Category Archives: Events

Future of News meet-up spreads to West Midlands, Brighton and (maybe) Scotland

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Having set-up a discussion group online and run two successful offline meet-ups, Adam Westbrook’s Future of News initiative has inspired new events in the West Midlands, Brighton and Scotland. The idea: to discuss new tools, new directions and share ideas for the future of UK journalism.

West Midlands

The first ever meeting of the West Midlands branch of the Future of News group will be held at Birmingham City University on Monday 8 February at 6.45pm. To register you’ll need to sign up here. All is explained in a post on the site Journal Local and there’s a short introductory video from organiser Philip John:

Brighton

On the same date Journalism.co.uk’s own Judith Townend has set-up the first meeting of the Brighton group – with scheduled talks from the Brighton Argus’ web editor Jo Wadsworth and the Guardian’s Simon Willison. It’s at The Skiff from 7.15pm – and you can sign up here.

Scotland

Both of which have got digital editor Iain Hepburn wondering what demand there is for a similar meet-up in Scotland. If enough people register an interest, he says he’s happy to get the ball rolling. If you are, let Iain know on this blog post.

Orwell Prize blog entries double in 2010

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The Orwell Prize has received a record number of entries for the book, blogging and journalism prizes this year.

The journalists Peter Hitchens and Henry Porter, who both featured in last year’s journalism shortlist, become the first entrants to submit for all three prizes, its organisers announced today.

The entries will now be whittled down to long-lists of 12 (and 18 for the book), to be announced in March 2010, followed by shortlists in April, and the final winners in May. A release from the prize said:

The 84 journalism entries (versus 63 in 2009) include some of the year’s biggest scoops, including Robert Winnett on MPs’ expenses (Daily Telegraph), David Leigh on Trafigura, Paul Lewis on policing, Ian Cobain on torture, Iran and British hostages in Iraq (all The Guardian), Cathy Newman on British politics (Channel 4 News) and Jonathan Calvert and Claire Newell on the House of Lords (Sunday Times). There were also entries for campaigning journalism, including Rachel Cooke on library closures (The Observer) and Stefan Simanowitz on the people of the Western Sahara (freelance).

164 bloggers – nearly double last year’s total of 83 – will do battle in the Blog Prize. Professional journalists, including BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders and Sky News foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall, will compete with blogosphere heavyweights including Iain Dale and Hopi Sen. There appears to be a ‘Nightjack’ effect after last year’s Blog Prize was won by a pseudonymous detective, with a postal worker (‘Roy Mayall’), a teacher (‘Mr Teacher’), a social worker (named after the main character from 1984, ‘Winston Smith’), a police officer (‘PC Bloggs’’) and even a dominatrix (‘sensory regulation’) putting themselves forward anonymously. Joining a number of local councillors are MEPs Dan Hannan and Mary Honeyball, and MPs John Redwood and Douglas Carswell. Legal campaigner Jack of Kent and exiled Jersey senator, Stuart Syvret are among the more campaign-oriented entries.

Hacks and Hackers play with data-driven news

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Last Friday’s London-based Hacks and Hacker’s Day, run by ScraperWiki (a new data tool set to launch in beta soon), provided some excellent inspiration for journalists and developers alike.

In groups, the programmers and journalists paired up to combine journalistic and data knowledge, resulting in some innovative projects: a visualisation showing the average profile of Conservative candidates standing in safe seats for the General Election (the winning project); graphics showing the most common words used for each horoscope sign; and an attempt to tackle the various formats used by data.gov.uk.

One of the projects, ‘They Write For You’ was an attempt to illustrate the political mix of articles by MPs for British newspapers and broadcasters. Using byline data combined with MP name data, the journalists and developers created this pretty mashup, which can be viewed at this link.

The team took the 2008-2010 data from Journalisted and used ScraperWiki, Python, Ruby and JavaScript to create the visualisation: each newspaper shows a byline breakdown by party. By hovering over a coloured box, users can see which MPs wrote for which newspaper over the same two year period.

The exact statistics, however, should be treated with some caution, as the information has not yet been cross-checked with other data sets.  It would appear, for example, that the Guardian newspaper published more stories by MPs than any other title, but this could be that Journalisted holds more information about the Guardian than its counterparts.

While this analysis is not yet ready to be transformed into a news story, it shows the potential for employing data skills to identify media and political trends.

Event news: Will 2010 be the first new media election?

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The Media Society, which is backed by Camelot, and City University have joined forces to arrange a panel discussion on the role of new media in the forthcoming UK general election.

How will 2010’s election differ from past events? What impact will social media have on the coverage and outcome? What will the tole of new media mean for TV, radio and press coverage?

BBC political editor Nick Robinson and City University London professor Ivor Gaber will take part in a panel discussion alongside Matthew McGregor from Blue State Digital, the agency behind Barack Obama’s social media and web campaigns.

Full details of the event, which will be held on 2 March at City University London, are available at this link. The event is free to attend, but delegates must register beforehand to reserve a place.

Coverage during and after the event will be available on Twitter and other channels under the hashtag #vote2.0.

Rosie Taylor: ‘Impossible to get a foot in the door without several thousand pounds’

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Rosie Taylor, who describes herself “an undergraduate student who wants to beat the odds and become a journalist”, comments on the Unleashing Aspirations report that finds journalism “one of the most exclusive middle-class professions of the 21st century”.

“[I]t seems to me to be an irrefutable fact that it is practically impossible to get a foot in the door without several thousand of pounds in your pocket,” she says.

Exclusive? Yes. Middle-class? Definitely. A profession of the 21st century? Maybe not for much longer.

A good one to consider alongside a piece in yesterday’s Observer Magazine by freelance (and recently made redundant) journalist Andrew Hankinson. Hankinson, who stubbornly refuses to give up the print trade he loves, looks at the ‘Lost Generation’ concept across the board, but his own experiences might strike a chord or two with 20-something (and maybe 30-something) struggling journalists. The comments underneath the piece are worth a peruse too – he provoked a mixed reaction.

Journalism’s future at the Frontline: ‘The snails attacked us!’

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“Aagh, it’s the attack of the snails!” is how Kevin Anderson, digital research editor at the Guardian described the news industry’s reaction to revenue destroying online technology – just what were publishers doing in the mid-90s when the web was first growing, he asked.

Anderson, who describes himself as a digital native since the web’s earliest days, joined a panel of fellow digital enthusiasts at the Frontline Club last night to discuss the dreaded ‘future of journalism’ question: RBI’s head of editorial development, Karl Schneider; Peter Kirwan, media columnist; and Ilicco Elia, head of mobile at Reuters Consumer Media.

Kirwan commented how few of the audience actually paid for news. Anderson also played the sceptical card, pointing out how the Guardian was looking to Guardian Professional and events for alternative funding streams.

Anderson also flagged up the potential for social enterprise type start-ups and collaborative working groups, such as ‘newsroom’ cafes in the Czech Republic.

Karl Schneider – who talked about the value of journalism in providing specific business services – said that 60 per cent of RBI’s revenue comes from online. The industry was “too negative” about the scope for digital advertising, he added.

But the most practical tips of the night came from Ilicco Elia, in our breakout groups: if you’ve got a website, build a mobile site. Don’t make it complicated, make it as simple as possible. (If you want pointers,  he’ll no doubt be happy to help point you in the right direction: he’s @ilicco on Twitter.)

The crowd was as good value as the panel, with many of Journalism.co.uk’s favourite media bloggers: organiser Patrick Smith; Adam Tinworth from RBI; Kate Day, head of communities at the Telegraph; Martin Stabe, online editor at Retail Week;  and Jon Slattery… of the Jon Slattery Blog.

Excitingly we also had chance to spot the newbie Guardian beat bloggers (who later headed off for dinner with Guardian Local mentor/boss Sarah Hartley and new  colleague Kevin Anderson): Hannah Waldram (Cardiff); John Baron (Leeds) and Tom Allan (Edinburgh).

Those interested in continuing the discussion should check out the UK Future of News Group – and its regional nests, springing up over the UK (Brighton, South Wales and West Midlands, so far).

Alan Rusbridger: ‘I worry about how a universal pay wall would change the way we do our journalism’

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Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger strongly believes journalists should link to the specialist source. We’re rather fond of that approach here, so here’s his Hugh Cudlipp lecture in full. There’s a video interview at this link.

There is lots to pull out here, but key were his comments on pay walls – he doesn’t believe it makes commercial or professional sense:

[C]harging might be right for some bits of the Murdoch stable of media properties, but is it right for all bits of his empire, or for everyone else? Isn’t there, in any case, more to be learned at this stage of the revolution, by different people trying different models – maybe different models within their own businesses – than all stampeding to one model?

(…)

As an editor, I worry about how a universal pay wall would change the way we do our journalism. We have taken 10 or more years to learn how to tell stories in different media – ie not simply text and still pictures. Some stories are told most effectively by a combination of print and web. That’s how we now plan our journalism. As my colleague Emily Bell is fond of saying we want it to be linked in with the web – be “of the web”, not simply be on the web.

You can also hear Rusbridger talking about pay walls in Coventry two weeks ago: http://podcasting.services.coventry.ac.uk/podcasting/index.php?id=298

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UK Future of News gets local

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Future of News group organiser Adam Westbrook has summarised last week’s meet-up on his blog and also updates on the birth of three UK splinter groups: in Brighton, South Wales and the West Midlands. Full post at this link…

On Sarah Booker’s suggestion, I set up a page for the Brighton group: places are filling fast for our first meeting on 8 February, featuring developer Simon Willison (behind the Guardian‘s MP expenses crowdsourcing project and wildlifenearyou.com) and the Argus online editor, Jo Wadsworth. So put your name down quickly!

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Thoughts from the AJE’s entrepreneurial journalism seminar

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Rob Campbell reports on the AJE conference on journalism education and entrepreneurship:

Meet Danny, Jack and James, of Little White Lies , Bad Idea , and London-Se1. They are young journalism entrepreneurs, who recently shared their thoughts with journalism lecturers at the January seminar of the AJE . Delegates also heard about Goldsmith College’s East London Lines start-up, and about the way students are working with a hyperlocal news site in Newcastle. And the icing on the cake (more icing later) was a skype chat with Jeff Jarvis speaking from his desk at CUNY.

Full post at this link…

(Hat-tip Paul Lashmar)

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