Tag Archives: Telegraph.co.uk

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On the Editors’ Blog

Telegraph.co.uk: MSN discussing hyperlocal partnerships with local papers

Microsoft has been very chatty this week – see its long-awaited announcement of a search partnership with Yahoo.

On top of this and following the launch of the data-rich MSN Local, MSN executive producer Peter Bale told the Telegraph that the site was hoping to take feeds from local newspapers and map the content.

“Hyperlocal news online has never been more important and we think this is a really interesting growth area,” he said.

Payment for the feeds is a possibility or a linking/traffic driving arrangement could be made, he added.

Full post at this link…

Telegraph.co.uk: Why is the right to refuse to disclose information the preserve of journalists?

The Telegraph’s Kate Day looks at a case in California: a student journalist in  was granted the legal protection given to professional journalists when a judge overturned a police search warrant.

That prompts Day to ask: “When it comes to the right to refuse to disclose information, why is that the preserve of journalists? Surely in a free society we all have the right to remain silent?”

Full post at this link…

The Shiny Media story: what’s going on?

Since news broke that Shiny Media had gone into adminstration, Journalism.co.uk has been trying to gather more information – especially in regards to the details of the new buyer. Unfortunately, calls and emails to its remaining founder Chris Price have gone unanswered. We’ve called the administrators, Wilson Field, and they promise to keep us posted if a statement is put out.

  • Also at at Telegraph.co.uk: Why Brightstation Venture’s Dan Wagner is fighting the Shiny Media administration.

We have not been able to reach Price’s co-founder Ashley Norris, who left the company last year. The other co-founder, Katie Lee, has provided some information via her Twitter feed and in the comments on paidContent, and now she’s provided even fuller detail about her experiences at Shiny for a blog post on Telegraph.co.uk.

We hope to post more news soon.

News Innovation: The Telegraph’s experiments with e-commerce

A useful look at how the UK’s Telegraph.co.uk has branched out into several e-commerce areas – notably its Fantasy Football and Fantasy Cricket channels and puzzles.

According to digital editor Ed Roussel, the online fashion shop hasn’t take off as hoped.

“Roussel says developing a system that seamlessly matches product to editorial content is still a challenge, but he envisions a day when the e-commerce gardening application will recognize the rose in an article and serve up offers for that rose or something close to it,” writes Matthew Sollars.

Full article at this link…

How the news sites are treating the phone tapping story

Yesterday afternoon in a powerful Guardian exclusive, investigative journalist Nick Davies reported that the Murdoch News Group papers paid £1m to ‘gag’ phone-hacking victims.

Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Group, recently argued he had little influence on his publications’ editorial content; it would be interesting to see how his other UK papers would treat the story about their sister title today.

Let’s see how each of the UK news websites is running the story [as around 9.30 – 10 am]. [News organisations owned by Murdoch are labelled (M).]

Note: Observations correct at time of writing; subject to updates.

  • The BBC has headlined many of its bulletins across radio and TV with the story. Channel 4 ran with the story yesterday. Both news sites feature the story as the main article. Sky News (M) ran it last night and its main (breaking) story on its website is “Cameron: ‘Coulson’s Job Is Safe'”.
  • Guardian: Top story with several supplementary features and stories
  • Sun.co.uk (M): Not running the story
  • NewsoftheWorld.co.uk (M): Not running the story

The Murdoch empire (source: BBC website / News Corp)

NEWS CORP BUSINESSES

HarperCollins
New York Post
Fox News
20th Century Fox
Times and Sunday Times
Sun and News of the World
BSkyB
Star TV
MySpace
Dow Jones Co. (incl. Wall Street Journal)
The London Paper

Australasia:
Daily Telegraph
Fiji Times
Gold Coast Bulletin
Herald Sun
Newsphotos
Newspix
Newstext
NT News
Post-Courier
Sunday Herald Sun
Sunday Mail
Sunday Tasmanian
Sunday Territorian
Sunday Times
The Advertiser
The Australian
The Courier-Mail
The Mercury
The Sunday Mail
The Sunday Telegraph
Weekly Times

Telegraph.co.uk: Guide to the full MP expenses database

Telegraph.co.uk has now published a searchable database of all MPs’ expenses. It reports:

“The searchable database will include exclusive documentary evidence as well as detailed figures assembled over recent weeks as part of an exhaustive investigation into Parliament’s expenses claims system.”

“In the coming weeks, the database will be extended to include the uncensored documentation for the claims, including receipts and correspondence with the Parlimentary authorities, of all MPs.”

Full guide at this link…

MPs’ expenses database at this link…

More to follow from Journalism.co.uk on users’ experiences later today. How have you found using the data provided by the Commons, the Guardian and the Telegraph? Drop judith at journalism.co.uk a line, or via Twitter to @jtownend.

Let the expenses data war commence: Telegraph begins its document drip feed

Andy Dickinson from the Department of Journalism at UCLAN sums up today’s announcement in this tweet: ‘Telegraph to drip-publish MP expenses online’.

[Update #1: Editor of Telegraph.co.uk, Marcus Warren, responded like this: ‘Drip-publish? The whole cabinet at once….that’s a minor flood, I think’]

Yes, let the data war commence. The Guardian yesterday released its ‘major crowdsourcing tool’ as reported by Journalism.co.uk at this link. As described by one of its developers, Simon Willison, on his own blog, the Guardian is ‘crowdsourcing the analysis of the 700,000+ scanned [official] MP expenses documents’. It’s the Guardian’s ‘first live Django-powered application’. It’s also the first time the news site has hosted something on Amazon EC2, he says. Within 90 minutes of launch, 1700 users had ‘audited’ its data, reported the editor of Guardian.co.uk, Janine Gibson.

The Telegraph was keeping mum, save a few teasing tweets from Telegraph.co.uk editor Marcus Warren. A version of its ‘uncensored’ data was coming, but they would not say what and how much.

Now we know a bit more. As well as printing its data in a print supplement with Saturday’s newspaper they will gradually release the information online. As yet, copies of claim forms have been published using Issuu software, underneath each cabinet member’s name. See David Miliband’s 2005-6 expenses here, for example. From the Telegraph’s announcement:

  • Complete records of expense claims made by every Cabinet minister have been published by The Telegraph for the first time.”
  • “In the coming weeks the expense claims of every MP, searchable by name and constituency, will be published on this website.”
  • “There will be weekly releases region by region and a full schedule will be published on Tuesday.”
  • “Tomorrow [Saturday], the Daily Telegraph will publish a comprehensive 68-page supplement setting out a summary of the claims of every sitting MP.”

Details of what’s included but not included in the official data at this link.  “Sensitive information, such as precise home addresses, phone numbers and bank account details, has been removed from the files by the Telegraph’s expenses investigation team,” the Telegraph reports.

So who is winning in the data wars? Here’s what Paul Bradshaw had to say earlier this morning:

“We may see more stories, we may see interesting mashups, and this will give The Guardian an edge over the newspaper that bought the unredacted data – The Telegraph. When – or if – they release their data online, you can only hope the two sets of data will be easy to merge.”

Update #2: Finally, Martin Belam’s post on open and closed journalism (published Thursday 18th) ended like this:

“I think the Telegraph’s bunkered attitude to their scoop, and their insistence that they alone determined what was ‘in the public interest’ from the documents is a marked contrast to the approach taken by The Guardian. The Telegraph are physically publishing a selection of their data on Saturday, but there is, as yet, no sign of it being made online in machine readable format.

“Both are news organisations passionately committed to what they do, and both have a strategy that they believe will deliver their digital future. As I say, I have a massive admiration for the scoop that The Telegraph pulled off, and I’m a strong believer in media plurality. As we endlessly debate ‘the future of news™’ I think both approaches have a role to play in our media landscape. I don’t expect this to be the last time we end up debating the pros and cons of the ‘closed’ and ‘open’ approaches to data driven journalism.”

It has provoked an interesting comment from Ian Douglas, the Telegraph’s head of digital production.

“I think you’re missing the fundamental difference in source material. No publisher would have released the completely unredacted scans for crowdsourced investigation, there was far too much on there that could never be considered as being in the public interest and could be damaging to private individuals (contact details of people who work for the MPs, for example, or suppliers). The Guardian, good as their project is, is working solely with government-approved information.”

“Perhaps you’ll change your mind when you see the cabinet expenses in full on the Telegraph website today [Friday], and other resources to come.”

Related Journalism.co.uk links:

Telegraph to publish ‘unredacted’ expenses information… in print

From the first day the Telegraph began printing information about MPs’ expenses Journalism.co.uk wanted to know what would happen to the data and how exactly it was being handled inside the ‘bunker’. An insight into the process would have been fascinating for journalists and non-journalists alike.

Would the expenses information ever be released in its pre-redacted format? Or would it be too much of a legal risk and detract from potential print sales?

Unfortunately, the Telegraph press office did not want to discuss the issue, and any enquiries made directly to journalists were forwarded to the press office. We were told we were on the waiting list to talk to someone about data, but we never heard anything.

Today, however, the big announcement was made, following the House of Commons’ official release of blacked-out and redacted data. The Telegraph will print a special supplement free with this Saturday’s Daily Telegraph. It’s a move reported here by the Guardian. The Telegraph also said:

“Inside the 68-page magazine supplement you will find files concerning all 646 MPs, with details of their Additional Costs Allowance (ACA) expenses for 2007-8, the most recent year for which figures are available.

“This is the first time that such detailed information about our elected representatives has been available in one place. It is an historic moment. We believe that our expenses files will help change the face of British politics for the better.”

Journalism.co.uk asked the press office if the information would be available online.  No answer as yet.

But… we just spotted this exchange between the Telegraph.co.uk editor, Marcus Warren, and a follower on Twitter.

MarcusWa: @craigelder: i wld suggest everyone wait a day or two for the uncensored expenses to appear….

craigelder: @MarcusWa: Might we be seeing something on Saturday?

MarcusWa: @craigelder: in newspaper form yes, saturday http://bit.ly/10HiC8

MarcusWa: @craigelder i can also suggest that you ‘watch this space’…..

craigelder: @MarcusWa: I had a feeling! Looking forward to it. Any chance the data can be made available in some sort of *useful* online format as well?

MarcusWa: @craigelder: i can’t say as yet!!!

craigelder: @MarcusWa: You tease

Related links:

Were these MPs’ expenses stories misleading? The screen grabs

As reported on the main site [“Telegraph ‘didn’t tell any lies but was selective in its facts’ – says Lib Dem Voice site editor“] several MPs, or others on their behalf, have voiced various concerns in regards to claims about their expenses in the Daily Telegraph, and subsequently reproduced in other stories by other media organisations.

Here are the screen grabs of the Telegraph and other news organisations’ headlines, in the order featured in the article, with links to the complaints. If you wish to add any examples, your own thoughts or information about the questions raised, please leave them in the comments below, or email Judith at journalism.co.uk. As stated in the original article, a spokesman from the Telegraph said: “The Daily Telegraph does not discuss individual cases.”

Update: the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has confirmed that it has not received any complaints from MPs over stories about expenses to date. Generally, third parties cannot complain on the first party’s behalf.

1. Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire
Issues raised on Quaequam blog by James Graham [he discloses that he is a friend of Swinson’s] and other Liberal Democrat blogs, e.g. Mark Reckons.

Swinson denies claiming for eyeliner or other cosmetics and dusters but said they were included on the same receipt as items she did claim for.

  • Telegraph.co.uk May 21, 2009. The online version reproduced below; the print version of the headline read: ‘Tooth flosser, eyeliner and 29p dusters for the makeover queen’

swinson1

bbcswinson

mailswinson


2. Andrew George, Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives and the Isles of Scilly
Issues raised on the Liberal Democrat Voice website in a piece by Alix Mortimer and also by George in media interviews: the MP claims that he owns a third of the flat in question, it is for his use, and is only used by his daughter occasionally.

andrewgeorge

3. Alan Reid, Liberal Democrat MP for Argyll & Bute
In the same piece (see above) on the Liberal Democrat Voice website, Mortimer claims that unfair criticisms were made of Reid’s B&B expenses: she argues that the size of his Scottish constituency, and the number of islands within it, more than justifies the money spent. Other pro-Lib Dem bloggers, Andrew Reeves and Stephen Glenn make similar points.

alanreid

4. Andrew Turner, Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight
The VentnorBlog reproduces Turner’s response to the Telegraph the day before publication. It shows that Turner denied claiming for life coaching for his girlfriend, stating that it was for another member of staff in his office. Turner also responds to the allegations on his site. Issues raised on OUuseful.info.

andrewturner1

5. Martin Horwood, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham
Gloucestershiretoday.co.uk has published an article reporting that the Telegraph apologised to Horwood for stating that he had claimed mortgage interest in parliamentary expenses.

martinhorwood

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