BBC’s sports editor on social media and the Olympics: ‘There’s an illusion around Twitter’

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Image copyright Populou

Speaking at the Polis International Journalism conference today, BBC sports editor David Bond discussed as part of a panel the expected impact of social media on this year’s Olympic games, with 26,000 accredited journalists all eager to cover the sporting event across media platforms.

I caught up with David after the panel discussion to find out more about how he feels social media will impact sports journalism this year, and the considerations he is taking to ensure information from the platform is used responsibly.

Twitter has just changed everything. It wasn’t around in Beijing, maybe just starting off, but it wasn’t at the level it’s at now in terms of the amount of people who use it, the personalities who use it.

Currently David says he largely uses Twitter as a news source, and highlights the risks journalists will need to consider when using information from social media platforms, during the Olympics and more generally.

I think it comes with a lot of risks and dangers, you have to approach it like any piece of information.

On Twitter because it’s there and people see it, it’s got that broadcast quality and you assume, in most cases wrongly, it has reliability.

We’re still trying to get our heads around it.

He added that when it comes to using the platform to see the interactions of athletes competing in the games there are further considerations to be made by sports journalists.

A lot of it is done to plug sponsors and we have to be careful of are they really the people they say they are … that’s less of an issue now.

But it is going to be in many cases the way we find out about stories involving athletes as that’s the way they’re communicating now. Just look at football.

But he does have some concerns:

The worry for me is that increasingly we’re getting restricted on what we can ask people, direct contact with people is becoming more and more limited.

That’s quite alarming for me, the more barriers there are between two people having a conversation, having unfettered access, that just restricts the freedom of the media.

There’s an illusion around Twitter, I think, that it is all free information and it’s all moving incredibly fast, which it is – but I think there’s a risk of distortion around the quality of the information and there’s a lot of opportunity for people to put barriers in the way.

Searchmetrics: Financial Times is news outlet with most Google+ followers

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The Financial Times has the largest number of followers on Google+, while the Daily Mail and Telegraph websites get the most Google +1 recommendations from readers, according to a release from analytics software firm Searchmetrics.

Searchmetrics has looked at the Google+ presence of 13 national newspapers which have “a combined total of 544,545 followers”.

This compares with a total of 1,284,674 followers (fans) on Facebook, currently the world’s biggest social network, for which all 13 newspaper sites maintain official pages.

The social network, which was launched nine months ago, has more that 100 million user accounts, according to Google.

At the time of the Searchmetrics study, which was carried out on 19 March:

372,159 people were recorded as following the Financial Times’ page on Google+ (or having the newspaper’s page in their Google+ ‘Circles’) beating the Guardian’s page which came second with 75,255 followers. The Independent came third with 60,195 people having its page in their Google+ circles.

In the release Searchmetrics points out that the Times, the Sun, Daily Express and Daily Star have not created a Google+ page for their news sites.

Searchmetrics found stories and content from the Daily Mail website received the most recommendations from people using the +1 button, with approximately 10,493 +1s a week on average.

Second came the Telegraph website with around 5,822 +1s a week and third was the Guardian with around 3,367 +1s a week.

While the Financial Times has the most followers it averages around 670 +1s a week, probably due to its metered paywall.

The most frequently +1’d article on Daily Mail site was “a story (with images) about how the majority of runway models meet the Body Mass Index (BMI) criteria for anorexia”. It had been +1’d 837 times.

This contrasts with the Mail’s most “liked” story of 2011, which saw more than 62,458 people click the Facebook like button. This story was headlined “the 9/11 rescue dogs: Portraits of the last surviving animals who scoured Ground Zero one decade on”. See our story on the top 10 Facebook stories of 2011 (we used Searchmetrics to gather the data).

Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics’ CTO and founder said in the release:

Google+ is still a relatively young social network but Google is very positive about its future and we’re already seeing a large number of people on the site, so it’s important for newspapers and other big brands to get in early and have a strong presence on the network.

Frequently +1’d articles from national newspapers:

DailyMail.co.uk, 12 Jan 2012, 837 +1s
‘Most runway models meet the BMI criteria for anorexia’, claims plus-size magazine in powerful comment on body image in the fashion industry’

Telegraph.co.uk,  18 Nov 2011, 1110 +1s
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration

Guardian.co.uk, Comment is Free, 25 Nov 2011, 1,142 +1s
The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

Tool of the week for journalists: freeDive, to create a searchable database

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Tool of the week: freeDive

What is it? A wizard to turn a Google spreadsheet into a searchable, embeddable interactive

How is it of use to journalists? This is a fantastic tool from the Knight Digital Media Center, based at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

freeDive is a wizard that allows you to take a Google spreadsheet, turn it into an interactive database, embed it into a news story and let readers to explore the data.

A word of warning: the embed code created is mainly JavaScript which some platforms restrict.

WordPress users can download a plugin such as Artiss Code Embed which works with WordPress security settings, allowing you to embed JavaScript.

The tool generates a simple embed code and also has an option to allow you to download the HTML, upload it onto your server and use an iframe.

Here is one we made earlier. This searchable database shows the ABC-audited web traffic figures for regional news groups.

[iframe src=”http://www.journalism.co.uk/uploads/abcembedtest.html” height=”650px”]

 

No change to newspapers’ VAT tax break in budget

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Newspapers are to remain zero-rated for value added tax – despite moves by the government in the budget to remove other similar tax breaks.

Chancellor George Osborne told parliament yesterday that a number of loopholes in the way VAT is applied would be closed, but that the government remains committed to a zero per cent rate for the press.

He said in the budget speech: “We’re publishing our plans today to remove loopholes and anomalies, but we keep the broad exemptions on food, children’s clothes, printed books and newspapers.”

The majority of EU countries levy VAT on newspapers. Complications arise in the UK when newspapers sell digital editions (which are charged VAT at 20%) and bundle their print and digital subscriptions together.

Social predicted to overtake search as Guardian traffic driver

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The Guardian’s Facebook app has been downloaded eight million times since it was launched six months ago, seeing around 40,000 downloads a day.

Speaking at the Guardian Changing Media Summit, Tanya Cordrey, director of digital development at Guardian News and Media, said the news outlet has been “blown away by the results”.

The “frictionless sharing” app works by readers opting in to share all articles they read with their Facebook friends, generating more traffic for the news site with “no editorial curation”.

She later explained that the Guardian has generated more money through ad revenue from the app than the news organisation spent on building it.

Six months ago Google provided 40 per cent of the Guardian’s traffic. The launch of the Facebook app resulted in a “seismic shift” with social exceeding search as a driver on several occasions in February (see above photograph).

Cordrey predicted:

It’s only a matter of time until social overtakes search for the Guardian.

She said that the audience becomes more global everyday, providing “an amazing opportunity to learn about this new audience”.

It’s the audience we want to learn about rather than the platform [Facebook]

Readers are in “habitual grazing mode”, Cordrey said, traffic peaking in “the middle of the afternoon”.

Addressing those who believe the app has implications for privacy, Cordrey said “we are acutely aware of the critics” but readers are not being driven away or removing content they have read from their Facebook timeline.

“Once people have it, they use it,” Cordrey said, explaining “only a tiny percentage of people” have taken up the option of hiding their reading habits.

Earlier in the day Karla Geci, strategic partner development for Facebook said that it would be “just weird and awkward to read a whole article inside of Facebook”, saying Facebook’s role is enabling “distribution and discovery” rather than taking traffic away from publishers.

Asking herself if frictionless sharing “is creepy”, Geci said:

People are quite interested in being an influencer in their circles. Sharing what you are reading is something you did any way.

Guardian launches Streetstories, an app for King’s Cross

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The Guardian has launched Streetstories, an iPhone and Android app, providing audio stories based on the phone’s location.

The app is another Guardian project focusing on social, local mobile and is launched the day after the public release of n0tice, another move by the news organisation into the SoLoMo space.

Launched ahead of the Guardian’s Open Weekend event this weekend, the Streetstories app provides a guide to King’s Cross,the area of London where King’s Place, the Guardian building where the event will take place, is located.

Francesca Panetta, the app’s creator, has blogged about it.

Streetstories is a free app for iPhone and Android which triggers audio relevant to your location – your smartphone knows where you are, and plays the stories automatically. The way the app works is you plug in your headphones, start up the ‘autoplay’ mode and put your smartphone in your pocket. The app will find where you are and start playing the clips, so you don’t need to press any buttons, just wander anywhere in the area and your route will create your own narrative

Guardian hyperlocal platform n0tice now open to all

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The Guardian’s latest venture into hyperlocal publishing is now open to all with the “full open release” of n0tice.

Matt McAlister, director of digital strategy for the Guardian Media Group, presented the social, local, mobile offering at today’s Changing Media Summit.

The seed of the idea came out of a Guardian Hack Day project inspired by geolocation services.

McAlister explained the concept to Journalism.co.uk, which has tracked the progress of n0tice:

If the phone knows where you are and if I see something interesting around me, why can’t I report on that and be an active citizen journalist or participant?

The team evolved the idea into “a community service explicitly tied to a location, almost as a navigation or a filter for finding information”.

Since accepting members by invitation only, early users have been influencing its development.

The platform has opportunities for hyperlocal news sites, which can brand a noticeboard, tracking interaction using web analytics.

Some hyperlocals have adopted n0tice as “their events database, essentially submitting events directly onto notice but with their brand and look and feel”.

McAlister explained that it can increase engagement for hyperlocals.

WordPress is a wonderful publishing environment but it’s not as good as crowdsourcing reports. You can get someone to comment on something you’ve written but it’s not as good for letting anyone share anything original directly into a community space.

The platform also has wider opportunities for hyperlocals and other users: they can potentially make money by creating a noticeboard.

Based on a classifieds system with users paying for premium ads, noticeboard owners keep 85 per cent of the revenue generated.

Here Matt McAlister explains the project’s development:

BSkyB CEO confirms he pulled Sky News story on F1

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Jeremy Darroch, the chief executive of British Sky Broadcasting, has confirmed that he asked Sky News to pull a story on Formula 1, ahead of the launch of a Sky F1 HD channel.

The Financial Times yesterday reported that Darroch “ordered a news story to be removed from the Sky News website after an executive producer complained that it had upset Formula 1 racing teams”.

“I asked the team to review the story,” Darroch told the Guardian Changing Media Summit, where he was delivering a keynote speech in which he announced the launch of a no contract, pay-as-you-go internet TV service from Sky called NowTV.

He said Sky News “has absolute independence and integrity” but added that “there are times as CEO … when you have to challenge parts of the business”.

Journalisted Weekly: The budget, Cameron in the US, and NHS reforms

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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.

The budget, Cameron in the US, and NHS reforms

For the week ending Sunday 18 March

  • Final preparations for George Osborne’s budget captured the most headlines
  • Cameron’s US visit, NHS reforms, and the killing of 16 Afghan civilians by an American soldier, covered lots
  • Legal aid, the ICC’s first verdict, and violence in Gaza, covered little

Covered Lots

Covered Little

  • Legal aid, due to be cut significantly in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill, currently being debated and amended in the Lords, 33 articles
  • The ICC, in its first verdict, found the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga guilty of using and recruiting child soldiers between 2002 and 2003, 25 articles
  • After four days of violence in Gaza – where 25 Palestinians died and 35 Israelis were injured – Egypt steps in to broker a ceasefire between the two, 12 articles

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

Celebrity vs Serious

  • Britain’s Got Talent is set to return for another TV series, 71 articles vs. The Government has launched the NewBuy scheme, designed to assist first time buyers onto the housing ladder, 55 articles.
  • Russell Brand was in trouble with the law – again – throwing a photographers mobile phone through a window, 43 articles vs. Kony 2012 may have 83 millions hits on Youtube, but it was mentioned in just 42 articles
  • David Beckham and family head out for lunch and he opts for a Burrito (possibly not the same day), 32 articles vs. Bo Xilai, one of China’s leading Government officials, was sacked by the Communist party after trying to block a police inquiry regarding his family, 38 articles

Eurozone leaders (top ten by number of articles)

No other Eurozone leaders were mentioned in UK press coverage.

Who wrote a lot about… George Osborne

Long form journalism

Journalists who have updated their profile

Chris Mason is a political correspondent for the BBC. After studying at Christ’s College Cambridge, he trained at City University as an ITN trainee. Chris has worked for numerous BBC outlets and was part of the team that won the Sony Gold award for ‘The Birth of the Coalition’ on Radio 5 live. Follow him on twitter @ChrisMasonBBC

Emily Lawrence is a freelance journalist who has written for a number of publications. After completing her studies in International Relations at Exeter, she has worked for Al Akhbar English, Palestine News Network, Palestine-Israel Journal and the Electronic Intifada. Follow her on twitter @EmilyWarda

All information taken from journalisted profiles as updated (2012-03-20)

If you have a profile on journalisted you can now claim it and start adding articles, links and contact details

Do email team@journalisted.com if you spot any mistakes or have suggestions for other journalisted weekly analyses. You can also follow us on Twitter @journalisted

All Journalisted weekly newsletter statistics are calculated based on articles published on national news websites, BBC News online and Sky News online

Independent: UTV could sell television business to focus on radio

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UTV Media, which owns the Channel 3 television licence in Northern Ireland as well as national radio station TalkSport, could be interested in selling its television arm to focus on radio and online.

The Independent quotes UTV director Scott Taunton as saying: “If that was something they [a buyer, presumably ITV] were interested in, we’d have a conversation. Less than a quarter of profits come from TV now. We’re essentially a radio business.”

UTV’s end-of-year results, published yesterday, revealed the group makes 70 per cent of its profits from radio.