Journalisted Weekly: Eurozone crisis, American downgrade, phone hacking, Syria, Somalia

Leave a reply

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.

Eurozone crisis, American downgrade, phone hacking, Syria, Somalia

  • The Eurozone crisis leads the news
  • US downgrade, the 11th phone-hacking arrest, and Mark Duggan’s shooting also covered lots
  • Thailand’s first female prime minister and the appointment of new Turkish military leaders 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… the trial of Hosni Mubarak

Jack Shenker – 6 articles (The Guardian) Nate Wright – 3 articles (The Times) Adrian Blomfield – 3 articles (The Daily Telegraph) Robert Fisk – 3 articles (The Independent) Paul Owen – 3 articles (The Guardian)

Long form journalism

Sign up to the campaign for a public inquiry into phone hacking at hackinginquiry.org
Visit the Media Standards Trust’s new site Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism
Churnalism.com ‘explore’ page is available for browsing press release sources alongside news outlets
The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

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

Opinion: Birmingham students outshine Mail and Post in riot coverage

2 Replies

The Manchester Evening News has proved that long-established newspapers can shine online, following Roy Greenslade’s criticisms of some London local newspaper publishers for what he considered weak web riot coverage, with their focus instead being on print editions.

The MEN had around 25,000 people viewing its liveblog at any one time between 8pm and 11pm last night (9 August), one of the paper’s digital editors, Lee Swettenham, told Journalism.co.uk.

We didn’t want to fan any flames so held off from liveblogging until something concrete happened.

The liveblog was started shortly after 6pm, once it was clear riots were taking place in Manchester and Salford.

We had half a dozen reporters out tweeting and taking pictures from the whole area.

We received thousands of comments on the liveblog, including lots of very positive feedback. We were providing information such as travel news.

MEN used liveblogging platform Cover it Live which “worked perfectly” despite heavy traffic.

It shows that if you do it properly online the audience and interest is there.

We shone compared with a lot of the national media. It just shows how valuable we still are.

But where the MEN excelled, readers of the Birmingham Post could be forgiven for failing to realise rioting had taken place in the city.

Just two of the five top stories on the home page carousel are about the riots, the others include a cinema reopening as an independent, a story how a Hong Kong “newspaper shakeup gives Birmingham City investment hope” and a top story about Dragon’s Den. Sister title the Birmingham Mail had more riot coverage on its home page but its site design means it failed to shine (see pictures below which illustrate this).

UPDATE: Responding in the comments section below, David Higgerson, who is head of multimedia at Trinity Mirror, explains the stats prove readers have been going to the Mail and Post for news of the riots and more.

Both sites have seen unprecedented levels of traffic over the past three days, and have devoted many, many man hours to covering the story in a responsible way. The riots coverage is prominent on the home page, but our traffic analysis also demonstrates that people are interested in more than just the riots – hence the promotion of other content on the site. In the case of the Birmingham Post, it is a relied upon source of business information for the city and people expect to be able to find that too. The Birmingham City Football Club story you reference is a very important story, and has been very well read.

Like the MEN, and the Liverpool Echo, the Birmingham Mail and Post sites have run a live blog, and will continue to have reporters working in difficult circumstances to ensure we bring our readers the best possible coverage.

Your analysis of the Post and Mail v the Redbrick coverage seems to centre on not liking our front page design. That’s purely a matter of taste. If you apply the logical web publishing question of ‘Can people find the content they are looking for?’ to our home page, then there’s no doubt those looking for riot coverage will find it, as will those people looking for the content they also expect – other news, business news, sport and so on.

Wolverhampton’s Express and Star, which is behind a part-paywall does well, making its riot coverage available to non-subscribers.

Compare the home page of the Trinity Mirror-owned Birmingham Post (which does have riot video content further down its front page) and sister title the Mail with that of Redbrick, the University of Birmingham’s student newspaper.

Hardly surprising, therefore, that Redbrick has seen 93,000 visits and 148,000 page views since 7 August. And because it is summer, and most students are out of the city, it has been co-ordinated from afar. The editor, Glen Moutrie, an economics student, is in Singapore, and just two student reporters are on the ground getting stories.

Moutrie told Journalism.co.uk how he has been coordinating coverage “quite easily”:

We are doing a lot of it through Twitter, keeping a check on hashtags and following things up.

I’ve also been chatting on Facebook and have managed to do things such as organise a statement from the MP.

Meanwhile The West Londoner, a blog that is the work of another student covering the riots, has seen a million views in one day.

So if a group of unpaid students can get to the heart of the story when the editor is the other side of the world, newspapers which have suffered the closure of their town centre offices in favour of out-of town news hubs should be able to cope.

That is exactly what happened at the Hackney Gazette, which moved from its Cambridge Heath Road office, a short walk from the location of looting on Monday night, to Ilford, Essex, which is nine miles away.

But far from being removed from the story, the Archant-owned weekly has one reporter who works from their Hackney home.

Emma Bartholomew was able to get on her bike and go in search of the story. She described the scene she was reporting on as “a little intimidating”, as she witnessed bricks were being thrown by rioters.

It seems location is less important as long as some reporters are able to go out, tweet, upload videos and get the story. The problem, as Greenslade said, is not to do with the journalists who have shown themselves to be perfectly capable, but with their print-minded publishers.

The problem could not be clearer. Local newspapers remain wedded to print. They are just not set up to report online, even if their journalists have engaged with new media tools.

So long-established local newspapers must focus on their online content, on site design, allowing a story to have sufficient impact if they are not to be outshone by students working without a budget and with an editor posting from the other side of the world.

‘It’s gone viral’: How a student’s riot liveblog brought a million views in a day

2 Replies

When the riots broke out in London and beyond last weekend, the press worked hard to keep up with the latest accounts and rumours circulating. And it was not just the national press and local papers bidding to bring audiences the latest from the heart of the action, the riots also proved an extraordinary experience for student journalists keen to flex their online reporting muscles.

On the fourth night of riots in the city and beyond, Journalism.co.uk caught up with MA journalism student at Brunel University Gaz Corfield, editor of hyperlocal site the West Londoner. Corfield and his team of contributors produced a live-blog of the events on the WordPress blog which, according to Corfield, enjoyed a tremendous 1 million views in just 24 hours (see graph below).


Below Corfield explains how the team approached coverage of the events, why he thinks the live blogging formula worked so well, and how him and his team of contributors helped verify and check reports.

Why a live-blog?

From the feedback we’ve had it seems that speed and accuracy of coverage is what makes the liveblog format popular. Full length news stories are great for catching up on events when you’re having a leisurely read about them the day afterwards. However, when the situation is fluid and still developing, readers want immediate updates. It takes time even to write up a NIB and you may not have enough information to pad out a story. Devoting a separate page on your website to four and a half lines with a break in the middle isn’t very informative. Some of our readers were interested in the earlier reports and with the liveblog format those are easily accessible just by scrolling down the page.

What challenges did you face while covering the riots, both in terms of safety and technological?

Our people on the ground have mainly been friends and volunteers who got in touch and offered their services. The vast majority of what we’re doing is curating reports from Twitter but having our own people on location has helped. One of our contributors, Sarah Henry, was in Hackey on Tuesday and was briefly caught up the violence there but got away unscathed – she tells me that the BBC reporter next to her was hit by a bottle.

Twitter, Twitpic and Yfrog have all been essential to our services and I really cannot recommend TweetDeck enough; the ability to set up live-updating searches was a true godsend. The biggest challenge, though, has been keeping the updates going out onto the site. You can have all the people and apps in the world bringing you information but at the end of the day, someone’s got to type them up!

What made your coverage stand out from others?

Speed, accuracy and collation of information from the ground, sifting between rumours and facts. Debunking false rumours, where we felt confident enough to do so, also built up our readers’ trust quickly. We weren’t afraid to categorise our reports – if we had sketchy information about something, we’d tell our readers “this report is unconfirmed” and work as quickly as we could to either confirm or deny it.
We also made a conscious choice not to label the people we were reporting on, even though our sources mentioned vigilantes, ethnic groups and political groups. Given the already heightened situation I felt it would be irresponsible to put out sensitive information we couldn’t directly check ourselves, so we stuck to just reporting movements of people. I think our readers appreciated that; our coverage was seen as being purely factual without any speculation, and therefore more valuable than other sources. I refused to report rumours about intended targets, which I think reassured a lot of people.

Rapid and relevant updates are what seems to be driving the traffic – at the end of Tuesday night/Wednesday morning the traffic was dropping off as there simply wasn’t anything new to report on. We also had the huge advantage of being the first liveblog to have up-to-the-minute reports. At the beginning of the riots there were repeated rumours that there was a news blackout, and many people were expressing frustration at their usual go-to news outlets being behind the curve.

How were you verifying breaking news/images/video etc?

We put a lot of trust in images. Provided they were tweeted alongside a location-specific hashtag we took them seriously – although this did go slightly awry when someone produced fake pictures of the London Eye on fire! Videos more or less spoke for themselves – either you can recognise local landmarks, or you can’t. Google Street View was useful for verifying images and videos in less frantic moments.
Sorting through tweets was harder – although we had our trusted sources out on the ground at the beginning, as the night progressed we had to read through public Tweets and decide what was real and what was just rumour. If we had a lot of similar (but not identical) reports of activity in a given area, we tended to treat that as reliable. However, that did get confusing towards the small hours of Wednesday morning because our own information was immediately being picked up and distributed by Twitter users in the areas we were trying to learn more about. Our biggest challenge was filtering out retweets because they clogged our information flow.

How did you use social media to further your reporting?

We used Twitter and Facebook. One person dedicated to running each, plus myself on the liveblog. It did get quite tricky deconflicting information going out from both sources. When I first built the site I set our Facebook page’s updates to autopost on Twitter, which later made us wonder where some of our own tweets were coming from! Close co-ordination kept the feeds unique and interesting, though.
We established a conversation with our readers on Facebook, using our page there to respond to queries about riots in peoples’ local areas. Our Twitter feed was pushing out shortened versions of the liveblog updates, with regular links to the liveblog page. In quieter periods we also published our Twitter username and asked for tip-offs to be directed at that, which worked well. Surprisingly, we also received a large volume of tip-offs through the email contact form on our website; you don’t really think of email as being a form of social media but clearly it has its place.

Cutline: Nick Davies to join Guardian US operation

1 Reply

Nick Davies addresses a parliamentary select committee on phone hacking. Image: PA

Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies, the driving force behind the recent phone hacking revelations, is to join the paper’s fledgling US operation, Yahoo’s Cutline blog reports.

Davies has been in the US for the past week or so, ostensibly to work on the US dimension of the phone hacking scandal. Earlier this month, the FBI launched an investigation into allegations that the mobile phones of 9/11 victims had been hacked by people working for News Corp.

Davies told the Cutline blog:

“The Guardian have asked me to join a group of journalists who they are sending from London to the U.S. to increase our coverage of U.S. stories. So, apart from looking at the hacking story here, the other purpose of the trip is to make decisions about exactly where I would be based if I were to come here. I’m still exploring that, too.”

“My job here would be to do investigations,” he added.

The Guardian announced the new US operation in April, naming former guardian.co.uk editor Janine Gibson as its editor. It coincides with the Guardian’s shift towards a new “digital first” strategy. According to the Guardian it has an online audience of around eight million unique users in the US, based on statistics from Comscore for February 2011. Recent reports from the Audit Bureau of Circulations suggest that 60 per cent of traffic to the Guardian site is from outside the UK.

Full story on the Cutline blog at this link.

 

#followjourn: @_choobacca – Charlotte Richardson/journalist

Leave a reply

Who? Charlotte Richardson

Where? Charlotte is deputy editor at wearsthetrousers.com, staff writer at Tours Times Magazine, and a freelance writer for Guardian Film & Music and DIVA magazine.

Twitter? @_choobacca

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, 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.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

test

Opinion: Newsquest’s social media policy doesn’t inspire journalists to use Twitter

4 Replies

Newsquest journalists are not exactly being encouraged to use Twitter and other social media, according to the company’s new social media policy sent to employees today (9 August).

The policy advises “the internet is provided primarily for business use” but the company recognises “employees participate in social networking on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and Friendster”. No kidding.

It seems a pretty standard policy for local newspapers, such as one I seem to remember Johnston Press sending out when I worked for the company a couple of years ago. JP even went as far to ban the use of mobile phones in the office, resulting in most reporters quietly ignoring the rule for the sake of gathering stories.

The statement shows the company fails embrace the power of social media as a source or for traffic referral. The statement should be reassuring both journalists and sales teams that they don’t need to hover their mouse over the minimise icon of Tweedeck in case the editor walks by.

Newsquest’s statement does state “exceptional circumstances may apply” when journalists can use social media for “editorial research”.

Presumably any Newsquest journalist reporting on the riots may be permitted to look at Twitter today. But what about checking the WI’s Facebook page for details of the next coffee morning? Could you argue the case as exceptional? Hardly encouraging, is it?

And where the social media policy is restrictive, it is not helpful in offering guidance. How about “don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t say if representing the company on the radio” or “be sensible in your use of social media”?

Newsquest’s full social media policy is below. Presumably whoever wrote it is unaware that they are using the Twitter standard of asterisks to denote *emphasis*.

UPDATE: Newsquest has responded explaining that this social media policy is better described as “some HR ‘acceptable use’ advice.

Roger Green, managing director of digital media at Newsquest, sent a statement explaining the company has a ‘social media best practice for journalists’ document available on its wiki.

Our social media best practice guidelines have been promoted in a number of well-attended training workshops run over the past few months by my heads of editorial and audience development. The most recent of these was just three days ago in Basildon where it was stressed that the effective use of social media is part & parcel of modern journalism.

These promotional efforts, along with the energy and enthusiasm of Newsquest journalists have generated a growing number of cutting-edge story-telling successes.

A leaked copy of the guidelines on personal use of social media:

*Hard copies of this Policy are on the notice boards.*

* *

*SOCIAL NETWORKING POLICY*

*PURPOSE*

This policy on social networking websites is in addition to the
Company’s existing policy on email and internet use.

As employees are aware, the internet is provided primarily for
business use. The Company recognises that many employees use the
internet for personal purposes and that many employees participate in
social networking on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo
and Friendster.

The purpose of this policy is to outline the responsibilities of
employees using the internet to access social networking website,
which are not limited to the named sites above and include
photo-sharing sites, blogs, web forums and other associated websites.

*USE OF THE INTERNET*

The Company permits employees to access social networking websites on
the internet for personal use during certain times. These times are:

* before and after work hours; and
* during the one-hour break at lunch.

The Company reserves the right to restrict access to these websites.

The Company permits employees to access social networking websites on
the internet for business use as and when required providing this use
has a positive impact on the employee’s work and does not interfere
with the employee’s primary job responsibilities.

*PERSONAL CONDUCT*

The Company respects an employee’s right to a private life. However,
the Company must also ensure that confidentiality and its reputation
are protected. It therefore requires employees using social networking
websites to:

* refrain from identifying themselves as working for the Company;
* ensure that they do not conduct themselves in a way that is
detrimental to the employer; and
* take care not to allow their interaction on these websites to
damage working relationships between members of staff, advertisers
and clients of the Company.

*Business Use – Exceptional Circumstances*

Exceptional circumstances may apply, where in a work capacity, an
employee may identify themselves as working for the company which are
as follows:

· In promoting a Company event linked to one of the Company products

· Through one of the Company’s products social networking pages

· Editorial research

In these circumstances, employees are responsible for representing the
company in a professional manner.

All employees should ensure that any personal blogs and other personal
posts contain disclaimers that make it clear that the opinions
expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent the
views of the company.

Employees are not permitted to write recommendations or referrals on
social networking sites in relation to the Company.

Employees should not make reference to any customers, advertiser or
staff without obtaining their express permission to do so.

In any event, employees should at all times comply with the law in
regard to copyright and plagiarism.

*MONITORING OF INTERNET ACCESS AT WORK*

The Company reserves the right to monitor employees’ internet usage,
but will endeavour to inform an affected employee when this is to
happen and the reasons for it. The Company considers that valid
reasons for checking an employee’s internet usage include suspicions
that the employee has:

* been spending an excessive amount of time viewing websites that
are not work-related; or
* Use of the internet for personal use during working hours
* acted in a way that damages the reputation of the Company and/or
breaches commercial confidentiality.

The Company reserves the right to retain information that it has
gathered on employees’ use of the internet for a period of one year.

*SECURITY AND IDENTITY THEFT*

Employees should be aware that social networking websites are a public
forum, particularly if the employee is part of a “network”. Employees
should not assume that their entries on any website will remain
private. Employees should never send abusive or defamatory messages.

Privacy and feelings of others should be respected at all times.
Employees should obtain the permission of individuals before posting
contact details or pictures. Care should be taken to avoid using
language which could be deemed as offensive to others.

Employees must also be security conscious and should take steps to
protect themselves from identity theft, for example by restricting the
amount of personal information that they give out. Social networking
websites allow people to post detailed personal information such as
date of birth, place of birth and favourite football team, which can
form the basis of security questions and passwords. In addition,
employees should:

* ensure that no information is made available that could provide a
person with unauthorised access to the Company and/or any
confidential information; and
* refrain from recording any confidential information regarding the
Company on any social networking website.

*MANAGING THE POLICY*

If information on the site raises a cause for concern with regard to
conflict of interest, defamation or any other breach of the Social
Networking Policy, employees should raise the issue with their line
manager.

If occasion arise of what might be read to be online bullying or
harassment, these will be dealt with in the same way as other such
instances under the Equal Opportunities and Dignity at Work policy.

*DISCIPLINARY ACTION*

Non-compliance of the Social Networking policy or in instances where
the Company is brought into disrepute as a result of non-compliance
may constitute misconduct or gross misconduct and disciplinary action
will be applied. Please refer to the Company’s Disciplinary Policy.

 

Questions on use of social media during London riot coverage

Leave a reply

Over on his blog, Andy Dickinson, who teaches digital and online journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, reflects on a question he posed via Twitter last night, while monitoring activity on the platform in relation to the violence taking place in London and beyond.

http://twitter.com/#!/digidickinson/status/100678058423488512

He said his question was prompted by Tweets from journalists outside London stating that nothing was happening on their patch. But other Twitter users were quick to cast doubt on his statement.

His blog post details the points made, but one of their points was that the value of what a journalist reports is not always about news but the provision of information. That, as a trusted source, journalists could let the online community know whether or not there was substance in rumours circulating on sites such as Twitter, that violence was building elsewhere.

Ultimately Dickinson “held up his hands” (via a hashtag), and his subsequent blog post today (9 August), reflecting on the issue, and some elements of the argument he still stands by, gives some food for thought about the use of social media by journalists in these sorts of situations.

Despite protestations of its importance ‘no news’ statements like that would never make the front page or head of a bulletin.  As Neil Macdonald pointed out that they where [sic] more information than news. Journalism as a source of information – very valid.

A few tweets did quote authoritative voices – police etc. That was better. Some proper information in there. Many did not.

Online video journalist Adam Westbrook also offers his thoughts in this blog post, on what he calls the “messy” situation for the media using social media/user generated content. He got caught up in the so-called “mess” when retweeting video footage which was originally linked to the wrong location.

On the plus side, I do think real-time web’s ability to self correct is extraordinary. My blunderous retweet was corrected within five minutes. If you don’t mind taking stern words from other users, it’s a rock solid facet to the platform.

However, Twitter being used by journalists, who (hopefully!) question sources and try to verify, is one thing. But non-journalists aren’t necessarily as skeptical of information. A rumour to a journalist could be read as fact by someone else, especially people who are scared.

London riots: Five ways journalists used online tools

7 Replies

Since riots started in London on Saturday, 6 August, journalists – and many non-journalists, who may or may not think of themselves as citizen reporters – have been using a variety of online tools to tell the story of the riots and subsequent cleanup operation.

Here are five examples:

1. Maps

James Cridland, who is managing director of Media UK, created a Google Map – which has had more than 25,000 views.

Writing on his blog (which is well worth a read), Cridland explains how and why he verified the locations of riots before manually adding reports of unrest to his map one by one.

I realised that, in order for this map to be useful, every entry needed to be verified, and verifiable for others, too. For every report, I searched Google News, Twitter, and major news sites to try and establish some sort of verification. My criteria was that something had to be reported by an established news organisation (BBC, Sky, local newspapers) or by multiple people on Twitter in different ways.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, he explained there was much rumour and many unsubstantiated reports on Twitter, particularly about Manchester where police responded by repeatedly announcing they had not had reports of copycat riots.

A lot of people don’t know how to check and verify. It just shows that the editor’s job is still a very safe one.

Hannah Waldram, who is community co-ordinator at the Guardian, “used Yahoo Pipes, co-location community tools and Google Maps to create a map showing tweets generated from postcode areas in London during the riots”. A post on the OUseful blog explains exactly how this is done.

Waldram told Journalism.co.uk how the map she created last night works:

The map picks up on geotagged tweets using the #Londonriots hashtag in a five km radium around four post code areas in London where reports of rioting were coming in.

It effectively gives a snapshot of tweets coming from a certain area at a certain time – some of the tweets from people at home watching the news and some appearing to be eyewitness reports of the action unfolding.

2. Video

Between gripping live reporting on Sky News, reporter Mark Stone uploaded footage from riots in Clapham to YouTube (which seems to have inspired a Facebook campaign to make him prime minister).

3. Blogs

Tumblr has been used to report the Birmingham riots, including photos and a statement from West Midlands Police with the ‘ask a question’ function being put to hugely effective use.

4. Curation tools

Curation tools such as Storify, used to great effect here by Joseph Stashko to report on Lewisham; Storyful, used here to tell the story of the cleanup; Bundlr used here to report the Birmingham riots, and Chirpstory, used here to show tweets on the unravelling Tottenham riots, have been used to curate photos, tweets, maps and videos.

5. Timelines

Channel 4 News has this (Flash) timeline, clearly showing when the riots were first reported and how unrest spread. Free tools such as Dipity and Google Fusion Tables (see our how to: use Google Fusion Tables guide) can be used to create linear (rather than mapped) timelines.

If you have seen any impressive interactive and innovative coverage of the riots please add a link to the comments below.

INSI: Safety advice for journalists covering riots and violence

Leave a reply

The International News Safety Institute today (9 August) issued an advisory notice for news outlets covering the violence which has broken out in London and beyond in the past few days.

Its checklist for civil disturbances will serve as a very important guide in the wake of any further violence now, or in the future.

Pointers on the checklist include:

  • Establish pre-arranged contact points with the rest of the crew;
  • always carry press identification but to conceal it if it attracts unwarranted attention;
  • have a mobile phone with emergency numbers already pre-set for speed dialling;
  • have eye protection on you such as swimming goggles or industrial eye protection;
  • for reporters – you don’t have to be in the crowd as long as you can see what’s happening;
  • for photographers or camera operators – try to shoot from a higher vantage point;

The INSI advisory also offers recommendations for equipment, if available, such as first aid kits, knee pads, ear plugs and flame retardant spray.

Read more here…

#followjourn: @vikkichowney – Vikki Chowney/Journalist

Leave a reply

Who? Vikki Chowney

Where? Vikki is a writer and former editor of Reputation Online. She blogs about music “on the side” at www.thingsthatmakeyousaytune.com

Twitter? @vikkichowney

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, 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.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

amoxicillina 1g prezzo https://www.ilquaderno.it/myQ2/robots/amoxicillina-antibiotico-prezzo.html amoxil antibiotico