Author Archives: Rachel Bartlett

About Rachel Bartlett

Rachel Bartlett is editor of Journalism.co.uk

Guardian: Ministers agree on terms of reference for privacy committee

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The Guardian reports today that culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and justice secretary Ken Clarke have agreed on terms of reference for the committee of MPs and peers to look at the balance between the rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

David Cameron called for a joint committee to be established following the celebrity injunction furore. The terms include looking at the issue of enforcement in online publishing, which has been at the heart of recent events and controversies.

According to the Guardian the full terms of reference are:

  • To consider the operation of the current law in relation to privacy and the use of anonymity injunctions and superinjunctions and to advise the government on any improvements that should be made.

In particular, to consider:

  • How the current law, both statutory and common, has operated in practice.
  • How issues relating to determining the balance between privacy and freedom of expression, including particularly determining whether there is a public interest in material concerning peoples private and family life, could best be decided.
  • Issues relating to the enforcement of anonymity injunctions and superinjunctions, including in relation to publication on the internet, parliamentary privilege and the rule of law.
  • The role of the press and issues relating to press complaints and self-regulation in the context of privacy matters, including the role of the Press Complaints Commission and Ofcom.

paidContent: Guardian News & Media director of international leaving later this year

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The director of international at Guardian News & Media, Stella Beaumont, is to leave later this year, it was announced this week. Beaumont has worked at the news group for 28 years and will depart after helping to launch and oversee the company’s new digital operation in the US.

In a report paidContent quotes Guardian Media Group CEO Andrew Miller as telling staff that reporting lines for ContentNext, publisher of GNM-owned paidContent, following Beaumont’s departure, “will be determined as part of the wider planning for our American operation”.

Read more here…

Reporters to get author pages with Google’s new authorship markup

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On its official blog this week Google announced it was to start supporting “authorship markup — a way to connect authors with their content on the web”. According to the post this will enable websites to publicly link within their site from content to author pages.

For example, if an author at the New York Times has written dozens of articles, using this markup, the webmaster can connect these articles with a New York Times author page. An author page describes and identifies the author, and can include things like the author’s bio, photo, articles and other links.

According to Google it has worked with sites including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNET and the New Yorker, prior to the launch of the markup to help get them set up. The markup will also been added to everything hosted by YouTube and Blogger, Google added.

For a more detailed description of how authorship works see the neat description below by the Search Engine Journal:

Sites that have large portions of content written by a specific author can denote the author of each piece of content and can specify the author’s page on the site. The author page can then include markup that specifies what select data on the page is. Google can then display portions of the specified data from the search engine results page, giving direct links to the author’s page, other content from the same writer, and other pages that belong to the same author (such as social sites).

Strike dates announced at Newsquest South London

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Journalists at titles within Newsquest South London have announced that their planned strike action will take place on Wednesday and Thursday next week (15 and 16 June). The strikes follow a dispute over redundancies, a reduction in editorial space, a review of a 2 per cent pay rise and an office relocation.

At the end of May Journalism.co.uk reported that members of the National Union of Journalists at Newsquest South London voted in favour of strike action, with 22 out of 23 returns of a ballot in favour.

Staff at newspapers in the area, which covers Surrey, Sutton and Twickenham, have been working to rule since 15 April.

NUJ head of publishing Barry Fitzpatrick said: “Our members’ overwhelming decision to take strike action in defence of jobs and quality was the inevitable result of a wrong-headed management policy. But it is not too late for the company to show some sense and sit down with us to discuss the future security of the papers which are so important to our members and their communities.”

Earlier last month the division announced 12 job cuts at a series of titles in the area, including the loss of the sports and leisure department at one of the South London offices.

Guardian launches Comment Network on Comment is free

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The Guardian today announced the launch of the Guardian Comment Network on Comment is free. The site says it has partnered with a range of websites which they will curate content from and cross-post, in a bid to break down “barriers between us and them”.

We hope to act as curators for the best of this content, while acknowledging that we as editors are not the only ones who can or should decide on the direction of Comment is free on any given day. We already draw on the inspiration and insights of our users through series such as You told us, the People’s panel and Anywhere but Westminster. We want to extend that to the many bloggers out there who are often just as good as Guardian journalists – if not better – at spotting stories and responding quickly and imaginatively to them.

This follows similar developments in content curation across other areas of the site, as outlined by Dan Sabbagh to Journalism.co.uk when he joined the Guardian last year as its new head of media and technology.

BBC responds to Chancellor’s criticism of financial reporting

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Yesterday on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme the Chancellor George Osborne seemed to suggest that the BBC‘s reporting on the economy had at times focused on more ‘bad news’ stories than positive, saying he wanted to see “more balance”.

I’ve listened to news bulletins on your programme for the last year. Every time there’s an unfortunate loss of jobs somewhere, a few hundred jobs, it’s on the news bulletin. I’ve not yet heard a single news bulletin that says 400,000 new jobs have been created over the past year, that just doesn’t appear on the news.

Last week there was a disappointing manufacturing survey, it was on the news, today there’s a more encouraging manufacturing survey, its not on the news. I think what I’m asking for is a bit more balance in the way we look at the British economy at the moment.

Later that day editor of the BBC News business and economics unit Jeremy Hillman responded via the Editors Blog to the specific claims.

… had the chancellor been listening carefully to Today just an hour earlier (he seemed to suggest he had been but may have missed it) he would have heard our economics editor Stephanie Flanders say clearly that over the last year employment has been very strong and that private employment was especially strong.

Viewers of our main Six and Ten O’Clock News bulletins will know that virtually every single time we report unemployment figures we also give the employment figure for fairness and balance. It’s also worth noting that in our heavily read online coverage we have reported on at least seven job creation stories in just the last few of weeks.

He did accept however that at times the BBC may over-emphasise or under-emphasise something.

That always ensures a lively and valuable editorial discussion in the newsroom. Very occasionally we may miss something interesting completely, though we’ll try to catch up as soon as we realise. While we understand the political context around all our business and economics reporting, our sole purpose is to report and put context around the data for the benefit of all our audiences, reflecting that there are differing points of view and analysis which may occasionally make uncomfortable reading from both sides of the political divide.

FleetStreetBlues: Roger Boyes on reputation management after unfortunate byline

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It certainly caused a snigger or two in the Journalism.co.uk office when, more than a year ago, we came across the unfortunate byline placement on this story in the Times, which happened to be about the Vienna Boys’ Choir sex abuse scandal – a story written by Roger Boyes, Berlin correspondent for the newspaper.

Since then, as reported by FleetStreetBlues, Boyes has had to bring in reputation management to clean up the damage caused to his online profile. In an article for the Times today, as FSB reports, Boyes writes about about how he had to perform “a kind of digital exorcism”, whether he liked it or not.

Here’s the hitch though: I never wanted to join Facebook. Now I am signed on (and have no access to it), accumulating friends who presumably have been put up to it by the reputation managers. It’s not me, it doesn’t feel like me. And the YouTube video, though duly positive, just looks daft. So it seems that the only way I can fight the lasting effects of my Twitter ambush is by exposing myself more online.

Media release: RAJAR introducing new digital technology

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RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) today announced it is to introduce new digital technology to its audience measurement tools, including a new online radio listening diary and a digital personal interviewing aid.

According to a release this new digital collection of data is to be rolled out from July, “in response to the wider availability and everyday use of online”.

The move will enable RAJAR to offer improved demographic representation, with the complementary benefit of the online diary adding wider appeal to people who may be less responsive to the existing format. It will also enhance the capture of listening data across all platforms be it analogue, internet, DTV or DAB. The online survey will mirror the paper survey in content, allowing all data to be integrated for reporting.

See the full release here.

Internships are a mix of exploitation and privilege, says Ross Perlin

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On Radio 4 this morning Andrew Marr spoke to Ross Perlin, the author of a new study into the issue of unpaid internships. It was an interesting topic of debate in light of an announcement last month by the National Union of Journalists of its first victory in its Cashback for Interns campaign.

Speaking on Start the Week, Perlin argued that the older idea of work experience is giving way more to an “American notion” of multiple months of serious but unpaid work with an “unspoken barter deal” with the understanding that there may be a paid-position at the end. But more often this is not the case, he claims.

It is a curious mixture of exploitation on the one hand and privilege on the other. People who can afford to do these internships are in once sense privileged, they are lucky to have their foot in the door. People who can’t pay to get into the system, just in terms of the expenses or rent or food, are essentially left out and therefore barred from a whole range of professions which have made internships a virtual prerequisite.

Perlin calls for existing internships to be reformed, adding that he is not calling for their abolition, but the development of a fairer system.

I would say wade very carefully into the internship morass if you must. If you feel you must work unpaid and you can manage to do it, for any individual it might make sense in a particular situation to do this for a brief period of time, but don’t get caught in the internship trap. Know your rights and once you’re doing real work that you should be paid for under the national minimum wage act you should be receiving that pay, you should amend that.

Follow this link to hear the full programme. The discussion on internships starts at about 30 minutes in.

Also today, the Frontline Club website has published an anonymous piece by an intern detailing their experiences of unpaid work.

In most of my experience, however, they rarely amount to more than the routine execution of mundane activities that could and should be done by a paid member of staff or which add little meaningful value either to the intern or to the organisation/publication for whom they are working.

Read the full article here.

Beet.tv: BBC apps received more than 10 million downloads

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In this interview with Beet.tv digital director of BBC Worldwide Daniel Heaf talks about how the iPad has “truly become the fourth screen”.

He says that session time on the device matches the time spent with traditional media such as periodicals and television.

According to Heaf the BBC has had more than 10 million downloads worldwide of its apps for the iPad and other devices.