Author Archives: Rachel Bartlett

About Rachel Bartlett

Rachel Bartlett is editor of Journalism.co.uk

Journalisted Weekly: Redknapp and Capello, Syria and Homs, and Leveson

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

Redknapp and Capello, Syria and Homs, and Leveson

for the week ending Sunday 12 February

  • Harry Redknapp, his acquittal and England management rumours lead the news
  • Luis Suarez, Leveson Inquiry and Abu Qatada covered lots
  • Romanian PM resignation, Russian protests and Turkmenistan elections covered little

Covered Lots

  • Harry Redknapp walks free from court, acquitted of cheating the public revenue, and into speculation about managing the England football team, 464 articles – succeeding Fabio Capello, 462 articles
  • The death toll rises as Syrian government forces bombard the city of Homs, 233 articles
  • The Leveson Inquiry continues, hearing from witnesses including Mail editor Paul Dacre and recalled editors James Harding and Dominic Mohan, 190 articles
  • Luis Suarez avoids shaking Patrice Evra’s hand, reigniting racism row, before apologising, 187 articles
  • An immigration commission rules that radical cleric Abu Qatada can be released on bail, 143 articles

Covered Little

  • Emil Boc resigns as Prime Minister of Romania following protests against austerity measures, 17 articles
  • Mikhail Gorbachev criticises Vladimir Putin following protests and ahead of March presidential election, 6 articles
  • Elections in Turkmenistan, with opposition candidates all praising the incumbent, 2 articles
  • Brazilian journalist Mario Randolfo Marques Lopes and his girlfriend are kidnapped and killed, 1 article

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs Serious

Eurozone leaders (top ten by number of articles)

Who wrote a lot about… Fabio Capello

Long form journalism

The Media Standards Trust, which runs journalisted, won the ‘One to Watch’ category at the Prospect Think Tank Awards
Read the Hacked Off live blog on the Leveson inquiry and follow our Twitter feed @hackinginquiry.

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Read the MST’s submission to parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions and the House of Lords Communications Select Committee on investigative journalism

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

Media release: Piano Media raises paywall price with ‘steady revenue’ in place

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Piano Media has announced that it is raising the price of the national paywall it established in Slovakia last year, a move its CEO Tomas Bella says in a release had been the plan for once the platform was “accepted”.

The decision to raise the price follows the launch of the company’s second joint national paywall in Slovenia last month, involving nine publishers in the country.

In Slovakia the price will go up from 1 March, the release adds, from €.99 to €1.39 a week, €2.90 to €3.90 a month and from €29 to €39 for a year.

With steady revenue and reader growth established, Piano’s pricing structure moves into its next development phase after gaining broad acceptance by Slovakia’s digital readers.

In the release Bella adds: “The number of our subscribers is still going up. More and more people are telling us that they were against the concept at first but now have gotten used to the idea and already feel comfortable with paying.”

The company confirmed in the release that it “is in negotiations with publishers in 11 European countries and has plans to launch in more European markets by the end of 2012”.

Guardian launches ‘next phase’ of open newslist: Newsdesk Live

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The Guardian has launched a new liveblog in its next development of its open newslist trial, which it started last year to facilitate greater discussion around the given topics.

According to a blog post by UK news editor Dan Roberts, Newsdesk Live was prompted by “limitations” with the open newsdesk which became apparent, “chiefly the difficulty of using a simple grid and 140 characters to communicate all the complexities of the day’s news with an outside audience”.

Newsdesk Live will “incorporate the open newslist, but will also feature a live comment thread allowing readers to discuss what’s going on directly rather than having to do so via Twitter”.

Journalist Polly Curtis is overseeing the project, Roberts adds:

For the period of the experiment, Polly is joining the national newdesk to work alongside other UK editors to help feed ideas from readers back into the newsgathering process.

Hat tip: 10,000 Words blog

#followjourn – @viewmagazine David Dunkley Gyimah/videojournalist

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Who? David Dunkley Gyimah

Where? Knight Batten and international award-winning videojournalist. He also produces online magazine viewmagazine.tv.

Twitter? @viewmagazine

David will be speaking about online video journalism at news:rewired – media in motion, Journalism.co.uk’s conference on the latest trends in digital journalism.

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to Rachel at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

AFP photographer wins political photography award

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The AFP has issued a release to say its photographer John MacDougall won the Rueckblende (flashback) award in Germany for 2011.

The agency says this is the first time the award, which is for political photography and cartoons, has gone to one of its photographers.

The winning picture of a German female soldier embracing a relative of one of three victims at a military funeral brought home the human aspect of the tragedy of Afghanistan, judges of the Rueckblende award for political photography said.

MacDougall first started work at AFP in 1989 as a photo editor.

According to the AFP release “his photo was chosen from among 247 entries for the Rueckblende, which was created in 1995 and carries a 7,000-euro ($9,200) prize, and which also awards a prize for political cartoonists.”

Unions jointly submit pay claim for BBC staff

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The National Union of Journalists, Bectu and Unite have jointly issued a pay claim for BBC staff for 2012 to 2013, which according to union statements, asks for a rise “of RPI plus two per cent, with a minimum increase of £1,000”.

The NUJ says this would apply to BBC staff in bands two to 11. In a statement the NUJ’s broadcasting organiser Sue Harris said they consider it “a fair claim”.

According to the unions the claim “also seeks the reinstatement of a previous right for staff to lodge pay appeals” and “encourages BBC management to agree to the inclusion of elected staff representatives on the Executive Remuneration Committee”.

Read more on the pay claim on the NUJ and Bectu websites.

Journalisted Weekly: Costa Concordia, Newt Gingrich and cuts controversy

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

Costa Concordia, Newt Gingrich and cuts controversy

for the week ending Sunday 22 January

  • The Costa Concordia crash dominated the week’s papers
  • Newt Gingrich, Labour cuts controversy and Leveson covered lots
  • Chinese growth, Egyptian election and Croatian referendum covered little

Covered lots

Covered little

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs. serious

Eurozone leaders (top ten by number of articles)

Who wrote a lot about… the Australian Open

Long form journalism

The Media Standards Trust, which runs journalisted, won the ‘One to Watch’ category at the Prospect Think Tank Awards

Read the Hacked Off live blog on the Leveson inquiry and follow our Twitter feed @hackinginquiry.

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Read the MST’s submission to parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions and the House of Lords Communications Select Committee on investigative journalism

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

 

Jon Snow’s Cudlipp lecture: ‘Twitter leads the information thirsty to water’

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Toni Knevitt, London College of Communication

Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow gave the annual Hugh Cudlipp lecture last night, in which he gave a powerful speech on what he views as the advent of “journalism’s golden age”.

Snow has published the full version of his speech on his Snowblog, but here are some highlights from the lecture.

Much of his speech discussed how new technology and real-time news across platforms has an impact on the work of journalists:

Contrast therefore my first reporting from Uganda in 1976 and my most recent foreign assignment in 2011.

That first report on the ground in Uganda dealt with the horror of Amin, it was graphic, and because I was not constrained by immediate “live” deadlines and the rest, I had time to hang about to try to grab an interview with the tyrant: that’s the upside. But I had little mechanism for developing any sense of how the story connected with the outside world – the UN, Westminster and the rest.

… Contrast that with my last major foreign assignment in Cairo’s Tahrir Square where I tweeted, blogged, reported, fed the bird, and then anchored that night’s Channel 4 News live from just outside the Square. Mind you, with the pressures of time, some of the fun has gone out of it all.

For journalists, he said, the “liberation” of the media gives way to a new “golden age of journalism”:

We are in the age of answer back, better still we are in the age in which “we the people” have their greatest opportunity ever to influence the information agenda … But above all we are in the age of more. More potential to get it right, to get it fast, to get it in depth. We have that illusive entity “the level playing field”, we can compete on equal terms and yet be the best.

He also passed comment on some of the biggest issues facing the news industry today, from regulation to the phone hacking scandal:

I think it is absolutely right that there is a regulator that people can go to. Who are we to be above the opportunity for people to review what we’ve done? Furthermore I do not want to find my own editors somewhere in the mix. I want an objective regulator.

… Of course, papers and TV are entirely different beasts, and they work in entirely different ways, but I see no reason why print journalism wouldn’t benefit from a credible regulator in the same way TV has.

And not forgetting the Leveson inquiry, which is currently looking at the culture and ethics of the press:

Leveson should recommend many of the people and institutions that have been before him find a way of allowing their staff to get stuck into the real world, it will vastly improve and deepen their journalism. We journalists are not a breed a part – we must be of the world we report. The hacking scandal reveals an echelon of hacks who removed themselves from the world in which the rest of us live – they took some weird pleasure in urinating on our world.

But finally, he called for journalists to be given more time and space wherever possible:

The speed and pace of what all of us is doing is starving, television journalists in particular, of the opportunity to develop the stature and presence of our forebears.

These were people who had days in which to prepare their stories, dominated a tiny handful of channels, and became iconic figures in the medium. It is much, much harder for journalists today to ascend the same ladder and preside with their kind of authority and we need to afford talent the time, the space and the working experience to develop the authority that our medium depends upon.

Mail Online publisher: ‘If you don’t listen to your users then you’re dead’

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Appearing before the joint committee on privacy and injunctions yesterday, Martin Clarke, the publisher of Daily Mail website Mail Online, shared some interesting comments on digital media, in reference to privacy, regulation and general approaches to journalism in a digital world.

The latest results from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (published in December) showed the Mail Online continued its lead ahead of other audited UK news sites with almost 85 million unique browsers in November.

So here is a collection of thoughts shared by Clarke before the committee on issues relating to the impact of the internet on the news industry:

Privacy:

If we were publishing really unpleasant, intrusive stuff our readers wouldn’t like it. One of the beauties of the internet is the feedback you get from your readers is pretty much instant in two ways.

First of all, you can see in real time who’s reading what stories on your homepage … that immediately tells me which ones they’re interested in.

Secondly, we have the comments facility and readers aren’t slow to let us know when they think we’ve been unfair or unpleasant. Quite often I’ve changed tack on a story, or the headline on a story or dropped a picture because of things readers have left in comments. That’s the beauty of the internet, the interaction between you and your readers is that much more immediate. If there were no privacy law no I don’t think it would make that much difference.

Regulation

You are dealing with an industry that faces big commercial challenges going forward. Digital is how newspapers are going to have to make their living, the economics of the internet are such you probably have to make big chunk of that living abroad. Any further regulation might compromise that, and then quite frankly we won’t really have an industry left to regulate.

… You think of the internet in chunks, press, bloggers, tweeters, but from the consumers point of view that’s not how they consider it. It’s an endless continuous spectrum that starts with what their friends are saying on their Facebook pages, what some tweeter might be saying, to a story they link to in a tweet, then go back on to Facebook page and comment … Pretty soon all those commenting systems are going to be bolted together. Where do you draw the line, where do you say right this bit of the internet is going to be regulated and this bit isn’t?

… We’ve had to wake up and deal, embrace a new reality … The internet is a great way to distribute news, it means newspapers are now back in the business of breaking news … alongside TV and radio and the people who had taken that privilege away from us. It’s gratifying as a journalist to be part of that. Equally it’s brought some negatives …. You can’t turn back the tide, we can’t say stop the internet world we want to get off.

On content:

The reason it’s different from the Daily Mail is because it’s a different market … I’m operating in a digital market where we do get feedback from the readers, I can see in real time what they’re really reading rather than what I might think as journalist they should be reading. In the digital world if you don’t listen to your users, if you don’t involve them, if you don’t listen to their tastes, than you’re dead. We don’t follow that data slavishly, that’s where I come in, it’s my job to mediate the light and the shade. So that’s why it’s different from the Mail.

Equally we do more showbiz…we do vastly more science, we do more political commentary, we do more foreign news because we’re not limited by physical space … It goes back to the point I made right at the beginning, if you’re going for scale you can’t just fit in a niche. You can’t say “we’ll be in the red-top end, or the middle-market or the broadsheet end”. Niches aren’t big enough on the internet to survive, so you have to be a much broader church.

You can watch the session in full on Parliament TV and hear from others who appeared before the committee, including Edward Roussel, digital editor of the Telegraph Media Group and Phillip Webster, editor of Times Online.

BBC News: The editors’ views from the Leveson inquiry

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BBC News has compiled a table of views as shared by newspaper editors at the Leveson inquiry, giving readers the opportunity to closely compare the standpoints of each editor on key points.

The table sets out “how the editors’ evidence compares” and includes key points on given by the editors “on researching stories”, “media regulation” and a “key quote”.

See the table here.

See Journalism.co.uk’s coverage of the Leveson inquiry here.