Tag Archives: Paul Bradshaw

#JEECamp: Follow live

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Today we’re up in Birmingham for the JEECamp unconference. Follow the live blog below for tweets and comments from the conference.

JEEcamp is an opportunity for a range of people to get together to talk about how on earth journalists and publishers can make a living from journalism in the era of free information, what the challenges are, and what we’ve learned so far.

You’ll find details of the day at this link: http://jeecamp.pbwiki.com/. It has a flexible agenda, but the keynote will be given by Simon Waldman, digital director, Guardian Media Group.

The campaign to repeal the Digital Economy Act and why journalists should pay attention

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More than 20,00 people may have demanded “a proper debate” on the Digital Economy Bill, but it didn’t stop it being whizzed through parliament and passed as legislation at the end of the last government.

We previously reported how the new Act affects journalists.

So what now? The campaign hasn’t stopped here.

Repealthedigitaleconomyact.com has a big stopwatch counting the hours since the new government took office: how long will it take to repeal the act? Seven days so far and nothing yet.

The Open Rights Group has started a petition to repeal the act under the current government:

We, the signatories, call on the new Parliament to repeal sections 11-18 of the Digital Economy Act, dealing with copyright infringement and website blocking powers.

We call on Parliament to refuse to pass any Statutory Instrument that would institute interference with families’ or organisations’ communications as a punishment for actual or alleged civil copyright infringement.

At the time of writing, 5,921 have signed.

One of the protest groups on Facebook, Together Against The Digital Economy Act 2010, lays out why it believes UK citizens – and others – should be worried:

– Websites will be blocked for alleged copyright infringement.
– Families accused of sharing copyrighted files will be disconnected without trial. They will have to pay to appeal.
– Even if you don’t live in the UK, it sets a worrying precedent for other countries to follow suit.

Disconnection or “technical measures” like bandwidth throttling will kick in if file sharing does not drop by an incredible 70 per cent. There are no alternative punishments to disconnection, no matter what the damage it will cause, and there is no statutory limit on the length of these disconnections, called, in the weasel words of the Act, “temporary account suspension”.

Despite thousands of letters of concern and a petition with over 35,000 signatures of protest, the Bill was rushed through in the final days of parliament during the “wash up process” – it was not given the full scrutiny that it deserved.

This is a piece of legislation that gives potentially unlimited power to unelected officials, and assumes guilt on the part of those accused of copyright infringement. We can expect the industry lobbies to be out in force to roll back our human right to freedom of expression in the name of copyright very, very soon.

Why journalists should listen up

Paul Bradshaw, director of the online journalism MA at Birmingham City University and publisher of the Online Journalism Blog tells me that journalists “should pay very close attention to the DE Act indeed, on a number of areas”.

“Firstly is the power the act gives to block websites based on an accusation of breach of copyright – or that the website is likely to in the future.

“The scope for abuse is clear – the potential to block access to Wikileaks is the most prominent example given. An organisation whose confidential documents have been leaked could apply to have it blocked in the UK (regardless of where it is hosted).

“Although revisions to the act mean there would have to be consultation there doesn’t appear to be any explicit public interest test and a look at how countries like Australia have adopted similar blacklists doesn’t bode well for accountability.

“Secondly, and more practically, the act threatens public wifi – a tremendously useful resource for journalists on the move, and for potential sources and leads.

“Providers of public wifi are still seeking clarity on where they stand legally – in the meantime, fewer companies are going to be willing to take the risk of providing it and falling foul of the law if someone uses it to download something ‘illegal’.

“Finally, there’s the broader issue of monitoring people’s use of the web in such a way that, for instance, would make it easier to trace and unmask whistleblowers and other confidential sources. It gives corporations power without accountability, which any journalist should be concerned about.

There’s still time, says Bradshaw

“On a more positive note, there is still scope to address the weaknesses of the act – and journalists and their sources should familiarise themselves with anonymising software such as Tor which will provide more confidentiality for both themselves and their sources.

Bradshaw says he was disillusioned by the political process that saw the bill passed: “Apart from the detail of the bill itself I found the use of the wash-up a depressing spectacle that further undermined our sense of proper democratic procedure.

“In the debates MPs themselves lined up to say how they were having to vote for a bill they or their constituents didn’t actually support. The role of lobbyists and party whips need to be addressed one way or another and I guess this challenge does that.

He has used his crowdsourcing investigations site, Help Me Investigate, to track the MPs’ performance over the bill and how MPs have responded to constituents’ correspondence over the bill.

“[I]dentikit responses make it difficult to see how much of that correspondence has actually been seen or understood by the MPs themselves.”

What do you think about the Digital Economy Act and its effect on journalism? Please get in touch (judith [at] journalism.co.uk) or leave a comment below.

Online Journalism Blog: Visualising data – tools and publishing

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The fourth part of a series of drafts for Paul Bradshaw’s forthcoming book on data journalism looks at tools for visualising data and how to publish those visualisations. A great round-up of the tools available, how best to use them and what type of datasets they work with.

Full post at this link…

Telegraph’s new election database (in beta)

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I’m having a play with the Telegraph’s new political database feature, currently in beta. While launched in time for the general election, it will live on afterwards as well, as a useful tool for tracking information about political candidates and constituencies.

The basic search allows you to find information about your candidates, eg. their educational background (private / state school etc.), as well as the background stats on the constituency itself.

If your candidate is an MP, you also get a link to the Telegraph’s expenses file on them, and their parliamentary allowances page. Check out Oldham East and Saddleworth MP Phil Woolas, for example.

Like Paul Bradshaw points out on the OnlineJournalismBlog, the really nice feature is the ‘advanced search’ option.

With this, you can narrow down your search to very specific criteria – by type of school (or even name of school – eg. Eton), age or the category of candidate they are.

It is in beta though, and a lot of information is still missing. Until all the information is complete (e.g every school for each candidate is accurate and complete) you couldn’t begin to make proper analyses of social backgrounds etc.

There’s a how-to guide at this link.

The swingometer feature is fun too (though perhaps needs clearer explanation on the main page – a pop out box, perhaps?):

“[F]ind which seats will change for a given swing. Choose from Labour v Conservative swing, Labour v Liberal Democrat, or Liberal Democrat v Conservative, and push the swingometer up to 20 per cent either way to see which constituencies change hands.”

On constituency search you can see where parties have picked their battlegrounds, which can be further narrowed by retiring or defending MP. So, for example, I can search all Labour target battlegrounds, where they are defending seats. There’s a swing feature here too:

[S]earch by swing required for a change of MP from the 2005 results. This can be organised by party using the drop-down bar and slider – so it is possible to show all the seats that would fall to the Conservatives given a 10 per cent swing from Labour, for instance.

Like Paul Bradshaw says, it’s a shame that there’s no API available or ‘mashable’ data on tap, but definitely a very nice looking tool – which I need some more time to play around with.

#aopforum: Live coverage on microlocal media discussion

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UPDATE – the liveblogs seem to have stalled – we spoke too soon, so below is a tweetstream from the event so far featuring Guardian local launch editor, Sarah Hartley; Birmingham City University senior lecturer, Paul Bradshaw; and Trinity Mirror head of multimedia, David Higgerson:

For those of us unable to attend today’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP) forum on microlocal media (hyperlocal/ultralocal/local – whatever you want to call it), we’re lucky to have the liveblogging skills of journalist Caroline Beavon, who will be covering the sessions as they happen from 2:30pm.

Follow #localmedia hearing online – live

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The House of Commons culture, media and sport committee will hear evidence from Matt Brittin, managing director, Google UK and Paul Bradshaw, lecturer in journalism, Birmingham City University this morning (scheduled for 10.30am but there was a problem with the live feed, which is now working). Caroline Beavon (@carolinebeavon) is liveblogging for the Online Journalism Blog.

Follow the live-blog here…

Watch it at this link…

Journalism students as entrepreneurs

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“Are traditional skills enough or do the new generation of journalists also need to be entrepreneurs?” asked Patrick Barkham in a Media Guardian feature today.

He cited examples of entrepreneurship, as preached by CUNY’s Jeff Jarvis, in journalism departments at various British universities.

Journalism.co.uk – rather an old ‘start-up’ at 10 years old, it must be said – got a mention, along with my comment that blogs and Twitter gave student journalists more opportunity than ever for a platform from which to get noticed.

But the real challenge of making money is rather more tricky than just getting heard, as the debate on today’s NUJ New Media email list indicated.

“Surely freelancers have always been entrepreneurs?” one contributor commented.

“Yes, journalists need to be taught about how business works and also how to manage people (how many journalists do you know who have made awful managers?) But that might be more appropriate to ongoing training than basic foundation courses,” added Journalism.co.uk’s founder John Thompson.

Alex Wood, City University alumni and a founder of the Berlin Project, thinks the entrepreneurial speak is ‘old news,’ saying that he and his student colleagues regularly made use of freelance opportunities, web design and online articles. “I’d say with most courses now over £10,000, becoming an ‘entrepreneur’ isn’t a skill, it’s a necessity (…) It’s a simple case of sink or survive and with huge debt around graduates necks these days, people are a lot more willing to fight.”

Meanwhile, multimedia and recently freelance journalist, Adam Westbrook, said that ‘this talk about journalists-as-entrepreneurs recognises a distinction between freelance journalism and entrepreneurship’.

“Yes, if freelancers run themselves as mini businesses there is some similarity, but I think its also about embracing the entrepreneurial spirit, looking for new markets and opportunities to exploit – seems a bit anti-journalism but that’s the game I think.

“And the ultimate journalism start-up is the one which cuts a profit and self sustains (ideally not through advertising alone), rather than living off grants or donations.”

Paul Bradshaw, lecturer at Birmingham City University and founder of the OnlineJournalismBlog, thinks the new approach does go beyond traditional methods; it’s a form of entrepreneurial journalism ‘that seeks to find new business models for journalism, rather than existing freelance journalism models,’ he said. “That could be anything from new forms of advertising, public funds, or platforms like iPhone apps etc.” Dušo filtrai ONrain.lt

Join the debate and send your own examples, in the comments, or through Twitter (via @journalismnews):

  • How is the new journalistic entrepreneurship different from freelancing of present / yore?
  • Are journalism schools the right places to develop these skills? Or would students be better off in business school?

Entrepreneurship will be one of the topics tackled at our news:rewired conference on 14 January 2010. See http://newsrewired.com for more details. Tickets on sale now.

Linking data and journalism: what’s the future?

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On Wednesday (September 9), Paul Bradshaw, course director of the MA Online Journalism at Birmingham City University and founder of HelpMeInvestigate.com, chaired a discussion on data and the future of journalism at the first London Linked Data Meetup. This post originally appeared on the OnlineJournalismBlog.

The panel included: Martin Belam (information architect, the Guardian; blogger, Currybet; John O’Donovan (chief architect, BBC News Online); Dan Brickley (Friend of a Friend project; VU University, Amsterdam; SpyPixel Ltd; ex-W3C); Leigh Dodds (Talis).

“Linked Data is about using the web to connect related data that wasn’t previously linked, or using the web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods.” (http://linkeddata.org)

I talked about how 2009 was, for me, a key year in data and journalism – largely because it has been a year of crisis in both publishing and government. The seminal point in all of this has been the MPs’ expenses story, which both demonstrated the power of data in journalism, and the need for transparency from government. For example: the government appointment of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the search for developers to suggest things to do with public data, and the imminent launch of Data.gov.uk around the same issue.

Even before then the New York Times and Guardian both launched APIs at the beginning of the year, MSN Local and the BBC have both been working with Wikipedia and we’ve seen the launch of a number of startups and mashups around data including Timetric, Verifiable, BeVocal, OpenlyLocal, MashTheState, the open source release of Everyblock, and Mapumental.

Q: What are the implications of paywalls for Linked Data?
The general view was that Linked Data – specifically standards like RDF [Resource Description Format] – would allow users and organisations to access information about content even if they couldn’t access the content itself. To give a concrete example, rather than linking to a ‘wall’ that simply requires payment, it would be clearer what the content beyond that wall related to (e.g. key people, organisations, author, etc.)

Leigh Dodds felt that using standards like RDF would allow organisations to more effectively package content in commercially attractive ways, e.g. ‘everything about this organisation’.

Q: What can bloggers do to tap into the potential of Linked Data?
This drew some blank responses, but Leigh Dodds was most forthright, arguing that the onus lay with developers to do things that would make it easier for bloggers to, for example, visualise data. He also pointed out that currently if someone does something with data it is not possible to track that back to the source and that better tools would allow, effectively, an equivalent of pingback for data included in charts (e.g. the person who created the data would know that it had been used, as could others).

Q: Given that the problem for publishing lies in advertising rather than content, how can Linked Data help solve that?
Dan Brickley suggested that OAuth technologies (where you use a single login identity for multiple sites that contains information about your social connections, rather than creating a new ‘identity’ for each) would allow users to specify more specifically how they experience content, for instance: ‘I only want to see article comments by users who are also my Facebook and Twitter friends.’

The same technology would allow for more personalised, and therefore more lucrative, advertising. John O’Donovan felt the same could be said about content itself – more accurate data about content would allow for more specific selling of advertising.

Martin Belam quoted James Cridland on radio: ‘[The different operators] agree on technology but compete on content’. The same was true of advertising but the advertising and news industries needed to be more active in defining common standards.

Leigh Dodds pointed out that semantic data was already being used by companies serving advertising.

Other notes
I asked members of the audience who they felt were the heroes and villains of Linked Data in the news industry. The Guardian and BBC came out well – The Daily Mail were named as repeat offenders who would simply refer to ‘a study’ and not say which, nor link to it.

Martin Belam pointed out that the Guardian is increasingly asking itself ‘how will that look through an API?’ when producing content, representing a key shift in editorial thinking. If users of the platform are swallowing up significant bandwidth or driving significant traffic then that would probably warrant talking to them about more formal relationships (either customer-provider or partners).

A number of references were made to the problem of provenance – being able to identify where a statement came from. Dan Brickley specifically spoke of the problem with identifying the source of Twitter retweets.

Dan also felt that the problem of journalists not linking would be solved by technology. In conversation previously, he also talked of ‘subject-based linking’ and the impact of SKOS [Simple Knowledge Organisation System] and linked data style identifiers. He saw a problem in that, while new articles might link to older reports on the same issue, older reports were not updated with links to the new updates. Tagging individual articles was problematic in that you then had the equivalent of an overflowing inbox.

Finally, here’s a bit of video from the very last question addressed in the discussion (filmed with thanks by @countculture):

Linked Data London 090909 from Paul Bradshaw on Vimeo.

Resources:

Advice from Guardian.co.uk’s online journalism Q&A

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On Friday Journalism.co.uk took part in a live Q&A  hosted by the The Guardian’s careers section, allowing new and experienced journalists the opportunity to ask industry professionals for advice on conquering the world of online journalism.

The multimedia panel on hand to answer questions were:

Paul Gallagher, head of online editorial, Manchester Evening News
Laura-Jane Filotrani, site editor, Guardian Careers
Sarah Hartley, digital editor, The Guardian
Alison Gow, executive editor, digital, Liverpool Echo and Liverpool Daily Post
Laura Oliver, senior reporter, Journalism. co.uk
Madeline Bennett, editor of technology news sites V3.co.uk and The Inquirer
Paul Bradshaw, senior lecturer in online journalism, Birmingham City University
John Hand, duty editor, UK desk BBC News website
Alison White, community moderator, The Guardian

Here’s our round-up of the best advice from Friday’s event on how to make it as a successful online journalist in the digital age. You can also read the panel’s responses in full on the online journalism Q&A page on Guardian.co.uk.

Jump to:

What is the best subject to study to help me break into journalism?

[asked by Matt, who is studying English literature and language at college and asked if going on to study an English degree would help him prepare for a career in journalism]

John Hand: “I’m often asked which is the best subject to study at university and the answer is really that there is no particularly bad choice. The best newsroom has a good mix of people with different knowledge areas – for example, I think every editor in the country would love to have someone with the in-depth health knowledge of a medical degree on their team. Of course, any degree course that allows you to develop your writing and analytical skills (I always think history is a clever choice) would be better than most.

“The most important thing is to get some vocational training. Many editors themselves initially came through NCTJ courses (http://www.nctj.com/) so would respect those, but there are also many media organisations that offer their own in-house (or even external) training. If you want to get into news journalism, the key question to ask of any training scheme is how good their law course is.”

Sarah Hartley: “Grab as much work experience as you can throughout your uni years. Who knows what the economic climate will be like when you graduate but it may well be that you can find an employer who will put you through a block release course or similar. New schemes for apprenticeships, internships and such are bound to come through in that time.”

Madeline Bennett: “Has your college got a student newspaper or website? If so, volunteering to write for that would be a good starting point and showcase for your work. If not, why not start one? This is also the case for when you go to uni, student papers can be a great place to launch your journalism career.”

But what if I can’t afford to go to university?

[Forum user Dan Holloway asked: how does someone who has no choice but carry on a full-time job to make ends meet go about switching careers to online journalism?]

Alison White: “My advice would be to perhaps take some evening classes in journalism if possible – while I was at uni I did a 10-week course, one evening a week, about freelancing and a two-day course about getting into journalism. Or how about some work experience? Newspapers and other organisations are less well-staffed at weekends, I’m sure they’d appreciate some help with uploading content or other duties. Once you’ve got to know some people you can always keep in touch in the hope they might point you towards job opportunities or further work experience.”

Madeline Bennett: “Look for courses that focus on online journalism or multimedia skills, there might be some weekend or evening classes available that you can do to support your NCTJ. Also these courses are a good place to meet people who can help you get your first job in journalism, as they’ll often be run by current working journalists.”

Laura Oliver: “Start experimenting – if you can find the time outside of work to run a blog, contribute to other websites, you’ll learn a great deal about the basics of online publishing. Contact sites and other blogs that interest you and offer postings. Look at successful bloggers and think about what they are doing that makes them influential/profitable. Here are a couple of posts that might help too regarding building an online brand as a journalist:

“http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2009/08/17/adam-westbrook-6×6-branding-for-freelance-journalists/

“http://www.journalism.co.uk/5/articles/534896.php”

What skills do I need to be an online journalist?

[Forum user Dean Best asked: what are the top online-specific skills I should attain to improve my online skills and better my chances of moving up the ladder?]

Laura-Jane Filotrani: “To be able to demonstrate a passion for digital – by this I mean that you are active online; you use the net; you have a profile online; you use and understand community; you are excited by being able to reach people using the internet; you want to find out the latest developments.”

Alison White: “A good knowledge of SEO and the importance of linking to others and providing ‘added value’ to the reader; i.e. give them the story but perhaps with a link to a video, an online petition, a Facebook page etc. News to me seems more of a package now rather than a traditional delivery.”

Paul Bradshaw:

“1. Understand how RSS works and how that can improve your newsgathering, production and distribution. I cover a little of that in this post:

“http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/04/21/rss-social-media-passive-aggressive-newsgathering-a-model-for-the-21st-century-newsroom-part-2-addendum/

“2. Engage with online communities around your specialist area, help them, provide valuable information and contacts, and then when you need help on something, they’ll be there for you in return. It will also build a distribution network for your content.

“3. Possibly hardest, but force yourself to experiment and make mistakes with all sorts of media. If you can make yourself entertaining as well as informative then that can really work very well.”

How can I make the transition to online journalism?

[‘Malini’ asked: how do I go about breaking into the field of online journalism? And why would anyone pay and retain a writer when they can easily get so much content for free?]

Paul Bradshaw: “Use free writing to build a reputation and contacts; and sell the valuable stuff that you generate from that. Ultimately you should aim to become reliable enough for them to want to hire you when they are hiring.”

Sarah Hartley: “Writers have always provided free content – be it letters to the editor, local band reviews, poetry or whatever, so being online will only further the opportunity for that sort of exposure and that can only be a good thing for diversity and choice.”

Paul Gallagher: “I have taught myself some coding skills like HTML and I believe it does help a lot to have some technical knowledge, not necessarily because you will need them in the job but because it really helps to be able to communicate well with the programmers and developers in your company.”

Event: Guardian.co.uk live Q&A on online journalism

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The Guardian’s careers section is running a Q&A on online journalism this afternoon featuring the Liverpool Post’s Alison Gow, Guardian digital editor Sarah Hartley and Birmingham City University lecture and online journalism blogger Paul Bradshaw.

Journalism.co.uk will also be posting on the forum, which aims to give advice, respond to common queries about getting into and progressing in this field.

You can post questions to the forum and follow the responses here.