This On The Edge programme from a couple of weeks ago features Milton Keynes Citizen journalist Sally Murrer and freelancer Tony Gosling.
Murrer, who was cleared of charges in connection with the alleged leaking of confidential police information in November last year, describes the growth of a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to the press within police press offices.
If the Wordle and other coverage isn’t enough, here’s the Hugh Cudlipp speech by the editor of the Sun, Rebekah Wade, in full [note: may have differed very slightly in actual delivery]:
The challenging future of national and regional newspapers is now the staple diet of media commentators.
If you have been reading the press writing about the press you’d all be forgiven for questioning your choice of career.
I’m not denying we’re in a tough place – we are.
But I don’t want to use this speech to make grand statements on the future of our industry.
I want to talk to you about journalism.
John Mair, television producer and associate senior lecturer in journalism at Coventry University, shares his thoughts on Charles Wheeler, the legendary BBC journalist who died in July 2008. A memorial service was held in London yesterday.
Yesterday the great and the good of British broadcasting and journalism gathered at Westminster Abbey to honour Sir Charles Wheeler ‘the reporters’ reporter’ who died, aged 85, last year.
Wheeler devoted 60 plus years to great journalism; we all have our personal and professional memories of him. Mine date back to 2004, when I was asked to produce the Media Society dinner at the Savoy Hotel to give him its award and honour him. How do you salute a God?
I’d grown up with his work from America and elsewhere, been a producer in the BBC where he was treated with huge respect, and seen and heard his work.
I can especially remember a ‘so-so’ story on Newsnight in the 1980s about cops beating up a black man in Notting Hill, which was everyday stuff then, unfortunately. It was transformed to a different plane by Wheeler reporting on it: all of a sudden it had ‘bottom’. Charles sprinkled journalistic experience and gold dust on all he touched. That ‘so-so’ became a significant story. Charles Wheeler was like that.
Back to the Savoy Dinner: Charles was modesty itself and happy to go along with whoever came along. Everybody but everybody I approached to speak readily agreed to do so: Helen Boaden, then controller of BBC Radio 4, said no problem; Steve Anderson, then controller for news and current affairs at ITV and a former Wheeler producer at Newsnight, was gagging to be on the cast list; so too the great Peter Taylor, who said he would be ‘honoured’ to be part of such an event. Charles and his work had that sort of influence with even the very best of our trade.
But the icing on the Savoy cake proved to be one Boris Johnson, then a barely known Tory MP, Spectator columnist and part-time clown. Boris is also Wheeler’s son-in-law, and his speech on the night was a tour de force. Scribbled on the back of a Savoy napkin, it had scores of hardened hacks in stitches.
Wheeler was much more measured and contrite when it was his turn: apologising to his many producers for giving them a hard time (the sign of a good reporter – one who in involved enough to get angry); radiating modesty and sheer professionalism at one and the same time. Charles Wheeler was like that – he cared about every single word and every single picture to the bitter end of the film that he was working on – and his life.
Never mind Westminster Abbey, Sir Charles Wheeler’s (Charlie Wheeler to all) work on tape and on screen is his epitaph. That will be with us all for a long, long time to come. Adieu ‘Reporters’ Reporter’. You probably have your notebook out, finding the great stories and telling them.
It was human error, rather than calculated plagiarism, that led to the incident that Megan McArdle flagged up on her Atlantic.com blog last week. She had spotted two strikingly similar article extracts:
‘Doctors fear return of Steve Jobs’s pancreatic cancer‘ by David Rose, TimesOnline, January 15, 2009 (note: the article has now been amended)
In 2003 Mr Jobs learned that he had a malignant tumour in his pancreas – a large gland behind the stomach that supplies the body with insulin and digestive enzymes. The most common type of pancreatic cancer – adenocarcinoma – carries a life expectancy of about a year. Mr Jobs was lucky; he had an extremely rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumour that can be treated surgically, without radiation or chemotherapy. (go to McArdle’s blog for more….)
Compared with:
‘Why Does Steve Jobs Look So Thin?‘ by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune magazine, June 13 2008
“In 2003 Jobs learned that he had a malignant tumor in his pancreas – a large gland behind the stomach that supplies the body with insulin and digestive enzymes. The most common type of pancreatic cancer – adenocarcinoma – carries a life expectancy of about a year. Jobs was lucky; he had an extremely rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor that can be treated surgically, without radiation or chemotherapy.”(go to McArdle’s blog for more….)
McArdle said she read Rose’s piece and thought… ‘wait a minute, I’ve read this somewhere before’. But how did it come about?
It seems the root of the problem wasn’t David Rose, as an email from another journalist at the paper, Mike Harvey, to Megan McArdle revealed, in which he explained how he [Harvey] had added the additional comments ‘at the last moment before publication’.
“It was done in a real hurry and I meant to put the proper attribution in but failed to do so before I pinged the email off. It was a mistake made in haste and my thanks to you for pointing it out,” he wrote. For players in the UK looking for a trusted and exhilarating online casino experience, admiral casino uk stands out with its exceptional selection of games, top-notch security measures, and generous bonuses.
“As a blogger and technology writer I know the importance of sourcing and linking to sources and rightly feel aggrieved when it does not happen,” he added.
Journalism.co.uk has been informed by David Rose and Mike Harvey that this email is genuine. The article has now been changed – Journalism.co.uk has a screen-grab showing the original with the paragraph intact.
Harvey since told Journalism.co.uk that he was trying to correct an omission in the original piece before it went online. The additional information specified the specific type of cancer that Steve Jobs had (note: something which has also caused controversy on McArdle’s blog).
The Times’ managing editor, David Chappell, is now dealing with the issue; he had no further comment for Journalism.co.uk but confirmed David Rose’s information.
The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) requires you to have shorthand at 100wpm in order to pass the course. When I first started my course 17 weeks ago I wasn’t very hopeful of reaching that speed.
Now 100wpm is doable – as long as you don’t get an exam about time capsules being buried with silver trowels, as I did last week, and can control your nerves. More on this later.
After reading a post on the Journalism.co.uk forum from a student, who was worried that they will not be able to get to 100wpm, I wanted to offer some hope.
Here’s my hope in a post:
Practice
In my first post on this blog I made a reference to my shorthand teacher insisting we did two hours a day shorthand practice.
It may seem obvious but practice is everything. I have been doing an hour of practicing special forms (see below) and an hour of dictations most days. If you don’t have time you have to make time. Partners, friends, dogs and life in general have to take a back seat.
That said, if you really can’t do two hours a day, doing some every day and keeping it consistent is better than nothing.
Special Forms and Common Words
My teacher advised us to create a special forms notebook out of an address book. This has become such a useful thing to have.
I, and a lot of people in my class, have written out all the special forms and common words onto an Excel sheet. I have a master sheet with all the outlines written in and a blank sheet so I can fill in the outlines. You can do this on the tube, at the doctors, in the lunch queue – anywhere where you have a spare moment. The Teeline Gold Word List is also a useful dictionary to have kicking about. You can always sell it to a student after you finish.
Dictations
Actual dictations at various speeds are really helpful for practicing. Hopefully your tutor will have some to give you. If not, or if you are doing a distance course, you can also order them from the NCTJ website or there are some great free ones on We Love Shorthand that go from 50–120 wpm.
The trick is to do a speed that is faster than where you are. So if you think you’re just about at 60wpm do the 80s. You won’t be able to get it all down at first, but you will eventually and it will make the 60 sound painfully slow and easy.
The same goes for the 100: do the 110s and 120s. It will blow your mind and you’ll get cramp, but it makes the 100 sound slow.
We Love Shorthand also has a rather strange music section called ‘And now for something completely different’. One would imagine that it is there to bring you back from the brink of doing 120wpm…
Pens and Paper
If you’re reading this and have only just started, bear with me. The right pen and even the right kind of paper can make all the difference. My group at college has whole conversations about the virtues of a certain type of pen – granted we need to get out more.
Try out loads of pens to see which one suits you best. I started with a biro but found it ran out or was patchy at a crucial moment meaning I missed whole sentences. I have settled on a Pilot V Ball 0.5, but other people in my class are using cheaper pens from Muji and swear by them.
The kind of paper and the way you fold it can also make a difference. I use A4 lined paper and fold it in half because it takes ages to bring you hand back across a sheet of unfolded A4 meaning you could miss words.
I have also been using narrow ruled paper. This was good for making my outlines smaller (supposedly the smaller your outlines the faster you are) but a word of warning here: I used narrow ruled in my exam and found it very hard to read back my nervous scrawl. Again it’s just about practice and what works for you.
Exams
The 100wpm exam is not as hard as you think it’s going to be and if you’ve been practicing with 120wpm then it will seem slow.
These exams are like taking your driving test. You can be excellent and at 100wpm but still fail because you’re nervous or get a hard dictation (silver trowel? Do me a favour).
Go in thinking you can do it and RELAX. This is hard and nerves have got the better of me two times now. Try Rescue Remedy or anything that you know calms you down. My Mum suggested I had a gin and tonic before going in but I’m not going to suggest that as an option (hic).
Do not be downhearted if you fail.
You can do it again.
Never give up.
Good luck.
Last night’s discussion at POLIS of the Guardian’s ‘It starts with a village project…’ in the Ugandan village of Katine raised plenty of questions about development journalism and the media’s accountability, and whether media organisations can work in the long term with NGOs and charities.
[See Journalism.co.uk’s Tweeted coverage of the event]
By far the most interesting remarks were made by Richard Kavuma, a Ugandan journalist working for the Guardian on the project for two weeks every month.
Kavuma, who was named CNN Multichoice African journalist of the year in 2007, is caught in the middle between AMREF, the Guardian’s partner in the project, and the paper – a tension he has learnt to live with and not let impact upon what he sees as his purpose as a journalist:
“My own understanding of the media from the elementary classroom is that we are supposed to be the voice of the people. Especially those who do not have the voice to be heard. I saw it [Katine] as an extension of what I was meant to be doing as the media.
“This project is bringing the voice of Katine to a wider interational audience – what they perceive as their problems and how they think the project is helping or not helping them.”
“There have been challenges at the centre of some fairly salient tensions: I’m not trying to become a PR officer, I’m a journalist.
“Traditionally the media is supposed to be a watchdog, we scrutinize things. But the NGOs get money from donors and they’d like to prepare good reports on how much the money has done.”
The Guardian and AMREF have been trying to recruit more local journalists to write for the project, but to little avail, as journalists in the country’s capital are already overworked, Guardian writer Madeleine Bunting added.
As a result Kavuma says his reporting has become something of a novelty and has attracted a great deal of interest. Part of this, which he is too modest to mention, comes from more focus on people-led reporting – a journalistic style not widely used by the Ugandan media:
“The tone is changing and becoming more people-centred [in the Ugandan media]. For example, it’s not reporting about mortality, but writing about a woman who is losing her life for becoming pregnant.
“I can’t claim the credit, but I am part of a new movement, which is putting people at the centre of development reporting.
“In Uganda high politics is seen as selling papers. The issue for the media is to try and spot the high politics in the development issues and writing stories as an issue of not numbers but of people.”
The content site for the project had its highest level of traffic last month with 46,000 uniques, Bunting told the gathering. But, as contributor and Guardian environment editor John Vidal pointed out, it’s not about traffic, the project ‘had to be done’.
Despite its flaws – huge costs, some conflict with partner organisations, slow recruitment of Ugandan contributors – those involved insisted there were invaluable lessons to be learnt from the scheme, which is just a third of the way through.
Kavuma agreed: there are lessons about a journalist’s role and writing as a development journalist; but more importantly there’s an opportunity to educate the public about the development process – how hard/easy it is and the ongoing progress.
A move away from, as Madeleine Bunting said, the traditional reportage of development:
“[S]weep in, show the extent of suffering and say that your cheque will put it all right and actually not got back to check.”
In its January/February issue an article in the Atlantic entitled ‘End Times’ suggested a scenario where traditional media brands die out completely. What if highly-revered brands could not make the leap, when the time comes to go entirely digital, it asked.
“What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business- like, this May?,” Michael Hirschorn wrote.
Now the New York Times responds (published in full on the Poyntor Online Forum).
“Your article ‘End Times,’ which speculates on whether The New York Times can survive the death of journalism, leaves a lot to be desired from the standpoint of… well, journalism,” writes Catherine Mathis from SVP, Corporate Communications.
“It’s not unusual that a journalist calls the subject of a piece before actually publishing the article or column. In fact, in some areas of journalism that’s standard practice. We wish that had happened with this story. We could have helped. Here are some of the things we would have told you.”
YouTube named the winner of its first journalist contest on Sunday. Arturo Perez Jr took the top prize in the Project:Report competition, which saw participants enter short films in three rounds of video assignments.
Perez was awarded the $10,000 funding prize to travel and work with the Pulitzer Center to produce a report at a ceremony on Sunday night. His winning entry ‘Abilities’ featured residents of Camphill, California – a community where adults with developmental disabilities live, learn and work together – documenting their day-to-day lives on video.
1. How to use Twitter to build communities, cover your beat, instigate and engage in conversations.
2. How to use RSS feeds to gather news and manage them using filtering techniques (basic or advanced).
3. That there is a difference between link journalism and ‘cut and paste’ journalism (aka plagiarism).
4. That your readers are smarter than you think. In fact, many are smarter than you – they know more than you do.
5. That churnalism is much easier to spot online. If you do this regularly, your readers are already on to you – merely re-writing press releases without bringing anything to the table no longer cuts it.
6. Google is your friend. But if you are not using advanced search techniques, you really have no idea what it is capable of.
7. You do not have to own, or even host, the technology to innovate in journalism and engage your readers. There is a plethora of free or cheap tools available online, so there is no excuse for not experimenting with them.
8. Multimedia for multimedia’s sake rarely works, and is often embarrassing. If you are going to do it, either do it well enough so it works as a standalone item or do it to complement your written coverage – for example, add a link to the full sound file of your interview with someone in your article, or a link to the video of someone’s entire speech at an event. The latter will enhance the transparency of your journalism too. Great tips and resources here and some useful tips on doing video on a budget.
9. How to write search engine friendly journalism. Old school thinking about headline writing, story structure etc no longer applies online and there is also more to learn about tagging, linking and categorisation. Sub-editors (if you still have them), editors and reporters all need to know how to do this stuff.
10. Learn more about privacy. You can find a lot of information about people online, especially via social networking sites, but think carefully about the consequences. And bear in mind that it cuts both ways, if you do not do it carefully, your online research could compromise your sources.
Update: see Ten things every journalist should know in 2010
Three days ago, three bloggers received press accreditation after suing New York City, following the Police Department refusal to give them press credentials because they work for online news outlets.
They have now been issued credentials after the police relented, the bloggers’ lawyer, Norman Siegel, has said (via NY Times City Room blog and Associated Press).
Rafael Martínez Alequin – (Your Free Press), Ralph E. Smith (The Guardian Chronicle) and David Wallis (featurewell.com) lauched the action after being denied credentials in 2007.
Although they have now been issued press cards the bloggers’ lawyer, Norman Siegel told the NYTimes in a phone interview that the trio would still pursue legal action. The NYTimes.com blog reported:
“Mr. Siegel sad [sic] he was delighted with the outcome, but he vowed to continue the lawsuit, saying further reforms were needed.
Siegel told the NYTimes.com:
“This step recognizes that bloggers are 21st-century journalists (…)
“It’s an important first step, but only a first step, because we still need to address the constitutional problem of who gets press credentials in New York City. The Police Department should not be in the business of determining who’s a journalist.”
Though nationally reported there doesn’t seem to have been much discussion in the online journalism world yet (please do add links below, if you’ve picked up any interesting comments).
It’s an interesting case for the ongoing legal definition of journalist/blogger. In the UK, for example, Jack Straw has announced that some family courts will now be opened to the press. But how will press be defined when the changes come in?
As Journalism.co.uk reported on this blog in December, the definition of ‘journalist’ has not yet been clarified…