The PTC New Journalist of the Year Awards 2009 will open for entry on July 22.
Now in their 26th year, the awards recognise emerging talent in the industry
Last year’s awards saw a double win for Caterer and Hotelkeeper’s Tom Vaughan and multiple prizes for CMP Information.
This year’s winners will be announced at a ceremony at Vinopolis on London’s South Bank on Friday November 20.
John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He was born in Guyana and regularly returns there to help build local media, print and TV. His last post looked at how summits bring out the lazy side of journalists.
The herd mentality is alive and well and living in the sun. I’ve just seen it at the Caricom (Caribbean Community) Summit (July 2-5) of 14 Presidents and Prime Ministers with the Caribbean media. A pack without teeth. The government of Guyana established a very slow accreditation system and a media centre in the conference venue. But the media centre was a broiler room. Up to 20 hacks, computers (usually working), tea, coffee and confusion.
The highlight of the day was often lunch, with the President’s press secretary presiding over just who got fish and who got meat. Big decisions. He and others in the communications team at the Summit did precious little briefing, precious little spinning in advance, or even ex post facto. That was left to the principals and usually in impromptu corridor press conferences where they were waylaid by journalists. The worst sort of herd mentality. One hooked the prey while the others piled in, often not knowing what questions to ask, but not wanting to miss out on the action. A journalism flash mob with plenty of heat and not much light. The leaders love this. They can bluff on a wide variety of subjects for several minutes to feed morsels to the hungry hacks.
Away from the pack, the masters of journalism. None bigger than Rickey Singh. Sitting typing in the corner of the media centre. Thousands of words over three days for his outlets in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados (where he lives) and his native Guyana. He is a one-man Caribbean press corps and the institutional memory for the travelling correspondents covering the Summit. Any historical or other questions they ask Rickey out loud. He knows all the answers. He has lived them.
Rickey has been to virtually all the Summits since the founding of Caricom. After 40+ plus years as a journalist, often against the odds and the subject of official displeasure, there are no new names and faces for Rickey in the Caribbean. Just watch him in action, prowling the corridors of power at a big event like this. No media scrums for him. As he walks around casually, his name is all. The powerful stop him and talk to him. Now, that’s contacts and working them. Rickey pumps out news, features, opinion, the works from his corner position in the Summit newsroom. The ultimate freelance, the ultimate journalistic craftsman.
For many Guyanese journalists, a little knowledge is enough. The big issues they leave to politicians and their prolix communiqués. The hacks take what they are offered, too often with little or no deep questioning. Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson was given a very easy ride in a press conference he called after facing criticism for an exercise in ‘ethnic cleansing’. It’s not a pretty sight to see how easily young journalists can be kept happy.
There we have it; experience against naivety, age against youth, solo against the pack. This is Georgetown but it could be Glasgow or the Westminster lobby. Herds don’t need cold weather to exist.
Bill Thompson, well-known for the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet, and his pieces for the BBC (e.g) gave a version of his ‘Two Cultures’ speech [which he first made in Cambridge on May 27] at OpenTech in London last Saturday. It was billed like this:
“It’s fifty years since CP Snow’s famous lecture on the Two Cultures – science and literature. We seem to have a different divide these days, between ‘people like us’ and the rest. What might be done about this?”
Thompson (@billt on Twitter) believes that computer literacy should mean more than word processing, a sentiment that seemed to go down well in the hall. You can read more about his views in this BBC article: “We don’t need a nation of programmers, but we do need to be confident that everyone knows what programmers do and what programs look like.”
Richard Elen (@Brideswell) filmed it, and has helpfully shared this video on the Bridewell Associates Blog. So if you weren’t there, sit back and enjoy some glorious geekery; even the intro includes a joke about writing in binary (his title for his speech is the ’10 cultures’)…
Bill Thompson on “The Two Cultures Problem”: OpenTech 2009 from Richard Elen on Vimeo.
Watch the Frontline’s event on the media and anti-terrorism legislation here, at 7pm tonight:
Here’s the run-down from the Frontline Club:
An ‘On The Media’ discussion in association with the BBC College of Journalism
How concerned should photographers and journalists be about anti-terrorism legislation that came into force earlier this year making people taking pictures of the police potentially subject to fines or even arrest? A mass picture-taking event outside Scotland Yard organised by the National Union of Journalists earlier this year reflected widespread concerns that section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act would extend powers already being used to harass photographers.Under the Act eliciting, publishing or communicating information on members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’ is subject to a 10 year maximum sentence.
The Home Office has insisted that the Act does not target the press but the number of photographers and camera crews who claim they have been prevented from taking pictures has increased.
On the other side of the lens there is growing evidence that Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) are not only collating information on protestors and campaigners but also photographers and journalists who report on demonstrations.
The emergence of video footage following the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in April demonstrates how significant images can be.
Claims by Val Swain and Emily Apple that they were unlawfully arrested during the Kingsnorth Climate Camp has again put the spotlight on the issue of police surveillance at demonstrations. And also raises questions about the status of citizen journalists in the eyes of the police.
How much of a challenge to the freedom of the press photographers, freelances of citizen journalists – to bear witness during protests could Section 76 become?
Panel: Peter Clarke, former head of counter terrorism for Scotland Yard
Marc Vallée is a London based photojournalist who is currently working on a long-term project to document political protest and dissent in modern Britain
Turi Munthe, CEO of Demotix, a citizen-journalism website and freelance photo agency
Angus Walker, UK editor, ITV News
Moderator: Margaret Gilmore is a freelance writer and broadcaster and senior research fellow with the leading independent think tank, RUSI, where she specialises in homeland security, covering terrorism and Olympic security
Reporting from ‘the EU in the sunshine’ where hacks are hunting in packs
John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He was born in Guyana and regularly returns there to help build local media, print and TV.
Summits bring out the worst in hacks. Lazy journalism by design. You arrive, get spoon-fed information, report it and then leave. You get fed and watered too. No need for digging, no need for investigation.
The Caricom (Caribbean Community – think EU in the sunshine) Summit, which opened last week here in Georgetown, Guyana, is no exception. Fifteen regional leaders and distinguished others from all round the world propelled at speed by police outriders all over the Capital City to a brand new Conference Centre. They ‘meet’ for three days to discuss the pressing issues of crime, security, economy and more in the region. But, like all summits it is a sham. The team have long been at work preparing the final communiqué. One person told me minutes after the end of the Opening Ceremony last night that the final communiqué was done and dusted – just crossing the ‘T’s’ and dotting the ‘I’s’ left to do. Where is the journalism in reporting that charade?
But the 60 or so journos from all over the Caribbean who are here go through the motions. The Guyana Government has set up a press centre in an anteroom of the summit to feed regular morsels to the hungry hacks. They run on the spot, faithfully file and come back for more. The herd instinct in action.
There is one real story at this talkfest. The Prime Minister of Barbados, David Thompson, is it. He is a pariah in the Community as it heads towards integration. He wants to clear his Little England island of illegal Guyanese immigrants. His police round them up early morning, interrogate then and so far 53 have been dispatched South in two months. Caricom is supposed to be about the free movement of labour. Thompson held a bizarre press conference on arrival in Georgetown. Local journos failed to ask the right questions. But the ‘Bajan bans Guyanese’ story will run and run.
The local media hunt firmly in packs – whatever their race or the politics of their paper/TV station. At the ceremonial opening last night, the usual suspects were present. All corralled in the lobby or in one small room. All using the feed from the State broadcaster as their only source. Some of them will not file for a day or so. ‘Soon come’ journalism is common here. But how many of the Guyana Press Corps will have the courage to announce the opening as a non-story? Nothing really happened. Fifteen men in suits sat on a stage and listened to six of their number drone on for two hours. Sound bites aplenty there were not.
More to follow on the conference, which ran July 2-5. Over the weekend, the Premiers and the Pack headed off to the Chinese built Conference Centre to go through the elegant quadrille that’s called ‘reporting’ major summits. Me – I got hold of a copy of the final communiqué and sat beside a hotel pool reading it and reporting it. If you are going to be lazy, do it right.
Round-up: Media Futures conference 2009 – ‘Beyond Broadcast’
“Gradually more power cuts – the future is more certain than you think (…) With 90 per cent certainty I can tell you that tomorrow will be Saturday.”
James Woudhuysen, professor of forecasting, De Montford University“Content is not king, it’s about how people use it. SMS is one of the most expensive mediums but still massively popular.”
Matt Locke, commissioning editor, education new media, Channel 4
The above quotes were just a small sample of the varied and interesting points discussed at Media Futures 2009 in London last Friday.
The conference explored the future of the media as we move ‘beyond broadcast’.
Speakers and guests included the BBC’s Richard Sambrook, POLIS director Charlie Beckett and TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher.
Themes for discussion included desirable, feasible, challenging and viable futures for the industry.
Television
Video on Demand (VOD) was a popular topic, which divided opinions. Avner Ronen, founder of Boxee, a video service that connects your TV to online streaming media, argued that personal video recorders (PVR) were soon to be obsolete.But as media analysts, including Toby Syfret from Enders, were quick to point out, TV still has a lot of life left in it. According to his analysis, despite the success of services such as the BBC iPlayer, watching streamed content remains a niche market with just 0.5 per cent of total viewing time being spent on computers.
Newspapers
Panellists were agreed on the future for local newspapers. Patrick Barwise, professor of management and marketing at London Business School said: “Local newspapers won’t come back, the classified advertising model that held them together has changed.”
After the conference I ran into Bill Thompson, the BBC’s technology columnist. Listen below to hear his views on the future for journalists:
Alex Wood is a multimedia journalist and social media consultant based in London. You can find him on twitter here.
Science journalism: a row
This week is the World Conference of Science Journalists (#WCSJ). This is what the Independent’s Steve Connor had to say in an article entitled ‘Lofty medics should stick to their day job.’
“The sixth World Conference of Science Journalists is underway in London. I can’t say it’s going to change my life, as I missed out on the previous five, but I did notice that it has attracted the attention of a bunch of medics with strong views on the state of science journalism today.”
Connor picked up on a gathering advertised by Ben Goldacre (a post-event meet-up on July 1 with Petra Boynton and Vaughan Bell) and quoted Goldacre’s website, labelling him as the ‘bête noir’ of science journalists.
“All three speakers are gainfully employed by the public sector so they don’t actually have to worry too much about the sort of pressures and financial constraints the mainstream media are under. But they nevertheless condescended to offer some advice on the sort of ‘best practice guidelines’ I should be following, for which I suppose I should be eternally grateful.
“But their arrogance is not new. Medical doctors in particular have always had a lofty attitude to the media’s coverage of their profession, stemming no doubt from the God-like stance they take towards their patients. Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say their profession is broken, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly – not yet anyway.”
Ouch. Goldacre spotted it and comments beneath his post, and Connor’s article, are flowing pretty fast. Goldacre also reproduces a letter and email sent to the Independent, on his blog.
- Here’s the letter sent to the Independent (unpublished as yet):
Dear Sir,
Your science journalist Steve Connor is furious that we are holding a small public meeting in a pub to discuss the problem that science journalists are often lazy and inaccurate. He gets the date wrong, claiming the meeting has already happened (it has not). He says we are three medics (only one of us is). He then invokes some stereotypes about arrogant doctors, which we hope are becoming outdated.
In fact, all three of us believe passionately in empowering patients, with good quality information, so they can make their own decisions about their health. People often rely on the media for this kind of information. Sadly, in the field of science and medicine, on subjects as diverse as MMR, sexual health, and cancer prevention, the public have been repeatedly and systematically misled by journalists.
We now believe this poses a serious threat to public health, and it is sad to see the problem belittled in a serious newspaper. Steve Connor is very welcome to attend our meeting, which is free and open to all,
yours
(Drs) Vaughan Bell, Petra Boynton, Ben Goldacre
In other WCSJ news, Goldacre wasn’t too happy with the panel addressing science and investigative journalism yesterday. He tweeted from the event: “so what about investigative science journalism done by bloggers? not a single person addressed the question. these ppl need to read more.”
Afghanistan in the media: ‘The Good War?’ Public meeting – July 13
A public meeting is to be held in London on July 13, hosted by Media Workers Against the War / Stop the War Coalition.
The Good War? Afghanistan in the media
Speakers include:
- Stephen Grey, investigative journalist embedded with British troops in Helmand and author: ‘Operation Snakebite: The Explosive True Story of an Afghan Desert Siege’, and ‘Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program’.
- Guy Smallman, photojournalist, recently returned from Helmand.
- Seumas Milne, columnist, the Guardian.
7pm, July 13: Friends Meeting House (small hall), 173 Euston Road, NW1 2BJ, opposite Euston station.
Gillian Tett at the Frontline Club: tonight 7.30pm GMT
This will be good. From the Frontline Club blog:
‘The credit crisis, financial journalism and scaremongering’ with Financial Times Assistant editor and journalist of the year Gillian Tett at the Frontline Club tonight. Gillian will be in discussion with BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders.
“When she picked up her prize for journalist of the year at the British Press Awards recently, the Financial Times’ Gillian Tett claimed the accolade was a vindication for ‘the geeks’ and ‘anoraks’. The assistant editor of the Financial Times has been documenting the rise of credit derivatives banking since she was appointed in 2005 to cover the the rather unglamorous capital markets patch. But it was only after the full consequences of the risks bankers had been taking became so catastrophically apparent that Gillian Tett was promoted from ‘geek’ to luminary, regularly making appearances on TV and radio.”
Watch live here at 7.30pm GMT:
Bloggertariat vs Commentariat – who’s winning? (does it matter?)
Last night Journalism.co.uk picked up its laptop and notepad, and sat on the fence. Sitting in the audience of the Editorial Intelligence/Edelman/Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism ‘Commentariat vs Bloggertariat, Who is winning?’ event typing away definitely had me branded as a ‘blogger’ by some of the established comment writers in the row in front, who seemed to throw a glance every time liveblogging was mentioned.
Blogger/reporter/observer – it was a night of arbitrary definitions – some of which were fortunately challenged by the panel of:
Martin Bright, New Deal of the Mind founder and Spectator blogger
Mick Fealty, political blogger at Slugger O’Toole and the Telegraph’s Brassneck blog
Iain Dale, Iain Dale’s diary
David Aaronovitch, comment writer for The Times
Anne Spackman, comment editor for The Times
‘versus’
Before attending the event I had some reservations about setting up bloggers/blogs vs comment writers/comment – so it was good to see this artificial opposition challenged by both panel and audience.“They are part of the same thing – it is part of the same continuum. I think it’s an artificial distinction,” said Bright.
But there are new rules and etiquette that blogging, and the technology which powers it, have introduced, which are shaping the future of comment.
“Bloggers have been able to hold traditional commentariat to account. That gets an instant reaction from the commentariat because they’re not used to be held to accountable in this way,” explained Dale.
“When you do comment quickly you do make mistakes and you have to hold your hands up.”
And if the future of journalism and the business of publishing is online, bloggers are the pathfinders, added Fealty:
“We’ve changed the behaviour of a commentariat. It isn’t bloggers that have ripped the revenue out of the big newsgatherers – it’s Google,” he said.
“Online bloggers have started a party that is irresistible to the commentariat. Spreadability is the new currency. To do that you need a personal audience as a blogger.
“They [the commentariat] are better writers, but there are many more of us than there are of them (…) We’re getting stories from the little people, not the big people that the commentariat are. The people we talk to aren’t always the best behaved witnesses.
“We’re not obliged to fit in with someone else’s brand. Bloggers are brand builders, the new brand online (…) is us speaking directly from the gut.”
Anonymity and NightJack
Last night’s event was timely given the debate over the Times decision to out anonymous policeman blogger NightJack – despite a punchy start from Iain Dale, neither Spackman nor Aaronovitch would be drawn on the issue.However, Spackman did say she agreed with Jeff Jarvis that social media sites were breaking down anonymity.
Aaronovitch went further saying he could see previously ‘anonymous’ political sources in comment writing being unmasked and suggested that this was a necessary development.
Bright agreed and said he hoped this would happen ‘organically’: “It is changing, but at the moment it isn’t changing fast enough.”
For journalists using social and new media sources, transparency is needed, added Aaronovitch: “There are synergies there (…) I use bloggers as sources of information I wouldn’t otherwise get. There’s a form of democratisation there. It’s unreliable democratisation – I don’t really know what I’m getting or who I’m getting it from.”
Twitter challenge and shaping the future
The commentariat has been with us for 25 years, but how the shape of the ‘bloggertariat’ will shift in the same time is almost unpredictable, he added.“I absolutely love what the new media has created (…) the possibilities it has created for me and everyone else.
“We couldn’t even imagine two years ago that there’d be a form of 140 characters and we had no idea how it would apply itself to situations like Iran.
“‘Commentariat vs bloggertariat’ suggests a settled contention that we know where everybody is and everybody’s going.”
Indeed the rise of Twitter was agreed to be a somewhat unforeseen challenge to the dominance of blogging over traditional comment.
“I’ve yet to read a great classic blog post. I think it’s getting close with Twitter. Every now and then you do read a fantastic tweet,” said Bright.
But, commenting on yesterday’s launch of the UK Investigations Fund, Bright said he was concerned that developments and the future of neither the bloggertariat or commentariat would accommodate investigative journalism.
UPDATE – you can now download Editorial Intelligence’s podcast of the event.