Who? Nick Martin
Where? Nick is a correspondent for Sky News. He will be speaking at news:rewired – media in motion on mobile reporting.
Twitter? @NickMartinSKY
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 rachel at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.
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.
Facebook has this afternoon released its own list of the top news stories of 2011.
Yesterday Journalism.co.uk published a list of top 10 Facebook stories. We looked at total numbers of shares, likes and comments (you can find the source data at this link)
Today’s list differs as it is based on the number of clicks each article received after being posted, liked or shared.
It is interesting to compare the “most clicked” and “most shared, liked and commented” lists. Note that recent stories such as the Sun’s “tatt-poo” story did not feature in yesterday’s list as it was published too recently to appear in the Searchmetrics data.
The number of clicks the Guardian has received has no doubt been influenced by its new Facebook app launched on 22 September. Last week Facebook reported the app was delivering an additional one million clicks a day for the Guardian.
Here is Facebook’s list of top news stories published by UK news outlets, which was released at the Le Web conference taking place in Paris.
1. BBC: The World at Seven Billion
2. The Sun: Tatt-poo for cheating
3. The Guardian: The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy
4. BBC: Amy Winehouse: Tributes paid to dead singer
5. BBC: Austrian driver allowed ‘pastafarian’ headgear photo
6. The Guardian: Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi: whose line is it
anyway?
7. The Guardian: The meaning of 9/11’s most controversial photo
8. Daily Mail: Amy Winehouse, 27, found dead at her London flat
after suspected ‘drug overdose’
9. BBC: Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg
10. BBC: ‘Brinicle’ ice finger of death filmed in Antarctic
12. The Sun: Frankie Cocozza kicked off X Factor
13. BBC: Japan earthquake: Footage of moment tsunami hit
14. BBC: Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader, dead – Barack Obama
15. The Guardian: Osama bin Laden corpse photo is fake
16. BBC: Japan earthquake: Tsunami hits north-east
17. BBC: Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern
18. BBC: Arrest over video of ‘racist rant’ on Croydon to Wimbledon
tram
19. Daily Mail: Loyal to the end: Heart-breaking photo shows Navy SEAL’s devoted dog guarding his coffin
After taking a look at the top 10 Facebook news stories of 2011 yesterday, today we are publishing a list of the year’s top Twitter stories.
This list is based on data from SEO and social data tool Searchmetrics.
A liveblog makes it in at number two, plus there are photo stories and a news game (see number four).
1. Independent: Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl = 83,529
2. BBC: LIVE: Osama Bin Laden dead = 77,853
3. Mail Online: The big pictures: The moment Japan’s cataclysmic tsunami engulfed a nation = 74,835
4. BBC: The world at seven billion = 73,783
5. BBC: Apple holding more cash than USA = 70,202
6. Guardian: Top 100 women = 48,250
7. BBC: Malawi row over whether new law bans farting = 38,861
8. Mail: Back from the dead: Astonishing pictures show how Japan is recovering just three months after tsunami = 31,750
9. BBC: Spelling mistakes ‘cost millions’ in lost online sales = 28,253
10. BBC: Sacrebleu! = 27,377
Data was gathered using Searchmetrics and downloaded for analysis on 6 December. The news outlets included were: BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Mail Online, the Sun, the Mirror. You can see the downloaded Twitter data here.
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.
Facebook last week published a list of the most shared articles on Facebook in 2011. That list included only US publishers – so we decided to create a list of the most shared, liked and commented articles from UK news outlets.
This list is based on data from SEO and social data tool Searchmetrics.
As with the US list, stories range from hard news to quirky (or “cute”, as Facebook describes them). Interestingly, the two top stories are newsgames, where the reader is invited to participate using gaming mechanics. (It’s worth mentioning here that there will be a session on newsgames and gaming mechanics at our news:rewired conference for journalists, for which the agenda is here.) The list also includes online video (another news:rewired topic).
The top 10 most shared, commented and liked Facebook news articles of 2011:
1. BBC: The world at 7 billion = 339,149 (shares, comments and likes)
2. Guardian: Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi: whose line is it anyway? = 219,023
3. Mail Online: Amy Winehouse, 27, found dead at her London flat after suspected ‘drug overdose’ = 190,498
4. BBC: Austrian driver allowed ‘pastafarian’ headgear photo = 167,754
5. BBC: Japan earthquake: Tsunami hits north-east = 159,023
6. BBC: Breast milk ice cream goes on sale in Covent Garden = 149,509
7. BBC: Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader, dead – Barack Obama = 146,244
8. BBC: Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg = 146,182
9. Mail Online: Robber who broke into hair salon is beaten by its black-belt owner and kept as a sex slave for three days… fed only Viagra = 145,413
10. BBC: London rioters: ‘Showing the rich we do what we want’ = 131,839
Top 10 most shared news articles on Facebook in 2011
1. BBC: The world at 7 billion = 147,000
2. Guardian: Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi: whose line is it anyway? = 65,820
3. BBC: Japan earthquake: Tsunami hits north-east = 60,238
4. BBC: Austrian driver allowed ‘pastafarian’ headgear photo = 54,800
5. BBC: Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg = 44,700
6. BBC: Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader, dead – Barack Obama = 38,891
7. BBC: Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern = 36,700
8. BBC: London rioters: ‘Showing the rich we do what we want’ = 36,500
9. Mail Online: Meet the blind Great Dane in need of a home (but you’ll need to make space for HER huge guide dog) = 34,600
10. BBC: Amy Winehouse: Tributes paid to dead singer = 31,400
Top 10 most ‘liked’ articles on Facebook
1. BBC: The world at 7 billion = 75,619
2. Mail Online: The 9/11 rescue dogs: Portraits of the last surviving animals who scoured Ground Zero one decade on = 62,458
3. BBC: Austrian driver allowed ‘pastafarian’ headgear photo = 61,306
4. BBC: Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg = 51,618
5. BBC: Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader, dead – Barack Obama = 49,882
6. BBC: The world at 7 billion = 47,449
7. Mail Online – Beauty in every grain: For the first time remarkable photographs reveal hidden charms of ordinary SAND = 43,760
8. Mail Online: Robber who broke into hair salon is beaten by its black-belt owner and kept as a sex slave for three days… fed only Viagra = 42799
9. Mail Online: Cheeky monkey! Macaque borrows photographer’s camera to take hilarious self-portraits
10. The Sun: Frankie Cocozza kicked off X Factor
Top 10 most commented news articles on Facebook in 2011
1. Mail Online: Amy Winehouse, 27, found dead at her London flat after suspected ‘drug overdose’ = 127,396
2. BBC: The world at 7 billion = 116,530
3. BBC: Breast milk ice cream goes on sale in Covent Garden = 108,258
4. Guardian: Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi: whose line is it anyway? = 105,754
5. BBC: London rioters: ‘Showing the rich we do what we want’ = 73,350
6. BBC: Amy Winehouse: Tributes paid to dead singer = 72,313
7. Mail Online: Robber who broke into hair salon is beaten by its black-belt owner and kept as a sex slave for three days… fed only Viagra = 71,514
8. BBC: Japan earthquake: Tsunami hits north-east = 68,830
9. Independent: US preacher warns end of the world is nigh: 21 May, around 6pm, to be precise = 67,388
10. BBC: Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern = 59,824
Data was gathered using Searchmetrics and downloaded for analysis on 6 December. The news outlets included were: BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Mail Online, the Sun, the Mirror. You can see the downloaded Facebook data here.
A catchy headline and easy-to-read presentation is often the deciding factor in a press release being read and followed up by a journalist.
Here are five tips for grabbing a journalist’s attention:
1. Limit headlines to 65 characters
This excellent idea was proposed by Chris Lake from Econsultancy who proposed the 65 character rule for headlines for all news stories.
It makes sense if headlines are 65 characters or less for several reasons: for Google search, Google News and for Twitter.
You can read Lake’s full explanation on how to optimise headlines using the 65 character rule at this link.
2. Three reasons to present a story as a list
1. Lists also do well, particularly on social media.
2. They encourage clicks. For example, would you be more likely to be tempted to click on a headline that reads “10 technical Twitter tips for journalists” or “Journalists can set up RSS feeds for tweets”.
3. They are easy to scan and read when in a hurry
3. Use words like “how” and “why”
Writing a post for Poynter earlier this year, Matt Thompson provides 10 questions to help you write better headlines.
He makes some excellent points, including this piece of advice:
Could it benefit from one of these 10 words?
When I’m stuck on a headline, I often refer back to this list of words: Top, Why, How, Will, New, Secret, Future, Your, Best, Worst.
Each of them has different merits. Many of them reinforce the advice I offer above. “Why” and “how”, for example, help to frame the headline as explanation (“when” and “what” also work well for this). “Top”, “best” and “worst” are natural partners with a numbered headline. Some of them tap into universal desires: We all want access to “secret” knowledge, and we all want to know the “future”. Words like “your” help me to reframe wonky, technical headlines around what they might mean to the user.
4. Consider writing a “how to” guide
“How to” guides work well online. People often search for an answer to problem and the search engine returns a guide as a result.
For example: How to: write the perfect press release for journalists
5. Consider presenting your release as a Q&A
For example: Q&A: Audioboo founder on the riots, Libya and ‘friendly competitor’ SoundCloud or Q&A: MediaCooler, a platform for freelance journalists to upload and sell features
This helps journalists to scan information and jump to points they are interested in.
Advised reading: How to write headlines that work for SEO
Poynter has a helpful lesson in Excel and other spreadsheet software for journalists dealing with data.
The post explains how to split names in a single column to two columns, for example.
Poynter’s post on how journalists can use Excel to organise data for stories is at this link.
There will be a workshop on data journalism – led by Simon Rogers, editor of the Guardian’s Datastore and Datablog – at Journalism.co.uk’s news:rewired – media in motion conference for journalists. The news:rewired agenda is at this link.
Tipster: Sarah Marshall
If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.
The New York Times newsroom in 1942. By Marjory Collins [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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?”
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.
Tool of the week: Buffer
What is it? A tool that allows you to schedule tweets
How is it of use to journalists? How many of your followers saw the last tweet you sent? As Twitter is a scattergun approach to sharing news, it is likely that most followers will have missed it.
Buffer is a tool that allows you to schedule tweets, posting them at selected intervals throughout the day. You can select Buffer’s suggested tweet times, which are based on research, or you can choose your own times.
Buffer could be helpful to news organisations who want to post a story, such as a feature or blog post, several times. It could also help in crowdsourcing, tweeting a request more than once.
According to Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich, who spoke to Journalism.co.uk and is quoted in this guide on how to: best post news on Twitter and Facebook, news organisations should tweet each story three to five times: for example once when the news story goes live, once a couple of hours later and then a third time the next day.
That’s very much a use case of why we built Buffer, but this is what we do for our news stories and blog posts. We drop all the stories we have into our buffer and they get well spaced out over the day and get posted so that we always have a different audience that will be able to see the tweet.