For the 2010 general election, the Guardian’s senior political correspondent Andrew Sparrow has been tasked with liveblogging the event on an almost daily basis. In this post for PDA he explains his approach, the practical considerations and the benefits for journalists and readers:
I live blog a lot and I believe the format – minute-by-minute updates, combining news, analysis and links – allows journalists to report events with more thoroughness and immediacy than if they are just writing stories (…) If journalism is the first draft of history, live blogging is the first draft of journalism. It’s not perfect, but it’s deeply rewarding – on any day, I was able to publish almost every snippet that I thought worth sharing, which is not the case for anyone who has to squeeze material into a newspaper – and it beats sitting on a battlebus.
On a typical day the site’s liveblog generated between 100,000 and 150,000 page views, rising to 2 million on election night, adds Sparrow.
The Guardian is hosting an online discussion of “new jobs” in journalism today, taking a look at the new job titles and career paths that have emerged for journalists as a result of new media developments and ongoing changes in the industry and workplace:
Journalism … it used to be so simple. You joined your local newspaper, passed your NCTJ exams and picked one of three paths: reporter, sub-editor or production editor. But these days, it’s a murkier media world. Newly-trained journalists face the leanest job market in years, with more people competing for fewer jobs than ever before. The very future of journalism is threatened. Or so the headlines would have us believe.
While I might not entirely understand the growing popularity of Chatroulette, a video chat site where users can change to a new, random partner at the click of a button, it’s interesting to see the Guardian’s and New York Times’ own take on a ‘chatroulette for news’.
The Random Guardian will throw up a random page from the past 24 hours from Guardian.co.uk, which can be changed by clicking ‘play again’.
The Guardian has today launched a new homepage for its website, Guardian.co.uk.
While the design is similar to other pages on the site, it has been revamped to give more prominence to long-running stories and to allow more flexibility for incorporating multimedia and breaking news coverage.
We wanted to be able to convey the importance of stories using different methods of presentation and we’re aware that sometimes it’s been hard to find our coverage of a long-running story if nothing new has happened today so we’ve introduced spaces to keep important subjects alive. We also wanted to be able to embed live stats in the front page as we inch towards a UK election and, perhaps most importantly, we need the front page to be a more flexible space so we can change what we’re doing in response to events. In a way that seems incredibly symbolic in today’s context, but didn’t at all when we started thinking about the front page many months ago, we wanted it to be very open, and to change shape to reflect stories, communities and what the wider web is up to. The opposite of putting it behind a wall.
New features include a “trending” section, directing users to content on the key topics of the day, and a “campaigns and investigations” box towards the top of the page. The “latest multimedia” section gives audio and video content pride of place, while a “what you’re saying” panel further down the page gives users more prominence, says Gibson.
Journalism.co.uk loves Twitter as our multiple Twitter accounts will testify. But we’re just not sure about gnews140, the Guardian’ s video show wrapping up the big news stories on Twitter from the past week.
It’s been going on for a year, but the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has finally published its report into press standards, privacy and libel in the UK.
You can read the 169-page report in full below, but we’ve highlighted some of the most interesting points in the report in this post.
Background:
The committee’s hearings and subsequent report cover a lot of ground: self-regulation of the press; libel law in the UK; privacy and the press – in particular the News of the World and Max Mosley; standards of journalism – in particular in relation to the reporting of suicides in Bridgend and the Madeleine McCann case; and allegations of phone hacking at News of the World.
In the committee’s own words:
This report is the product of the longest, most complex and wide-ranging inquiry this committee has undertaken. Our aim has been to arrive at recommendations that, if implemented, would help to restore the delicate balances associated with the freedom of the press. Individual proposals we make will have their critics – that is inevitable – but we are convinced that, taken together, our recommendations represent a constructive way forward for a free and healthy UK press in the years to come.
p10: the questions/issues that provoked the inquiry by the committee are set out.
p18: recommendation for “a fast-track appeal system where interim injunctions are concerned, in order to minimise the impact of delay on the media and the costs of a case, while at the same time taking account of the entitlement of the individual claimant seeking the protection of the courts”.
p18: report says Lord Chancellor, Lord Chief Justice and the courts should collect data on number of injunctions refused or granted and the impact of Section 12 of the Human Rights Act on interim injunctions.
p23:On Max Mosley and the News of the World: “We found the News of the World editor’s attempts to justify the Max Mosley story on ‘public interest’ grounds wholly unpersuasive, although we have no doubt the public was interested in it.”
p27: Focus on Justice Eady “shaping” UK privacy law is “misplaced”.
p31: Recommendations for the PCC to include guidance to newspapers on pre-notification.
p33: On Trafigura/Carter-Ruck and reporting parliamentary proceedings.
p40: Defendants in libel cases should still be required to prove the truth of their allegations, says the report.
p45: On the cost and difficulties of mounting a Reynolds Defence and whether this should be put on a statutory footing.
p54-55: The committee asks for better data collection on cases of ‘libel tourism’.
p59: On the single-publication rule and newspaper archives: “In order to balance these competing concerns, we recommend that the government should introduce a one year limitation period on actions brought in respect of publications on the internet.”
p72-76: On Conditional Fee Arrangements (CFAs) and After The Event Insurance (ATE) in defamation cases.
p82: Recommendations for better headline writing to improve press standards.
p91: Criticism of the press and the PCC for the handling of the Madeleine McCann case: “The newspaper industry’s assertion that the McCann case is a one-off event shows that it is in denial about the scale and gravity of what went wrong, and about the need to learn from those mistakes. In any other industry suffering such a collective breakdown – as for example in the
banking sector now – any regulator worth its salt would have instigated an enquiry. The
press, indeed, would have been clamouring for it to do so. It is an indictment on the
PCC’s record, that it signally failed to do so.”
p95-6: On moderating comments on websites and user-generated material: “The Codebook [upheld by the Press Complaints Commission] should be amended to include a specific responsibility to moderate websites and take down offensive comments, without the need for a prior complaint. We also believe the PCC should be proactive in monitoring adherence, which could easily be done by periodic sampling of newspaper websites, to maintain standards.”
p101-3: On NOTW and phone hacking: “It is likely that the number of victims of illegal phone-hacking by Glenn Mulcaire will never be known.”
p114: Guardian articles on phone hacking did contain new evidence, but committee has heard now evidence that such practices are still ongoing.
p121: On the PCC: “The powers of the PCC must be enhanced, as it is toothless compared to other regulators.”
p123-5: Recommendations for a more independent PCC.
p126: Peter Hill’s resignation from the PCC.
p128: Criticism for how the PCC reports statistics of complaints it receives: “In particular, contacts from members of the public which are not followed up with the appropriate documentation should not be considered as true complaints.”
p129: A new system for “due prominence” of corrections and apologies by newspapers?
p130: Proposals for the PCC to have the power of financial sanctions.
The Independent published a correction yesterday concerning its front page story from September 2009 ‘Toxic shame’, which contained claims of individuals who alleged they had been injured as a result of illegal dumping of waste in the Cote d’Ivoire by a Trafigura ship:
The article stated that claimants had been maimed and wrongly suggested that, due to the settlement, claims of more serious injuries including miscarriages would not be tested in the High Court case. In fact such claims had already been withdrawn earlier last year. A joint statement issued by both parties in that case said that independent experts have been “unable to identify a link between exposure to the chemicals… and deaths, miscarriages, still births, birth defects … or other serious and chronic injuries”. The story featured the photograph of a woman with a severely scarred face, a condition which Trafigura says, and we accept, cannot therefore have been caused by the waste. We are happy to set the record straight.
Trafigura and its lawyers Carter-Ruck were at the centre of last year’s super injunction debate after Carter-Ruck abandoned an attempt to prevent the Guardian from reporting a parliamentary question about the company.
In December the oil trader ended its legal dispute with BBC Newsnight. The programme agreed to: apologise for allegations made about waste dumping in Côte d’Ivoire on air and pay £25,000 to a charity of Trafigura’s choice, as well as legal costs.
What? Christopher Hope joined the Daily Telegraph in October 2003, and has since been their business correspondent, industry editor, home affairs correspondent, home affairs editor, and now Whitehall editor. He has also been published in the Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph.
Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.
Cost-cutting measures, including voluntary redundancy for around 40 editorial staff, will result in a “massive reduction” in Guardian News & Media’s (GNM) loss in the next financial year, chief executive Carolyn McCall told the Media Guardian weekly podcast.
The Guardian’s cost base is too high for the future revenues of any newspaper. If we don’t get our cost base in order someone else is going to do it for us.
In September, GNM managing director Tim Brooks said GNM was losing £100,000 a day and the group is seeking more than 100 job cuts across editorial and commercial operations.
McCall also commented on the sale of Guardian Media Group’s regional division to Trinity Mirror, acknowledging likely job losses amongst staff and papers and expressing surprise that Channel M was not part of the deal. GMG’s radio business is expected to be in profit this year, she added.
