Category Archives: Events

‘Journalists don’t know what’s really going on abroad’, claims Tesco ethical trading head

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The media is failing its responsibility to report on international aid and corruption in foreign countries, Giles Bolton, head of ethical trading policy at Tesco, said at a debate last night.

“In terms of the complicated answers and questions related to international aid, the media fall short,” he said. He went on to claim that journalists “don’t know what’s really going on abroad”.

The debate, chaired by the BBC’s George Alagiah, followed the ring-fencing of international aid in the Comprehensive Spending Review and asked whether it was time to rethink the approach to funding aid at a time of severe domestic spending cuts.

Bolton told the 300-strong audience at St. Peter De Beauvoir Church, Hackney that “we can’t trust the media to tell us how well money is spent because they don’t go to the remote countries unless there is some sort of tragedy.

“Journalists are only taken to report on the good stories, when a charity pays for them to go. So, we only ever hear about when aid is working. As a result, you can’t trust much of what is said about the aid industry.”

Alagiah faced tough questions concerning BBC policy, with an audience member asking him: “When will the BBC show what’s really going on in countries with corrupt governments?”

He refused to comment on the broadcaster’s coverage but later admitted, in response to a question about his own experience of journalists reporting on aid, that he has “seen both the good and the bad” as a BBC foreign correspondent.

Alagiah and Bolton agreed that more accountability in the media is essential for key issues surrounding aid to be properly understood and resolved.

Lucy Osborne is a freelance journalist. She is currently studying for an MA in Newspaper Journalism at City University London. Her website is http://lucyosborne.wordpress.com.

‘Only when you’ve done your homework…’ Kirsty Wark tells Coventry students that research is key

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I knew that Kirst Wark hadn’t lost it when I saw her doorstepping Nick Clegg all the way up the aisle of Sheffield Town Hall on Election night 2010. He was not best pleased. It was then that I decided to try and get her to speak at Coventry Conversations, and last wednesday she did, delivering a masterclass for Coventry University’s journalism students.

At that same Sheffield election count, Wark was about to do her first live stand-upper into the Dimbleby programme when two old ladies came by, “in a Moris Minor I think”. They told her that they’d not been able to vote, the queues at the polling station were too long and had shut before they could get in. A good yarn, especially as, in line with BBC post Hutton rules, it had two sources – both in the same car. Wark had to make a judgment call based on that hinterland of life in front of and behind the camera. She decided to broadcast thirty seconds later. She was right. She broke the story and it ran for hours overnight and for days afterwards. You cannot teach that nous.

Wark has now been in front of camera for nigh on three decades. She was a producer and director for BBC Scotland when the series producer suggested she take a try the other side of the lens on a political programme. She has never looked back. Today she commands the studio of Newsnight’s Review Show.

Wark left her Coventry town and gown audience in no doubt about the secret of good TV journalism – good research and hard work. Each interview is meticulously researched and brainstormed with her producers. “When you’ve done your homework, only then can you throw it away and respond using what you already know,” she said.

Wark was her own fiercest critic when it came to the interviews that had failed. When asked if she thought her style in the Alex Salmond interview in 2007, which was criticised for being rude and dismissive, was justified, Wark responded frankly: “It was overly aggressive and I later apologised”, she said. She told the audience that her favourite interviews were with Margaret Thatcher and Libertine Pete Doherty. Her least favourite was with disgraced Tory peer Lord Jeffrey Archer – “he was condescending”.

Wark stopped in Coventry on her way from her home in Scotland to London to present Newsnight the next evening. Her day would start early, she explained, with phone calls to the editor of the night at 9am and continue right through to transmission at 10.30pm. Newsnight satisfied her ‘nosiness’ but also meant she had to be constantly abreast of the world through reading, reading and more reading, she said.

She is buoyant about the state of journalism today. She believes no matter who the reporter or what the content, “as long as the journalism is rigorous and investigative it’s valid”. She added that if it helps to introduce a different demographic of viewer to news and current affairs, then programmes such as Sky’s Ross Kemp in Afghanistan have just as much place in the sphere as Newsnight.

So what’s next for Kirsty Wark? With a book and a documentary in the pipeline, as well as Newsnight and the successful Glasgow-based Review Show, ratings are as strong as ever and it appears that she will be a fixture on our screens for some time.

John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He founded and runs the twice weekly Coventry Conversations.

Can journalism students blog their way into a job?

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Having a job in mainstream media before the age of 25 is fanciful thinking for many aspiring journalists, but having a blog could help turn those dreams into a reality.

Just ask young journalists Josh Halliday of the Guardian, Dave Lee of the BBC and Conrad Quilty-Harper of the Telegraph, all of whom credit their blogs as being fundamental to their success.

Speaking at an event at City University London last night, Halliday, a technology and media reporter and Sunderland University graduate, said: “The most important thing I did at university, including my degree, was to blog and get online. That’s what got me the job.”

Lee, who also started blogging while doing his undergraduate degree at Lincoln University, echoed Halliday saying: “I credit everything I’ve got to my blog at university.

“There is no possible way that I would have been able to go into the BBC newsroom on the basis of my degree, or the basis of my freelance cuttings or the basis of my student newspaper. ”

While Quilty-Harper, a data mapping journalist, said having a good blog and presence on Twitter, which he could readily show to potential employers, was what got him his job after he finished his postgraduate degree at City University London.

The three online trailblazers yesterday revealed their experiences of how to “blog your way into a job”:

Build a brand

Using your blog to promote yourself correctly is essential. Halliday stressed the importance of “being yourself” and marketing yourself in a way that is “likable”. While Lee highlighted that you never know what part of your branding will be the most fruitful, so you must do it all.

Conversing, linking and networking
Linked to the above is the idea that you must be in active dialogue with as many people as possible to build a dedicated following. Part of this involves linking to people who are blogging about similar topics to you, to create a mutually beneficial relationship. However, do not forget that, as Halliday highlighted, it’s a “two-way street”. So don’t just push yourself, relationships – especially ones with journalists already in the industry – should develop organically. Use the net’s networks  appropriately.

Be patient

You won’t go from 20 to 5,000 twitter followers overnight. Cultivating a twitter following and developing a community takes time, so don’t get too caught up on this. Make content the driving force behind your website or blog and the community will come.

Find a niche
With an increasing amount of people entering the blogosphere standing out is harder than ever before, but what could really help is finding a topic that nobody else or very few people are writing about. Lee blogged about his experiences of being a student in the developing online media using himself as a “case study”; Halliday created a hyperlocal blog about Sunderland; and Quilty-Harper had a blog about gadgets and technology. All three were unanimously behind blogs having a niche, as Halliday highlighted “journalists are paid to cover a single beat, so just do that”.

Advertising
Increasing traffic to your site is one of the most difficult elements of blogging, but all three panellists deplored the idea of buying advertising space to this end declaring it a waste of money. Instead they advocated networking and conversing with the right people as the means by which to increase your popularity.

Rajvir Rai is a postgraduate journalism student at City University London. He can found on Twitter @R_Rai.

#journalistconf: Best practice examples of social media use in journalism

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I gave a presentation last week at the Social Media Academy’s Journalism in a Social Media World conference. I was asked to give an overview of some of the best practice examples of social media use by journalists and news organisations. It’s not an exhaustive list, but I thought I’d share the presentation and my notes (please forgive any typos in the Scribd document).

Zeit Online: Alan Rusbridger interview – ‘I’m an economic realist’

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Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger was in Berlin this week discussing the future of journalism with Zeit Online’s editor-in-chief Wolfgang Blau.

Rusbridger covers experimentation in the newsroom, Guardian journalists use of social media, collaborative journalism and – the elephant in the room – money and funding for journalism.

Being an economic realist I think it is likely that we’re going to have to operate with a smaller staff in the future because the money is not going to be there in the medium to long term. I think what I’m describing is economic realism too because if you an get over this hurdle where we have to produce all the content and we are the only people who are the authorities and the experts and other people can go along with us on this journey, you’re harnessing a lot of people who’s primary motivation might not be money…

I think we underestimate in journalism the value of publishing and having a voice. If you don’t understand that then you miss one of the most profound things about the web and the social web.

“We’re not opposed to charging for anything,” he later says, making particular reference to apps and the Guardian’s revenue of £40 million last year from digital products.

Murdoch: ‘We will not tolerate wrongdoing’

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Rupert Murdoch yesterday delivered the inaugural Margaret Thatcher Lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies in London. In his speech he spoke in support of an independent press and referred to the occasional “regret” he feels in relation to “editorial endeavour”. There was no direct mention of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, a paper owned by Murdoch’s News International, although he did make a general pledge to “not tolerate wrongdoing”.

Democracy will be from the bottom up, not from the top down. Even so, a free society requires an independent press: turbulent, enquiring, bustling and free. That’s why our journalism is hard-driving and questioning of authority. And so are our journalists. Often, I have cause to celebrate editorial endeavour. Occasionally, I have had cause for regret. Let me be clear: we will vigorously pursue the truth – and we will not tolerate wrongdoing.

Now, it would certainly serve the interests of the powerful if professional journalists were muted – or replaced as navigators in our society by bloggers and bloviators. Bloggers can have a social role – but that role is very different to that of the professional seeking to uncover facts, however uncomfortable.

His speech can be found in full here, or for a more visual representation see the Wordle below (note: we removed the words “Margaret Thatcher” from the visualisation):

RBI to host hacks/hackers day in November

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Reed Business Information (RBI) is hosting an event for journalists and programmers interested in working together on data visualisation. The one-day “hack day”, which will take place on 29 November, will be run with the help of data scraping project ScraperWiki.

Speaking on the ScraperWiki blog, Karl Schneider, editorial development director at RBI, explains the thinking behind the event:

Data journalism is an important area of development for our editorial teams in RBI

It’s a hot topic for all journalists, but it’s particularly relevant in the B2B sector. B2B journalism is focused on delivering information that it’s audience can act on, supporting important business decisions.

Often a well-thought-out visualisation of data can be the most effective way of delivering critical information and helping users to understand key trends.

We’re already having some successes with this kind of journalism, and we think we can do a lot more. So building up the skills of our editorial teams in this area is very important.

You can register for the event at this link.

TechCrunch editor on AOL, its new ‘sugar daddy’ parent

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At the AOP Digital Publishing Summit on Friday Journalism.co.uk caught up with editor of TechCrunch Europe Mike Butcher, to speak about the recent purchase of TechCrunch by AOL. Listen below to hear Butcher discuss TechCrunch’s dedication to independent editorial and the deal-breaker behind the purchase.

[powerpress]

#AOPsummit: B2B media and the value of communities

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Make a connection with your audience and harness the power of focused communities around your niche, media groups advised publishers during a panel discussion on how B2B publications can benefit from and offer value to their readers.

John Barnes MD of digital at Incisive Media said B2B publishers have to understand who their audiences are.

It’s about identifying a type of focused audience … and understanding what the role, function, value and importance of that individual is so we can sell that focus to advertisers. We have lost sight of that in some of the market as we have been chasing eyeballs instead.

He added that the way forward with this thinking is to create an environment where “it is the most natural thing in the world to hand over details”.

It’s about having the environment to encourage sharing … if we haven’t got that we haven’t got a media business.

Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch Europe which was recently bought by AOL, added that the chase for communities is historical in the publishing industry.

We didn’t chase registrations, what we chased was communities. If you look at what publishers have done historically … in the first instance it was to chase communities. They didn’t necessarily have data about them but they chased them and enlightened those communities.

In fact he said TechCrunch’s focused community was key to its value for AOL: “it was bought for this high value community”.

Tim Potter, managing director of business publishing at Centaur Media added that community focused platforms such as blogs when used within media brands will encourage high interaction.

If you give people blogging tools within our existing media brands  you get a very high level of interaction, even in markets where you wouldn’t expect it … it will take a lot for a blog to come along and challenge established media brands providing they do the right things.

But as long as the publisher continues to provide informed content, he added, it will remain “central to the debate”.

Kevin Eyres, managing director for LinkedIn Europe added that the value of the individual must also be remembered by brands.

It’s about not losing sight of humans. When you’re talking about B2B it’s a business person purchasing from another business person. Companies are leveraging their best assets – their employees – to make that more personal connection back and forth with whoever that purchaser is going to be.

#AOPsummit: Media leaders encourage experimentation and openness to failure

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Experiment, experiment, experiment – that was the message from the heads of ‘leading media’ at the AOP Digital Publishing Summit this morning.

Google UK’s MD Matt Brittin said publishers can’t afford not to experiment.

Be distinctive … there’s an explosion of choice, it’s a very different world … We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next year, no one knows  … experiment and get feedback. Audiences, readers and advertisers have got more choice than ever before … You think it’s fast now, mobile devices … are going to change the world much more than the last five years. At least we’re in a situation now where we recognise this is the new normal.

… If Fast Flip is Google’s next failure, well great. If you don’t fail then you’re just investing in low risk projects… You need to fail … now everything you do can cost you very very low amounts … if you don’t experiment, you don’t learn.

Tim Brooks, managing director for Guardian News and Media seemed to agree.

We should also be taking more risks, not fewer risks. The danger is that we try to de-risk in this environment, but digital media means you can fail more cheaply – you have to try lots of things because nobody knows which ones will work.

Stephen Miron, CEO for Global Radio, added that every organisation needs to find its own model.

There’s no template solution. We get hung up about ‘look what their doing, lets follow that’ … we need to look at what we individually do well and follow that through.

Mark Wood, UK CEO for Future Publishing added that while the near future for innovation is in mobile, it won’t be at the expense of valued content.

We’re going to see a lot more mobile apps of various descriptions, but the thing I find reassuring is throughout all these changes people still go back to the same sort of content they like to absorb and consume.

Magazines in 50 years … will still be there in some form or another. If everyone keeps hold of that, however it’s delivered, whether it’s through print or on an app is semi-irrelevent as long as you can monetise it. We’ve seen already quite dynamic changes … for example the TechRadar website’s traffic is now way ahead of Cnet in the UK … that shows what you can do with a bit of creativity and by going for a space in the digital market.

During the debate Brittin seemed to hint towards a discussion on rumoured plans for Google to introduce a micropayments system, believed to be called Newspass, by saying that “over time we’ll see the advent of a much bigger range of ways for people to pay for services”. But he quickly killed off any such ideas when questioned about it.

Don’t believe everything you read. It’s true that there has been a lot of speculation about micropayments. I have not got anything to announce. But I hope we can do something to push forward the way people can pay.

He added that it was vital for the user to always be offered choice: “be transparent and give choice, to opt in and out to different levels”, he said.