A look at the ‘digital generation in Africa’, with reference to its changing media. For example, when publishers of the Kenyan Daily Nation, Nation Media Group, started using YouTube ‘within less than three months they had overtaken the BBC World Service in terms of views’.
More audio content is planned for Guardian.co.uk: this week saw the launch of The Business, a weekly finance and economics podcast. Next to follow will be regular video features off the back of the weekly football podcast, the Guardian’s head of audio, Matt Wells, told Journalism.co.uk.
Jeff Jarvis’ monthly Media Talk USA launched last week: “The idea was this: all the major developments in global media, from digital innovations like Google and YouTube, to the crisis in print journalism, started in the US before spreading here. It makes sense to chronicle those developments in the same fashion as we follow the UK media scene with Media Talk,” Matt Wells told Journalism.co.uk.
Media Talk has recently been nominated for best internet programme in the Sony radio awards, he added.
Yesterday Journalism.co.uk spoke with Audioboo founder Mark Rock about the potential for the iPhone audio app to be used for local news reporting:
“[E]veryone knows what’s happening to traditional media and local newspapers are dying by the moment. But is there a very simple and easy way [for others] to start collecting audio data and using it?”
As the tool is developed – both by Audioboo’s team and third-parties once the API is released – there’s even more scope for using geotagged audio news reports.
You can see the possibilities from how it’s already being used by some Audioboo-ers:
Pie & Bovril
The Scottish Premier League site ran a trial of the app last weekend. The aim? To get ‘sound byte updates’ from fans in and around stadia, the site’s David MacDonald told Journalism.co.uk.
“Although the big clubs are well catered for of an afternoon with live commentary we felt that the smaller clubs weren’t really in a position to service the information requirements of their fans who can’t make it along for whatever reason or those ex-pats who are keen to find out what’s happening from afar on a Saturday afternoon,” explains MacDonald.
“We pick up the information via feeds from Boo which automatically populate the appropriate section of our site.”
P&B has tried updating web pages using email to text gateways and experimented with SMS updates, but these were time consuming and failed to convey the mood of fans at the game, he adds.
“It’s early days but we feel this could be a really neat, low cost way, of getting information back from around the grounds to those unable to attend. We’ll continue to grow the trial and get a few users on it and see how it goes from there,” says MacDonald.
London SE1 Community Website
James Hatts, editor of community website London SE1, published by Banksidepress said the site is also experimenting with Audioboo and has uploaded newsworthy clips, such as updates on a local fire.
“I think AudioBoo has great potential for local reporting – it’s just so easy. No waiting to get back to the office, no transcribing endless recordings, no editing, no waiting for YouTube (for example) to process your video,” says Hatts.
According to Hatts, the ‘idiot-proof brilliance’ of the app is comparable to using a Flip camera and could make it an important part of a modern reporter’s kit.
However, using it in a way that makes economic sense is a key consideration for Bankside:
“It’s early days for Audioboo but at the moment there’s no way to drive traffic to our own site from a boo page, for instance,” explains Hatts.
“There are interesting future possibilities for using voice recognition software to display contextual adverts around the audio player (or even to insert relevant audio adverts).
“At the moment it’s great for novelty value and building an audience and building a brand, but even an operation like ours which is run on a shoestring needs to be able to derive some revenue from our content.”
Our Man Inside
Rock said Audioboo should be used to augment other reporting and that audio was an emotive medium – both ideas that seem to have been taken on board by ‘social media mongrel’ Christian Payne in his use of the app.
“[W]hile i experiment, I have fallen back in love with audio. It makes you think more about how you describe your surroundings. It makes me want my surroundings to explain themselves. Either by getting close to a person and their opinion or close to environmental sounds,” he writes in a blog post.
“Combined with a photo attached to act as a catalyst for the imagination, the listener is not being force fed the story. They have to take a moment to let their imagination get involved in the media.”
The latest is from MediaGuardian: ‘Google to host ads from European agencies (March 17)’: “Google is ramping up its efforts to make money from its controversial Google News service by striking deals with eight European news agencies, and launching a contextual ad service to display adverts around their stories.”
Here’s a round-up of the recent coverage of advertising on Google News and other parts of Google, and its impact for journalism. Please do add any good links you’ve spotted in the comments below, or Tweet us via @journalismnews and we’ll include them in the list.
- Official Google Blog: ‘Ads in Google News searches’ (February 25): “Last November, we announced plans to begin experimenting with ads on a number of Google properties, including news query refinements within Google search. Today, we’re continuing a similar experience for users by introducing ads on Google News search-results pages in the US.”
- Journalism.co.uk: ‘Copiepresse would sue again if Google introduced advertising to Belgian news channel’ (March 4): “The secretary-general of Belgian newspaper copyright group, Copiepresse, said that if advertising on Google News was introduced in Belgium, as is happening in the US, the group would fight another case.”
- Official Google Blog: ‘Making ads more interesting’ (March 11): “We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching ‘interest-based’ advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube.”
- EditorsWeblog: Google News and newspaper publishers: enemies or allies? (March 11): “The internet has changed the way that people read newspapers in many ways: not least because news aggregators such as Google News have helped to bring readers away from the habit of focussing their news reading on just one paper’s website.”
- WashingtonPost: ‘Google to deliver more interesting ads’: (March 16): The piece asks: “So you tell me: How obnoxious would an ad have to be for you to stop visiting the site hosting it? What if it was a site that you wanted to see stay in business?”
- The Register: ‘Google clones search ad machine on photo sharer’ (March 16): “Google is now showing text ads when users search for public pics on its Picasa photo-sharing site.”
- EditorsWeblog: ‘Google News to host more news agency content with ads alongside’ (March 17) “Google News announced that it has struck a deal with eight European news agencies to host their content and to display advertisements around their stories.”
“Through karmic guidance, I sprang awake at the exact moment Jon Stewart was beginning his merciless demolition of interview with Jim Cramer of CNBC’s ‘Mad Money,'” writes James Fallows on TheAtlantic.com.
“I thought Stewart, without excessive showboating, did the journalistic sensibility proud,” comments Fallows.
Follow link for post and YouTube video of the Daily Show clip.
Needless to say, my New Year’s freelance resolutions didn’t last long, especially not the one about not procrastinating (I mean, have you seen the talking cats on YouTube?). Maybe I should get into viral marketing… Anyway, since we last met I have come up with a belated addition to that little list – thou shalt not take on too much at once.
This current climate is one in which budgets and staff are being cut – forcing new freelancers to enter the market place, and as as an existing freelancer out on your own it’s easy to panic about commissions. Will there be enough to get by? Will it look bad if I say no? Will they pay me if I say yes? Are my rates too high or too low?
It’s understandable, in light of this, that you might jump at any work that comes your way – but one thing that I’ve learned over the past, very hectic three weeks – is to know your limits (unless you want to spend a string of weekends burning the proverbial candle). Don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining about having work during a recession, in fact, I’m a big fan of it, but I really have realised that it’s important to stop panicking.
The nature of freelancing is sporadic, manic even, in some ways – there will be quiet times when modestly-paid web stories or blog posts will be a godsend – but when you’ve got a few big commissions on the go it’s important to leave time to be thorough, rework things and have contingency time in the case of family crisis (and don’t they always happen at the wrong time?).
Maintaining the definition between work-time and home-time is crucial, otherwise you’ll find yourself living in a constant state of guilt – fretting about looming deadlines when you’re eating bread and jam, and taking your copy to read on the loo. That’s no way to live my friends, no way at all.
On another note, I issued my first threat to a rogue payer. After dozens of phonecalls, subsequent rebuffs, ignored emails and left voicemails (for some work I’d done in November), it was time to get heavy. Finally, after stating my case and assuring them that I would be getting my solicitor involved if they failed to pay me in due course, I got put through to the accountant.
“There’s no need to threaten us with court action Miss Birkett,” said the accountant. Oh, but there is – especially when you’re freelancing in a recession.
Rosie Birkett is a freelance journalist and sub-editor who specialises in food, hospitality and travel. She can be contacted on rosiebirkett1 at hotmail.com. She also blogs at thelondonword.com and at fiftyfourfoodmiles.wordpress.com. You can follow the series ‘Mad to start freelancing in the recession?’ series here here.
I finished my NCTJ course at Lambeth College a couple of weeks a go (hurray! And thank God – I don’t think I could have done another day of such intensive brain cramming).
My last week was spent doing back-to-back exams. For those about to embark on the law (court reporting and general reporting), PA (central and local government) and news writing exams you have my condolences. For those thinking about doing the course here’s what I wish I had known before I sat them:
Law
My absolute top tip? Start revising in the first week if you’re doing the fast-track course and probably if you’re on a longer course as well. That might sound obvious, but you will be so overwhelmed with learning shorthand that law can often seem like a subject to put on the back burner.
Get home from the lecture and look at your notes. Look at the handouts. Look at relevant case law in McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists and make a note of which case studies you’re going to learn for that particular topic. Do everything you can to get the law into your head.
Don’t be swayed by what the press are doing either: there was always fierce debate about this in class especially if a victim had been identified and, according to the law, shouldn’t have been. Go with what the book says just for the exam and leave your own opinions at the door.
Learn the strict liability rule and the elements of what makes a defamatory statement. You will need to write these out verbatim and it’s best to get them in your head early. Why not write them out in shorthand?
Attempting to learn the law syllabus is a bit like standing at the foot of Everest. The exam differs from public affairs (PA) in that you have to know it all and can’t really second guess what might come up and hope for the best.
Having said that, there are obvious headline topics: contempt, defamation etc. On my exam a lot of the questions were defamation-based so those areas would seem like the ones to concentrate on.
Go through old exam papers. The answers are quite logical, but it’s easy to miss a section of the law because you don’t realise it applies. If you’re doing a distance course you can buy past papers from the NCTJ.
Finally have a look at this YouTube video – it features Cleland Thom, who taught law and marked exam papers at various colleges and is now legal adviser to around 50 different newspapers, websites and radio stations. Here he gives his two pence on how and what to revise and how to pass. I came across this video at around 2am on the eve of my law exam when the desperation started to kick in. Hopefully it will be of more use to others.
Public Affairs
Again start looking at this early. It is so easy to put it off because of the shorthand and also because some topics are like having a conversation with the most boring person alive. The good news is that you don’t have to answer all the questions on the exam paper.
This should mean that you don’t need to bother learning some topics, but a word of warning here: make sure you do more than the bare minimum. If you’re relying on luck and probability you may get your fingers burnt. It’s good to have definite subjects that you know inside out and then have back up topics, just in case.
Getting yourself familiar with how central government is structured is also really useful. The teacher may assume that everyone in the class has a good general knowledge of things like the differences between the House of Commons and Lords so if you have no clue, swatting up can make other things easier to understand.
The exam, like law, must be handwritten. I don’t know about you, but I hadn’t written an essay with a pen for years. Get used to writing at length for long periods and do practice exam questions. Again those on the distance course can add to the NCTJ’s coffers further by buying past papers.
Good old Cleland Thom dishes out yet more advice in his handy ‘how to pass PA’ video.
Newswriting
To the uninitiated, you may think this will be an easy couple of hours to spend your life. Wrong. Spell someone’s name wrong and you’re likely to fail immediately.
The NCTJ try and trick you as well: my favourite one in the practice exams has to be the use of ‘Pinky and Percy’ rather than Perky for two, on-the-run parakeets (don’t ask). The younger contingent of the group didn’t have a problem with this obviously having no reference point to the cartoon. Watch out oldies.
Be careful with county and country as well. I got that in my exam and, luckily, realised at the last minute.
Apart from accuracy the most important thing to learn is what the actual news values are in the question. You will be given a press release with additional quotes from various sources. The news is often buried and not obvious and, with my exam, pretty much non existent.
Practicing writing papers and going through the marking guide and with others is the only way to get to grips with it. There might be more than one newsy element in the release so best to bung both as far at the top as possible. Also be aware that a news element can sometimes appear in one of the quotes.
And, you guessed it, Cleland Thom has even done a video on the news exam. He really, really wants you to pass.
Also watch out for the syllabus guidelines that come with the portfolio. These proved invaluable to me.
Good luck and have a holiday standing by for when it’s all over.
To read previous posts in this series, visit the ‘Too old to become a journalist’ feed.
As the mainstream media shifts to writing more online content, its standards and guidelines are up for discussion. Just how much of other people’s work on external sites can/should you use and how should you attribute in articles?
Stephen Hutcheon, of the Sydney Morning Herald, flagged up an issue in a blog post on February 5. He is not happy with the way material from an interview he conducted with GoogleEarth (30/01/09) was used in an article on TimesOnline by Mike Harvey (30/01/09) – the latest version of which is at this link.
Hutcheon’s account can be read at this link with a screen grab of the Times’ original article.
The original Times piece shows the Sydney Morning Herald was named in the third paragraph, and, later in the piece, it again specified ‘Mr Hanke told the newspaper’.
Hutcheon had two complaints:
According to Hutcheon, Mike Harvey then contacted him with a ‘sincere apology’. “He said it was not his publication’s policy to link back to original articles but said that as a gesture of goodwill, they would do it.”
The TimesOnline article now has a link to the original SMH article, but Hutcheon remains unsatisfied:
“I told him I accepted his apology. However, he made no mention about my central complaint about the amount of material he lifted, nor does he appear to have cut out any from his piece. But that’s about as much as I can do. That, I told him, was an ethical matter between him and his editors.”
Journalism.co.uk asked Hutcheon about his own paper’s linking policy, via email. Hutcheon said:
“My issue is less with the lack of a link. We [SMH] don’t have a hard and fast policy on links. If we quote a par or so, no need to reference where it came from. But if we write a story about this amazing thing someone’s photographed or found, or written and the story is largely based on the other person’s discovery or effort, then yes. It’s a bit like writing about a YouTube video without pointing readers to it. Mike apologised but failed to cut back the almost 500 words – most of them direct quotes from my one-on-one interview with John Hanke. If traditional news organisations are prepared to let their reporters get away with this type of cheap journalism, then it’s a race to the bottom and we’re all doomed. If everyone just copies everyone else, who is left to do the original reporting?”
Journalism.co.uk contacted Tom Whitwell, assistant editor of TimesOnline to clarify the situation.
He said the Times’ linking policy was being worked on and while there ‘was no official linking policy’, journalists could link to other work at the moment.
However, he said, the subbing system and workflow in place – used for online as well as print work – meant links often got omitted. But ‘the general policy would be to link out to things’, he said.
“In terms of the principle I’m extremely firm that [we link] not as courtesy, but as service to the readers.”
In regards to the proportion of quotes used, Whitwell said:
“I think it’s fairly clear that he [Hanke] was talking to the Sydney Morning Herald (…) that particular example is reasonable.
“This isn’t something we do often as a policy. We don’t have a policy to do this regularly – I think in this particular instance it’s fairly clear to the reader what the story is.
“We do need to have a clear written policy at what point we link, and I’m in the process of putting that together. That to me, is interesting, the motivations for linking. To me, it’s purely about providing the service to readers (…) a better way of telling the story. The idea that it’s good manners, legally crediting something, isn’t the key thing for me.
“It is very different for online than print (…) I don’t want to get into the way some other newspapers operate, which is rather different from the way we operate, in terms of using material from other sites. In some sites there is real culture of picking up stories from lots and lots of places, constantly, as a matter of course. That’s not something we usually do,” Whitwell said.
The problem with linking arose in the production system, he said, which “has no way of capturing URLs, a purely manual process – I suspect this piece went through this process. We need to work out how to get the process to work.” Getting more links into place is ‘tricky’, but ‘not impossible’, he added.
Journalism.co.uk also contacted the Times piece’s author Mike Harvey, who did not respond by email.
Here’s an example where a paper did not attribute at all: a case over at Regret The Error, involving the NY Daily News, in which an accusation was made that material had been lifted from the Express-News, ‘without attribution’, for a piece on NYDailyNews.com.
A later amendment at NYDailyNews.com noted that ‘An earlier version of this story should have attributed quotes by certain individuals to reporting by the San Antonio Express-News.’
Hutcheon’s post hasn’t yet received any comments; perhaps this one is up for debate? Just how much is too much?
The Financial Times has signed up a host of guest bloggers for it’s coverage of this week’s World Economics Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, which starts tomorrow.
Sir Martin Sorrell, Kofi Annan and British foreign secretary David Miliband will all be posting alongside FT editors and correspondents – you can read Sorrell’s first post at this link.
The site has set-up an ‘in depth’ microsite to host its coverage, which will also feature video reports and can be followed on Twitter @FTDavos.
Elsewhere YouTube got its users to pose video questions to the forum via its Davos channel – the most voted submission was from Pablo Camacho, a student and independent writer from Bogotá, Colombia, who will now attend the event on behalf of the site as a citizen reporter.
Despite partnering with more than 800 US newspapers, Google has decided to end its Print Ads scheme, which saw the search engine help partners run traditional print-based advertising campaigns.
According to a post on the search engine’s Let’s Take It Offline blog, the service wasn’t having the desired impact and resources behind the project will be reinvested in finding other revenue sources for publishers through Google’s products.
“We believe fair and accurate journalism and timely news are critical ingredients to a healthy democracy. We remain dedicated to working with publishers to develop new ways for them to earn money, distribute and aggregate content and attract new readers online. We have teams of people working with hundreds of publishers to find new and creative ways to earn money from engaging online content. AdSense, DoubleClick, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Earth, Google News and many other products are a part of our significant investments to innovate in this space,” said Spencer Spinnell in the post.
“These important efforts won’t stop. We will continue to devote a team of people to look at how we can help newspaper companies.”
Google began trialling print advertising in 2005. The ads will no longer be available from February 28, though campaigns already planned will be run until March 31.