Tag Archives: The Guardian

Rusbridger: ‘If we want a PCC that is effective we will all have to pay more’

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, who has been and remains a vocal critic of the Press Complaints Commission, argued last night that the regulatory body should be supported and improved, not scrapped, and said the press will need to pay more to if it wants an effective regulator.

Delivering the Anthony Sampson lecture at City University London, Rusbridger, who resigned from the PCC code committee in November 2009, did not let up in his customary criticism of the body, calling it “ineffective” and its 2009 report into phone-hacking at the News of the World “utterly feeble”.

“How, MPs reasonably ask, can we as an industry argue that self-regulation works when it evidently failed quite spectacularly over phone hacking?”, he asked.

In March last year, speaking at a debate on self-regulation in the House of Lords, Rusbridger suggested the PCC might be “flying the wrong flag [and might be] better to rebrand itself as a media complaints and conciliation service and forget about regulation”.

But he argued last night that self-regulation remains preferable to statutory regulation, and called for the PCC to take a tougher stance on issues such as phone hacking.

He asked why it hadn’t written directly to News International over Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal, to ask “why are you paying fees of someone likely to be involved in illegal activity?”.

The PCC, he said, needed to “do something which showed a vertabrae”.

I can’t imagine a fine than would scare News International, they’re just so big and rich. What scares them is the truth, they’re are scared of the truth coming out.

I put it to Rusbridger after the lecture that one of the things required to strengthen the regulator and allow it to undertake proper investigations would be better funding, and asked if, alongside his criticism of the body and calls for it to be improved, the Guardian should lead the way in making a greater financial contribution.

It’s difficult, it’s not lavishly funded and it’s clearly not set up to do something like a big investigation into phone hacking. I think if we want the kind of PCC that’s going to be effective we are all going to have to pay more. But that’s a pretty tough message if you work on the Yorkshire Post or the East Anglian Daily Times. Why should you pay more when by and large you’re not doing things that are going to require fantastically expensive investigation?

He acknowledged that the PCC did not have the funds to undertake thorough investigations, investigations “with teeth”, and said the press would have “to be a bit more creative about the way that we fund the PCC”.

It can’t just stagger on as it is, being completely ineffective because they shrug they’re shoulders and say ‘we haven’t got the power and we haven’t got the money’.

See Rusbridger’s full lecture at this link.

The Guardian: 190 years old today

Five of the best Tumblr news blogs

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Blogging site Tumblr is growing at an incredible speed. There are now 32 million people in the US 4.5 million people in the UK visiting the site.

News organisations are engaging with the community by setting up their own Tumblr blogs. The Guardian set up a Tumblr account in January and started posting stories in February.

We have been taking a look at the Tumblr blogs of news organisations from around the world and have compiled a list of our favourite five.

1. Canada’s National Post

Why? For its use of photographs, front pages and graphics.

2. Washington Post’s Innovations

Why? For its linking of third party content, integration into its main site and the superb technology content (minus the deluge of royal wedding posts)

3. The Guardian

Why? For its design. It looks just like the Guardian. It includes a well-thought out layout, quantity and type of stories.

3. LA Times

Why? For it tone and fabulous collection of photos.

5. Newsweek

Why? For being very social and introducing us to their Tumblr person, linking multimedia content such as SoundCloud and for handy tabs within their layout theme

Follow our how to guide to creating a Tumblr blog for a news organisation.

How to: Create a Tumblr blog for your news organisation

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What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a very visual way of blogging. One of the many beauties of Tumblr is its simplicity and easy interface. You can create an account, choose a URL, select a design theme and create your first post in under five minutes.

It is free and it is social: users can reblog, flag up things they like and engage by asking questions and commenting. Since each Tumblr blog has its own URL, you don’t need to be a member to view posts.

Although it has been around since 2007, over the past year it has been growing at an incredible rate.

“Right now Tumblr serves up 5.7 billion pages each month; this is growing by 400 million more pages every week,” Mark Coatney from Tumblr told Journalism.co.uk.

Almost half the Tumblr pages viewed are from the US, but the UK Tumblr community is growing fast and it now has 4.5 million unique users and 8 per cent of page views making it the third largest country on Tumblr.

The US is first, with 32 million people visiting the site; Brazil second with 5.6 million.

News organisations are joining Tumblr.

The Guardian launched its Tumblr blog earlier this year, with a notable experiment of live reporting from the SXSW conference;
Washington Post’s technology blog is the best example so far of a news organisation integrating Tumblr into its main site;
Since it’s difficult to view Al Jazeera TV in America Al Jazeera’s Tumblr has become a source of news;
The New York Times T Magazine officially joined earlier this month following the controversial axing of an unofficial Tumblr blog.

Five of the best Tumblr news blogs are at this link.

Tumblr, which was started in New York in 2007, by David Karp when he was just 20, almost became too popular for its own good. In December, rapid expansion led to it being down for eight hours. It has since opened another data centre to cope with capacity.

How does it work?

There are seven post types: text, photo, quote, link, chat, video, plus you can ask or answer questions.

You can post from the web-based dashboard or by downloading the free iPhone, Android or BlackBerry app.

There are also other options including posting links from Bookmarklet, publishing via email and other third party applications (find out more via the Goodies tab on the dashboard).

You can decide to follow people or organisations, much as you do on Twitter. You can reblog (similar to retweet) and “like” a story. Followers can also ask questions or leave messages. You can create a group blog so several members of a team can contribute (go to the dashboard and members).

Who should consider Tumblr?

News organisations and individuals.

There are some great examples of news organisations getting to grips with Tumblr with the Guardian leading the way in the UK. There are some great examples from the worlds of fashion and art.

Tumblr’s Mark Coatney pointed us in the direction of this Short Form Blog, a really nice independent site that does news analysis and curation.

Why use Tumblr?

To engage with the 4.5 million UK Tumblr users.

“Our use of Tumblr is neither a marketing exercise nor a means by which to generate simple click-throughs,” Stephen Abbott, executive producer at Guardian.co.uk told Journalism.co.uk.

“We launched the Tumblr because we wanted to engage with the Tumblr community and we’re always on the lookout for new communication tools which might help to improve or augment our editorial coverage.”

First things first

Get a feel for Tumblr and decide whether it is suitable for you or your news site.

“I would advise any journalists thinking about using Tumblr for their organisation to first get to grips with the nature of the platform and become familiar with the practices and tone used on Tumblr.

“Then they’ll be in a much better position to decide whether they could find a opening or niche on Tumblr which could be filled by their journalistic output,” Abbott explained.

Think about how you can engage without the Tumblr community and what you want to blog.

Perhaps you can use it for fashion and lifestyle, the best photography from your publication or as a way to connect readers with your newsroom. The Economist’s Tumblr blog includes its cartoons and front pages.

News organisations can use Tumblr “as a way into specific niches” of the organisations, Tumblr’s Mark Coatney advises.

“For instance, Washington Post does a very nice Tumblr blog just for their style section; this allows a specific kind of post reader another entry into the paper tailored just for them.”

The second piece of advice Coatney has is for organisations to use Tumblr “as a way to foster peer-to-peer communication between news organisation and reader”: GQ’s Tumblr, for instance, does an excellent job of using Tumblr’s “ask” feature (every Tumblr blog as an ask me a question page) to bring readers inside the GQ’s office.

His third piece of guidance is to use Tumblr “as a way to bring the intelligence of the newsroom to the public: CNN Money Tech has a group Tumblr that replicates the chatter that goes on in newsrooms every day; a cast of seven CNN reporters regularly dash off short notes and observations about stories they’re following throughout the day”.

Think visually. And also in terms of video and audio as Coatney explains.

Tumblr is a very visual platform; of the 25 million posts done every day on Tumblr, half of them are photos.

Posts with striking visuals tend to be reblogged more by other users as well, helping to spread the content quickly throughout Tumblr’s network.

The Guardian’s Stephen Abbott said: “We will often strive to post stories which have striking pictures or video to accompany the text of the post.

“But this doesn’t mean that we only post picture-led stories. As you can see from the variety of posts at guardian.tumblr.com, we like to try to post stories picked from a wide variety of sections on guardian.co.uk to showcase the breadth of content on our site.”

Along with receiving much attention for its use of Tumblr at SXSW, the Guardian has carried out two other experiments as part of its editorial coverage: this Glastonbury 2010 scrapbook and this one on untangling the web.

Think about who will manage it. Large news organisations use community editors.

“The Guardian Tumblr account is managed by our news community coordinators Laura Oliver and James Walsh,” Abbot explained.

“Laura and James work closely with our news desk editors on a wide variety of our coverage – from breaking news to long-form features – and they pick a variety of stories that they feel will be appropriate for Tumblr.”

Ready…

Now you have got a feel for Tumblr blogs you can create your account, which takes a few minutes. All you need is an email address, a password and a username, which will become part of your URL (thenews.tumblr.com)

Upload a picture/avatar. This is probably going to be your logo, perhaps the same as your Twitter thumbnail.

Now choose a design. You can opt for a free theme, pay for a premium one (costing between $9 and $49) or you can customise your own (perhaps with the help of a developer).

Look around at other examples and see what is most effective.

“We looked at many Tumblr accounts before creating the Guardian Tumblr in order to survey the enormous variety of designs and layouts available – but we didn’t copy any of these.

“Our designers came up with a look and feel for the Tumblr which was distinct to the Guardian but which capitalises on the strengths of Tumblr,” Abbott said.

Download the free smartphone app if you want to post from away from your desk/laptop.

Connect with Facebook and/or Twitter if you want your posts to be automatically added to your Facebook and Twitter news feeds (via customise on the dashboard). Bear in mind it will indicate that the post is via Tumblr.

Steady…

Consider other add ons. Tumblr supports short comments but you can also add your Disqus account you can also take advantage of Tumblr’s own back up tool. You can decide whether or not you want to embed the blog into your own website (via Goodies).

Get ready to analyse. Paste your Google Analytics code into your site description in the customize menu.

You’ll also be checking the notes section to see what has been reblogged.

You don’t necessarily have to heavily promote your Tumblr blog.

“We have alerted Guardian readers to the presence of the Guardian Tumblr via our main @Guardian Twitter account but, at present, we don’t promote the Guardian on Tumblr across our other platforms.” Abbott told us.

Go!

Start posting.

Go visual
Be conversational
Keep it short. One, two or three paragraphs and link additional background content
Don’t just promote your own content. For example, the LA Times has linked to an Economist article on California; Al Jazeera has posted third party content of a time lapse map of uprisings and protests
Tag tag tag. Tumblr is powered by tags
Reblog
Ask and answer

How did you get on? Let us know when your news organisation has set up a Tumblr account.

Guardian: MP launches inquiry into new gagging orders

Huff Po bloggers take legal action for back pay

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The Guardian today reports a group of unpaid bloggers for the Huffington Post, unhappy with the money being made from the $315 million sale of the site to AOL, have filed a $105 million lawsuit for back pay.

According to the Guardian the action is being led by Jonathan Tasini, a writer and trade unionist, quoted as complaining that “people who create content … have to be compensated” for their efforts.

Discussing the action with Journalism.co.uk’s senior reporter Rachel McAthy at #media140 today was Pat Kane, who also blogs on the Huffington Post. Speaking following his keynote speech at the event he said he was “very skeptical” about the action.

I never regarded the Huffington Post space as a commercial space.

I think what’s more interesting is the extent to which the blog community keeps an eye on the Huffington Post and sees that its leveraging its investment in the right way.

Is it becoming an even stronger platform for citizen involvement, for raising voices, for providing an alternative to the mainstream media or is it becoming absorbed by the mainstream media, are there subjects that it just won’t cover now?

So to me the question is more about monitoring them as an enabling enterprise … And the extent to which they fail or trip up on that is the extent to which you don’t participate.

One of the things about the internet is the exodus and not participating is often some of the most effective action that could possibly happen. The sense that something has lost its bloom on the internet … is a real caution to people.

But as I say if one hears stories of the editorial breadth and integrity of the operation being constrained then that’s the point at which I wouldn’t write for it.

I’d rather test it out and practice than actually go down a route that says I’m doing this because I expect a return.

You participate in these things because you want to be part of a community and you want the freedom to express and then you also want to be part of a big conversation you weren’t part of before.

The extent to which you make an earning part of your portfolio is a different question, I’m not as anxious about that.

Guardian: Phone-hacking round-up from the papers

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Roy Greenslade has written a thorough round-up on how the weekend newspapers covered the News of the World phone hacking apology. He also looks at the coverage – and non-coverage – in today’s papers.

But where will those headlines appear (and which papers will remain silent)? There is a clue in today’s papers.

The Guardian carries a page one story, Civil service blocked hacking probe. The Independent runs two pages under the headline Lawyer claims up to 7,000 may have had phones hacked, plus a leader – Saying sorry is not enough – and a column by Donald Trelford (the ex-editor who thinks hacking isn’t much of a story).

Elsewhere, silence. Well, not quite. Boris Johnson pops up in the Telegraph to argue the News of the World was not the only paper to have hacked.

In a piece which makes light of hacking while calling on “every editor and every proprietor to appear before an inquiry and confess” to having been involved in such activities.

This was just what the Times wanted to hear. It quickly drew on Johnson’s column to run a news story on page 4, Johnson calls on editors to tell the whole truth on hacking.

This is nothing more than the continuation of a News International strategy to deflect from its own paper’s misbehaviour – and its accompanying cover-up operation – by spreading the muck.

Greenslade’s full blog post is at this link.

Malcolm Coles: Why the Guardian’s future does look bleak

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Writing on his blog, SEO expert Malcolm Coles claims the disparity in price between the Guardian’s digital services and print product is a problem for the company’s revenue.

Responding to a comment piece by former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie, which predicts the Guardian’s print edition will be dead in a decade, Coles asks the paper: “Please, let me give you more money”.

A newspaper buyer until he got an iPad, Coles now pays £3.99 a year instead of £230 to read the Guardian everyday in print.

The collapse in what I pay is because I read most of the news for the next day’s newspaper on the Guardian website on my iPad the evening before. And I read anything new on my iPhone on the way to and from work. The newspaper has nothing in that I need.

Read the full post on Coles’ blog at this link.

Guardian: TV’s royal wedding nerves

April Fools’ Day: Headline hoaxes from the morning’s news

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Midday has brought another April Fools’ Day to a close, and the UK media has gone to town as usual. We’ve taken a look at some of this year’s spurious stories.

Jeremy Paxman is quitting University Challenge because of a move to multiple choice questions, if this article in the Radio Times is to be believed.

Teams will be given three lifelines, to be used once only per match: “switch”, “clue” and “phone a Professor”. They will also be permitted to confer on starter questions. It is thought that this last change was what persuaded Paxman to tender his resignation.

The Telegraph has gone for this Labour party memo urging members to celebrate the wedding of Ed Miliband and Justine Thornton with “street parties, trifles and bunting”.

BBC Radio 4 opted for a breakthrough in 3D sound that threatens to put John Humphrys inside your head. (Not quite their April Fool a few years ago, in which Brian Eno reworked the Archers theme tune.)

Now the musician and sound pioneer Robert Fripp and Simon Heyworth, a leading sound engineer who produced Tubular Bells, have been working with the BBC so that for the first time 3D sound should be available to Radio 4 listeners.

The Independent reports that Portugal is to sell Ronaldo to raise €160 million to help alleviate its national debt.

In a move which some observers claimed “will lead to the destruction of the World Cup”, Cristiano Ronaldo has agreed to “act like a patriot” and be sold to neighbouring Spain for €160m.

According to this article on Pulse, patients will be staffing GP surgeries.

Romford patient Rick Dagless was one of the first to hail the move, which he described as ‘dangerously progressive’. He said: ‘I may not have been to medical school, but I am a fast learner and a good people-person. How hard can it be?’

The Sun – always good for an April Fool gag – has gorillas running around with iPads in “Planet of the Apps”. The article claims that gorillas at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park have been given iPads (though presumably not the iPad 2, unless the gorillas have had better luck than most getting their hands on the sell-out device).

Fathers’ groups are taking legal action against Mumsnet on this mock BBC News site. “To clarify, this April Fools’ hoax story has nothing to do with the BBC”, a tweet from the official BBC News Twitter account said.

A number of groups representing male parents, including Justice for Fathers, Men Can Be Mothers Too and Fathers Need Forums, have launched a class action, believed to be the biggest of its kind in protest against the site’s growing influence over politics and popular culture.

An edible edition was this morning’s page three hoax from UK freesheet Metro.

In a move that might suggest Willy Wonka has taken over the editor’s chair, newsprint and food experts have combined to cook up a sweet-tasting paper that will soon be sugar-rolling off the Metro presses.

The EU is to appoint a high-level truth teller, if this euobserver.com article is to be believed.

Other tasks include throwing custard pies at prime ministers whose economies require an EU-IMF bailout and sounding a klaxon whenever anybody uses the phrases “shared values” or “human rights” in reference to EU foreign policy.

Builders will no longer be tempted to wolf-whistle according to this blog entry on Builder Scrap.

The “Stop That Hard Hat” comes with tiny speakers which play pre-recorded messages to the offending builder whenever they detect a wolf-whistle.

The first whistling offence prompts a warning about site behaviour.

And any further whistling leads to recorded readings from the works of famous feminist writers like Germaine Greer and Andrea Dworkin.

The Bookseller reports that bookshops are to have a quota on foreign authors.

The Bookseller has learned Prime Minister David Cameron is set to give a speech today outlining his latest iteration of the “Big Society”. A DCMS spokesman said: “The publishing industry needs protecting from the Browns, Larssons and Meyers of this world. We think British literature should be celebrated, not swamped.”

The Guardian – which went Twitter only in 1999 – has launched this live blog on the royal wedding.

Prince William and Kate Middleton are due to be married at Westminster Abbey in four weeks time. In something of an about turn, the Guardian today pledges its “full throated support” for the monarchy [which is a contribution form Comment is Free]. Follow here for live coverage of all the latest royal wedding news, build up and reaction.

And Will and Kate are going to Cleethorpes for their honeymoon, according to this article on This is Grimsby.

The Grimsby Telegraph can exclusively reveal that The Pier will be hosting the party for the royal newlyweds, which will also be attended by the groom’s best-man, his brother Prince Harry.

A delighted Jack Smith, spokesman for the nightclub said: “We’ve got a special event that’s taking place where the Prince and Princess will be attending.”

And from the so-called ‘Marmite couple’ to Grazia’s Marmite Vaseline.

Thus, it’s altogether very exciting news that Vaseline have sent us their new lip therapy with (wait for it!) a hint of MARMITE! Yummy scrummy and perfect for an elevenses top up. Give it a try and let us know whether you love it or hate it…

With thanks to everyone who sent April Fools’ pranks to @journalismnews. We’ve included suggestions from @BeckieOwens @stevenowottny @GMPrendergast @crimeticreader @Le_Chat. Keep the tweets coming as we’ll be doing another April Fools’ pranks round-up at the end of the day.

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Tag Archives: The Guardian

Rusbridger: ‘If we want a PCC that is effective we will all have to pay more’

The Guardian: 190 years old today

Guardian: MP launches inquiry into new gagging orders

Guardian: Phone-hacking round-up from the papers

Malcolm Coles: Why the Guardian’s future does look bleak

Guardian: TV’s royal wedding nerves

April Fools’ Day: Headline hoaxes from the morning’s news