Tag Archives: PDF

Following up on Guido Fawkes’ Scottish media speculation

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Earlier this week Guido Fawkes published what seemed to be a segment of the minutes from a North Lanarkshire council meeting. The original PDF link on Guido’s blog no longer seems to work. The council told Journalism.co.uk that this information about appointments is always made public (see end of post).

Guido speculates who the people were on the shortlist for the position of head of corporate communications and marketing at the council. Could it be that five senior figures in Scottish journalism were up for the role?

FleetStreetBlues suggests – probably based on the minute – who the final candidate was, while this report from February 1 over on AllMediaScotland suggested the new head is Sunday Herald deputy editor Stephen Penman. (Update – Deputy editor of the Scotland on Sunday, Tom Little, has now confirmed to Journalism.co.uk that he was offered the job but turned it down, and Stephen Penman has confirmed that he will be taking up the position in April.)

North Lanarkshire Council supplied Journalism.co.uk with this statement from Gavin Whitefield, chief executive of North Lanarkshire Council:

“It is this council’s practice to ensure transparency and accountability in all aspects of our business – including the recruitment process for Chief Officer posts. For that reason we have always included the names of shortleeted [sic] job candidates, and of successful applicants, in the minutes of the Appointments Committee, which deals with Chief Officer appointments. Although we have not received complaints about this practice in the past, we do keep our processes under review in response to comments and experience.”

Update: Journalism.co.uk asked the council why, if the material had been intended for publication did the link not work? “In light of the concerns raised in relation to this post, we consider it appropriate to remove the minute from the council’s web site and we will review our practice for the future. The web site is being amended today and the appropriate section is therefore temporarily unavailable. It should be available again later today,” Gavin Whitefield, Chief Executive, said.

Journalism.co.uk will try and contact the relevant parties involved for more information.

Links for ICO’s call for senior public officials’ (including BBC) salary bands to be publicly available

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“Senior public officials salary bands should be publicly available as a matter of routine, according to new Guidance published today by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO)”, the ICO said, in a release today.

“Salary details, bonuses and performance related pay should be in the public domain to the nearest £5,000 band when there is a legitimate public interest. Disclosing exact salaries will only be required in exceptional circumstances,” the ICO said.

The Independent reported the ICO has said that “highly paid executives and presenters working for the BBC, and bosses of the newly nationalised banks, must disclose details of salaries and bonuses.

And here is where you can find that information:

Download the PDF of the release here: http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/pressreleases/2009/salaries_guidance_final230209.pdf

Download the PDF of the Guidance here:http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/freedom_of_information/practical_application/salaries_v1.pdf

Two examples concerning the BBC from the Guidance:

  • “The Commissioner determined that the BBC should disclose the salary band of the Controller of Continuing Drama, but not his exact salary, which was individually negotiated. He found that the legitimate public interest outweighed the intrusion of disclosing the salary band but not the additional intrusion of disclosing an exact salary. (ICO decision notice FS50070465, March 2008)”
  • “The Commissioner decided that BBC Northern Ireland did not have to release the fee paid to a presenter. The fee had been decided in confidential negotiations in accordance with the standard practice in the industry, and was therefore properly treated differently from the salary of a senior employee. (ICO decision notice FS50067416, January 2008).”

Nielsen Online release: Web traffic to top 10 US newspapers grew 16 per cent last year

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Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today reported a 16 per cent year-on-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper Web sites, growing from 34.6 million unique visitors in December 2007 to 40.1 million in December 2008.

NYTimes.com was the number one online newspaper destination in December 2008, with 18.2 million unique visitors. USATODAY.com and washingtonpost.com took the second and third spots, with 11.4 million and 9.5 million unique visitors, respectively. Download PDF release

Googleblog: Optical Character Recognition now allows searching in PDF documents

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From today Google can now perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on any scanned documents that it finds stored in Adobe’s PDF format. OCR technology helps convert a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words and the words can now be searched and indexed. “A small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world’s information accessible and useful,” said Google on its blog.

Nashua Telegraph video of Clinton aide arrest is in public interest, says online editor

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The Nashua Telegraph‘s decision to publish a 15-minute video of Sidney Blumenthal, aide to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, while he was in police custody has been criticised by media commentator Roy Greenslade.

Writing on his blog, the former editor of The Daily Mirror said the video was ’embarrassing, humiliating and overly intrusive’.

“To show the footage of a person undergoing ritual humiliation while in police custody is a disgraceful act. It serves no public interest whatsoever,” he wrote.

Damon Kiesow, managing editor and online editor of the Telegraph, told Journalism.co.uk that the decision to publish the video was ‘typical practice’:

“During the course of our coverage we have published booking photos, police records and court documents related to the case. This is typical practice for us. In fact the story with the video also included a PDF containing nine pages of records including the sentencing document.”

Far from seeking to ‘humiliate’ Blumenthal, Kiesow said the paper – and other US media – had previously been accused of covering up his arrest by not reporting it immediately to protect Clinton’s election campaign.

“The Telegraph has been publishing video on the Web for almost three years. During that time we have published numerous court-related segments including police interviews and court hearings.

“Some have been very graphic and painful in detail but were published due to a significant local interest in the stories.

“The Nashua Police Department only recently implemented the technology that makes it possible for us to gain access to booking videos. Blumenthal is the second booking video we have requested, the first was not published due to technical difficulties on our end.”

Publishing the video was not an attempt to cast aspersions on Blumenthal, but was intended to give readers the opportunity to make up their own minds – with all the information provided.

“I think Roy Greenslade frames the question ‘why publish’ in exactly the wrong way, and by doing so pre-supposes both the answer and the potential public reaction to the video.  In fact, this was the first story in our coverage that garnered any positive reader comments for Blumenthal.

“Obviously those predisposed to support or oppose Blumenthal will interpret it as they want. But it is not our place to try and guess what those interpretations are. We felt in this case, and in general, that supplementing our reporting with source documents is the best way to let readers make up their own minds.”

Is there an issue here about the medium: is multimedia content such as this more intrusive, as Greenslade suggests, and therefore arguably less in the public interest? Or does it better serve the readers by giving them all the information available?

NUJ’s Journalist magazine to launch website?

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The April edition of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) magazine the Journalist is available only as a downloadable pdf – a decision criticised by some, who argue that a dedicated website for the publication is needed.

However, according to an introduction to a feature in the current issue, there are plans afoot to launch such a site: “The Journalist Editorial Advisory Board is already working on a plan to go online with a site — a proper website, not pdfs — launching later this year. The relationship to the printed magazine — and to the union’s official website — are under discussion.”

In the feature, Chris Wheal, freelance journalist and chair of the NUJ Professional Training Committee, says a multimedia website for the union could demonstrate its ability to do multimedia content ‘in a planned, well thought-out and funded way’. Wheal also suggests that such a site might require a full-time editor’s post with less responsibility for union duties.

Reactions to the PDF version featured alongside this article show little support for an PDF-only Journalist. “This completely undermines our faith in the newspaper and magazine business. Many members will not bother to access the NUJ site,” says one commenter, while another suggests the experiment will ‘damage links with members and decrease their support’.

This month’s trial has certainly provided some food for thought, but what’s the answer: pdf, hybrid or online-only?

IOC blogging guidelines – ‘Blogging form of personal expression, not journalism’

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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has had the definitive word on what a blog actually is by publishing its blogging guidelines for the upcoming Beijing Games (apologies for the late reference to these guidelines – they were first published some time ago).

“The IOC considers blogging, in accordance with these Guidelines, as a legitimate form of
personal expression and not as a form of journalism. Therefore, the IOC does not consider that blogs by Accredited Persons, in accordance with these Guidelines, will compromise Paragraph 3 of Bye-law to Rule 49 of the Olympic Charter which states that “Only those persons accredited as media may act as journalists, reporters or in any other media capacity”.”

(IOC blogging guidelines for Beijing 2008 PDF)

According to the limitations if an Accredited Person – coach, athlete, team official, drinks carrier and the like – wants to maintain a blog throughout the Games they will not be able to make mention of anything other than ‘their own personal Olympic-related experience’ as ‘blogs of Accredited Persons should take the form of a diary or journal’.

This means posts should not contain:

  • Any interviews with, or stories about, other Accredited Persons
  • Any information that is confidential or private in relation to any third party
  • Information which may compromise the security, staging and organisation of the Games
  • Pictures – still or moving – that contain sporting activity and medal ceremonies in Olympics-designated areas.

Essentially, the IOC doesn’t seem to want any form of journalism or publication that could in anyway clash with the activities of commercial stakeholders or the political sensibilities of the hosts.

Anything journalistic will be monitored from the imposing media centre that has been constructed as the designated home of the world’s press during the Games.

Here’s what could happen if rules are flouted:

“Violation of these Guidelines by an Accredited Person may lead to the withdrawal of such person’s Olympic identity and accreditation card.”

NUJ’s Journalist magazine to go online-only

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Next month’s edition of the Journalist – the magazine of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) – will be available only as a pdf from the union’s website.

The experiment is a chance to see which format members prefer, an announcement in this month’s edition explained.

But this is also a cost-saving strategy, as, according to the union, postage and packaging account for 60 per cent of the cost of the Journalist, which costs the NUJ in excess of £200,000 a year to produce.

Members will receive an email alert about the special edition, which will be available for download from March 17.

How to make a blog an e-paper…

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(…if that’s what you really want to do)

Using Feedjournal bloggers can essentially pdf their content by putting the feed for their posts into the site’s generator. The result is the blog laid out in a newspaper style, complete with headlines and bylines, you can even make a masthead if you so wish.

Dave Lee has tried it out on his blog and I have to agree with him that I’m not really sure what the point is. The idea of taking a functional online publishing platform and shoehorning it into a ‘traditional media’ format seems counterproductive.

Plus it doesn’t really make longer posts more user-friendly, as, having tried it out on our feed, a long enough post will take up a whole page and find its way to the front of the ‘paper’.

On the other hand the service could be a way for newsletter-style publishers to better link their print handouts with content online. Being able to repackage a blog’s content so quickly could encourage these kind of operations to devote more time to what they do online without neglecting their print operations.

For e-paper fans, however, the forthcoming release of a FeedJournal service for readers, allowing users to select the feeds that make up the pdf’s content, might be more appealing.