Media Culpa reports that a man employed at the Swedish Migration Board since the 1980s has been fired for running a outspoken blog about the conflict between Israel and Palestine – but has received 32 months salary plus damages, totalling 1.3 million Swedish Krona, or US$165,000. Full story...
Project Report, the journalism contest organised by YouTube and the Pulitzer Center to reward non-professional journalists producing videos, is drawing to a close.
Until January 9, viewers can vote on videos produced by the five finalists, who have progressed through two previous rounds of the competition, producing a different short film each time.
Entries include videos about Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) groups in the US, sexual abuse by priests and a community of developmentally disabled adults.
Videos can be watched and voted for on the YouTube Project:Report channel and the winner, who will receive a $10,000 grant to report on any topic, from anywhere in the world, and a scholarship at the Pulitzer Center, will be declared on 11 January.
TechCrunch’s announcement that it will break every embargo it agrees to has caused something of a stir amongst PR and journo bloggers alike.
TC’s Michael Arrington explained the good, the bad and the ugly side of embargoed news releases:
“A lot of this news is good stuff that our readers want to know about. And we have the benefit of taking some time during the pre-briefing to think about the story, do research, and write it properly. When embargoes go right, we get to write a thoughtful story which benefits the company and our readers.
“But there’s a problem. All this stress on the PR firms put on them by desperate clients means they send out the embargoed news to literally everyone who writes tech news stories. Any blog or major media site, no matter how small or new, gets the email. It didn’t used to be this way, but it’s becoming more and more of a problem. As the economy turns south, PR firms are under increasing pressure to perform and justify their monthly retainers which range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more. In short, they have to spam the tech world to get coverage, or lose their jobs.”
Increased competition in the journalism industry is causing more and more embargoes to be broken, argues Arrington, creating ‘a race to the bottom by new sites’ and a climate in which, he says, TC can’t operate.
Certain ‘trusted’ companies and PR firms will continue to have their embargoes honoured by the site, but the hope is that by disregarding the rules firms will have to be more selective with who they break news to and clamp down on those repeat offenders breaking embargoes.
Arrington will also be posting a blacklist – now topped by TC – listing all firms and publications involved when an embargo is broken.
ReadWriteWeb has come back on Arrington’s decision, saying it will honour embargoes. While the site agrees that the press should get better at respecting them, RRW says embargoes give more outlets a chance to cover a story, providing multiple perspectives for readers.
“They give multiple blogs a chance to review a technology in depth, instead of making it a race (…) Embargoes lead to more total coverage than exclusives (…) Exclusives are the tactic of people with weak products and of reporters who compete better in bullying than in writing.”
Journalism.co.uk receives its fair share of embargoed news and releases – and has never knowingly broken any, because we want to cultivate good relations with tipsters, companies and PR firms.
This doesn’t mean we’ll cover everything that gets sent our way. We also know other journalism news sites will be getting much of the same info and agree this can make it more of a race to get the news out.
But from our perspective: we have two full-time journalists, so having good contacts with companies and PR is vital to our expanding our newsgathering.
However, as a twittered reply from @Daljit_Bhurji, founder of Diffusion PR, suggests, does the old-fashioned embargo model really work for online?
Reporting on our specialism – as I’m sure is the case with many other subject-specific publications – it’s increasingly apparent that the organisations/titles/companies we write about are becoming their own news sources. e.g. have their own press office, press release feed, blog/write about their own developments.
Sending an embargoed release about this info to us later isn’t a great help. Most of the time I’d rather learn about it if it’s covered in a blog-style like the BBC Editors blog or Guardian’s Inside blog.
We’re then free to dig deeper into that news if needs be and are given a direct line to the people behind it; or pass it on through another of our channels like Editors’ Pick.
Holding back the news tide with embargoes seems to go against the way information and news spreads online through links, official ‘leaks’ (as referred to above), blog networks etc.
What’s more it’s not just quote-unquote journalists covering news releases any more – is the industry expecting other writers and bloggers online to respect embargoes? It goes against the grain of the web.
Are embargoes redundant in the online age?
A report from ContentNext suggests news websites, from independents to newspapers, can turn a profit if they generate more than 200 million monthly page views.
According to the research, a site such as NYTimes.com would need to record 1.3 billion page views a month – this could lead to $300 million in quarterly ad revenues.
Rob Kall imagines 10,000 investigative reporters being paid by the government an average of $75,000 each and spending a further $225 on 3,000 more editors. “That would cost less than a billion dollars and provide the nation with probably 50 times more investigative reports than we now have.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is helping to fund better coverage of world health issues by news outlets.
The foundation has made a series of million-dollar grants to organisations including WGBH in Boston, Public Radio International and the International Center for Journalists.
Having secured $25 million of funding and launched its Chicago section in beta, the Huffington Post is reportedly eyeing further expansion with plans for San Francisco coverage.
The launch of a network of HuffPo local editions is still in the planning stage, however, the San Francisco Chronicle was told.
So it’s next stop San Fran, then – the world. The site’s international section is also in beta:
Publish 2 has had the bright idea of a contest for journalists, with the much-coveted and very rare prize of… a whole, brand new, job in journalism (paid, and everything)!
Entrants need to promote themselves as ‘the future of journalism’.
“We believe journalism has a bright future, and we’re betting everything on that belief,” writes Publish2 CEO and co-founder Scott Karp on the Publish2 site.
The winner of the ‘I Am The Future Of Journalism’ Contest will bag a job with Publish2, a site and application developed to promote ‘link journalism’ in newsrooms, as reported by Journalism.co.uk in October.
The new recruit will join a team of two existing journalists and included in the offer is a $1,000 signing bonus.
Unsuccessful entrants will also receive a boost, writes Karp: Publish2 will promote them to ‘news organizations and media companies that are looking for journalists who are focused on the future and who want to help journalism evolve’.
Entries can be video, slide show, or written (or all three) but must address ‘why you believe you are the future of journalism’.
“I am the future of journalism because…”
And then it’s down to the entrant. Further information here. Publish2 users will rate the contest entries.
The contest is open to submissions until December 30, and entries can be rated up until January 9.
Despite securing $25 million of private equity funding and lacking some of the overheads of its traditional news cousins, HuffPo will still have to weather the advertising downturn faced by all media.
Following reports that the print editions of certain US newspapers sold out after Barack Obama was declared President elect, some ‘collector’s copies’ have appeared on eBay.
How about $80 for this edition of the New York Times from yesterday? You get a ‘resealable plastic envelope’ too.
Not a fan of the Times? Well, why not snap up these eight papers from the Chicago area for just $500. No bids as yet, so if you’re quick…
A new online revenue stream for the traditional printed paper perhaps?