Author Archives: Gaz Corfield

Met police representatives and crime reporters before Leveson inquiry this week

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Copyright: Sean Dempsey/PA

The Leveson inquiry moves into week three of module two today, starting with evidence from Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick of the Metropolitan Police and Sir Dennis O’Connor, head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.

On Tuesday Dick Fedorcio, director of communications at the Met Police, will give appear before the inquiry.

It is expected that Fedorcio will be asked about his relationship with journalists at News International and also about the advice he gave senior officers on socialising with journalists.

On Wednesday morning Jeff Edwards, representing the Crime Reporters’ Association, will give evidence, along with journalists from the Guardian, the Independent and the Times. A written statement from a Daily Telegraph journalist will be read.

On the last day of this week’s hearings evidence will be heard from the Sun’s Mike Sullivan, who was named in the press as one of four current and former journalists at the Sun arrested and bailed by officers from Operation Elveden on Saturday, 28 January.

See the full witness list here.

Archant London restructures its senior editorial team

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Archant London has restructured its senior editorial team following the merger of its newspaper and magazine divisions.

Geoff Martin has been appointed editor-in-chief for Archant London’s newspapers published out of its Swiss Cottage office in Camden.

Malcolm Starbrook is the now editor-in-chief of newspapers published from its Ilford office, in east London.

Archant London’s editorial director Bob Crawley said the changes would provide one point of senior management contact at each office.

Chris Carter, editor of the Ilford Recorder, will continue to lead CMS editorial development as well as working on new projects such as the roll-out of its citizen journalism website iWitness24 for the whole of Archant London’s newspaper division.Laura Adams will continue to edit Archant’s bridal publications as well as editing the Barking and Dagenham Post, while Colin Grainger continues as editor of the Newham Recorder.

Peter Le Riche has been appointed to the newly-created role of commercial features editor.

Peter Le Riche, who previously worked as an editor with Archant South West before joining Richmond Council as head of communications, will rejoin Archant as their commercial features editor from 12 March.

New German law may impose fees on aggregated content use

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Germany’s governing centre-right coalition has proposed a new copyright law which would see content aggregators such as Google News paying royalties every time they index search results from news websites.

The proposal, which is available (in German) on the German Press Agency’s website states:

Commercial traders out there, such as search engines and news aggregators, should pay a fee to the publishers in the future for the distribution of press products (such as newspaper articles) on the internet.

Citing the German government’s original agreement, which states that online publishers “are not meant to be worse off” than other industries, the legislators suggest that the fee period should last for one year.

The fee proposals do not cover individuals using the material for private purposes and private users “will not be affected” by the proposal to charge for access.

Google has previously been sued for copyright infringement by French publishing houses Albin Michel, Flammarion and Gallimard, after the search giant scanned nearly 10,000 books for its Google Books site without permission.

The publishers later dropped their case against Google, saying they wanted to seek an “amicable solution to the litigation”.

In a similar copyright dispute in the UK, the Court of Appeal rejected arguments from the Public Relationships Consultants Association and news clippings service Meltwater that exemptions to copyright law could be applied to the content of newspaper websites, according to law firm Pinsent Masons.

In the UK, users of a clipping service must now have a licence from publishers to click on links taking them to a news website to avoid infringing the publishers’ copyrights, says Pinsent Masons.

A copyright tribunal said:

We reject the argument that requiring end user licensing under the WEUL (the Web End User Licence issued by the NLA), and at the same rates as the WEUL, is unreasonable.”

If Meltwater want to offer a headline only service to their end users they are free to do so but the service must be licensed in the same way as the headline plus text extract service.”

Q&A with hyperlocal site boasting 15,000 newsletter subscribers

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ChiswickW4.com, which claimed 50,000 unique visitors during January, has just gained it’s 15,000th email newsletter signup.

Launched by the Neighbour Net group in 2000 to cover the W4 postcode area of London, Neighbour Net now boasts a portfolio of nine other hyperlocal sites in London, including EalingToday.co.uk and PutneySW15.com.

One of Neighbour Net’s directors, Sean Kelly, spoke to Journalism.co.uk about the site’s model.

Who’s behind the operation of the website? What inspired you to set up a hyperlocal site?

The site was set up by Tony Steele and Sean Kelly who both live in the Chiswick area. The aim was to fill the gap in local news provision initially in Chiswick and then extend the concept out to other areas.

Are your articles written by local contributors or do you have a dedicated team?

We have a dedicated editor for each site and a significant number of other local contributors in each area. The contributions tend to be reviews – restaurants, concerts, theatre. There is also a central office resource for content production which can write stories when the editor is away.

Is anyone employed to work full-time on the site?

Yes, we have four full-time staff but that includes sales and back office. The aim on ChiswickW4.com is to be able to respond 24/7 to breaking news.

Your site has a number of subtle advertisements – could you tell us a little about your business model?

Nearly all our customers are small local businesses and they either have advertising packages which include banner display and newsletter inclusion or listings in our directories.

We also like to be supportive of local independent businesses and like to write positive stories about them. Obviously we are more inclined to cover items about our clients but often feature non-clients as well.

Do you have a social media strategy? If so, what social networks do you use and how do you use them?

We put all our news content out on Twitter and Facebook as well as some aggregated feeds with local offers, events, jobs and traffic reports. The main use for us of social media is sourcing stories rather than broadcasting. It is particularly powerful for breaking news.

We try and follow as many people as possible who live in the area to ensure that if something is kicking off locally we hear about it quickly.

Why did you go down the newsletter route, rather than taking a different approach?

Probably because in 2000 there weren’t really many alternatives but e-mail newsletters have proven to be the most effective broadcast method ever since.

On a proportional basis they still deliver the highest level of response both for advertisers and in terms of click through to news items.

How does your traffic for the Chiswick site compare with the rest of Neighbour Net’s sites?

It makes up around 50 per cent of group total over the course of a typical month. On exceptional days sites like PutneySW15.com and EalingToday.co.uk can exceed Chiswick’s traffic.

Do you have any plans to roll out new features on the sites?

The plan is to increase the amount of user contributed content further although the editor will remain central to the story production process.

Are you planning to expand? If so, where to?

We normally expand contiguously so that people in the area may be familiar with the site and we can cross-sell to existing clients as well as provide editorial support from neighbouring sites.

The most important determinant of where we launch is finding a suitably high quality editor. The plan is to recruit more actively once the content management system is up and running.

ChiswickW4.com can be found on Twitter as @ChiswickW4.

Citizen journalism: Street Photographer of the Year announced

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Kheoh Yee Wai, winner of the CJET Street Photographer of the Year, poses with his photo

The winner of the Citizen Journalism Education Trust (CJET)’s Street Photographer of the Year was announced yesterday.

In a release, Kheoh Yee Wai, 23, (pictured above) described his winning photograph:

The mum and her child were strolling on the streets of a neighbourhood in Leeds, passing by a family that was having a barbecue at that time. They had a huge dog that kept jumping-up in excitement.

That was when I knew I had to stop and capture a candid street photograph.

To qualify for the prize, entries had to be taken on a mobile phone by an amateur photographer or citizen journalist.

Judges included award-winning photographer and former Guardian picture editor, Eamonn McCabe and Allyce Hibbert picture editor for Time Out.

Wei, was awarded a camcorder. Runners-up Pete Smith and Daniel Holland received framed prints of their photographs.

All 12 shortlisted photographs are being exhibited at the London College of Communication until Thursday, 15 March. More information is available on the LCC news and events blog.

BBC ‘does not fully understand’ effects of savings on services, committee reports

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The Public Accounts Committee issued a report earlier today claiming that the BBC “does not fully understand” what effects its savings have had on the output of its services.

In the report, which was published on the Parliament website today, the committee said the broadcaster “has made good progress towards the efficiency target set by the BBC Trust in 2007” but criticised the BBC for not carrying out “a detailed analysis of the costs and benefits of what it produces to support its decisions about where to make savings.”

The BBC does not know with confidence whether the savings it has delivered have affected the quality of its services. In future the BBC will be going beyond efficiency savings by making cuts to services, and it must be clear about the distinction between the two.

The BBC should publish how it expects cuts to impact on services, the level of impact it is willing to tolerate, and how it will respond if these levels are breached.

According to the report, in trying to make savings the BBC analysed more than 50 audience measures covering its services, comparing them to similar analyses carried out in 2007-08.

As a result the BBC was said to have found that although some quality measures had fallen over the interval, these were not the same measures that had been under-performing in the earlier analysis.

The committee’s report also included criticism of the BBC’s accounting, claiming that it was “unambitious” in delivering cost savings.

See the full report here.

The BBC had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

ITV in race row after referring to “coloured” footballers

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Today the Guardian reports that ITV is under investigation by broadcast regulator Ofcom after news reporter Richard Pallot called black footballers “coloured” – while reporting on a racism in football summit held at No.10 Downing Street.

According to the Guardian:

ITV News apologised shortly after the broadcast on its Twitter page and the word has been removed from all future catchup editions of the broadcast, including an edited clip on the ITV News website.

The ITN-produced programme is now investigating how the pre-recorded report that included the word was allowed to be broadcast.

An ITV News spokesman said: “ITV News apologises for the inappropriate use of the word ‘coloured’ in a report on racism and football in today’s News at 1.30pm. We take this error very seriously and we regret any offence caused.”

Flipboard goes French with latest update

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Flipboard, the iPad and iPhone app which creates a magazine out of friends’ social network updates, now supports the French language following its latest upgrade to version 1.8.

Although a French content guide was released in December, this is the first time that the app’s core text has been translated into another language.

Also included in this update is the popular Cover Stories personalised feed feature, which highlights content curated from friends’ reading links. Cover Stories was first introduced on the iPhone edition of Flipboard.

Readers of Flipboard in the U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland, France, Hong Kong and Taiwan can also access country-specific international content guides.

According to Flipboard’s latest press release, other new features include:

  • A third page of tiles provides a home for all your favorite content. This is one of the most-requested features from Flipboard fans.
  • New typography and photo layouts will make your Flipboard even more beautiful.
  • Easy set-up lets you pick topics of interest and instantly build your Flipboard with great stuff to read.
  • International Content Guides offer hundreds of recommendations for readers in the UK and Ireland, Canada, Australia, France, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Tap on the red ribbon to choose your Content Guide edition.
  • All-new French-language edition. We launched a French Content Guide back in December, but now the app itself is in French, too. You’ll get it if your device language is set to French.