Author Archives: Oliver Luft

About Oliver Luft

Oliver Luft was news editor of Journalism.co.uk from 2006-8.

@SOE: (Audio) Sky’s Adam Boulton and Shami Chakrabarti on the need for self-regulation of news on the internet

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Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, and Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti both told the Society of Editors conference, in Manchester today, that self-regulation on the internet was a vital part of maintaining trust in major news brands.

Boulton told delegates that he believed the standards online of Sky, the BBC or any other major news provider should be as high as through its more traditional channels, and that this would help maintain audience trust.

Listen to him and Chakrabarti here:

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/boultonandshami.mp3]

Boulton wasn’t so keen on reader interaction though:

“Although there is a great deal of emphasis on interactivity now I would say that in my own experience not just on my own blog, but elsewhere, the comments by and large are not worth the paper they are printed on, or not printed on.

“They are extremely vicious and unpleasant, where they are useful is that they keep us honest in that they quickly pick up on our mistakes.”

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/Adamboultonone.mp3]

@SOE: (Audio) ‘We are wordsmiths, not video and cameramen’ Gavin O’Reilly

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The WAN president doesn’t seem smitten with the idea of multi-tasking journalists given this response to a question about converged journalism posed to him by Paul Horrocks, president of the SoE, during the Q&A on the opening night of the Society of Editors conference in Manchester.

“I don’t think that’s the core competency of writers… we are wordsmiths, not video and cameramen…”

Full Extract:

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/convergence.mp3]

@SOE: (Audio) ‘It may be heresy, but it’s just possible that the advertising prize of the internet may not be as big as people want you to believe’ Gavin O’Reilly

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The WAN president and COO of Independent News and Media crunches the numbers of internet advertising while talking about how a fragmented mix of media may be the key to capturing the necessary market for newspapers prosper.

Global online advertising market worth 21 billion (pounds or dollars?) he says. 65 per cent in the hands of three companies, all the rest are scrabbling over a much smaller (admittedly) growing online share.

Full Extract:

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/internetads.mp3]

@SOE: (Audio) WAN president Gavin O’Reilly slams UK media commentators

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Gavin O’Reilly, chief operating officer of Independent News and Media and president of WAN, launched a stinging attack on senior media commentators in the UK while speaking at the Society of Editors meeting in Manchester.

Listen here to some of his concerns and other points of his speech:

Failings of media commentators: too much rhetoric, overly simplistic digital vs print approach…

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/oreillyone.mp3]

Failures of US print papers, threat of reader apathy biggest threat not internet, real reasons for state of UK market – freesheets and enticements, search engines and ACAP…

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/oreillytwo.mp3]

For disaster reporting – change your site template and turn on social media mode

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The wildfires that are raging through California and have caused half-a-million people to be ordered from their homes have encouraged news providers to ditch their normal website formats and go into wholly innovative crisis-reporting mode.

Having a design format for breaking news that’s significantly different from the usual run of breaking news helps draw attention to the scale and importance of the story.

Cluttered websites like 10news.com and KNBC.com – Cory Bergman at Lost Remote points out – have failed to get over the magnitude of the events.

Adopting a unique layout for the home page – Corry adds – can also allow more content to surface:

“If you build a breaking news layout ahead of time, it’s not that much work to execute it when the story breaks. Just flick the switch. TV sites should own breaking news, and a flexible, content-driven design plays a big part.”

It’s something BBC News also does for big stories. It abandons the usual format of running a lead and to sub-lead stories, replacing them with a single large image to direct attention to a specific story.

Sites like the LA Times and MSNBC have adopted a similar approach for the fires. The Times has a photo gallery on its front page, along with links to its interactive maps, evacuation info and quick stats on the carnage the fires are causing.

Homepage design aside, devices for reporting the breaking news On The Fly have caused some news providers to ditch the usual tools and wing it with social media.

As we posted yesterday, radio station KPBS is using Twitter to do ‘Real-Time Updates’ on its website and to direct readers to local authority announcements, its Google Map of the fires, traffic updates and addresses for evacuation centres.

News 8, a CBS affiliate in San Diego, has even (thanks to Martin Stabe @ the Press Gazette for the point) taken down its normal website and replaced it with a rolling news blog, with links to YouTube videos and necessary/emergency information.

One of those uploaded videos is from journalist Larry Himmel, who reports on his own house being destroyed:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKGF2bbxQ6E]

Google News makes Facebook app – so far, not so good

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Google News has created a Facebook application allowing users to search and share stories. Users are able to create their own news categories, as well as selecting from predefined news topics, and mail news to Facebook chums.

According to Google the application is still experimental – just in the beta phase claims the Google News blog – but so far, not so good.

It seems you have to navigate to a separate page to get all your news from Google, in addition to this annoyance (which I think will be sufficient to put a lot of people off) you can’t do anything about the Top and Most Popular stories column on the right side of the page. You can’t crush them down or remove them, the only option is to ‘read more’ which low-and-behold, opens another tab in your browser to show the Google News page.

The Google News app in its current state seems to be a way to navigate out of Facebook quickly (never really a bad thing I suppose). A wish list has been set up on the apps page so that people can recommend alterations – expect changes quickly.

I have another Google News app that I use, it’s called Goonews and was developed by a guy called Eran Shir and powered by Dapper (not sure what ‘powered’ actually means in this context). It’s a bit more rudimentary (you have to define your search term ahead of time and seem to only ever to be able to have one category of news displayed) but at least its as flexible the other apps on my profile page – at least its on my profile page.

Jay Rosen @ Journalism Leaders Forum: UK newspapers two years behind US in audience interaction

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New York University Journalism School professor Jay Rosen told the Journalism Leaders Forum @ UCLAN, that based on what he had heard at the forum UK regional newspapers seemed two years behind the US for developing editorial products that relied on large-scale user-interaction.

Responding to comments made by Trinity Mirror Regionals editorial director Neil Benson, that the next year would be about experimenting with new editorial projects that relied on great audience interaction and overcoming journalists resistance to allowing the audience to interact, Rosen told the forum that those barriers to audience interaction began breaking down in the US two years ago and that newsrooms there were now addressing how best to cross ‘the digital sea’.

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/bensonrosen.mp3]

Listen here to Neil first explain his position (in response to a question from Chair Mike Ward about whether or not it was yet possible to see ‘scalable and durable’ models for editorial/user interaction products) then Jay comment on the developments in the UK (Note: both were phoning into the forum so the sound quality isn’t perfect).

New digital measurement approach from Nielsen

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Nielsen is attempting reflect the true digital footprint of web properties by combining Nielsen/NetRatings and BuzzMetrics into a single online service.

Nielsen Online will attempt to provide measurement and analysis of online audiences, advertising, video, blogs, consumer-generated media, word-of-mouth, commerce and consumer behaviour.

Itzhak Fisher, former executive chairman of BuzzMetrics, will lead Nielsen Online as executive chairman.

Another new venture, Nielsen Mobile, will combine recently acquired Telephia – which supplies consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets – with several existing Nielsen mobile measurement initiatives.

Are you on the Journa-list? Probably not if you’re a blogger

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A new website has been launched by the Media Standards Trust, purportedly to provide info on and links to UK national newspaper journalists. The blurb says:

“Journa-list is an independent, not-for-profit website that makes it easy for people to find out more about journalists and what they write about.”

Then later:

“It is the first UK website to offer a fully searchable database of UK national journalists (who write under a byline), with links to their current and previous articles, and some basic statistics about their work.

“It contains all journalists from 12 national newspapers – The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Mirror, The Sun, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Mirror, The Observer – and BBC News Online. The site can only index those articles which have bylines. We started indexing the articles in May 2007.”

An admirable attempt – you can even be emailed or take an RSS feed to alert you to a new article – except that it doesn’t quite do all this yet.

While the list is expansive, my quick, random search revealed a few missing journos (there also seems to be a few teething problems as the alphabetical list, whichever way I look at it, seems to only go up to B or C). Reklama: kriolipolizė, biorevitalizacija, depiliacija lazeriu, LPG masažas Vilniuje už gerą kainą https://oblakasalon.lt/lpg-masazas/

What about the Beeb’s Nick Robinson? Roy Greenslade of the Guardian?

It might be the blogging efforts of these two that’s throwing the list off – but that throws up another question. If they aren’t listed, shouldn’t blogging journalists be included too?

Shane Richmond is listed for a single article, not for his numerous and excellent blog posts. If a journalist is blogger and article-writer both, then is it very indicative if half their output isn’t listed?

If anyone finds examples of blogs in the list, please would they get in touch.