Category Archives: Events

Entrepreneurial journalism – how Newcastle University is shaping up

1 Reply

In an industry facing fewer jobs and more journalism graduates, the concept of the entrepreneurial journalist (an idea freelancers will be familiar with) is growing in popularity.

Earlier in the year, Birmingham’s City University launched MAs in Online Journalism and Freelance Journalism with a strong focus on entrepreneurship and enterprise.

“We will be exploring new business models and I think that is the chief difference. We’re certainly not relying on the existing structures,” Online Journalism MA course leader Paul Bradshaw said in March.

“Ultimately the industry is crying out for this and there’s clearly a demand for it.”

So it was good to hear from Newcastle University‘s David Baines and Dr Ciara Kennedy at Friday’s Association of Journalism Education (AJE) conference about the institution’s plans to bring more of these skills into journalism training.

The university has already introduced business and entrepreneurial training to other disciplines using its Solvers programme – next year will see the same crossover with the journalism school.

The aim? To teach ‘a new world view, the benefits of an entrepreneurial life, knowledge of how to and the start-up process, networking skills’.

Speaking about the changes, Baines said elements of the traditional freelance journalist would be developed – for example, expanding journalists’ business skills, such as negotiating payment for work.

“To be self-employed is not necessarily the same as being enterprising,” he explained.

“Do journalists want to be a business? They want to be journalists. We’ve a long standing tradition of journalistic values being established against business values.”

The idea of entrepreneurship will be embedded in the curriculum with students expected to bring more than just starting points for their projects to the table, with ideas to develop them beyond the course.

One area that these skills will feed into – hyperlocal publishing and journalism, says Baines: “Hyperlocal – isn’t that a business model that a couple of our graduates could take on? They could take on local papers on their own terms and do it better than them.”

AJE: BJTC and NCTJ – a necessary, but unlikely, marriage?

Leave a reply

“Just don’t mention the m-word – ‘merger’,” whispered my neighbour at Friday’s Association of Journalism Education (AJE) conference before we entered the final session on the role of the accrediting and qualification bodies and the future of journalism training in the UK.

Efforts to bring the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) and Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) together under a Joint Journalism Training Council forum are ongoing and having spoken to interested parties before, Journalism.co.uk has been told that while a single accrediting body is desirable, the two groups are very different beasts, with different structures and remits.

According to panellist at the event and BJTC secretary Jim Latham, the next meeting between the two bodies is scheduled for this week.

“We [previously] allowed ourselves to become distracted by some issues that shouldn’t have got in the way (…) There should only be one accrediting body, but the devil is in the detail,” conceded Latham.

Going forward, less focus will be placed on the differences between the groups – in particular the NCTJ’s revenue streams – and what can be done jointly.

Both BJTC and NCTJ representatives on the panel where cautious about giving a merger date.

“I think Jim and I are largely in agreement about a single body. How we’re going to achieve that remains open to debate,” said Joanne Butcher, director of the NCTJ.

Demand for a single accrediting body was challenged by some members of the audience, support by others.

“The world has changed the definition of what a journalist is. Convergence isn’t the future, it’s already happened,” said Tim Luckhurst, professor at the University of Kent’s Centre of Journalism.

“I only wish we could have one gold standard body (…) It cannot happen quickly enough. It needs to have a single set of exams. The NCTJ wants to make its mark – one way it could do this is by setting a single gold standard for journalism.”

Notes from an award-winning blog: the Brit who scooped the European prize

2 Replies

Last week Etan Smallman won the first ever European blogging conference, the European Journalism Centre’s ‘Th!nk About It’ competition.  Etan blogs at studentjournalist.wordpress.com. Photos from the finale can be viewed on his Flickr stream at this link.

For a country that is sneered at by almost all of its European neighbours for its remote, aloof and imperious attitude towards the European Union, I, a humble Brit, was pretty proud (not say totally shocked) to be crowned the winner of the first ever European blogging competition at its finale in Rotterdam this week.

What’s more, I was by no means the only Brit to triumph at the awards ceremony of ‘Th!nk About It,’ a competition that aimed to get young people talking about the European elections that took place to almost no other fanfare at all earlier this month. In all, four out of the five British participants took home awards – not bad for a country that was derided as ‘ignorant’ at the very same event.

When I sent off a brief email in December to apply to take part in the first project of its kind – a pan-European contest that I dubbed ‘the blogging world’s Eurovision song contest’ – I had very little idea of what I was letting myself in for. Five months, and 39 self-penned blog posts later, to my surprise and delight, I have won the entire competition, beating 80 other competitors from all 27 EU member states – and collecting a top of the range Mac laptop for my efforts.

In January, we all assembled in Brussels for a free trip to meet each other and launch the contest – organised by the European Journalism Centre (EJC), and part funded by the European Commission. They weren’t doing things by halves, with speakers including the BBC’s venerated Europe editor, Mark Mardell, and the FT’s Brussels bureau chief, Tony Barber.

Four-and-a-bit months on in Rotterdam, there was a mood of celebration. Wilfried Rütten, director of the EJC, said that the competition had achieved so much, he was embarrassed by its success. The EJC said it did not have any expectations at the outset and that the project had helped engage young people in European politics.

But aside from the back-slapping and self-congratulatory Euro-love on display in Rotterdam, how successful has the project actually been? This is where it gets tricky. The hard numbers are certainly impressive; these are a few that have been bandied about:

  • Nearly 600 blog posts
  • 2,316 comments
  • Around 5,000 trackbacks from external websites
  • Over 2.7m hits
  • 14,000 Google links

However, the original figure of 81 bloggers taking part is actually one of the most damning. Despite a higher than 1 in 3 chance of coming away with a prize (ranging from iPhones to laptops and Flip cameras) – and two free trips on offer – a significant minority lost interest as soon as they returned to their home countries. Is that a desperate indictment of the EU and its ability to relate to its citizens? I’m inclined to conclude that it is more of a comment on the level of interest and commitment shown by some, who failed even to complete the minimum of one blog post per month to remain in the competition.

Turnout at the EU elections was horrendously low; but even the most ardent new media enthusiasts would be unlikely to claim that blogging should have changed that. A more important question is how many people from outside the Euro bubble actually popped their ear up against out blogging wall. My fear is that we were just an echo chamber; albeit a large, active and impressively innovative one.

However, compared to numerous EU inititatives in the new media arena, Th!nk About It was a roaring success. Its 2.7m or so hits in four months compare extremely favourably to the EU’s public flop of a European television station, EUTube, which notched up a dismal 2.2m viewers in the two years since its launch.

Charlie Beckett, director of media think tank POLIS, criticised the project several months ago: “Irrelevant of new media, I don’t think it is fair to expect bloggers talking in different languages in different media markets to cross boundaries and change political climates,” he said.

That is perhaps true, but nonetheless, actually getting representatives from every EU country talking together – and about the EU, of all things – is undoubtedly an ambitious start. And it does seem that this is only the start, as a quick glance at the current website will attest.

The site has undergone a quick re-brand since the awards ceremony, and the competition is now branded: ‘Round #1’. This could be just the beginning…

#Digital Britain: Ten good links

2 Replies

Yesterday it arrived: the final version of the Digital Britain report. Landline users among us will have to sacrifice around three lattes a year to meet the 50p a month levy for the Next Generation Fund.

Director of digital content for Guardian News & Media, Emily Bell, asked, via Twitter, for two words to sum it up other than ‘colossal disappointment’. An advanced Twitter search showed these responses from her followers: ‘as expected,’  ‘damp squib,’ ‘disappointingly colossal,’ ‘wasted chance’ and ‘too cautious’. However, Bell is now worried she might have been ‘too negative’ in her reaction – but that could just be her going soft, she says.

Ten good links*:

  • 2. ThinkBroadband’s summary. It’s clear and rectifies misunderstandings that might arise from second-hand summaries of the report.
  • 5. PageFlakes page with related links for Digital Britain content: including video, Twitter and blog searches.
  • 7. The BBC opposes top-slicing of the licence fee for independent news consortia, stated by the Trust’s chair Michael Lyons in a BBC press release.

*with an extra two, for luck.


140conf: Follow the event here

Leave a reply

Following on from last month’s UK event on microblogging, Media140, a new event dedicated to all things Twitter takes place today and tomorrow.

140Conf or ‘The 140 Character Conference’ features sessions on Twitter and TV; Twitter and newspapers; and Twitter for newsgathering, with contributions from BusinessWeek.com editor John A. Byrne (@johnabyrne), Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) and Andrew Keen (@ajkeen) amongst others.

You can watch a livestream from 8:45am (EST) today – you’ll need to register and download the player. There’s also a great backchannel site hosting video, tweets, speaker profiles and latest coverage of the conference.

Alternatively, follow the Twitter stream of #140conf tweets below:

Blogging for a cause leads to first prize for Global Voices in Zemanta competition

1 Reply

Last week Global Voices Advocacy won first prize in a ‘Blogging for a cause’ competition run by Zemanta, a platform which aims to ‘accelerate on-line content production for any web user’. More than 60 different websites were nominated; the top 5 to receive the most votes from bloggers won US $1200.

Solana Larsen, managing editor of the GV site, sums the project up like this:

“A project of Global Voices to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists. Its director is Sami ben Gharbia, a Tunisian free speech advocate and blogger.”

Larsen shared a few more thoughts with Journalism.co.uk: “The Zemanta win was fun because it was an opportunity for bloggers in our community to work collectively to raise some funds for Global Voices Advocacy in a simple way. So much of the time, we’re writing posts to draw attention to censorship, arrested bloggers, or different injustices around the world, that it’s nice with a little positive reinforcement.

“Global Voices Advocacy is working on developing more tools and resources for free speech activists online. A lot of the bloggers in this community are individuals who are working on their own or in small networks in different parts of the world, and we are connecting them with others and trying to develop a sense of unity across borders.

“When somebody discovers that their blog is blocked, or receives threats from authorities, it’s good to have someone to talk to about the risks and possibilities. Internet censorship is extremely common, but there are also many brave people who insist on making their voices heard. Sami ben Gharbia is one of them.”

FT scoops six prizes at SOPA awards

Leave a reply

The Financial Times’ Chinese-language website, FTChinese.com, took the prize for best feature writing at the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awards last night.

The site was one of six winners for the FT, which also took home gongs for newspaper design, digital journalism (for reporting on China and the Olympics) and scoop of the year. https://bcasino.io/

FTChinese.com’s winning effort was an article on 30 years of reforms in China.

The title’s Mumbai correspondent, Joe Leahy, was also named journalist of the year at the event.

A full list of the award winners, which also saw the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek recognised, can be downloaded at this link.

Whatever the platform, whatever the technology, it’s the stories, stupid!

3 Replies

Students rise to a challenge if you trust them and give them one. This week they’ve learnt that stories matter. As previously reported on this blog, my students – aided by my colleague Andrew Noakes and me – have been providing live reports on cutoday.wordpress.com from the Play the Game Conference in Coventry. To say this has been a rip-roaring success is an understatement.

The product and its appeal has shocked even hardened hacks like me and my fellow lecturer Andrew. The students have seen and scaled an online Olympus.

Let the figures speak for themselves: over 5000 hits  in four days before the conference has ended; hits received from all over the world and overnight they go up 500; 100+ posts for the week – the daily record so far is 30, from a staff that never exceeded ten. All contributed by students, bar two lecturers giving help and advice.

We’ve provided print, audio and video and a link to a live-stream of some of the events. These lessons in live journalism have taken place in the blogosphere and are very transferable.

But, Content is King. Keep putting up real and interesting stories in all media. The audience will find them and find them very quickly. One video on drug testing had 50 hits in the first five minutes.

It’s the video and audio which sells, especially if original and exclusive. Keep refreshing the stories with new one and new angles. People will come back to find the new. Vary the texture of stories with length and embeds. Remember that you are writing for a net generation with the concentration span of a gnat.

Tease and trail the speakers, profile them, preview them and then report them. Remember what happens in the conference hall (sometimes the live audience was, er, all of 15) is just the front-end; your audience is out there on the blogosphere worldwide. Via the internet, you can reach and refresh parts that many thought could never be reached – and do so in seconds and in some style.

But the central lesson is the obvious one. Produce good readable and accessible journalism. Assemble motivated hacks manqué, get them working quickly and accurately, finding angles and writing the stories up well. But make sure they are subbed and checked – one student was surprised to learn that the Lord Mayor of Coventry had changed since last year… But the mantra should always be – as Jim White of the Daily Telegraph once put it to my students – ‘good copy delivered on time…’

Whatever the platform, whatever the technology, it’s the stories, stupid. No stories, no content, no audience. It’s a lesson we have all learned quickly.

John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He ran cutoday.wordpress.com at the 2009 Play the Game Conference. Most of the hard work was done by his colleague Andrew Noakes and a small group of students of journalism at Coventry University.

Tom Walker Trust opens foreign reporting prize

Leave a reply

The Tom Walker Trust has a great opportunity to journalism students looking to break into foreign affairs.

The Trust, which was founded in honour of the former Times journalist, is offering a £1,000 prize and four weeks of work experience on the Sunday Times’ foreign desk as part of a new award.

Entrants are asked to submit their idea for a foreign news story for the chance to work with a senior correspondent and complete their assignment.

The deadline is July 1 and the winner will be announced later in the month.

To enter, please send an email to Val.Harper [at] sunday-times.co.uk and attach your CV with your entry.

(via University of Sunderland’s Journalism and Public Relations blog)