dusseldorf and banking scandals across Europe. This is absolutely not just navel-gazing German theorising.”

Patricio Robles, technology reporter at Econsultancy also raises some interesting issues:

“While it does contain some succinct pearls of wisdom, it’s not exactly the Magna Carta for 21st-century journalism.”

He points out that it includes little discussion of journalistic ethics, and criticises its ‘PowerPoint marketing-speak’.

‘BBC refused Guardian G20 protest vid’ – too much of a London story?

Interesting footnote to Duncan Campbell’s piece on Comment Is Free (‘De Menezes taught the Met nothing’) on the death of a G20 protestor last week from Guardian contributor Stephen Moss.

Apparently the Guardian’s footage of Ian Tomlinson being knocked down by police officers (as was seen repeatedly on broadcast news bulletins last night) was rejected by BBC News at 6, who said it was seen as ‘just a London story’.

Was this the reason? Some viewers would argue this is valid and part of the BBC’s remit to better represent the whole of the UK. Or was it, as Campbell suggests in the piece, an unwillingness to implicate the police:

“Although the Guardian reported the death on its front page, almost all the coverage elsewhere ignored it completely or concentrated on a version of events that suggested that the police’s only connection with Tomlinson had been to try to rescue him from a baying mob of anarchists.”

Update: A BBC spokesman has told Journalism.co.uk:

“It’s simply not true to say the BBC News at Six turned down the footage. We didn’t run it on the Six O’Clock bulletin as we didn’t receive the footage until 7pm.  We verified it and ran an extensive piece at Ten O Clock. It’s also been shown extensively across our outlets today.”

The video is now available to embed (HT @janinegibson):

What would a UK-based ProPublica look like?

In today’s MediaGuardian, City University of New York (CUNY) journalism professor Jeff Jarvis writes that that foundations will not take over newspapers, à la Scott Trust / Guardian relationship. He told Journalism.co.uk: “It is an empty hope for white knights to save news from inevitable change and business reality. But he says: “We’ll see foundation and public support able to fund a decent number of investigations.”

Yesterday, Journalism.co.uk published comments from New York University (NYU) professor, Jay Rosen, and ProPublica’s managing editor, Stephen Engelberg, as well as from Jarvis in a feature looking at the sustainability of ‘lump sum’ funded journalism – they all said that the point was not to look at ‘one solution’ but at a hybrid of funding opportunities (an issue picked up by Julie Starr here.)

US-based ProPublica, funded by the Sandler Foundation, for example, employs full-time journalists to conduct investigations which are then supplied to other media bodies. Journalism.co.uk raised the point with some of the NYJournalism interviewees (fuller features forthcoming) that similar foundation funding is a bit trickier to come by in the UK: just what would a UK version of ProPublica look like and could it be funded?

Would the equivalent of ProPublica work over here? Or, for that matter, something in the mould of Spot.Us, New America Media, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, or the Center for Public Integrity?

Last week the Guardian’s Stephen Moss mentioned Paul Bradshaw’s new project, HelpMeInvestigate.com in his giant G2 feature on the troubled regional newspaper industry. It’s a proposal not quite on the scale of ProPublica, which has an annual operating budget of $10 million, and it’s seen success so far, making it to third stage of the (American) Knight News Challenge 2009 and it awaits news of further progress.

How about existing organisations in the UK? There’s the Centre for Investigative Journalism with its annual summer school, but it doesn’t run and supply investigations in the way ProPublica does. There’s MySociety which can help journalists with stories, but is not designed as a primarily journalistic venture.

Author of Flat Earth News, Nick Davies, has previously told the Press Gazette (which has just announced its last issue) about his idea of models of ‘mini-media’.

“It may be that we are looking at funding mini-media or a foundation that will give money to groups of journalists if they can pass the quality threshold,” Davies said at an National Union of Journalists (NUJ) event in January, as Press Gazette reported.

“The greatest question in journalism today is what will be our ‘third source’ of funding,” Davies told Journalism.co.uk last week.

“If advertising and circulation can no longer pay for our editorial operation, we have to find this third source.

“I suspect that place by place and case by case, the answer to the question will be different, a matter of wrapping up whatever package of cash is possible, using donations or grants or sponsorship or micropayments from foundations, rich individuals, local councils, businesses, NGOs, universities – anybody who can understand that the collapse of newspapers is not just about journalists losing their jobs but about everybody losing an essential source of information.

“And in an ideal world, central government would lead the way by setting up a New Media Fund to provide seed money to help these non-profit mini-media to establish themselves and to find their particular third source.”

So could a third source-funded model work? And what shape would it take? It’s a question Journalism.co.uk will continue to ask. Please share your thoughts below.