Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » UK government

Free Speech blog: What the UK government’s cuts mean for British journalism?

Laura Oliver — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:19:26 +0000

Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University London, on what the UK government’s cuts and plans for university fees will mean for journalism:

Of all the professions, journalism is surely among the most vulnerable when it comes to the kind of touch cost-benefit analysis that school leavers and parents will have to do in a world of higher fees. Undeniably, the news industry is in existential crisis: yes, it offers thrilling new possibilities, but it is distinctly short on security.

In this environment, whatever Vince Cable and Nick Clegg may say, poorer students – by which I mean students who are not middle class – are more likely to back away than risk the big debts that will accompany a journalism degree.

The next generation of journalists, therefore, will probably have just the same social profile as the generation currently supplying us with news, even though the country around us will have changed.

Full article on Index on Censorship at this link…Similar Posts:

BBC College of Journalism blog: The problems with reporting a coalition government

Laura Oliver — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:53:01 +0000

The BBC College of Journalism’s Jon Jacob raises some interesting points about journalists’ coverage of the UK’s new coalition government:

“The coalition is still in its early days. It’s easy to forget how the business of reporting the coalition agreement has overshadowed the true schedule of government business;”
“[S]hould journalists actually continue referencing the government ministers they talk about in their reports – including in vision graphics and on-air announcements - to illustrate how ideologies differ within a coalition government?”

When can the media stop referring to it as a coalition government or is there a danger in doing so?

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

#FollowJourn: @DirDigEng/digital engagement director

Judith Townend — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:38:35 +0000

Who? Andrew Stott, UK government director of digital engagement.

What? Behind today’s public beta launch of data.gov.uk.

Where? Everything’s at data.gov.uk/blog here: http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/

Contact? Follow him at @dirdigeng /contact page here.

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:

Jon Bernstein: A telling tale of the twittercrat who wasn’t

Jon Bernstein — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:54:00 +0000

So the government is not seeking another Twittercrat after all, ‘someone (…) paid to teach the [it] how to use social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Bebo’.

On one level this is a shame. Take this from the very web 2.0 Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Using the microblogging site Twitter, it announced earlier this week:

“@foreignoffice: Opium cultivation, production and prices are down according to @UNODC report http://bit.ly/qjGVm #afghanistan“

As Guido politely asks on his blog:

“Why, if you are trying to eradicate supply in Afghanistan, proudly boast that opium supplies are cheaper?”

Perhaps Whitehall really could do with a deputy to help the Twittercrat-in-chief (aka the director of digital engagement, aka Andrew Stott) to knock the troops into shape.

But that’s not going to happen. In fact, what’s more interesting is to follow the story – how it got out there and how the Cabinet Office went online – with mixed results – to rebut those original claims.

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the Daily Telegraph (‘Whitehall expands “Twittercrat” empire‘); Daily Mail (‘Ministers seek £120000-a-year ‘Twittercrat’ to help them communicate on the internet’); Daily Express (‘The Twittercrat on £118,000 a year – and you’re paying’); and a trade journal called Public Journal (‘Now they want a deputy Twittercrat‘); all carried very similar stories about the government’s supposed appointment of a director of digital engagment.

The only problem was that many of the points of fact in all four weren’t true. In its rebuttal statement, the Cabinet Office met each claim head on:

1. The job title is wrong
2. The details of the job description are wrong
3. Claims that the vacancy is for a ‘spin doctor’ are wrong
4. Details of reporting lines are wrong
5. Claims that digital engagement is all about pushing government messages on Facebook are wrong

Got that? It’s all wrong, although the circa £120,000 remuneration (including pension and bonuses) is not challenged.

To be fair to the papers, the job ad on which they were basing their copy lacked clarity. With its calls to ‘embrace’, ‘re-engineer’, ‘extend’ and ‘engage’, the technocratic language is certainly open to some interpretation.

Nevertheless, there were some obvious inaccuracies, not least the job title, worthy of correction. As yet, scanning the print and online versions of these publications, no corrections have been made.

Meanwhile out on the web, the Cabinet Office was doing its bit to get its message across. It floated it out on social networks and the blogosphere. Meanwhile, former cabinet office minister Tom Watson (a Twitter veteran) put this out:

“@tom_watson Old media have problem with the word ‘digital’ when added (or not) to ‘engagement’. Cabinet Office fightback: http://bit.ly/12pI0S“

It carried a link to the Cabinet Office statement and was retweeted half a dozen or more times to be seen be many thousands of followers. Thanks to the network effect that underpins social tools like Twitter, word was getting out.

The end result?
A tight(ish) circle of digitally savvy Westminster, Whitehall and media folk and their associates got the message. But beyond that? Probably not quite far enough.

One of the great promises of the internet even in its pre-web 2.0 days was disintermediation, the notion that you can cut out the middle man.

It is an attractive proposition for everyone, from those seeking cheaper car insurance to celebrities keen to protect or repair their reputation to government departments wanting to go over the head of the fourth estate.

As we’ve seen in the recent past, for example in the case of singer Chris Brown, things don’t always turn out how you hope.

As so it is with the Cabinet Office’s attempts to right some wrongs. You and I know there’s more to the Twittercrat story than first thought, but most readers of the Telegraph, Mail and Express probably do not.

A story about outlandish salaries and civil service dilettantism is grist to the mill for those three papers – it plays to their agenda.

But as yet the average reader of all three is still expecting a £120k Twittercrat to head to a Facebook page near them soon.

Jon Bernstein is former multimedia editor of Channel 4 News. This is part of a series of regular columns for Journalism.co.uk. You can read his personal blog at this link.Similar Posts:

ReadWriteWeb: Google may hand over Caribbean journalists’ IP addresses

Judith Townend — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:54:59 +0000

ReadWriteWeb follows up Wikileaks’ report that Google could comply with an order to supply the IP addresses used to access a news site’s GMail account, as part of a libel claim in the Santa Clara, California Superior Court, regarding government corruption in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

The TCI Journal is a news and commentary site based in the Islands, run by ‘journalists, lawyers, professionals, students and patriots.’ RWW reports:

“A property developer discussed at length in the Journal’s documentation of corruption and in the official UK government inquiry report is now suing the journal for libel.”

According to Wikileaks and RWW, Google intends to hand over the requested records in just over two weeks, unless the Journal files a counter-motion with the court itself.

Google has supplied RWW with a statement that said the company was ‘still evaluating all [its] legal options regarding this particular request’.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Journalism Daily: Academics boycott Observer, theblogpaper’s launch and AOP conference

Laura Oliver — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:20:54 +0000

A daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site. You can also sign up to our e-newsletter and subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

News and features:

Ed’s picks:

Tip of the day:

Visualising with Muckety.com

#FollowJourn:

@abigailrieley/freelance journalist

On the Editors’ Blog:

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Online Journalism Blog: Can the UK government save journalism?

Laura Oliver — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:39:15 +0000

Paul Bradshaw suggests a number of steps (with examples) that the government could take ‘to create an environment that supports good journalism’:

Release of public data
Tax relief on donations to support investigative journalism
Encouraging innovation and enterprise
Reskilling of redundant journalists
An effective local news consortia

Well worth a read – and more suggestions are welcome.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

@more4news challenges government on Twitter

Laura Oliver — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:09:46 +0000

Some more simple and effective use of social media tools (and personality) from the team behind More 4 News.

We’ve covered Channel 4 News’ use of Twitter before and its crowdsourcing experiments – but yesterday sister channel @more4news got in on the act.

Responding to the launch of a 20-page guide for the UK government on using Twitter, @more4news issued a challenge to the 12 departments using Twitter: to sum up their current priorities in 140 characters.

The responses were later used by presenter Alex Thomson (@alextomo) in an evening broadcast on More4.

Four government departments don’t tweet it turns out (including the department for culture, media and sport), but there were replies from the treasury, ministry of justice and ministry of defence amongst others.

“We were pleasantly surprised at the way government departments rose to the More4 News twitter challenge. It’s clear that several of them have recently appointed Digital Media Advisors from among the twitterati,” Michael Hodgkin, assistant programme editor, More4 News, told us in an email.

“Some of the summaries may sound a bit like promoting motherhood and apple pie, but what can you expect in 140 characters? It’s probably a very good exercise to have to sum up one’s aims so concisely.

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Jon Slattery: Report calls for quality mark for journalism internships

Laura Oliver — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:54:21 +0000

Jon Slattery has a good round-up of yesterday’s Unleashing Aspiration – The Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions report released by the UK government yesterday.

The report, which looked at the background and educational history of those entering professions including journalism,found that 98 per cent of entrants to journalism had a degree or post-graduate qualification.

It made 88 recommendations to government, including a system for identifying high quality internships and open advertising of such placements.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

UK Freedom of Information Blog: FOIA act extended, but changes ‘disappointingly modest’

Laura Oliver — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:52:47 +0000

Catching up from news last week that the UK government has plans to extend the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to cover four new bodies: the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the Financial Services Ombudsman, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) and Academy schools.

The UK’s Campaign for FOI has described the proposals as narrow in scope – for example, contractors providing a service on behalf of a public agency will be covered, but only if that service ‘is a function of the authority’.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Press Gazette: UK government to cut 30-year rule on records

Laura Oliver — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:46:07 +0000

Official documents, apart from ‘sensitive information’, Royal Family and Cabinet papers, could be released after 20 years instead of 30 under new government proposals, Gordon Brown announced yesterday.

The government is also looking at extending the remit of the Freedom of Information (FoI) act to cover organisations that spend public money.

The measures will aim to improve the transparency of the UK parliament following the expenses scandal.

The official publication of the MPs expenses data by parliament will happen in the next few days, Brown added.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

Media Release: UK government launches local media inquiry

Laura Oliver — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:16:22 +0000

The UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Commons Select Committee has launched an inquiry into the future of regional and local media.

Full release at this link…Similar Posts:

CMS2009: @DigitalBritain on Twitter but you won’t find @LordCarter

Judith Townend — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:10:14 +0000

As MediaGuardian’s MediaMonkey has already noted and @journalism_live tweeted, the UK minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, Lord Carter, does not Twitter, and he has ‘no real desire’ to be on Twitter.

“I couldn’t compete,” he says – apparently in reference to the Guardian management addicted to the service (@arusbridger is also on Twitter these days, by the way).

So Lord Carter may not be, but @digitalbritain is on board, if you fancy following the UK government’s digital team.

Perhaps more controversial were Lord Carter’s comments about the importance of UK media, which didn’t make the next session’s panel host, Janneke Niessen, (the Dutch) co-founder of Improve Digital, too happy.

UK content is very different from that of other countries, Carter had said. “English media spreads,” Carter said.

He said that UK media output spreads more widely and crosses boundaries in different ways from the content of other countries – for example, from the Netherlands and Italy.

That’s a result of the widespread and global use of the English language, he was quick to add, sensing the sharp sucking in of breath around the room.Similar Posts:

PhotoAttorney: UK rejects copyright law amendments as result of UGC / mash-ups

Judith Townend — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:37:39 +0000

Following up on Out-Law.com’s reports, PhotoAttorney.com looks at the UK government’s decision not to revise its copyright law ‘after reviewing research results in a consultation paper (…) published by the European Commission (EC) on copyright reform’.

“In sum, the EC paper considered the possibility of creating new use exemptions to address the increased creation of ‘user-created content’ (UGC), also known as ‘mashups’, made easier by technological innovations.”

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Media Release: Office of Fair Trading seeks input on local media mergers

Laura Oliver — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:15:21 +0000

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is seeking initial views on local and regional media mergers as part of a review following the UK government’s Digital Britain report.

Full release at this link…Similar Posts: