Times web app brings tablet newspaper experience to browser

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The Times has unveiled an experimental new web application that aims to bring the “newspaper-like” tablet reading experience to ordinary web browsers.

The app, which currently works on Google Chrome and Safari, will be available for a two-week trial from today. Described as “like reading the newspaper, but with all the interactivity of the web”, it features enhanced graphics, picture galleries and videos.

Times web development editor Lucia Adams said on Twitter: “Readers told us they loved the linear reading of our tablet app, so we made it for the web too.”

Existing Times subscribers can test it out here.

The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 4-10 February

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1. Sun editor: Page 3 ‘part of British society’

2. Page 3 campaign grows as Leveson recalls Sun editor

3. Telegraph hires Sky producer James Weeks for video role

4. Heather Mills records 65 hours of ‘harassment’

5. Briefing Media to buy UBM medical and farming titles

6. Police officer cleared over NoW Milly Dowler ‘leak’

7. Tool of the week for journalists – Pinterest

8. ProPublica-inspired global news site launches in Australia

9. EU privacy rulings: ‘huge consequences’ for UK press

10. Ian Edmondson: ‘Culture of bullying’ at News of the World

Google to help Tunisian journalists pick up new skills

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Google is to sponsor six Tunisian journalists to spend three months at a leading French newspaper, picking up digital news-gathering skills.

The internet giant has teamed up with liberal daily Le Monde, which will offer a newsroom placement to each of the journalists, covering daily news and the French presidential elections taking place in May.

Google’s William Echikson wrote on the company’s European public policy blog:

Our hope is that they then will return home with new skills that will serve to construct a new, free but responsible professional press in Tunisia.

At Google, we are aware of the need to work with publishers to smooth the transition not only from oppression to freedom, but from analogue to digital distribution. We are sponsoring a series of digital journalism prizes with Institut de Sciences Politiques, the International Press Institute in Vienna and the Global Editors Network in Paris.

Meanwhile, journalism academics at City University in London are heading to Tunisia next week to lead a series of workshops for Tunisian journalists on “reporting a democracy”.

The project is the first of its kind being organised by the Journalism Foundation, which was founded last December and is led by former Independent editor Simon Kelner.

City lecturer Roy Greenslade writes on his Guardian blog:

The courses are the first to be held in Tunisia since last January’s overthrow of Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime.

They will provide practical advice to journalists on coping with the realities of reporting in a free society. But the classes will be held amid an ongoing battle for media freedom.

NUJ: More newspaper bosses should take pay cuts

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The National Union of Journalists has welcomed news that Guardian News and Media editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger has offered to take a pay cut – and the union has called on other newspaper bosses to do the same.

The Guardian reported that Rusbridger would take a 10 per cent voluntary cut in the 2012-13 financial year, from £438,900 to £395,010. His pension contribution will also be reduced.

NUJ deputy general secretary Barry Fitzpatrick said in a release:

“I welcome Alan’s response to the NUJ’s suggestion that he should take a pay cut and show a lead to executives within the industry at a time when many journalists face redundancy and pay freezes. I hope that others including Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, and Richard Desmond owner of the Express newspapers, will now be following suit.”

Trinity Mirror investors have expressed concern about Bailey’s pay package, almost £1.7 million in 2010. The company’s share price has fallen by 87 per cent in the past decade.

Italian newspaper joins Times safer cycling campaign

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The Times’s widely praised safer cycling campaign has been picked up by an Italian newspaper.

The Gazzetta dello Sport is taking part after one of its journalists, Pier Luigi Todisco, died while he was cycling to work last October.

The title is urging professional sportspeople to join the roll call, and for ordinary readers to support the campaign as well. A Twitter hashtag, #salvaciclisti is being used to spread the word.

According to the paper, 2,556 cyclists have died on Italian roads in the past ten years – double the number of bike deaths in the UK (1,275).

The Times launched its campaign earlier this month, three months after Times journalist Mary Bowers was knocked down by a lorry while cycling to work. She is still not conscious and remains in a trauma unit.

Some 33 MPs have signed an early day motion in parliament praising the cycling campaign.

Former BBC journalist Suzanne Franks joins City University

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Former BBC senior producer Suzanne Franks is to join the journalism department at City University in London as its new head of undergraduate journalism.

Professor Franks joins from the University of Kent, where she was director of research.

She previously had a long broadcast journalism career at the BBC, including work on Newsnight, Watchdog and Panorama. She went on to set up an independent production company specialising in political coverage.

Franks said in a release: “I was attracted to City University London because of its outstanding reputation in journalism. I’m looking forward to working closely with the next generation of journalists as they embark on their professional and academic careers.”

#followjourn – @richjm Richard Moynihan/social media and community manager

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Who? Richard Moynihan

Where? Richard is social media and community manager at Metro

Twitter? @richjm

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to Sarah at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

BBC Editors’ Blog: Guidance on breaking news and Twitter

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After Sky News’s crackdown on Twitter use – and specifically retweeting non-Sky journalists – was revealed last night, it’s the BBC’s turn to clarify its position.

In a post on the BBC editors’ blog today, social media editor Chris Hamilton says the corporation has distributed some revised breaking news guidance to correspondents, reporters and producers.

It says that, when they have some breaking news, an exclusive or any kind of urgent update on a story, they must get written copy into our newsroom system as quickly as possible, so that it can be seen and shared by everyone – both the news desks which deploy our staff and resources (like TV trucks) as well as television, radio and online production teams.

We’ve been clear that our first priority remains ensuring that important information reaches BBC colleagues, and thus all our audiences, as quickly as possible – and certainly not after it reaches Twitter.

Guido Fawkes: Lobby briefings should be televised

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Political blogger Paul Staines has called for parliamentary lobby briefings to be televised – and called the current system “a cartel”.

Giving evidence at the Leveson inquiry this afternoon, Staines, who runs the Guido Fawkes blog, said the current system of accreditation and access for parliamentary journalists was antiquated and “unhealthy” for transparency.

“It’s a cartel,” he told the inquiry.

The authorities in parliament won’t give you access to the parliamentary estate unless you’re on the lobby list. I have to go into parliament as a visitor. It makes it difficult for me to get access to the main players.

I don’t think it’s a very healthy system. Former chairmen of the lobby have said its antiquated.

Staines said the Westminster “lobby terms” – where journalists are briefed anonymously – meant reporters became “complicit in politicians’ lies”.

He added:

Downing Street sources normally means the journalist is in a briefing room, being fed the line. Just put it on TV.

The lobby functions like an obedience school for journalists – play the game and we’ll reward you. If you rock the boat you won’t get access.

During his appearance at at the Leveson inquiry, Staines also repeated a claim he made on his blog that Tina Weaver, editor of the Sunday Mirror, knew about and authorised phone hacking and blagging.

Riots and phone hacking coverage shortlisted for RTS awards

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Al Jazeera English, the BBC News Channel and Sky News will do battle for the title of news channel of the year at this year’s RTS journalism awards later this month.

BBC News at Ten, Newsnight and Channel 4 News are shortlisted for news programme of the year at the awards, which celebrate excellence in UK television news and current affairs.

Two rival channels’ coverage of last summer’s riots are nominated for home news story of the year – Sky and Channel 4 – alongside Newsnight’s reporting of the phone hacking story.

The nominees for TV journalist of the year are Sky’s Alex Crawford, Channel 4’s Alex Thomson and Newsnight’s Richard Watson.

The full shortlist is not yet on the RTS website, but can be found below. The awards ceremony will be hosted by ITV newsreader Mark Austin, in London on 22 February. Continue reading →