Tag Archives: The Guardian

Guardian: Lessons from our open news trial

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It’s been a week since the Guardian began publishing it’s newslist online for all to see. The unorthodox experiment seems to be going from strength to strength, with the introduction of new sections and a calendar for upcoming news events.

Writing on the Guardian’s Inside blog today, national editor Dan Roberts says any advantage ceded to competitors, including the Independent’s Archie Bland, has been outweighed by a growing number of ideas and tips submitted by readers. Initial interest from other journalists has also reportedly given way to interest from the Guardian’s audience.

We had a surprising amount of interest from around the world, including this in Le Monde, and I gave interviews to a Canadian radio station and US technology website Mashable. But gradually, the interest from readers began to eclipse the interest from other journalists and a subtle shift began to take place in our newsroom priorities.

Read Dan Roberts’ full post here.

See the Guardian open newslist here.

Daily Mail takes after Werrity with dubious use of Fox business card

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It seems Adam Werrity isn’t the only one to have been caught using a business card he shouldn’t have. The Daily Mail, unable to obtain their own picture of Werrity’s now-infamous “Advisor to Rt. Hon. Liam Fox MP” card, simply scanned the Guardian’s. But this wasn’t a right-click-save-image-as off the Guardian website, some enterprising staffer at the Mail actually scanned it right off the newspaper. Brilliant.

The copy was spotted by blogger Tim Ireland, who made his discovery after about 10 seconds’ sleuthing. See his damning evidence from Mail Online below.

 

Guardian to launch ‘reflective’ iPad app at £9.99 per month

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After taking its time in development the Guardian has finally announced an iPad app, which is coming “any day now” apparently. According to editor Alan Rusbridger, the app will not focus on breaking news but be a “more reflective” read.

We’re not going to be scrambling to update it every minute or every hour. We will do that on the browser, the browser is a place to go for liveblogging and to go searching for material, but this is going to be a different kind of read, it’s going to be more reflective.

It seems like the thinking behind the app will take it away from the web browser experience and closer to what Guardian has in mind for its print edition. Although producing a static, print-like app may seem a little strange for a “digital-first” news organisation (especially one that creates a promo video for its app criticising the idea of “recreating the newspaper on the iPad”), it’s a move that makes sense in many ways. It looks at the tablet as more of a lean-back device for evenings, which research by Bit.ly and others has shown is a popular time for iPad use, something to supplement breaking news on Guardian.co.uk and via the iPhone app.

The app will be free for the first three months after launch thanks to a sponsorship deal with Channel 4, after which it will cost £9.99 per month. Six- and seven-day print subscribers will get access to the app bundled with their deal, although the app won’t include content from the Observer.

Hearsay, a non-Facebook way of social news sharing

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If you like the sound of Facebook’s new Open Graph news sharing concept, which allows readers to tell their friends what they are reading, but want to share away from the social network, meet Hearsay, which has today (September 29) launched in public beta.

You can sign up by connecting with Facebook, Twitter or by registering and then start to follow people and news sources, such as the Guardian, Mail Online and Telegraph. Once you click-through to a news item from Hearsay others will learn that you have read that article. You also have the option of sharing news on Twitter and Facebook (though bear in mind the tweet will just be the URL of the article with a “via @HearsayNews” message).

John Duncan, Hearsay’s co-founder and CEO who is a former managing editor and general manager of the Observer, describes the social news reader concept as providing others with a more accurate description of your news reading habits than provided by a Twitter stream, for example.

On Twitter and Facebook you tend to share what you think other people will be interested in. On Hearsay you share what you are interested in, what you were interested enough to actually read.

Duncan, who last year was a Knight Fellow at Stanford in the US, met a group of post-grads and together they formed the San Fransisco-based start-up, first working on the concept of social news game which then developed into a social news reader.

So how did they react to last week’s news from Facebook’s #f8 conference that the social media giant was launching its Open Graph single opt-in news reader?

Co-founder and CTO Kevin Montag said they see it as a “flattering endorsement of our vision of the future of social news”.

The more people get used to it on Facebook, the better. Facebook’s problem is that people’s news graph is not the same as their social graph. Can I really rebuild my news graph on Facebook? Do I even want to?  We think there’s plenty of room for us to build something that’s huge and news specific.

Duncan put it another way.

We think that Facebook is a bad place for [social news sharing]. Why do I care what my Aunt Mabel read on Yahoo News? But we think that it helps us get across the idea that passively sharing everything you read isn’t so scary – when you know you’re doing it.

The former journalist told Journalism.co.uk that Hearsay last week held talks with the Guardian, one of two UK news sites to launch a new-style Facebook Open Graph app last week.

And as with the Guardian and the Independent Facebook apps, Hearsay users can opt-out of sharing any article.

If Hearsay is successful in attracting enough users then as with the Facebook apps this news reader could be an important social traffic driver and other news sites will no doubt be keen to sign up as recognised sources.

Tweet, Like and Google +1 buttons: lessons in privacy

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There are two articles that are essential reading for anyone who has a news site or blog, and interesting to anyone who cares about the data they are sharing online.

It is something we have written about in the past: Like and Tweet buttons – what news sites need to know about dropped cookies.

The first is this excellent article by James Cridland, managing director of Media UK. In his post “It’s a matter of privacy” he explains why his site has stripped out code and moved away from the official Twitter and Facebook buttons.

Whenever you see a tweet button, that means that site owner has added a small piece of code from Twitter onto their page. Load the page, and, whether you like it or not, Twitter is aware that someone has just loaded that page. If you’re signed in to Twitter, Twitter know that you’ve visited it. You don’t have to hit the tweet button or do aything else.

The same goes for the Facebook like button. Any page which uses it loads code from Facebook: and if you’re logged in (or even if you’re not), Facebook knows that you’ve seen that page – regardless of whether you click on the like button.

And the same goes for the Google +1 button. While there’s no evidence that Google Analytics knows who you are even if you are signed into your Google Account, Google +1 certainly does. Once more, simply by loading a page with a Google +1 button on it, you signal back to Google that you’ve looked at that page.

Cridland also points out that the collection of data slows the page loading time too.

Privacy is also a theme also taken up by the Guardian in the article, which first appeared on developer Adrian Short’s blog headlined “Why Facebook’s new Open Graph makes us all part of the web underclass“.

Short argues that by relying on social media sites business, including news sites, are poor tenants ruled by the whims our rich landlords. He too discussed how all social media sites pose privacy questions to sites and illustrates why Facebook, which launched a new type of Open Graph apps last week, is worth studying.

Facebook’s abuse of its Like button to invade people’s privacy is much less publicised. We all think we know how it works. We’re on a website reading an interesting page and we click the Like button. A link to the page gets posted to our wall for our friends to see and Facebook keeps this data and data about who clicks on it to help it to sell advertising. So far, so predictable.

What most people don’t know is that the Like button tracks your browsing history. Every time you visit a web page that displays the Like button, Facebook logs that data in your account. It doesn’t put anything on your wall, but it knows where you’ve been. This happens even if you log out of Facebook. Like buttons are pretty much ubiquitous on mainstream websites, so every time you visit one you’re doing some frictionless sharing. Did you opt in to this? Only by registering your Facebook account in the first place. Can you turn it off? Only by deleting your account. (And you know how easy that is.)

The article goes on to explain that most users accept the dropping of cookies and the collection of data as a necessary part of browsing. However, Short highlights an important point:

What Facebook is doing is very different. When it records our activity away from the Facebook site it’s a third party to the deal. It doesn’t need this data to run its own services. Moreover, Facebook’s aggregation and centralisation of data across all our disparate fields of activity is a very different thing from our phone company having our phone data and our bank having our finances. Worst of all, the way Facebook collects and uses our data is both unpredictable and opaque. Its technology and policies move so quickly you’d need to be a technical and legal specialist and spend an inordinate amount of time researching Facebook’s activities on an ongoing basis to have any hope of understanding what they’re doing with your data.

Short recognises that business – including news sites – rely on social media for their success. And he doesn’t offer any solutions.

Perhaps the first step is to follow BBC News and Media UK in using unofficial Twitter and Facebook buttons.

Update: The Next Web has today (27 September) published a post stating that Facebook has confirmed is collects data from Like buttons.

The post states:

Facebook has confirmed that the way it collects information from its users may result in the transmission of user data from third-party websites, even when they are logged out, but has asked for users to trust the company and will fix a total of three cookie-related issues within the next 24 hours.

Guardian: How Luke Harding became the reporter Russia hated

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The Guardian’s former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding has a lively piece up on his time as the city’s harassed-western-journalist-in-chief.

Ahead of the publication of a book by Harding on his quarrels with Russia’s security forces, he describes being intimidated and having his flat regularly broken into, and his deportation and Russia’s u-turn in letting him back in.

There could be no doubt: someone had broken into my flat. Three months after arriving in Russia as the Guardian’s new Moscow bureau chief, I returned home late from a dinner party. Everything appeared normal. Children’s clothes lying in the corridor, books piled horizontally in the living room, the comforting debris of family life. And then I saw it. The window of my son’s bedroom was wide open…

Read the full article on Guardian.co.uk at this link.

‘We wanted to make ourselves more Facebookey’, says Guardian

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The Guardian and Independent are two of the first news sites to build a new breed of Facebook apps, which were unveiled at the f8 conference yesterday (Thursday, 22 September).

Here is director of Facebook’s platform partnerships Christian Hernandez explaining how the apps and the new ‘recommend bar’ work.

Facebook’s Christian Hernandez on the launch of the Guardian and Independent Facebook apps by journalismnews

News sites will be watching to see whether the new apps result in a jump in Facebook referrals to the Guardian and the Independent.

Outlets will also be keen to discover whether Facebook users prefer the Independent and Yahoo News approach of the social engagement happening on the news sites, or whether the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Daily have the winning formula, with the experience happening within Facebook.

The Guardian’s theory is that Facebook users like the experience of being on Facebook so rather than direct readers away, they want them to explore the Guardian within the platform.

Head of digital engagement at the Guardian Meg Pickard told Journalism.co.uk:

We wanted to make ourselves more Facebookey. We also know that if people come to the Guardian via Facebook they often bounce back to Facebook see what else a friends are recommending.

She said despite the Guardian’s being an app within Facebook it is incorrect to think most users will access it as they would a smartphone app.

The starting point is your friend’s timeline, not the app.

The single opt-in to the app – where users agree to share everything they are reading – is an interesting development and both the Independent and Guardian have been quick to assure users they have full control.

Pickard said:

You might be happy for friends to see that you’ve read an article on tarte citron but less comfortable with a public note to say you have read an article called “my husband is a cross-dresser”, so you can quickly click the cross to hide that from your friends.

She explained conversations between the Guardian and Facebook took place throughout the summer with the news organisation’s in-house developers building the app, making the most of the open technologies.

We’ve got our open API, Facebook has this open graph.

The Independent has taken a different approach – its app encourages Facebook user engagement on its site rather than within a user’s personal profile on the social network.

Here’s head of audience and content development at the Independent Jack Riley explaining more on the soon-to-be-released app:

Jack Riley from the Independent discusses the newspaper’s new Facebook app by journalismnews

 

Luke Harding: ‘We’re sort of used to the gunfire, but this was clearly directed towards us’

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Around 35 journalists were relieved yesterday to have been allowed to leave the Rixos Hotel in central Tripoli, where they had been trapped for five days amid heavy fighting between rebels and Gaddafi loyalists.

Many of them moved from the Rixos to the Corinthia Hotel, further away from the fighting around Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound. But a report this afternoon from Guardian correspondent Luke Harding suggests that, despite Gaddafi having been ousted, they are still in some danger from loyalists. Talking to his colleague Mathew Weaver over Skype from the Corinthia, Harding said the hotel was “sprayed” with heavy ammunition fire for five to 10 minutes.

I was just downstairs in the lobby having lunch … and I went up to the second floor and there was a surge of journalists in from the terrace and there was gunfire. This was where we’d all been setting up our satellite dishes and people had been doing live braodcasts. There’s been a fantastic amount of gunfire over the last few days so we’re sort of used to it but this was clearly directed towards us which was why everyone came charging in.

It’s hard to know who, but it seems there were loyalists in the high rise blocks to our left that opened fire on the hotel.

There isn’t much security here, there are a couple of guards in the hotel who panicked and fired inside, which sent everyone scarpering. I just took the lift up to the 13th floor and locked myself in the room. The firing went on for about five to 10 minutes.

I just went to see my neighbour Kim Sengupta from the Independent. He is two [floors] down from me, and he has four bullet holes in the wall and one on the ceiling. This is not Kalashnikov fire – this is a very well-built, modern hotel – this is clearly something much heavier and someone has just sprayed the hotel with it. As far as I know, nobody has been hurt.

This is indicative of just how insecure Tripoli is.

See more on the Guardian’s Middle East liveblog at this link.

Follow Luke Harding on Twitter: @lukeharding1968

Cutline: Nick Davies to join Guardian US operation

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Nick Davies addresses a parliamentary select committee on phone hacking. Image: PA

Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies, the driving force behind the recent phone hacking revelations, is to join the paper’s fledgling US operation, Yahoo’s Cutline blog reports.

Davies has been in the US for the past week or so, ostensibly to work on the US dimension of the phone hacking scandal. Earlier this month, the FBI launched an investigation into allegations that the mobile phones of 9/11 victims had been hacked by people working for News Corp.

Davies told the Cutline blog:

“The Guardian have asked me to join a group of journalists who they are sending from London to the U.S. to increase our coverage of U.S. stories. So, apart from looking at the hacking story here, the other purpose of the trip is to make decisions about exactly where I would be based if I were to come here. I’m still exploring that, too.”

“My job here would be to do investigations,” he added.

The Guardian announced the new US operation in April, naming former guardian.co.uk editor Janine Gibson as its editor. It coincides with the Guardian’s shift towards a new “digital first” strategy. According to the Guardian it has an online audience of around eight million unique users in the US, based on statistics from Comscore for February 2011. Recent reports from the Audit Bureau of Circulations suggest that 60 per cent of traffic to the Guardian site is from outside the UK.

Full story on the Cutline blog at this link.

 

‘I knew they’d never get the lid back on’: Tom Watson talks to the Guardian about phone hacking

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Labour MP Tom Watson has spoken to the Guardian’s John Harris about his part in bringing the phone-hacking scandal to light, and the mountains of paperwork and lack of sleep that followed the news that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked.

Despite the sleep deprivation, Watson said, there has was “a great sense of relief” as revelations tumbled out over the past month.

At some points over the last two years, I thought it might blow. But I’ve also thought that the lid could be welded back on. But when Nick Davies broke the Milly Dowler story, that was the point where I knew they’d never get the lid back on.

The full article is at this link.