Category Archives: Journalism

2012 – a year of irony for the media industry?

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By Matt Buck, currently engaged as engraver to @tobiasgrubbe

If…

1. Rupert Murdoch revives the News of the World, but online-only.

2. Nick Davies loses his job at the Guardian, but joins the revived News of the World as part of its investigative team.

3. The Guardian poaches the “fake sheikh” Mazher Mahmood from the Sunday Times.

4. A trend develops for floundering local newspapers to be bought out by local entrepreneurs, returning control and vested interest to their communities.

5. The Leveson inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the UK press concludes nothing needs to be done about unethical and/or illegal media practices, as they are redundant because everyone is publicly revealing everything about themselves on social media sites like Facebook anyway.

6. Journalists are officially declared to be bloggers, thereby ending a perennial (and very tedious) debate.

7. The Guardian launches a paywall.

8. Richard Desmond, founder of Northern & Shell and owner of Express Newspapers is knighted in the New Year Honour list and becomes chair of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

9. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and is appointed National Security Adviser to the Obama administration.

10. Facebook buys the Daily Mail, as part of a number of strategic acquisitions of ‘accordant’ news outlets throughout the world.

Thanks to Matt Buck for permission to use his excellent cartoon.

Journalisted Yearly: Arab Spring, phone-hacking and the Eurozon

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

Journalisted Yearly: Arab Spring, phone-hacking and the Eurozone

for the week ending Sunday 18 December

  • The Arab Spring, phone-hacking scandal and the Eurozone debt crisis were the biggest stories of 2011
  • The royal wedding, the natural disaster in Japan and the UK summer riots were extensively covered
  • Reality TV shows such as The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing attracted much media interest…
  • …while deadly mudslides in Brazil, Mexico’s ongoing drug war, the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and mass protests in Chile received little attention

Covered lots this year

Covered little this year

15 most covered UK politicians

Top 10 current European Union leaders

Protests around the world

12 most written about sports stars

Celebrity vs serious

Weird and wonderful

  • ‘The Rapture’ preacher Harold Camping predicted that the world was going to end in May. He then changed the date to October, 67 articles
  • Einstein’s theory of special relativity was called into question when scientists found neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light, 51 articles
  • Silvio Berlusconi released an album of love songs, 30 articles
  • 20 tonnes of marmite were spilled on the motorway in South Yorkshire, 13 articles
  • Six members of the European Space Agency finally ended their 520 days of isolation as part of a simulated space journey to Mars. They were locked in a capsule in a Moscow car park for the experiment, 12 articles
  • A ‘drunk’ moose was found stuck in an apple tree in Sweden, 8 articles
  • In July, the first artificial organ transplant was carried out in Sweden. Scientists created a synthetic windpipe that was covered in the patient’s stem cells, meaning that there was no risk of organ rejection, 6 articles.
  • November saw the world’s biggest zombie march in Mexico City, 3 articles

Newly added words added to the Oxford English Dictionary

Who wrote a lot about…the Leveson Inquiry

Lisa O’Carroll – 71 articles (The Guardian), James Robinson – 57 articles (The Guardian), Josh Halliday – 43 articles (The Guardian), James Cusick – 37 articles (The Independent), Roy Greenslade – 35 articles (The Guardian), Dan Sabbagh – 30 articles (The Guardian), Ben Fenton – 29 articles (Financial Times), Ben Webster – 26 articles (The Times), Cahal Milmo – 24 articles (The Independent), Sarah Rainey – 20 articles (Daily Telegraph)

Long form journalism

Most prolific journalists

(by number of articles)

The Media Standards Trust, which runs journalisted, won the ‘One to Watch’ category at this year’s Prospect Think Tank Awards

Read about our campaign for the full exposure of phone hacking and other illegal forms of intrusion at the Hacked Off website

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Read the MST’s submission to parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions and the House of Lords Communications Select Committee on investigative journalism

The Orwell Prize 2012 is now open for entries following a launch debate on ‘Writing the Riots’

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

Ten things every journalist should know in 2012

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Image by Tormel on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Here are 10 things every journalists should know in 2012. This list builds on 10 things every journalist should know in 2009 and 2010. It is worth looking back at the previous posts as the ideas are still relevant today.

1. Learn from Leveson. The Leveson inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the media has specifically scrutinised journalism and the industry, but social media (and therefore popular opinion) is also holding it to account. Journalists need to be sure that the means really do justify the ends for a story and must be crystal clear about the legalities of their actions. And they need to be more transparent about the sources of stories, where the source will not be compromised. If a story originates from a press release, acknowledge it.

2. Curate and share. Social sharing is a great way for a journalist to add value to their personal output (also see point 9).

You can share articles of interest to you by tweeting, adding curated links on your personal blog and using bookmarking site like Delicious or Pinboard.

Doing so will raise your social capital and help you to engage with your peers, contacts and your audience. Online influence and reputation may well become as important as your CV with the rise of tools like Klout and PeerIndex.

3. Invite others in. Your readers graze content, snacking from several news sites – so help them out. Include links to external content on your news site and post news from other outlets on your organisation’s social networks.

Although readers will still have a brand affinity, they are much more promiscuous in their reading habits, consuming content from a wide variety of news outlets. So acknowledge this and make your news site a destination not just for your journalism by providing links to content from other publishers.

4. Know your niche. Technology is driving the delivery of niche content. Where specialist titles once required consumers to hunt them down via postal subscriptions and visits to larger newsagents, niche content is now delivered instantly online and via apps and is more easily found. Specialise in an area that interests you, blog about the subject and share links.

5. Think multimedia on multiplatform. There has been much debate about tablets revolutionising publishing, but many magazines are simply pushing out their print version via non-interactive PDFs, aided by new delivery systems such as Apple’s Newsstand.

Publishers are opting to offer consumers a laid back reading experience in the knowledge that tablet owners read in the evenings when they have time to consume in-depth news. Publishers will also need to play to the strength of the tablet device, allowing interactive content such as video to shine, and focus on providing consumers with a reading experience that is different to that of a newspaper.

Journalists can be ahead of the game by developing skills in video, audio and other types of multimedia that can be used to enrich storytelling in apps and on other digital devices.

6. Data is not just for geeks. Data is driving journalism but many journalists are afraid of the numbers, spreadsheets and code. But all journalists need to know how to spot the nonsensical numbers in a press release, to be able to accurately make sense of statistics, and understand how to find a story in a study.

Take these examples of data used for investigative journalism from the Guardian: Afghanistan war: every death mapped and reporting the riots. But as well as in-depth data reporting, be aware of the free tools to get you started such as these ManyEyes visualisations, showing the number of women in British politics by party, of Manchester City Council spending or debt in the English premier league.

Be aware that data can be misinterpreted. Take this Express front page splash on a cancer study and read about the pitfalls highlighted by data journalist James Ball in this presentation given at news:rewired, a conference for journalists.

7. Focus on what works – do less to do more. No news organisation however well resourced can achieve everything. Work out what works and strive for excellence in that area.

Sometimes you need to take a step back to see where your priorities should lie. You may realise it is better to write one original feature than chase five stories already in the public domain.

8. Look to new off-site audiences. Don’t just focus on clicks on your site. If 10,000 people listen to your podcast on SoundCloud, 1,000 people click on a Storify or 10 people comment on a story on Facebook without visiting your site they are still being introduced to your title and brand and may visit in the future.

9. Add value. Readers will be able to get a story that is in the public domain from several sources so make your content count. Consider yourself a collective educator by adding value to everything you produce by including links and background information. Think of the way the Guardian’s liveblogs, such as Andrew Sparrow’s politics liveblogs, curate and add context. Act as a guide to your readers on your site, on Twitter and on other platforms.

10. Online communities are no substitute for offline communities. Journalists must still meet people, build trusting relationships and nurture real-world contacts.

  • For a day of inspirational ideas in journalism sign up to attend news:rewired – media in motion, a conference for journalists. It is being held at MSN HQ, London on 3 February 2012.

Sarah Hartley to join Talk About Local as interim managing director

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Sarah Hartley, a community strategist for the Guardian Media Group and part of the team behind its online noticeboard n0tice, is to join community media project Talk About Local as its interim managing director next year, according to an announcement on the site.

The post adds that she will continue to head “the community strategy for n0tice.com” but will also help with “exciting new initiatives in the pipeline” for Talk About Local, which was set up by William Perrin.

In a quote Hartley said:

I am delighted to be starting 2012 tackling some new challenges working alongside the talented and dedicated team at TAL.

We have some exciting new initiatives in the pipeline, helping people find their online voice for communities, as well as continuing to be active in supporting and promoting the many blogs and websites we are already involved with.

Read more here.

Media release: Reuters announces global extension of Journalism Trainee Program

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Reuters announced today that it will be extending its Journalism Trainee Program outside the UK from 2012 and into New York and Asia.

According to a release the scheme, which offers nine-months of training, has been running for 50 years.

University graduates, working journalists and other professionals wanting to move into journalism can apply for the highly competitive program that involves hands-on training in the classroom and on the newsroom floor. Trainees who meet Reuters rigorous standards will be placed in staff jobs and assigned mentors to guide their careers at the company.

In a statement in the release editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, added that this year a total of 15 jobs were made available to trainees.

Active recruitment across universities and top journalism schools is underway to find exceptional talent committed to journalistic excellence. Applicants should exhibit a passion for news, a competitive instinct, and speak and write fluently in English.

Applications can be made online with a closing date of 31 December.

Guardian study finds just 22.6% of journalists are female

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The New York Times newsroom in 1942. By Marjory Collins [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 The Guardian today published the findings from its research into gender in the press, based on “a simple count of newspaper bylines” and those appearing on the Today programme on Radio 4.

The bylines were said to have been taken from articles published in a total of seven newspapers from 13 June to 8 July. The Guardian reports that the research, led by Kira Cochrane, found that women journalists accounted for just 22.6 per cent, as opposed to 77.4 per cent for male reporters.

National papers were all shown to have large gender gaps in byline averages. The Daily Mail and the Guardian recorded the lowest male dominance at 68 per cent male and 72 per cent male respectively.

In its ever-open approach to data the Guardian has made all the data available as a downloadable spreadsheet and is asking its audience to get involved by posing the question: “What can you do with this data?”

Read more here.

Research published earlier this year, commissioned by the Women in Journalism group, found that almost three quarters of journalists working in the national press were male.

Journalisted Weekly: Leveson Inquiry, Tahrir Square and England RFU

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

Journalisted Weekly: Leveson Inquiry, Tahrir Square and England RFU

for the week ending Sunday 27 November

  • The first wave of witnesses to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry dominated this week’s news
  • Violent protests in Tahrir Square, and the England rugby team scandal, covered lots
  • Carina Trimingham lobbying row, Basra bombs and Welsh budget resolution covered little

Covered lots

Covered little

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs. serious

Arab spring (countries & current leaders)

Who wrote a lot about… clashes between the Government and Unions over planned public sector pensions strikes

Long form journalism

Journalists who have updated their profile

  • Jack Oughton is a photographer at KKVA Fine Art Photography and Portraiture and works freelance for The Independent, the International Astronomical Union, FHM and Empire magazines, along with a number of companies. He was previously a writer intern for Catch 22 Magazine after completing a Higher National Diploma in Astronomy and Science at the University of Glamorgan. He has written several books: ‘Glamorgan University Observational Diary’, ‘A Layman’s Guide To Nuclear Fusion’ and ‘The Speech Of The Chimera’, all in 2010. Follow Jack on Twitter @koukouvaya
  • Jane Symons is a freelance health writer, media consultant and facilitator whose work has been published in publications including the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Sun, The Times, the Telegraph and Sunday Express, as well as various women’s magazines. She has previously been editor of Sun Health at The Sun, health editor of Woman’s Own, and chief sub editor for the Telegraph Magazine. In addition, she has written two books: ‘Pregnancy: The Best for You and Your Baby’ in 1999 and ‘How to Have a Baby and Still Live in the Real World’ in 2003. Follow Jane on Twitter @janesymons1

The Media Standards Trust, which runs journalisted, won the ‘One to Watch’ category at this year’s Prospect Think Tank Awards

Read about our campaign for the full exposure of phone hacking and other illegal forms of intrusion at the Hacked Off website

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Read the MST’s submission to parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions and the House of Lords Communications Select Committee on investigative journalism

The Orwell Prize 2012 is now open for entries following a launch debate on ‘Writing the Riots’

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

#news2011: ‘Public responsiblity’ of journalists under spotlight in ethics debate

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The phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World has prompted numerous debates about ethical practices in newsrooms in the UK and abroad, as well as a public inquiry in Britain and calls for a new regulatory framework in Britain.

So it was under the frame of the News of the World closure that the Global Editors Network news summit today held a session on ethical journalism.

But board member of the Stiching Democracie en Media in the Netherlands Adriaan Stoop warned that governments “feeling the need to regulate media” given “developments in technology” is a “big threat”.

The problem is if we do not decide to do it ourselves, then somebody else is going to do it and that’s the last thing you want.

Interestingly in opening the session Francois Dufour, editor-in-chief of Play Bac Presse in France had already taken a first step in the DIY approach, by proposing 10 “world journalism principles”.

These included keeping certain things separate, such as the roles of editor and publisher, journalism and advertising and facts and opinion.

Other points include double checking of facts, respecting privacy and where “people are presumed innocent it is respected”.

Other panelists also shared their ideas on good and ethical journalism and their views of best practice in the media.

Bambang Harymurti, CEO of Tempo Indonesia, and also a member of Indonesia’s press council, said the question is whether mistakes are made with “malicious intent”.

It’s very important that society has that understanding … A good journalist is not a journalist that never makes a mistake, but when they make a mistake, before anyone complains, they make a correction and tell the public.

He said that journalists should say to themselves: “When I write something I truly believe it is the truth and if later I find I made a mistake I will quickly correct it and tell the public”.

The issue of standards and ethics also moved to the online environment, with standards editor of the Associated Press Tom Kent asked to comment on the fact journalists who tweeted about the arrest of fellow reporters covering the Occupy Wall Street protests were told to stop doing so.

He said this was not considered “a competitive news situation”.

It was about the welfare of journalists. We told them to cut it out and I feel comfortable with that.

He added that when it comes to reporting generally on Twitter, the news agency has “an obligation to people who support AP” to preserve exclusives for the wire.

As for reporting online generally, the rules are “largely” the same, he said.

Do not have different standards. I think that one thing that has changed in the landscape is the existence of bloggers and they do play very important role in press coverage in lot of countries. We are very interested in helping to protect bloggers and not in providing tools that can be used against them.

Summing up, GEN consultant Aidan White said the question to be asked is:

How do we in journalism try to make sure the person producing the information, editing the information and putting it out has got a sense that they’re doing something as a part of public responsibility. That is the challenge.

As a result, he announced that GEN will launch a coalition for ethical journalism which will “bring in partners from the online industry, print, broadcast etc” and another debate on the topic has already been scheduled for GEN’s next summit in Paris next year.

He also shared the following links as useful resources on the topic of ethics and standards in journalism:

#news2011: ‘Content is king, efficient delivery is King Kong’ and ‘experience is queen’

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Media consumers today have the options of numerous screens when accessing content, but a session at the Global Editors Network news summit today focused on building a “four-screen strategy: mobile, tablet, PC and IPTV”.

The session opened with a powerful speech from former director general of Al Jazeera Wadah Khanfar, whose comments embodied the standpoint of content being “king”.

Concentrate on content. People demand accuracy and credibility. Content is the king, platforms and distribution should be there to service, but the strategy is always to integrate the content in a centralised location then redistribute the output.

He went on to say that “technology sometimes distracts us”.

It should not become central to the extent that the journalist becomes a technician and loses touch with the pillars of the profession. He has to be the journalist, but sometimes he has to be the technician.

We demand too much sometimes for our journalists. It starts from one important departure – from our responsibilities.

… We are here to understand what is behind the surface and what exactly the story means. We need to think beyond the data.

Continuing the metaphor Guido Baumhauer, director of strategy for marketing and distribution at Deutsche Welle, said that “content is king, efficient delivery is King Kong.”

We have to understand what it is people are interested in, that’s where the technology kicks in.

And the delivery of this is determined by their POPE strategy, he said – “plan once publish everywhere”. He described it further to me in an interview after the session:

The idea behind it is if you want to reach different platforms with your content you have to tailor it to the needs of the platform and target groups. It can never be done if you produce once and publish everywhere. So if there’s a television item that you then put on a mobile device or on a similar device, it doesn’t really make any sense.

But if you plan from beginning that there is some part of the content that you have produced that will go to mobile and some that will go to television, it means you plan once then publish everywhere and that does make sense.

During the session he also said “we have to stop thinking in broadcasting terms”.

We have to become part of the dialogue. If [the audience] still stands at the gate, he or she will just walk around us because the gate has no fence anymore. We have to become part of the network.

The BBC’s controller of digital and technology James Montgomery also shared the broadcaster’s approach to multiplatforms, telling the conference the BBC is “trying to move towards seamless coherence between platforms” and offer “access to the same content in different ways”.

By creating a “joined-up experience and content delivered across multiple platforms” he said that “adding a fifth or sixth [screen] in the future wouldn’t be difficult”.

In terms of use across different platforms at different times of the day, he said mobile devices tend to “spike” in the morning while access via desktops is more prevalent at lunchtime. He said the research also showed mobile – and especially tablets – were peaked in the evenings.

On the subject of tablets, the final panel member to present, Patrice Slupowski, vice president of digital innovation and communities at Orange, unveiled for the first time a new iPad app not yet launched called Newsblend, with the declaration that “if content is king … experience is queen”.

The app brings together “videos, drawings, polls and social media” along with news articles, and mixes them together to create a “social magazine”.

It is a smart clustering of news and social media.

The app content is currently in French but there are plans to launch an English version also when it goes live next year.

#news2011: Lessons from ‘roadmap for news media’

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Consultant Jim Chisholm gave a jam-packed presentation to the Global Editors Network news summit in Hong Kong today.

His presentation (which I will link to here once it is available) offered plenty of facts and figures about the state of the industry across all platforms, but focused on how improving the approach to digital content can also help provide a secure future for more traditional forms.

Here are just some of the messages I took away from his presentation and comments:

1. We have abandoned circulation

“There is no evidence that the internet is the cause of the circulation decline”, he said. According to the statistics for online given in his presentation the rate of ad spend per hour was £8.20 online but £23.50 in newspapers. And the time spent by the audience consuming media was still top for newspapers, although overall this is in decline.

Television is increasing its share but not time, the amount of time internet is consumed is leveling off. People are not spending more time [consuming news] despite all the platforms available.

Print circulation was also said to maintain a key share of revenues, but he said that it “has been forgotten”.

The reason it’s going down is because nobody cares. It is a really serious problem.

2. Mobile opportunities will be higher than predicted

Chrisholm told the conference that “forecasts suggest by 2017 mobile will deliver around 24 per cent of all digital advertising”, but “the forecasts are wrong”, he said, adding mobile use will be a lot higher.

Mobile is a second evolution.

As well as wireless capabilities mobile offers multimedia and location features that can exploit the personalisation trend. Also looking at tablets, he said growth in this area is “absolutely enormous” adding that Le Monde told him “reading times on tablets are as high as those reading print newspapers”.

3. Newsstands could be the way forward, not paywalls

Put simply, “paywalls will not work”, he told the audience. But the newsstand formula could be the answer.

It will work online if everyone works together [and offers content] all in one place. That is a solution that could work. In a competitive market people can choose to go from one place to another.

4. We need to be more obsessive about analytics

He told the audience of editors that journalists may not like to hear it but “the time has come … we have to be obsessive about analytics.”

Because of our reluctance to take on board the concept of analytics, that’s what’s holding back our ability to develop digital. We are not exploiting the medium in the way it is meant to be exploited.

… The reality is unless traditional news media adopt scientific approach to customer retention and intensity, they’re dead.

In conclusion on the topic of analytics he told the audience of editors “you can all do this,” and added that “tailored content will dramatically transform the industry”.