Category Archives: Events

BBC must return to Reithian values, says Bakewell

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The BBC can only be saved by a rediscovery of the values that John Reith placed on public service broadcasting, Dame Joan Bakewell counselled at an event on Wednesday.

Bakewell warned that broadcasters have a responsibility to look back to the ethos of the ‘golden age’ of public service broadcasting of the 1960s in order to deal with the challenges presented by multiplying competition.

“At a time when so many other institutions, financial, parliamentary, are deeply flawed, the battered and tattered ideals of public service broadcasting survive. If a societal consciousness is creeping back into public affairs, then now is the time to celebrate public service broadcasting and see it flourish again,” she said.

Bakewell described Public Service Broadcasting as the ‘lynchpin’ of Britain’s culture and democracy and argued that it must have the courage of its own judgments in order to survive as the ‘bedrock on which the BBC’s worldwide reputation relies’.

Her reflections came in the form of the annual James Cameron Memorial Lecture, which she delivered to an audience made up of journalists and students at City University in London.

Gary Younge, the US-based Guardian reporter and columnist, was presented with the James Cameron Memorial Award for his reporting written with ‘passion and compassion’ in the run up to the election of Barack Obama.

Younge’s nod to Kanye West’s recent faux pas at the MTV Video Music Awards had the room in fits of giggles. “Beyonce was the greatest writer of all time,” he said.

Also posthumously honoured with a special award for those who fight to hold those in power to account was Sri Lankan editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was murdered in January. As editor of Sri Lanka’s Sunday Leader he was known as a forceful critic of the challengers to liberal democracy.

Wickrematunge wrote a ‘living obituary’ predicting his own death as a result of his work as a journalist shortly before his murder. Sonali Wickrematunge, Lasantha’s wife, said that the award would serve as ‘a beam of hope for those who continue to risk their life for the truth’.

Freelancers – how well are you marketing yourself online?

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It’s your last chance to book on Journalism.co.uk and Guy Clapperton’s ‘Introduction to online marketing for freelance journalists’ course, to be held at Journalism.co.uk’s central Brighton offices on Monday 12 October 2009.

For the low price of £85 + VAT, we’re offering attendees a place on this course as well as a year’s subscription to our online database of freelance journalists. This is normally £50 per year, so depending how you look at it you’re either getting yourself exposure to our 120,000 plus monthly unique users for free, as well as learning how to get the best possible exposure for yourself, or you’re making a great saving on a course that’s been described as ‘really useful’ and an ‘enjoyable evening’ by previous delegates with an ‘excellent’ tutor.

Guy Clapperton, who will be teaching the course, is a veteran freelance journalist, media trainer, and social media expert, and the author of ‘This is Social Media: Tweet, Blog, Link and Post Your Way to Business Success’. Guy will be taking you through all the steps you need to take in order to ensure you’re getting your name out there online, in the right avenues and in the best way. With the current economic climate, increasing numbers of journalists are looking at turning freelance, so it’s advisable to take advantage of any opportunity to make yourself stand out from the crowd that you can.

Your listing will include the following:
* a profile page in Journalism.co.uk’s database of freelance journalists
* a subscription to our freelance newsletter
* access to our members-only freelance forums, where you can find exclusive job leads sourced by us for you
* get your name out there to our unique community of visitors from all sectors of journalism and publishing.

For more information on the course and to book, please visit the course page.

#aop3c: Think duration, not page views for online video says MSN’s Peter Bale

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In a session discussing the future of video at the the AOP Publishing Summit 2009 (also featuring BBC Worldwide, ITN On, CBS Interactive, InSkin Media) Peter Bale, executive producer for Microsoft UK said that in the next 18 months to two years we will see a shift in the way video is measured for advertising purposes.

Duration spent watching, or ‘dwell-time’ will become a much more important measure than page views, and the format of advertising itself will change – with more connection between television advertisements and online campaigns, Bale predicted.

Listen to Bale talking to Journalism.co.uk here:

“Page views at the moment are used – rightly or wrongly – as a proxy for ad impression delivery,” said Bale.

“For example, we deliver something like 10 billion page views on MSN in UK, a couple of years ago it was only five billion – and there is a vague approximation between that and ad impression – it’s become a necessary currency for us for advertisers and it does give you a sense of scale, but what it doesn’t give you is a good measure of engagement.

“It is not information that works tremendously well with a video intense site or this environment where people are trying to make more money off the web.

“Average revenue per user and dwell time are going to become much more important. It’s about time online, as opposed to pages moved through and consumed.”

It will require new advertising formats, he said. “It will become more engaging, it is going to become more easy to click on an ad in a video environment.”

In addition, television advertising will become more interactive and connected to the online offering:

“I despair at the moment at the lack of real connection to a major brand’s web campaign – it rarely gets promoted effectively on television,” said Bale. “It’s as though people are working in two completely different environments.”

NCTJ and PTC shortlists for new journalist awards released

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Two UK industry awards focusing on new journalists have announced their shortlists for 2009.

The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) Excellence in Journalism Awards cover six categories and recognise the best journalism students completing NCTJ-accredited courses and journalists/photographers with less than two years’ experience on the job.

The full shortlist is available on the NCTJ awards site. The winners will be announced at the Society of Editors conference on November 16.

Meanwhile the Periodicals Training Council’s (PTC) shortlist for the New Journalist of the Year Awards is now online.

The winners of the eight categories will be announced at a ceremony on November 20.

#aop3c: Reuters’ Project Insider: ‘narrowcasting’ in beta

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Chris Cramer, global editor for multimedia at Reuters, dropped a new project into a speech at the AOP Publishing Summit 2009 that welcomed social media as the ‘first resort’ in newsgathering.

The development in question is Project Insider, he outlined in the next session, and will see clients provided with specifically targeted content via PDAs.

It’s narrowcasting, not broadcasting, Cramer said.

Currently in beta for selected clients, it delivers live financial markets coverage, analysis and breaking news through a web-based TV service.

Users are able to tag specific points in videos to share with others, and can engage with producers to invite them ask questions of an interviewee, he said.

“It doesn’t attempt to replicate what’s already in the marketplace,” Cramer said, adding that ‘at this moment in time, it’s unique’.

And – he was speaking in a social media session – it is ‘driven on the basis of social media. There is a sub-strata in there which is social media’.

“It’s about the financial professional who wants to know smart data now before their competitors,” he said.

More to follow from the summit throughout the day: in the meantime, follow this tweet stream featuring choice 140ch updates by digital journalists and publishers at the event.

#aop3c: eHow.com users earning entire living from ‘How-To’ site

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Demand Media’s eHow.com is allowing ‘power users’ to make their entire living by writing for the site, Shawn Colo, co-founder and head of M&A, Demand Media told delegates at the AOP Publishing Summit 2009.

With 50 million unique users a month, and ‘just shy’ of  one million articles published, some of the site’s contributors are earning ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ per year, via its ‘writer compensation programme’.

The site, which provides instructional solutions for users – anything from how to remove a red wine stain to dealing with computer software problems – was bought by Demand Media in 2006, but really expanded in 2008: “We knew it was critical to have a killer application,” said Colo.

Richard Rosenblatt started up Demand Media in 2006 with US $320 million in investor funding. Its family now also includes LIVESTRONG.COM, Trails.com, GolfLink.com, Cracked.com, Mania.com, Pluck Enterprise, Pluck on Demand, and eNom.

More to follow from the summit throughout the day: in the meantime, follow this tweet stream featuring choice 140ch updates by digital journalists and publishers at the event.

#AOP3C: Coverage from the AOP annual conference 2009

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Journalism.co.uk will be covering today’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP) one-day conference in London.

Topics on the agenda include social media for publishers, the paid content debate and mobile applications, with speakers including Reuters multimedia chief Chris Cramer, Demand Media’s Shawn Colo and Mecom’s David Montgomery.

A full line-up and programme for the day is available on the AOP website.

You can follow our coverage on this blog and our main news channel.

To follow tweets from the event, use the #aop3c hashtag or see the stream below:

Prizewinning journalism students: what do they do next?

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As reported by HoldTheFrontPage last week, two students from the Journalist Works fast-track course based in Brighton, were recently awarded top marks in the NCTJ Public Affairs examinations, scooping them £250 prizes.

Journalism.co.uk is keeping an eye on the type of jobs newly trained journalists are going onto: Nicky Newson, who came top in the central government exam, is about to start work as a researcher at the House of Lords.

“One of the topics I was asked about at my interview was reform of the House of Lords, which we had covered as part of the syllabus, so studying at Journalist Works definitely helped me to land a great new job, even though I haven’t gone down the route of becoming a news reporter,” Newson said.

If you’ve just finished your NCTJ examinations, drop us a line and let us know what you’re going on to do. Is it a traditional journalism job, or something a little different? What benefit was the journalism training? You can email judith or laura [at] journalism.co.uk, or send us a tweet via @journalismnews.

The presentation, from left:  Nicola Newson, Paula O’Shea, Nicola Corfield

journworks

Anna Kirah: Every news org CEO needs a mentor aged 18-22 (audio)

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Last week at the WAN-IFRA ‘Managing the Crisis’ conference, Anna Kirah, design anthropologist and vice-president of CPH Design, argued that reader/user habit surveys were useless (unsurprisingly, she advocated an ethnographic approach) and suggested that every newspaper exec get themselves a young mentor, aged 18-22…

Here she is talking to Journalism.co.uk:

“I think we are living in a revolution gap; it’s not a generation gap. We’ve always had generation gaps where the older people think differently from the younger people and there are all sorts of tensions there.

“This is a revolution gap: it’s between the industrial revolution way of thinking, and a new way of thinking that has developed through interconnectivity.

“Whether we call them the net generation, or digital natives, or Gen Y, it doesn’t matter. But these people think differently, act differently, behave differently, experience the world in completely different ways and newspapers have taken far too long to realise the potential there.

“I think the best way to do that as a CEO is hiring a mentor who is between the ages of 18 and 22, who sits with them and explains what they are doing.

“It will require the CEO to be humble and not put value judgement on it. But learn what the excitement is about; what it gives to these people. What it gives them has filtered into other generations now.”

London Film Festival competition for young journalists

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A great opportunity for aspiring film journalists from the British Film Institute (BFI).

As part of its London Film Festival later this month (October 14-29), the BFI is offering one 16-24-year-old the chance to interview a director at the festival.

The winning entrant will also be given a training session on interviewing with Nick James, editor of film magazine Sight & Sound.

To enter, applicants must name the director they’d most like to interview and the five questions that they would ask them. Send this along with your name, age and phone number to journalismcompetition [at] bfi.org.uk.

Deadline for entries in 10am (BST) on October 12.