Tag Archives: poll

Huffington Post UK launches tool for greater debate around news stories

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Huffington Post UK has launched The Gauge, a new platform which invites debate around the biggest news story of the day on the Post’s new UK website while harnessing the power of social networks.

The tool also works to produce a visualisation of the results, giving a quick snapshot of the overall standpoint of the online community on any given topic.

Users are invited to “agree” or “disagree” with a daily proposition, and thereafter they’re invited to elaborate. It only takes a second or two to weigh in, and users can post more detailed responses on Twitter and Facebook.

The tool will also help to connect users to the site’s bloggers, through the ability to agree or disagree with their views and click through to see all the posts written by the individual. Users can also submit ideas for their own blog through The Gauge.

Editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post UK, Carla Buzasi, will be speaking at news:rewired – connected journalism on 6 October as part of the “bringing the outside in” panel. On the day Carla will be discussing the site’s strategy for drawing in content from outside its own four walls and how this is then integrated into its own output.

Radio Times: Vote for the greatest broadcast interview of all time

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Inspired by the BBC College of Journalism’s Art of the Interview season, the Radio Times is calling for people to vote for the greatest broadcast interview of all time.

Contenders include Robin Day’s 1959 ITN interview with the Japanese Foreign Minister, in which Day was accused of “treachery”; drunken antics from both sides when Bill Grundy interviewed the Sex Pistols on ITV in 1976; more drunken antics from both sides when Francis Bacon took Melvyn Bragg out for lunch in 1985; David Frost’s “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal” interview with Richard Nixon; Sarah Palin’s excruciating inability to name a newspaper she reads when asked by Katie Couric on the 2008 campaign trail; and Adam Boulton’s lively spat with Alastair Campbell during the tense 2010 general election negotiations.

You can see the full shortlist at this link and cast your vote here.

Distrust in US media at record high, according to Gallup poll

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Distrust in mass media in the US has reached a record high, having risen for the fourth year running. In a recent Gallup poll, 57 per cent of respondents said they had little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.

The 43 per cent who answered that they had a great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media make up a joint record-low. An earlier poll, conducted by Gallup last month, suggested that trust in newspaper and television news is particularly low, with just 22 per cent saying they had quite a lot or a great deal of trust in newspapers and 25 per cent saying the same for television.

The suvey suggests a sharp decline in trust in the branches of government, with Gallup recording a record low for the legislative branch, worse than the media rating.  The executive and judicial branches of government fared better but also suffered declines.

Other findings suggest that nearly half of Americans (48 per cent) think the media is too liberal, compared with just 15 per cent who think it is too conservative. Sixty-three per cent of respondents perceived bias in one direction or the other.

A recent YouGov poll of the UK found that trust in media outlets is in steep decline. The survey suggests that ‘upmarket’ newspapers (Times, Telegraph Guardian) had an approval rating of 41 per cent, ‘mid-markets’ (Mail, Express) 21 per cent, and red-tops  just 10 per cent.

Full Gallup findings at this link…

Did you buy a newspaper yesterday?

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It was a bid to help the US’s ailing newspaper industry: Buy A Newspaper Day. It had a Facebook group and everything. Unfortunately, 19,397 people said they weren’t attending. Charity endeavours aside, out of interest, how many Journalism.co.uk readers bought a newspaper yesterday? Vote below:

Innovations in Journalism – Opinion Tracker

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, it’s monitoring what people are talking about on the web with Opinion Tracker.

image of opinion tracker logo

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi, I’m Chris Quigley, managing partner at Delib Ltd.

Opinion Tracker is a new form of opinion research that shows what people are thinking and saying around the internet by monitoring conversations taking place in forums, blogs, social networks and video sharing sites.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
For a journalist it provides useful insight into what the general public are thinking about issues. Opinion Tracker is very different to traditional polling, it provides live data as to what people are really talking about online.

The data from Opinion Tracker can either be used on its own, or as the back-story to what polls say about issues.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
Opinion Tracker’s a newly launched service, and is still in beta, so there’s definitely much more to come. So far we’ve been restricted as to how much information we can present, so over time we’ll be adding more – for example, graphs and trend analysis.

4) Why are you doing this?
Opinion Tracker is a commercial product, so in short money. In addition, as a company we’re very interested in innovation, and are always looking at new ways of doing things.

We saw a great opportunity to do opinion research in a different way with the increase in usage of the internet as a social space.

5) What does it cost to use it?
For the general public it’s free. Our business model is based around developing bespoke Opinion Trackers to monitor specific issues in detail.

For example, the government may want to monitor what people think about Climate Change, or a brand may want to monitor what people are saying about them.

6) How will you make it pay?
It will obviously take time to return our initial investment, however we’re confident in breaking even in the first year, and then turning profitable after that.

Poll: Is the new Daily Mail beta website an improvement?

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The Daily Mail has launched a beta version of its website to trial design improvements and a new content management system.

The trial version currently features content from the sport, showbiz and femail channels of the main site, but more will be added in the next few days.

The Mail is asking users to submit their feedback directly through the site – so why not give us yours in the Journalism.co.uk poll: is the new Daily Mail beta website an improvement?

(Apologies for not publishing the poll directly to the blog, we can’t get that to work yet)

Poll: Was the Guardian right to shut down Max Gogarty’s problem travel blog?

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The Guardian has closed the travel blog of Max Gogarty after the young writer’s initial post came under fire from readers.

But was this the right move by the paper? Was this a reaction to readers’ views or an attempt to control them?

Have your say in our online poll: was the Guardian right to shut down problem blog? (Brief Log-in required.)