Category Archives: Local media

News sites can now add a Facebook ‘send’ button

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Facebook has launched a new plugin with great appeal to news sites.

“Send” is similar to the “like” function but allows Facebook users (and there are half a billion of them) to send a news story as a private message to an individual, a few friends or a group.

The “send” button can be added to a site’s sharing options, as the Washington Post has done here:

Send button

 

 

 

Or users can click the Facebook icon or ‘share’ button and they will then have the option to send the story as a private message.

Send as a message

 

 

A Facebook user may come across a gallery of marathon pictures on a news site and decide to “send” the link to everyone who sponsored them. Or a charity may want to “send” a news feature about a campaign to a particular group, which the members can then discuss privately.

Facebook message

According to this Facebook blog post, the ‘send’ button keeps people on your site.

The send button drives traffic by letting users send a link and a short message to the people that would be most interested. They don’t need to leave the web page they’re on or fill out a long, annoying form.

Compared to the alternatives, the send button has fewer required steps, and it removes the need to look up email addresses by auto-suggesting friends and groups.

A small group of news sites and brands launched their ‘send’ buttons yesterday.

Details of how to add the ‘send’ button to your site are at this link.

New focus for relauched TBD.com and WJLA.com

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Local news and community website for Washington DC TBD.com and its sister site WJLA.com are planning to relaunch next week, following the downsizing of TBD.com in February.

In a post on TBD.com outlining the changes, it is said the new WJLA.com will offer stories from regional crime, weather and transportation reports and in-depth looks at health and medicine to features on big national and international stories.

TBD.com on the other hand will look through information from news sources across the area and offer them up alongside original reporting “on the area’s arts and entertainment scene, news, crime, sex and gender, groceries and transportation”.

Earlier this year Journalism.co.uk reported that TBD.com was shedding most of its staff after just six months and would stop most of its general news and sports coverage.

#ijf11: ‘Innovation is about about throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks’

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Journalism conferences, as with all conferences I suspect, are always vulnerable to least a bit of tiresome industry navel-gazing, if not a lot. Even when they’re good, which the International Journalism Festival was, there is inevitably a lot of talking.

But on the last day of #ijf11 there was a welcome antidote in amongst the talk to round things off, a coherent message from several of the panelists: go out and do things, try things, find out what works. This particular session looked innovation in news, specifically at what it takes to go from having a good idea for a news site, to getting off the ground, to staying solvent.

Nigel Barlow trained as an accountant. He worked in small businesses for 20 years before he decided it was enough, and packed it in for a journalism course at UCLan.

Shortly after graduating Barlow co-founded Inside the M60, a local news site for the Manchester area. He told the #ijf11 panel that people need to start worrying less about the traditional journalism routes and start trying new things.

It’s a difficult time for journalism, but difficult times tends to bring out the best innovation. Don’t just look at the traditional routes, if you’ve got an idea just get on and do it. It’s abut throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

A model example of getting on with it, Nigel was covering news for Inside the M60 before it even had a website.

Before the site was even there, we started to report on news in the area using Twitter, and created momentum for the site a few months before it launched.

We actively made connections with what I would call the local movers and shakers, MPs and businessmen for example.

We got a couple of big interviews with local MPs as well, which helped a lot at the beginning, and we were the first on the scene to cover a large gas explosion in Newham and were covering it live from the scene, after which we put about 1,500 followers in a couple of days.

We didn’t have a lot of money and we still don’t, so we have to make the most of free tools. But we got started by using social media and basically making a big noise on Twitter.

Using Barlow’s site as one example, Google News executive Madhav Chinnappa said the important thing was “the barriers to starting a news organisation have fallen”.

Fifteen years ago, starting a news organisation from scratch would have been impossible, but we have three people on this panel who have done exactly that.

And Chinnappa echoed Barlow’s sentiments on just getting on with it.

Google’s take on this is experimentation and interaction. Go out, try it, try it again, see what works.

He acknowledged it was difficult for smaller sites like Inside the M60 to get a decent ranking on Google news, and they would inevitably be dwarfed by the big global stories.

We know that if you’ve got a local news story that no one else has that it can be difficult to get out there. If you go to Google News and you don’t see an Inside the M60 story, that’s because they are getting outweighed by the likes of Fukushima and Libya.

And he acknowledged Google News was not giving proper due to certain types of content.

We’re not as good as we should be around video, or image galleries. And we’re almost playing catch up with the news organisations as they innovate, whether that’s graphics or slideshows.

But he also said there isn’t a magic formula to cracking Google, and argued that original, creative content was still important.

I think there is this myth about getting the technical aspect just right, and hitting on a formula and then you will suddenly be great on Google.

I don’t want to sound cheesy, but having good original content is still very important.

I spoke to Nigel Barlow after the session about making money as a local news startup:

Listen!

Debate: Will other reporters follow Tindle’s and strike over quality?

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Journalists at Tindle newspapers in north London are striking over the declining quality of the nine newspapers written by just three news reporters.

They complain they cannot leave the office to cover court stories, council meetings and are delivering a poor product to readers.

They are saying “enough is enough” and downing tools for a full two weeks. Nine editorial staff will walk out from Tuesday.

Tindle has said it will aim to produce the Enfield papers during the strike. Father of the chapel and features editor of the north London papers Jonathan Lovett speculated that they would do this by asking staff from other regional centres to cover.

So are the striking Tindle nine bravely leading the way to stop “churnalism” and deliver a better quality product for readers or are they standing on a picket line for two weeks only to ask the impossible of a company which has been hit by declining sales and advertising?

And, of course, cuts and declining quality is not just happening at Tindle newspapers.

It’s not just Tindle’s arts pages that are cut back, reporters who are over worked and council meetings that are ignored.

The last three years have seen cuts in regional newspapers across the country.

Jobs have been lost, subs’ posts have disappeared, production has moved way beyond the area where the spellings of councillors’ names and villages are known, football reports have been written a long way from the pitch and change pages have been reduced.

So can the quality of regional newspapers be upheld by industrial action taken by the reporters who write them? We would like to know your opinions on this issue.

Newsquest staff to vote on strike action over ‘subbing hub’

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Nearly 80 Newsquest journalists are to vote on whether to take strike action in protest over plans to axe 14 subbing jobs in Darlington and York.

Newsquest plans to create a subbing hub in Bradford, which is 70 miles from Darlington, where the production of the weekly papers will take place.

The sub-editing of the dailies, the Northern Echo in Darlington and the Press in York, will remain at the existing locations.

Four jobs will be created in Bradford as subbing operations move during the next six months.

Members of the National Union of Journalists at Darlington, Durham, Northallerton, Bishop Auckland and York will take part in the ballot, which closes on 3 May.

“Newsquest needs to convince us, their staff and in all probability themselves, that this plan can work but management has shied away from that debate. At some point Newsquest will have to stop the cuts and start taking all their staff with them – in all senses of the words,” NUJ northern and midlands organiser Chris Morley said in a statement.

#ijf11: Are paywalls incompatible with community engagement?

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A member of the audience in this morning’s online community engagement session at #ijf11 asked the panelists this interesting question:

Are paywalls entirely incompatible with community engagement?

The general response from the panel was no, not necessarily. Justin Peters from the Columbia Journalism Review compared community engagement behind the paywall to a private members club:

At a private club, membership is restricted, so there are less people there, but you could say that they feel more connected to each other and to the club. The quality of the interactions and ties that are forged are stronger.

But, Peters added, “the bet is, does anyone want to join the club? Is it sustainable?”

Ed Walker, online communities editor at Media Wales, (pictured left) referred to Joanna Geary’s keynote speech at Journalism.co.uk’s most recent news:rewired conference, in which the Times’ communities editor talked up the value of having a smaller number of readers that the publisher knows more about, and who engage with the content in a more valuable way.

With Media Wales, Walker said that “it is better to have two really well informed comments than twenty that just say something like “I agree”.

How to approach comments formed the heart of the discussion during the session, with panelists addressing how publishers can drive comments on more complex or long-form content and whether good comments should be promoted somehow.

Walker said that the problem with users commenting on certain stories and not others was to do with confidence. He said that Media Wales had tried to address the issue by encouraging users to use recommend buttons as well as commenting.

We turned to recommend buttons, because people don’t have the confidence to comment on the large investigations or complicated stories. And when you look at the stories that have been recommended, compared with those that have comments, they are often very different.

Walker also described how Media Wales often take the best comments and publish them in the next days newspaper, often alongside a related article, as a way of encouraging print readers to become more involved online.

In terms of publishers attempting to promote and reward good quality comments, the Huffington Post’s Josh Young said that the site encouraged its quality commenters by offering badges for a history of good contributions, but he stressed that it was essential for news sites not to shut out comment threads that became off-topic conversations.

Its great that people are talking on your website instead of in their living room, you should be proud of that. If you can restructure, rearchitect your site so that poeple can have conversations like they have in cafes and in their living rooms, you have really succeeded.

Young added that the Huffington Post had experimented with two ways of promoting quality comments on the site:

You can absolutely find ways to elevate the most enlightened comments. At the Huffington Post we had two ways of doing this, one was an editorial way in which the writers indicated which comments were good, then readers would get a little badge that indicated they had a history of good comments in politics, for example.

The other way was a machine learning engine. We took a thousand comments and entered looked for statistical tendencies about what makes a great comment and what doesn’t. It doesn’t work perfectly but it works beetter and better as we continue to improve it.

Paola Bonomo, head of online services at Vodafone Italia, said that she thought that using technology to improve the quality of comments was a good thing, but echoed that a balance was needed between rewarding quality comments and heavy moderation, which just discourages people across the board, she said.

Ed Walker took part in a similar session at Journalism.co.uk most recent news:rewired conference. You can see video from the session here: news:rewired video: Building an online community from scratch

See the full agenda for Journalism.co.uk’s upcoming news:rewired at this link.

Comment: Response to Kelvin MacKenzie on shutting journalism colleges

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Media law, 100 words a minute shorthand and how to shoot and edit a video, these are just some of what I probably would not have learned in my first month on a local paper.

But according to former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, writing for the Independent this morning, “there’s nothing you can learn in three years studying media at university that you can’t learn in just one month on a local paper”.

He believes aspiring reporters should start on their local newspaper at 18 and be on a national by 21. Perhaps he is unaware local newspaper editors, radio stations and TV newsdesks are not exactly falling over themselves to take on teenagers with no training.

Learning on the job may be a highwire act but it will be a lesson you will never forget compared with listening to ‘professor’ Roy Greenslade explaining why Wapping was a disgrace. No amount of academic debate is going to give you news sense, even if you have a PhD. It’s a knack and you’ve either got it or you haven’t.

There are more than 80 schools in the UK teaching journalism. These courses are make-work projects for retired journalists who teach for six months a year and are on a salary of £34,000- £60,000. Students are piling up debts as they pay to keep their tutors in the lifestyles they’re used to. I’d shut down all the journalism colleges today. If you want to be a print journalist you should go straight from school and join the local press. You will have a better career and you won’t owe a fortune. Good luck.

This is not the first time MacKenzie has rubbished journalism courses.

The Independent’s full story is at this link.

So, fellow journalism graduates, are you shouting at your computers/phones/iPads yet? Or has MacKenzie got it right?
Please comment and let us know what you think.

NCTJ to launch new competition to find ‘Stars of the Future’

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The National Council for the Training of Journalists is running new a competition in partnership with regional newspapers to mark its 60th anniversary.

The competition will be open to 16 to 18 year olds who want to see their work in print to submit a 200 word news story to their local newspaper for judging.

A single winner will then be selected by members of the NCTJ board and the winning student will be awarded a cash prize, work experience and careers advice.

Full details of the competition, which opens for entries on 18 April, is at this link.

Council publications axed days after restrictions agreed by parliament

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Two councils have axed publications, less than a week after a new code was approved by parliament which limits councils to publishing a maximum of four newspapers a year.

Hammersmith and Fulham’s H&F News has announced it is publishing its last newspaper today, due to the new revised Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity and, as Jon Slattery had reports, Hull City Council has axed its monthly magazine Hull in print in a cost saving move and, in an on the council’s website, says the way forward is online.

Hammersmith and Fullham council reports “an agreement was approved with Trinity Mirror Southern to publish future council advertising” which will see “public notices and other display advertisements published in the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle every week”. Simon Edgley, managing director of Trinity Mirror Southern, welcomed the development. “We are not only absolutely delighted to sign this agreement, but also that our titles and websites will play such a significant part in ensuring that residents of Hammersmith & Fulham remain appropriately informed,” Edgerly said in a statement on the council’s website.

H&F News was first published as a monthly paper in 2006, and went fortnightly in 2008.

Councils have no legal obligation to follow the new code, which comes in to effect shortly. Last week Tower Hamlets Borough Council’s newspaper East End Life said it is continuing to publish weekly while a review is carried out.

New code for council newspapers being ‘considered’ in review of East End Life

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A council newspaper currently under review, will continue to be published weekly while the local authority considers a revised code of practice passed by parliament last night.

Tower Hamlets Borough Council, which publishes East End Life, said the code would “be considered as part of the review” due to go before the council’s cabinet on 11 May.

The Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity – of which there is no legal obligation for councils to follow – was put forward in an attempt to crack down on “wasteful” use of council resources. It was passed by parliament last night.

Tower Hamlets’ review, which was launched in January, will “fully take into account the views of residents, businesses, schools and anyone else with an interest in the paper”, the council said in a statement. In February Jon Slattery reported that the Conservative opposition leader at Tower Hamlets said the council is ‘fighting to the death’ to preserve East End Life.

Commercial newspaper for Tower Hamlets, the Archant-owned East London Advertiser, today welcomed the revised code.

“The problems that we face, not just in the East End but across other areas too, are that the councils are out to control the papers by starving them of revenue in some cases and also being able to control messages they are putting out,” group editor Malcolm Starbrook told Journalism.co.uk.

The Newspaper Society has also welcomed the new code, highlighting the importance of ensuring the new rules are effectively enforced.

“We hope that all local authorities will be encouraged to use the local media, which remain the best-read and most trusted form of local news and information,” Lynne Anderson of the Newspaper Society said in a statement.

The National Union of Journalists, which had called for an independent review to establish the impact free council newspapers have on commercial titles, dismissed allegations of blame placed on local authority publications.

We reject the assertion – made by the Communities and Local Government Secretary, that local authority publications are responsible for the decline in local newspaper sales. We believe that attempts to maintain profit margins by cutting overheads, rather than by investing in quality journalism lies at the heart of the current decline in circulation amongst many local and regional newspapers.

The union also pointed out that some commercial newspaper groups such as Trinity Mirror have “lucrative printing contacts” for several London borough publications.

The NUJ does not recognise the Communities and Local Government Secretary’s description of biased, politically motivated local government publications, lacking editorial integrity, which he claims are so prevalent. The day-to-day reality for journalistic staff working on these publications is one of habitual struggles to resist attempts by local authority cabinet members and chief executives to dictate content. Indeed, NUJ members working in Press and PR – both in and outside of local authorities, are bound by both defamation law and the union’s ethical code.