CBS Interactive plans to relaunch TV.com, paidContent reports. The network ‘hopes to transform the well-named site known for its TV-related community and user-generated content into a serious video destination,’ according to PaidContent’s reporter.
Liked this on Hold the Front Page this morning: an escaped prisoner took time to drop an email to his (ex?) local newspaper, the Courier, to correct them on a story:
“I read online your reporter’s untrue comments relating to my absconding from Castle Huntle [sic] open estate.The comments say I preyed on the elderly and vulnerable people. This is most certainly not true.”
HOTFP reports that Derek Watson ‘failed to return to Castle Huntly open prison on October 8 after a week-long release. He was sentenced to five years in prison last year on 25 charges of fraud.’
HOTFP quotes Ian Lamb editorial manager for Courier publisher DC Thomson, as saying that the prisoner “has complained about our coverage about his misdeeds in the past … but it’s quite bizarre that a convicted criminal who has absconded from an open prison would appear to be e-mailing us.”
Undercover journalism has no role in reporting on meetings – in private or public places – between people in power and celebrities or individuals known to have vast wealth or power, investigative journalist Tessa Mayes told journalism students at Coventry University at last week.
Probably best known for ‘Sleepers: undercover in the sex trade‘ broadcast on Channel 4 in 2001 (when she worked as a receptionist to investigate the conditions endured by many illegal sex workers in the UK), Mayes told students at the ‘Coventry Conversations’ session that ‘investigative journalism has in recent times been branded “dead” by many in the world’s media, but that was far from the truth’.
The News of the World’s Nazi sex expose of FIA president, Max Mosley, was unethical and in bad taste, Mayes said. That type of exposure was ‘just the beginning of the investigative process’, she said.
“These are people caught up in a private moment, caught during free speech. You have to approach investigative journalism in context because it is an intrusive form of gathering information.
“I think you have to look long and hard if you want to do this at the way we present the evidence. We have to get answers for the right reasons, even though objectivity has been heavily criticised in recent years,” she added.
The Liverpool regional papers, the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, continue their comprehensive coverage of the Rhys Jones murder trial using Cover It Live technology, which allows the reporter to feed back detailed information about what is happening in the courtroom.
The liveblog of the Rhys Jones trial is currently on standby, but should be going again at 14.30 today. The Rhys Jones coverage can also be viewed together on one page.
For ease of reading back through, it would be good to have the live court coverage more clearly marked with dates and days of trial in the left hand margin next to the times.
On October 9 the Liverpool Daily Post’s editor, Mark Thomas, asked for feedback, but it seems none has been offered.
It’s an impressive feat, which has been going since October 9, and brings up questions of modern day court reporting: it will be interesting to see if it enters the public panel discussion at this week’s POLIS debate at LSE. They’re debating ‘Respect for Contempt: Keeping Speech Free and Trials Fair’.
With a panel that includes Maxine Mawhinney from BBC News 24 as chair, and contributions from Joshua Rozenburg (Legal Affairs Editor, Daily Telegraph), Jonathan Kotler (US Attorney and USC Annenburg School of Journalism), Mark Haslam (partner, BCL Burton Copeland, and Nick Davies (Guardian, author of Flat Earth News), it should make for an interesting set of much-needed discussions.
At last week’s Digital Editors’ Network event in Preston, Trinity Mirror’s new geotagged news maps were a popular topic of conversation.
Launched on the Liverpool Echo and Liverpool Daily Post (LDP) websites, the maps let readers search for news by postcode.
But what information are journalists required to input to make the maps work? and how does this affect their newsgathering?
Alison Gow, deputy editor of the LDP, explained the system to Journalism.co.uk:
“At the moment, every time our reporters create a news story they fill in certain fields which dictate where a story is placed online (e.g. story type, keyword tags, author).
“For stories to appear on the map the reporter simply ensures the new ‘postcode’ field is also completed; they do this by chosing from a vast selection of regional postcodes which are already included in a dropdown menu.”
For stories that could be tagged with multiple postcodes, the primary site of the news, e.g. the accident site in a road crash, is currently being used, though multiple location tagging is being looked into.
“We don’t use them for everything; there would be no point in geotagging Liverpool town hall for every council story, for example. But for location-specific articles they work really well.
“As it grows the map offers greater potential for ‘news from your street’ for readers, and it makes the Post and Echo sites more sticky – people can see markers for stories in their area and this should encourage them to click through and read more,” said Gow.
To develop the project further, the same map format is being looked at for other editorial content, such as business articles, she added.
Any more questions about the journalists involvement with these maps? Leave a comment and hopefully we can get a response.
The Guardian has published its first article including geolocation data and is using geographic tagging to track reporters covering the US presidential race. Every time a reporter posts a blog their location will be highlighted on a Google map.
Geotagged content has been around for a while now, but is starting to take effect in the UK media: last week, the Liverpool Echo, published a hyperlocal news map.
On Guardian.co.uk’s Inside Blog, Paul Carvill describes the geolocating process: reporters add their latitude and longitude to their article or blog post, and their location will appear in the RSS feed, which in turn can be fed into a Google map using a java script.
Online users can type in their postcode to find out what is being reported in their area, or alternatively click on an area of the map to source information from another location.
So Boris might give out Blackberries (well, ‘blackberry-type gizmos’) to Olympics spectators in 2012, but over in the States Wall Street Journal journalists are finding that their technology allowance is being cut back.
Or so this ‘internal memo’ on Gawker.com would have us believe. Is it for real? Apparently, all WSJ news staff have been told that a new money-saving measure is in place: ‘at its core is the concept of “one person/one machine.’
“If you are an office-based editor, you’ll get a new desktop. If you are a reporter or editor who travels on assignment, you’ll get a new laptop with a docking station, keyboard and monitor for office use.”
That’s what the alleged internal memo reads. Comments below the Gawker article are sceptical: surely the typos in the memo are a bigger story than the computer cuts, writes ‘drunkexpatworker’.
Hmmm. Authentic or not? It seems an odd kind of prank if not: it wasn’t that funny.
Trinity Mirror regional titles, Newcastle’s Journal, the Birmingham Post and the Liverpool Post have joined forces to report on the economic situation on this live blog, happening right now, as we type this post.
It’s charting the falling FTSE share index and the Liverpool Daily Post reporter Alison Gow twittered this morning that it is the brainchild of Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves and the head of regional multimedia David Higgerson.
Its purpose: “to provide live information on breaking news surrounding the banking crisis, as well as informed opinion from our team of experts across the country,” the administrator wrote at 12.19.
The poll shows that 63 per cent of voters think that yes, the government should offer 100 per cent protection on all savings.
At 14.23 Sion Barry of Media Wales writes that the length of of the recession ‘really is the golden question. Some sectors of the economy have been in recession from a while… just ask a housebuilder.’
The papers are using Coveritlive.com to create the blog.
The problems lie with business models not with newspapers’ journalism, argues Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi.
“Even a paper stocked with the world’s finest editorial minds wouldn’t have a fighting chance against the economic and technological forces arrayed against the business. The critics have it exactly backward: Journalists and journalism are the victims, not the cause, of the industry’s shaken state.”
It’s a story that has seen a hive of online activity: the BBC puts a new reporter in the army for six months (he’s never worked in the media before); puts out a documentary, based on mainly anecdotal evidence; the army suspends five people (not clear how many were a result, if any, of the investigation); the mainstream media reports on the whole thing (Telegraph report linked here, as an example).
A Facebook group has been created criticising the reporter for the programme – suggesting he should be tried for treason – which at the time of writing has 1,460 members.
Yet nowhere on the BBC website is there anywhere to post a comment. Although BBC news stories don’t always allow comments, this could have been ideal discussion material for a blog. But because there wasn’t any we’ve seen a flurry of activity on our own site, from users who probably wouldn’t normally use a journalism news site. Likewise, Digital Spy had a fair number of comments. The other place with high level of comment is an unofficial Army forum, Arrse (British Army Rumour Service).
People reacted to the question I asked on Friday ‘why the low ratings?’ with a range of suggestions.
Most, if not all, the commenters disagree that the footage was ‘shocking’ or ‘remarkable’. I agree with those that think the documentary had flaws in its method and reportage, but stand by my original comments. Whether it needed this type of ‘undercover documentary’ to give exposure to racism and bullying in the army (anecdotal evidence, or otherwise) is another matter (that was the discussion I was expecting to be provoked).
Bizarrely, if you currently search for ‘Russell Sharp’ on Google you’ll come to our own website, rather than the BBC’s. While we welcome the additional comment and discussion on our own site, would this not have been better placed on bbc.co.uk?
I emailed the BBC Press Office a number of questions about their online management. Initially I was told that there had been an opportunity for feedback in the phone-in on Radio 5 Live, immediately after transmission. I know, I tried to listen. Russell Sharp was supposed to be on it, but was replaced at the last minute – the explanation on air was that he was (or had been?) ‘holed up’ in an edit suite.
I’m posting here the full response from a spokesperson at the BBC in regards to the response to the programme.
I asked why the BBC decided not to open up comments to the public:
They said: “It’s good to see our journalism promoting debate and discussion. We don’t always provide an opportunity for people to comment on every story posted on the news website – decisions are taken on a case by case basis. In this case there was also a phone in discussion on 5Live which examined the issues raised and heard from people with an interest in the story.”
I asked if they were disappointed in the low ratings. They said: “The broadcast of Undercover Soldier last week is absolutely in keeping with BBC One’s commitment to placing agenda setting investigative journalism at the heart of the peak time schedule. We are proud to have ensured the maximum number of viewers had the opportunity to see it. An audience of 2.3 million viewers alongside the media exposure it brought to the issue of bullying in the army is an illustration of public service broadcasting at its best.”
I asked them what they thought about this story that appeared in the Sun, which suggested Sharp could be called back into the army.
They said: “The Sun approached us for a response to their story on Friday but sadly didn’t see fit to include it in their piece. It was as follows…..
‘We would never comment on a hypothetical situation but the MoD will no doubt want to focus on the issues raised by the programme rather than the individual who helped raise them. We are cooperating with the Army in their investigations’.”
The discussion continues, as does our blog traffic. When I posted on Thursday I expected a few reactions from journalists criticising the reportage of the documentary, to explain its low ratings, or a comment on the interests of the viewing public.
Instead, it became apparent that there has been very little outlet for the viewers of the programme to voice their concerns with the BBC’s methodology and subsequent reporting.