Calls for Action » online journalism

Can in-depth journalism flourish online?

Josh — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:33:54 +0000

How much do we want to read online? Is the screen really the domain of the breaking-news headline, while paper is better suited to in-depth reports? Apparently not, according to techdirt.com, who refer to the case of online magazine Slate , where writers were given the opportunity to research and produce lengthy pieces of journalism, with their work receiving millions of page views.

How much do we want to read online? Is the screen really the domain of the breaking-news headline, while paper is better suited to in-depth reports?

Apparently not, according to techdirt.com, who refer to the case of online magazine Slate, where writers were given the opportunity to research and produce lengthy pieces of journalism, with their work receiving millions of page views.

No content farm is going to create the type of content described above. They won’t even come close. Perhaps one of the problems with traditional media is that they’ve focused on writing stories that can be easily copied by content farms. Instead, they should be focusing on deeper, quality work.

This is also the thinking over at The Times, who believe such journalism can not only thrive online, but should be paid for.

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Video: USAToday.com designer Juan Thomassie talks interactives at Norwegian conference

Calls for Action — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:26:57 +0000

Juan Thomassie ( @jthomassie1 ), senior designer at at USATODAY.com talking about data-driven interactive graphics at the Norwegian Online News Association (NONA) annual conference earlier this month. Hat tip: @kristinelowe Similar Posts: #followjourn: @kristinelowe/media journalist Slideshare: research tips for journalists from @colinmeek AOP: Hyper-local sites have to be news driven Washington Post Interactive chief on the failure of some sites NYTimes.com: New York Times presents its ‘Innovation Portfolio’ WAN 2008: Stop fixating on young readers, O’Reilly tells newspaper industry

Juan Thomassie (@jthomassie1), senior designer at at USATODAY.com talking about data-driven interactive graphics at the Norwegian Online News Association (NONA) annual conference earlier this month.

Hat tip: @kristinelowe

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Johnston Press Atex system is bad news, but the death of the sub-editor is inevitable

Calls for Action — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:50:42 +0000

It’s not just journalists that threaten to go on strike to maintain the standards of their work – but surely no other occupation’s products can be judged so subjectively. One managing director’s “quality journalism” is a reporter’s incitement to take up arms and storm the parent company’s HQ. According to the National Union of Journalists, it’s this urge that saw Johnston Press journalists vote for group-wide industrial action last month (they were thwarted by a High Court challenge ; a re-ballot is underway)

According to the National Union of Journalists, it’s this urge that saw Johnston Press journalists vote for group-wide industrial action last month (they were thwarted by a High Court challenge; a re-ballot is underway). JP journalists are enraged that a new publishing strategy, based on an online/print content management system (CMS) called Atex, will make reporters responsible for subbing and editing their own newspaper stories using pre-made templates. Several companies including Archant are either using or considering using the same system.

The NUJ has a point: with fewer staff and less checks and balances, more errors will get through – this aberration of a front page in the JP-owned Bedfordshire Times & Citizen recently is a classic example.

Yesterday I questioned exactly why the union was opposing Atex; included in the union’s greviances were baffling and unexplained “health and safety” concerns. The union later told Journalism.co.uk that they meant that it adds to staff stress levels.

But, I went on in conversations both online and privately, isn’t this part of a wider problem? The NUJ has a fundamental belief that sub-editors should sub stories and reporters write them. Like the pre-Wapping ihousen-printers that jealously guarded their very specific, outdated roles, the ideal outcome for the union is to maintain the status quo and protect jobs.

The reality isn’t quite that simple. Atex, as more than one person said, is far from the innovative answer that newspapers need. One person with knowledge of how Atex works, who works for a company that is planing to implement it and asked not to be named, put it to me like this:

We’re still in transition in my newsroom at the moment – we haven’t switched to using it for the web yet. However, if the system goes ahead as planned we will not be able to insert in-line links into stories, nor will we be able to embed content from anywhere else online. It’s possible to build link boxes that sit next to web stories, but it’s time consuming compared to in-line links – and if our current CMS is anything to go by, in the press of a busy newsroom, it won’t get done.

That sounds like a retrograde step. Far from holding back innovation, it sounds like JP journalists are right to oppose the move. This is from a company whose former chairman of nine years, Roger Parry, last week criticised the very board that he chaired for not investing enough in digital media (via Press Gazette). Exactly who else is there to blame?

But it gets worse:

For those of us who possess data skills and want to make mashups, visualisations and so on, this is a massive inhibition – even if we find the time to innovate or create something really special for our papers, we’ll have no outlet for it. It also means we can’t source video or images for our stories in innovative ways – no YouTube embeds or Flickr slideshows – cutting us off from huge resources that could save time, energy and money while enhancing our web offering.

It’s astonishing that we’re even considering such a backwards step to a presumably costly proprietory system when so many cheaper, more flexible, open source solutions exist for the web.

Regional reporters, web editors and even overall editors will read that and find this frustration of digital ideas by technical, budgetary limitations very familiar. The last point rings loudest of all: cheap, dynamic blogging solutions like WordPress and Typepad provide all newsrooms need to create a respectable news site. Publishing executives seem to find it hard to believe that something free to use can be any good, but just look at what’s coming in the in-beta WordPress 3.0 (via @CasJam on Mashable).

So the union’s misgivings in this case appear to be well placed. The drop in quality from Johnston’s cost-cutting is there for all to see in horrendous subbing errors, thinner editions and entire towns going without proper coverage.

Unfortunately, journalists have to accept that no amount of striking is going to bring back the staff that have gone and that times have changed. Carolyn McCall’s parting shot as CEO of Guardian Media Group was to repeat her prediction (via FT.com) that advertising revenues will never return to pre-recession levels – and don’t forget Claire Enders’ laugh-a-minute performance at the House of Commons media select committee, in which she predicted the death of half the country’s 1,300 local and regional titles in the next five years.

Regional publishers may not all have a solution that combines online editorial innovation with a digital business model right now. But to get to that point, reporters will have to cooperate and accept that their roles have changed forever – “sub-editor” may be a term journalists joining the industry in five years will never hear.

this is from a company whose former chairman of nine years criticised the very the board that he ran for not investing enough in digital media (via Press Gazette).

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Photography campaign group launches new copyright proposals; ‘National Cultural Archive’ among plans

Calls for Action — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:56:49 +0000

Earlier this year the stop43 campaign successfully campaigned against the introduction of Clause 43 in the Digital Economy Bill, arguing that the legislation would take away the rights of photographers and artists.

Campaigners, which included members of the Association of Photographers, the British Institute of Professional Photography, the British Press Photographers’ Association, Copyright Action, EPUK, the National Union of Journalists and Pro-Imaging, were worried that proposals to collect a fee for commercial use of works whose creator could not be identified (so-called “orphan works”) were in the interest of commercial publishers rather than the original producer.

They got their way, and Clause 43 was removed from the Bill, before it became an Act.

While Clause 43 may be dead, Stop43 isn’t and it has been developing a ‘New Thinking’ proposal, to take to the new coalition government.

Stop43 supporter and photographic consultant Pete Jenkins told Journalism.co.uk that parliament will again be looking at orphan works and copyright, after the summer. “We need to ensure that they are working on the right models – that is models that are creator friendly rather than publisher friendly as witnessed in the past,” he said.

The campaign has now unveiled its new proposal, which lays out plans for “cultural use” of orphan works, “and for this cultural use to switch all other uses and users to “known” works, to stimulate cultural and economic activity to the benefit of everyone”.

To enable this we propose some changes to current copyright law and the establishment of a National Cultural Archive, which must be free to use.

The group will continue its efforts to replace “inequitable and unworkable proposals” in the failed Clause 43, says Paul Ellis, co-founder of Stop43, in the latest announcement. The New Thinking proposal, he believes, “should benefit everyone”.

The Conservatives promised in their manifesto to introduce an Intellectual Property Act and we would like our proposal to be incorporated into that Act.

Although our proposal concerns itself with photography we believe it could easily be extended to all media types to create a massive cultural and economic resource of immense value, and Stop43 is eager to work with creators active in other media to achieve this.

This proposal was first introduced at the 2nd National Photography Symposium at the beginning of May, and was received well, with almost unanimous support, says the group.

The proposal has three parts PDF at this link

The arguments against Clause 43’s proposals.
The National Cultural Archive
Background information: the characteristics of digital media and networking, how digital intellectual property is used, and the different photography markets

Jenkins is optimistic that the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government will listen. “Personally I am hopeful that we (photographers) will get a better response from the new government than we did with the old regime,” he said.

But there are challenges, Jenkins warns, citing the British Library’s recently announced partnership with DC Thompson’s brightsolid, as an example. Plans to digitise newspapers and make the British Newspaper archive available to the public for a fee, trouble him.

Whilst their initial efforts involve out of copyright material, if all goes to plan it will not be long before the partnership is digitising work which is in copyright. Although questions have been asked of the British Library as to the clearance of copyright they have refused to answer any of them.

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Late Night Marketing: How one newspaper lost 5,000 incoming links

Calls for Action — Mon, 10 May 2010 07:12:28 +0000

Late Night Marketing discusses how Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.no lost more than 5,000 natural “inlinks” (links to its website from external sites and blogs) to its website by disabling a feature from blog search engine Twingly on its website: The first thing here is that Dagbladet.no now looses a lot of blog traffic, but this is not the most important thing, because the traffic from blogs is not enourmous compared to the traffic a newspaper can gain from good rankings on search engines.

The first thing here is that Dagbladet.no now looses a lot of blog traffic, but this is not the most important thing, because the traffic from blogs is not enourmous compared to the traffic a newspaper can gain from good rankings on search engines.

What do you think that Google will think of your site if you suddenly have approximately 5,000 fewer incoming links per month?

Full post at this link…

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#ge2010: Times experiments with news and polls tracker

Josh — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:42:39 +0000

As part of its election coverage the Times attempted to chart the relationship between the news agenda, represented by Times reports and articles, and the political parties’ perfomances in the polls. It looks like this : And works like this: Each bubble in the above graph is a news story. Its size reflects the number of comments it received on our site, and its position (on the y axis) indicates the number of recommendations the story received.

It looks like this:

And works like this:

Each bubble in the above graph is a news story. Its size reflects the number of comments it received on our site, and its position (on the y axis) indicates the number of recommendations the story received. (The basic idea here is that, the higher and larger the bubble, the more ‘important’ the news story, assuming that larger, more important stories tend to get commented on and recommended more.) Colours show to which party a story relates. The lines show (depending on the tab) either Populus polling results, or the number of seats the parties were predicted to win during the campaign based on Ladbrokes odds, which are used elsewhere on the site.

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Journalism students collaborate on election night coverage using Skype and Livestream

Calls for Action — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:26:43 +0000

“Skype has been a complete game changer for us. It genuinely is a revolution,” says the director of the MA and BA journalism courses at the University of Winchester, Chris Horrie. This technology is enabling his team of students to do a live election webcast using Skype and Livestream , via its site winol.co.uk , drawing in teams of students from across the country – from Kingston University, University of Buckingham and University of Westminster.

“Skype has been a complete game changer for us. It genuinely is a revolution,” says the director of the MA and BA journalism courses at the University of Winchester, Chris Horrie.

This technology is enabling his team of students to do a live election webcast using Skype and Livestream, via its site winol.co.uk, drawing in teams of students from across the country – from Kingston University, University of Buckingham and University of Westminster.

The cross-university team plans to cover a range of constituencies in: Winchester; Eastleigh (Chris Huhne’s seat); Southampton (two constituencies); Isle of Wight; Devizes; Bethnal Green; Twickenham (Vince Cable’s seat); Battersea; Whitney (David Cameron’s seat); and Aylesbury.

While Horrie admits it won’t look as good as BBC or Sky, he says they’ve “made the 1 million sat truck redundant” with their Outside Broadcasting (OB) using Skype.

Their goal, based on promotion so far, is to have 1,000 viewers live online.

Each team consists of three: one to present; one to operate the camera; and one to run Skype. As well as the live outside broadcast, the team plans to run live output – interviews and packages – from the studio.

But Horrie stresses the process as well as the final product: “We are recording all of this so we will have hours of fantastic teaching materials which we are happy to share,” he says. Bloopers and mistakes are “the best part of the learning process”, he says – as long as they don’t cause legal problems.

Additionally, they plan to to publish a comprehensive “how to” video for producing the Skype OB.

In this video (below), WINOL election editor and second year journalism student Catherine Hayes outlines her hopes for the all-night continuous broadcast: “This project is absolutely massive. We’ve looked it up on Wikipedia and no-one has done anything bigger than this The difference is we’re actually going out to a live audience – and this is what makes it real.”

Follow the team on Skype: WINCHESTERJOURNALISM or: http://www.winol.co.uk/
The Skype OB editor is Kayleigh James, who will deal with content enquiries, via Kayleigh dot James at winchester.ac.uk.

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The AWL: Cash-for-traffic scheme underway at New York Observer

Josh — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:29:57 +0000

The New York Observer has instigated a new cash reward scheme for its staff.

The New York Observer has instigated a new cash reward scheme for its staff. There are five categories: pageviews; posts; Twitter followers; comments; and external pickups.

In each of the five categories there will be a $500 dollar bonus for the staffer with the highest number, and $350 for the runner up.

According to AWL, “The tips for “pageviews” included using Google Trends and Twitter and other web tools to see “what’s buzzing” on the web, so as to write about more popular things”.

AWL puts the scheme into context: “Annualized, the bonus pool of $48,000 could hire two extremely junior reporters with no benefits or a single rather senior one.”

Follow this link to read David Amerland on Journalism.co.uk last month discussing performance-related pay in journalism.

Full story at this link…

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What the candidates really think: TheyWorkForYou database goes live

Josh — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:39:21 +0000

Yesterday we reported how online election scrutiny projects could really come back to haunt candidates once elected , as bloggers and developers collect detailed information on promises and claims made in the run-up to 6 May. Well, one of those powerful tools is now live.

Yesterday we reported how online election scrutiny projects could really come back to haunt candidates once elected, as bloggers and developers collect detailed information on promises and claims made in the run-up to 6 May.

Well, one of those powerful tools is now live. The non-partisan Democracy Club sent out questionnaires to as many prospective parliamentary candidates as possible, and they have received over 1,000 replies. About one third of PPCs have responded; follow the response rate here.

As the Guardian reports, of the three main parties, the Conservatives have been the least responsive, with candidates unwilling to publicly declare a personal position on specific local and national issues. Only 6 per cent of 616 invites had been answered at the time of writing.

Those answers have been compiled into a TheyWorkForYou.com database, available here:

Who would work for you, if elected MP?

Answer each question with your own view, and you will find out what the candidates (who responded) stand.

There’s a project FAQ here at this link, but we also asked developer Tim Green for a bit more information:

Did the candidates answer most questions?

Candidates have to answer all questions to submit. Some had a problem with this.

Where are the gaps?

You’ll notice from the chart that the Conservatives don’t seem to like it. Most of the ones I’ve been in email contact with don’t seem to like the idea of being forced to go clearly on record with other candidates, and would rather contact each constituent individually even if it actually means fewer people hear about them, which I find a bit odd.

Will you be doing any statistical analysis with the data?

We’ve had some interest from academics on working out the political breakdown implied by the survey results. I’m really looking forward to it! The low Conservative response may make this harder, but we hope it’ll be possible anyway.

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Guardian asks readers who it should back for the UK election

Calls for Action — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:03:35 +0000

The Guardian is using Comment is Free to ask its readers which political party the paper should back in its election editorial. Comments have to be submitted before 1pm today. Beyond this, however, there’s a great table showing UK national newspapers’ support for different parties since 1945 – the data can be sorted by individual title, year and election winner: Similar Posts: Hacks and Hackers play with data-driven news BBC release: BBC, ITV and Sky submit joint letter calling for three live televised election debates Guardian Politics: Second BNP membership leak expected Jonathan Rayner: ‘Time to put some balance back into journalism’ An experiment with UK newspapers’ coverage of political polls

The Guardian is using Comment is Free to ask its readers which political party the paper should back in its election editorial. Comments have to be submitted before 1pm today.

Beyond this, however, there’s a great table showing UK national newspapers’ support for different parties since 1945 – the data can be sorted by individual title, year and election winner:

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The Straight Choice offers election leaflet widget to regional newspapers and bloggers

Calls for Action — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:53:30 +0000

Election leaflet project, the Straight Choice , is offering regional newspapers and bloggers a free widget that displays recent leaflets distributed in their local constituencies. “There are loads of local stories locked away in election leaflets, and we want to make sure that as many local eyes as possible are on them,” said Richard Pope, from the Straight Choice. “So we’ve created a widget that lets local papers and bloggers display leaflets from their constituency on their own website.” To find your widget, simply visit your constituency’s page via this link, http://www.thestraightchoice.org/browse.php , and find the code at the right hand side of the page.

Election leaflet project, the Straight Choice, is offering regional newspapers and bloggers a free widget that displays recent leaflets distributed in their local constituencies.

“There are loads of local stories locked away in election leaflets, and we want to make sure that as many local eyes as possible are on them,” said Richard Pope, from the Straight Choice. “So we’ve created a widget that lets local papers and bloggers display leaflets from their constituency on their own website.”

To find your widget, simply visit your constituency’s page via this link, http://www.thestraightchoice.org/browse.php, and find the code at the right hand side of the page.

Furthermore, the Straight Choice is offering users the chance to customise the widget further, by aggregating several constituencies together. Pope encourages anyone interested to contact team at thestraightchoice.org.

As we reported at the end of last month, the Guardian started syndicating Straight Choice content on its politics sites.

Here’s an example of the Brighton Pavilion widget (Journalism.co.uk’s local constituency):

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Lost Remote: New journalism programme to mix digital storytelling and business

Calls for Action — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:50:40 +0000

“Even with the state of journalism today,” claims Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman, “most university professors would be loath to meld a curriculum of storytelling with the business side of the equation”. This is not the case at the University of Washington digital media programme though, which aims to become the ‘Columbia Journalism School of digital media and communication’, and teach “a unique blend of digital storytelling, social media and the business of digital media”. “The three go together,” says Hanson Hosein, the director of the Masters of Communication in Digital Media program and a former NBC News correspondent who covered the Iraq war as a one-man band.

“The three go together,” says Hanson Hosein, the director of the Masters of Communication in Digital Media program and a former NBC News correspondent who covered the Iraq war as a one-man band. “Were hearing from our applicants that theres nothing else like our program.”

Full story at this link…

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ComRes stats: Who’s to blame for misreported Lib Dem leap frog poll? ITV blames outside journalist

Calls for Action — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:09:04 +0000

Earlier today Friday media news sites, bloggers and tweeters reported that Liberal Democrats had leap frogged Labour by 14 per cent in a ITV/ComRes poll, to 35 per cent. For example: But this figure was soon amended and given some context

Earlier today Friday media news sites, bloggers and tweeters reported that Liberal Democrats had leap frogged Labour by 14 per cent in a ITV/ComRes poll, to 35 per cent.

For example:

But this figure was soon amended and given some context. ComRes actually reports in its “final analysis” that Liberal Democrats remain in third place, with a cut of 24 per cent.

How did the misunderstanding occur?

ITN claims, in a statement to Journalism.co.uk: “A headline figure of the ComRes/ITV News poll was overheard by a journalist outside of ITV News.”

“Other media outlets ran with this information without verifying. The full figures were released in their full context almost immediately by ComRes and ITV News to all media.”

If you read ComRes’ press statement – published on the Independent’s blog here – it states:

The final analysis of the ComRes instant poll for last night’s ITV News at Ten among those watching the First Election Debate, extrapolated across the GB adult population as a whole, puts the Conservatives on 35 per cent, Labour on 28 per cent and Liberal Democrats on 24 per cent.

(…)

Of the 4,000 viewers sampled, before the poll was weighted across the population, their voting intentions are now Conservative 36 per cent, Labour 24 cent and Lib Dems 35 per cent.

(…)

The national vote share result takes into account ComRes’s latest voting intention figures published on Wednesday 14th April and the voting intention of respondents who watched the debate polled on 15th April.

But it was the latter unweighted sample that caught the headlines, before being quickly updated when the full results were release.

According to the Telegraph’s Robert Colvile it was a case of “egg on pollster face”. But ComRes told Journalism.co.uk it only ever released the full results – with context and weighting.

ConservativeHome’s Jonathan Isaby blamed a tweet from ITV correspondent Lucy Manning (@lucymanning).

But she denied she was the first, and tweeted (in an open message to Guardian political journalist Andrew Sparrow): “Not true many more tweeted them before me. thought id clarify!”

Sparrow justifies sharing the initial poll results, acquired via Twitter, on Guardian.co.uk. He writes:

“Twitter is a wonderful source of information (if we didn’t use it, this blog would be slower and far less information) and the figures were released by journalists who are normally reliable. But on this occasion the information was misleading. I should have waited until I had spoken to ComRes before going into overdrive. I’m sorry about that.”

But weighting or no weighting, is the poll’s methodology sound? Journalist James Ball tweets that weighting a poll like that is “very problematic”.

“Not only is direct audience for debate small, it’s untypical of general population,” he claims. He says it’s “staggeringly poor methodology” for ComRes, “at a time rife for misinterpretation.”

Full ComRes press release:

The final analysis of the ComRes instant poll for last night’s ITV News at Ten among those watching the First Election Debate, extrapolated across the GB adult population as a whole, puts the Conservatives on 35 per cent, Labour on 28 per cent and Liberal Democrats on 24 per cent. This compares to the ComRes poll broadcast on ITV News at Ten on 14th April showing Conservatives on 35 per cent, Labour on 29 per cent and Liberal Democrats on 21 per cent.

Of the 4,000 sample of viewers who watched the debate, their voting intentions are now Conservative 36 per cent, Labour 24 per cent and Lib Dems 35 per cent. This compares to their stated voting intentions prior to the debate which stood at Conservative 39 per cent, Labour at 27 per cent and Liberal Democrat 21 per cent.

Methodology statement:

Instant Poll
ComRes interviewed 4032 GB adults on 15th April by an automated telephone survey immediately after the ITV1 Leaders’ Debate. Data were weighted to be demographically representative of all GB adults and weighted by past vote recall. Respondents were selected from a pre-recruited panel of people who agreed to be contacted by telephone following the leaders’ debates to give their views. ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. Full data tables will be available shortly at www.comres.co.uk.

National Voting Intention
To extrapolate the impact of the change in voting intention figures for viewers of the debates the national voting intention is modelled taking into account: (i) viewing figures for the debate (Peak of 10 million approximately 21 per cent of the population); (ii) projected turnout nationally and among viewers. Therefore, the national vote share result takes into account ComRess latest voting intention figures published on Wednesday 14th April and the voting intention of respondents who watched the debate polled on 15th April.

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Nieman Journalism Lab: Barriers to entry can improve quality and quantity of reader comments, says Gawker

Josh — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 06:06:58 +0000

In 2009, blog network Gawker Media introduced a new, stricter commenting system in an attempt to free the site from certain readers who were dominating comment threads. Nieman Journalism Lab has the full rundown of how the system now works, which includes trusted commenters having greater access to discussions and most recent comments placed at the top rather than bottom of threads to steer discussion. “We’ll be able to encourage the kind of discussion that *we* want – not one that is dominated merely by the most prolific of our commenters

“We’ll be able to encourage the kind of discussion that *we* want – not one that is dominated merely by the most prolific of our commenters. It’s our party; we get to decide who comes,” wrote founder Nick Denton at the time.

A graph on the blog of Gawker Media chief technology officer Tom Plunkett shows an initial dip in comment volume when the changes were first made, followed by a steep incline:

Though there were some calls to do so, purging commenter accounts is not a solution for the out-of-control commenter community. Nor is a large moderation staff. We believe pruning, and a commenting platform as we have implemented, will lead to increased participation, while at the same time encouraging quality. This data, and the subjective opinion of many, seem to back this assertion.

Full Nieman Journalism Lab report at this link…

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ProPublica launches ‘matchmaker’ to pair case studies with local journalists

Calls for Action — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:26:22 +0000

Non-profit US investigative organisation ProPublica has got so many ‘ loan modification’ case studies it is now playing matchmaker , linking contacts and stories with local journalists from other publications and broadcasters as part of its reporter network project .

Non-profit US investigative organisation ProPublica has got so many ‘loan modification’ case studies it is now playing matchmaker, linking contacts and stories with local journalists from other publications and broadcasters as part of its reporter network project.

Numerous American homeowners have had problems obtaining ‘loan modifications’, a national programme with some major flaws.

More than three million people are eligible and more than one million might be currently involved in the loan modification process, ProPublica’s Mike Webb said, explaining the scale and level of interest.

“We’re doing this because more than 800 homeowners have shared their stories with us about the numerous problems they’ve had in obtaining a modification,” he said.

“We’ve shared many of their stories in our reports, but there are just too many to publish. So we’re hoping local reporters can talk to the homeowners and local banks to help your readers understand how the program works (or doesn’t work).”

Very quickly, ProPublica had 40 reporters sign up to be be paired. “It’s a continuation of our sharing approach, like the reporting recipe, and stimulus data sets,” said Webb.

“We know that news organisations dont give up their sources to their competitors, but were a different kind of publication,” say reporters Amanda Michel and Paul Kiel, on their blog.

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Brighton Future of News: telling the election straight

Calls for Action — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:10:49 +0000

Freelance journalist John Keenan reports from last night’s Brighton Future of News meetup. This post originally appeared on his blog.

Freelance journalist John Keenan reports from last night’s Brighton Future of News meetup. This post originally appeared on his blog.

As the general election lumbers ineluctablyinto view, householders across the United Kingdom must brace themselves for an avalanche of political leaflets. But hold on a minute before you binthe bumf.

According Richard Pope, web designer and political provocateur, there is a mine of unintended information in the annoying pamphlets littering your doormat. Pope told the meeting of the Brighton Future of News Group (BFONG) at the Skiff last night that careful monitoring of such material can prevent politicians getting away with murder.

Pope’s election leaflet project, The Straight Choice, is an attempt to turn the propaganda back on the spin doctors. He outlined a number of ways that journalists (and by implication any engaged citizen) can use leaflets to dig out inconvenient truths. Among these were:

Track down ‘fake supporters’. Pope highlighted how a supposed group of British National Party members featured in one leaflet were, in fact, a group of Italian models whose photo the BNP had lifted from another source.
Follow the money. A close reading of the small print detailing where the leaflet was printed can lead you to often surprising information about political donors.
Spot the spoof: in a desperate attempt to snare your attention, the parties will dress up their dreary slogans as gossip magazine fodder. And you thought photos of celebs in front of their mantelpieces were dodgy – you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Capture the contradictions. We all know that politicians of every stripe will promise the moon in order to get elected. But they trust us to forget about their lunar pledges as soon as we have tossed aside the handbill. Pope’s website aims to keep them on message and under the microscope.
Splat the stats. It is amusing and instructive to compare the surreal use of statistics as politicians play the numbers game to support any policy they choose.

Pope was candid over his desire to see a party official lose a job over a gaffe highlighted by his website. A more measured ambition is to improve the quality of political debate – moving it away from gratuitous character attacks to sensible arguments over policy.

Don’t fret, however, if you are not deluged with leaflets in the coming weeks; this simply means that you live in an area where a donkey with the right rosette would find itself in Westminster.

As Dan Wilson, who is campaigning for Nancy Platts in the Brighton Pavilion constituency, told the meeting, the prime purpose of leafleting is to gather names and addresses of each party’s supporters so they can get the vote out on the day. “I’m not convinced that the Argus wields political influence,” he said, sucking the air out of the room.

Brighton Future of News group was founded by Journalism.co.uk’s Judith Townend and journalist/blogger Sarah Booker. Find out more at this link. You can see tweets from last night at this link.

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AP: Search engines must pay up, say Murdoch and AP’s Curley

Josh — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:26:51 +0000

Publishers must take back control of their content from search engines, aggregators and bloggers, which have become the ‘preferred customer destinations for breaking news’, the Associated Press’ (AP) Tom Curley has said at an industry summit in Beijing. “We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves – at great human and economic cost – to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it,” Curley said (though slightly strangely citing Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook as key examples of threats)

“We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves – at great human and economic cost – to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it,” Curley said (though slightly strangely citing Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook as key examples of threats).

Speaking separately at the event, News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch said ‘the aggregators and plagiarists’ would soon have to pay the price for using publishers’ content for free.

If publishers and news organisations don’t regain control they will pay ‘the ultimate price’ and it will be ‘the kleptomaniacs who triumph’, he added.

Earlier this week the Associated Press (AP) said it is considering whether it could sell news items to online clients for a short, exclusive period.

The agency is also developing a new system for tracking its content online and monitoring copyright infringements.

Full story at this link…

The Baltimore Hoax: newspapers and bloggers fall for Wire comments spoof

Calls for Action — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:17:01 +0000

There’s been a wonderful ‘gotcha’ story today. Following on from the ‘froth and fertle’ of the ‘Chris-Grayling-compares-Britain-to-Baltimore’s-The Wire-TV-Series’ story ( even Garbo came in on that one at the Wardman Wire ), parts of the British Press and parts of the blogosphere picked up a story that the mayor of Baltimore had rebuked Grayling on her own website. These news sources included: 1

There’s been a wonderful ‘gotcha’ story today.

Following on from the ‘froth and fertle’ of the ‘Chris-Grayling-compares-Britain-to-Baltimore’s-The Wire-TV-Series’ story (even Garbo came in on that one at the Wardman Wire), parts of the British Press and parts of the blogosphere picked up a story that the mayor of Baltimore had rebuked Grayling on her own website.

These news sources included:
1. The Guardian
2. The Independent
3. The Baltimore Sun
4. Liberal Conspiracy
5. Labour List

The Sky News blog took a different position, and suggested that the whole thing was a bit fishy.

The story was a fake, as Alex Hilton – the editor of Labour Home and ‘currently resting’ Recess Monkey – had created a spoof mayor of Baltimore website with a fake press release, which suggested that if we compare Baltimore to TV series The Wire, we may as well compare Britain to The Midsomer Murders.

The real Mayor of Baltimore website is part of that of Baltimore City.

The fake website contained a number of clues, such as an assertion of copyright belonging to ‘R Monkee Esq’, and a slight giveaway in the source code:

OK, so I’m just having a bit of fun at Chris Grayling’s expense.
Sitting in the office on a hot August afternoon, I was fantasising
that I was mayor of Baltimore and how annoyed I would be.
I hope you very quickly picked up that this was a spoof.
Didn’t mean to break any laws or ethical mores – please don’t
extradite me if I have unwittingly done so. Hope you appreciate the
humour, Alex Hilton, alexhilton@gmail.com – 07985 384 859

But some British newspapers and blogs missed the clues.

What can we learn?
I’ve recently been arguing that the different skills of bloggers and journalists are complementary rather than being competitive; it seems to me that this ‘incident’ points up some skills which are common to both.

The pressure to get the story out now is the real enemy of good reporting. Surely it is better to wait and be beaten, than to just get it wrong. A model which depends on being five or 10 minutes quicker than a competitor with the news may end up undermining credibility. In this case, there were ample signs that this was a hoax, but they were somehow missed. I’m glad I’m a supporter of the slow blogging movement.

One antidote to mistakes caused by time pressure is a stronger ‘fact-checking’ framework, as used in the USA. For bloggers the equivalent might be a ’sanity check’ by a completely different set of eyes.

One way to avoid that is to follow the classic ‘niche’ route, and simply avoid competing in the commodity area of ‘the latest news’; report something in-depth where you can be a specialist and a unique authority. That is a strategy which is perhaps more open to bloggers than journalists in the big media.

Once the incorrect report is published, the important element becomes the nature of the the updates and corrections are a peculiar mix of self-justification, continued reflex-bashing of Mr Grayling, and straight corrections. Labour List has done the cleanest three-point-turn in this case:

UPDATE: The Guardian, The Independent, The Baltimore Sun and LabourList all got hooked, lined and sinkered by this, which was a hoax inexplicably deisgned to deceive, arranged by LabourHome’s Alex Hilton. Lesson learned: check twice.

Question asked: why, Alex? Hopefully he’ll let us know in due course. In the meantime, apologies.

The final point that I have noted is the ‘comment box ranting’ tendency to follow the line of the article, even when there are those in the same thread pointing out that the article is nonsense.

The one point that I am still interested to discover is how Alex Hilton seeded the story into the media.

Matt Wardman edits the non-partisan Wardman Wire group blog which covers politics, media and technology. He is @mattwardman on Twitter, and mattwardman [at] gmail [dot] com on email.

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Update on Wired Journalists’ new look; Publish2 claims it now has 20 per cent of all journalists in the US

Calls for Action — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:38:32 +0000

As reported on the main site, the social network Wired Journalists is now looking rather different; it has been incorporated into Publish2, the social journalism venture based on a belief in the link economy. Since no terms of the deal were disclosed in the announcement, Journalism.co.uk was keen to know more. Publish2 CEO Scott Karp didn’t reveal the details of the agreement but added this statement:

“Creating a social network for our journalist community within P2 was always on our roadmap, and WiredJournalists presented an opportunity to buy instead of build. It was a great fit. WiredJournalists grew from nothing to more than 3,000 journalists in 18 months.

“The frontline web producers, reporters, and editors using Wired Journalists are exactly the journalists we’re bringing together at Publish2 to collaborate and share links with each other and their readers.

“With this deal, Publish2 now has the equivalent of 20 per cent of all journalists in the U.S, since launching less than a year ago.”

Guardian gives comedians right of reply: There isn’t a ‘new offensiveness’ say Herring and Burns

Calls for Action — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:26:34 +0000

As noted here earlier this week, comedian Richard Herring (@herring1967) objected to Monday’s Guardian G2 feature on offensive comedy. Herring felt that quotes and examples from his shows were used out of context, giving the impression that he was a racist. He used his personal blog and Twitter account to air his frustration while others (including fellow comedians) used their own platforms to express surprise at the article. Other supportive blog posts sprang up, and tweets quickly flew round, condemning the original Guardian article. Following his complaint, the Guardian gave Herring, and Australian comedian, Brendan Burns, the chance to respond in print in today’s G2. Find them at these links:

“There is no New Offenders movement: We don’t have a clubhouse. Standup comedian Brendon Burns responds to Guardian critic Brian Logan’s attack on ‘the new offensiveness’.”
“There isn’t a ‘New Offensiveness’: Standup comedian Richard Herring defends his ‘Hitler Moustache’ act after comments made by Guardian critic Brian Logan.”

Richard Herring’s latest blog post can be found here; an interesting account of writing the article, and the searching questions he asked himself about the whole thing.

The Blog Herald reports that Shiny Media has gone into administration

Calls for Action — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:34:59 +0000

Early this morning, Andy Merrett, who formerly worked for some of the network’s blog titles, broke the news on the Blog Herald that the Shiny Media had gone into administration.

Early this morning, Andy Merrett, who formerly worked for some of the network’s blog titles, broke the news on the Blog Herald that the Shiny Media had gone into administration. He wrote:

“Despite this years cutbacks and new additions, it doesnt seem to have been enough to save the company.”

Full story at this link…

Interestingly, Shiny’s co-founder, Katie Lee claims today, via Twitter, that Shiny Media never received the reported $4.5m of funding from Bright Station Ventures in 2007, an amount confirmed here on Shiny’s own blog.

Lee, who left the company in February, wrote today:

“$4.5m was incorrectly reported in the press and we were told to stick with the story. Was mortified.”

Lee also said she thought the company had already been bought:

“As far as I know, Shiny Media has already been bought (before I even knew it had gone into administration). So hopefully some jobs OK.”

More to follow from Journalism.co.uk.

Why Nick Denton wouldn’t set up shop in UK

Josh — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:42:33 +0000

From Politico: a report on a panel at the Institute’s Ideas Festival in Colarado, asking ‘Whats the News Worth to You?’ For us Brits, this is the interesting part: “During the panel’s Q&A, Gawker Medias Nick Denton sarcastically thanked the American newspaper industry for being so unaggressive, making it possible for ‘thugs’ like him to succeed. “Conversely, Denton said he’d never set up shop in England. ‘Every single day, those editors get up and try to kill each other,’ said Denton

From Politico: a report on a panel at the Institute’s Ideas Festival in Colarado, asking ‘Whats the News Worth to You?’

For us Brits, this is the interesting part:

“During the panel’s Q&A, Gawker Medias Nick Denton sarcastically thanked the American newspaper industry for being so unaggressive, making it possible for ‘thugs’ like him to succeed.

“Conversely, Denton said he’d never set up shop in England. ‘Every single day, those editors get up and try to kill each other,’ said Denton. Not so in the U.S.”

(Hat-tip: Martin Stabe)

Science journalism: a row

Josh — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:57:35 +0000

This week is the World Conference of Science Journalists (#WCSJ) . This is what the Independent’s Steve Connor had to say in an article entitled ‘Lofty medics should stick to their day jobs.’ “The sixth World Conference of Science Journalists is underway in London

This week is the World Conference of Science Journalists (#WCSJ). This is what the Independent’s Steve Connor had to say in an article entitled ‘Lofty medics should stick to their day jobs.’

“The sixth World Conference of Science Journalists is underway in London. I can’t say it’s going to change my life, as I missed out on the previous five, but I did notice that it has attracted the attention of a bunch of medics with strong views on the state of science journalism today.”

Connor picked up on a gathering advertised by Ben Goldacre (a post-event meet-up on July 1 with Petra Boynton and Vaughan Bell) and quoted Goldacre’s website, labelling him as the ‘bte noir’ of science journalists.

“All three speakers are gainfully employed by the public sector so they don’t actually have to worry too much about the sort of pressures and financial constraints the mainstream media are under. But they nevertheless condescended to offer some advice on the sort of ‘best practice guidelines’ I should be following, for which I suppose I should be eternally grateful.

“But their arrogance is not new. Medical doctors in particular have always had a lofty attitude to the media’s coverage of their profession, stemming no doubt from the God-like stance they take towards their patients. Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say their profession is broken, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly not yet anyway.”

Ouch. Goldacre spotted it and comments beneath his post, and Connor’s article are flowing pretty fast. Goldacre also reproduces a letter and email sent to the Independent, on his blog.

In other WCSJ news, Goldacre wasn’t too happy with the panel addressing science and investigative journalism yesterday. He tweeted from the event: “so what about investigative science journalism done by bloggers? not a single person addressed the question. these ppl need to read more.”

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Data Center Knowledge: Ads and widgets slowed news sites during Jackson surge

Calls for Action — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:28:07 +0000

An article from Data Center Knowledge cites evidence suggesting that advertising networks and widgets could have been key factors in slowing news sites during the surge of internet traffic as news broke of Michael Jackson’s death. “Keynote Systems, which provided early data on the sluggishness of news sites Thursday, released an analysis late Friday that highlighted the role of third-party content.” Full story at this link… Similar Posts: BusinessInsider: Advertising will arrive at the Daily Beast ‘by late spring,’ says Brown Editor&Publisher: Tribune launches multimedia marketplace online Malcolm Coles: MPs’ expenses – the best of the web Editor&Publisher: Michael Wolff – “Newspapers not only will go away but they should go away” MPs’ expenses data will be officially released Thursday but how much will be edited out?

“Keynote Systems, which provided early data on the sluggishness of news sites Thursday, released an analysis late Friday that highlighted the role of third-party content.”

Full story at this link…

Going back to the backlink licensing case: NLA’s full statement

Calls for Action — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:38:08 +0000

This goes back to last week, but it seems worth putting up here anyway. Last Thursday Matt Wardman covered this story for Press Gazette: about the Newspaper Licensing Agency regulating hyperlinks for commercial agencies and aggregators.

“The NLA will be introducing a new form of licence from 1 September to regulate ‘web aggregator’ services (such as Meltwater) that forward links to newspaper websites and for press cuttings agencies undertaking this type of activity.”

Craig McGill also picked up on it and asked a series of provocative questions. He got a lengthy response from the NLA, including this:

“This is not about bloggers adding links to newspaper sites. Our focus is on professional media monitoring organisations (news aggregators, press cuttings agencies) and their client business who make extensive use of the newspaper content.”

More questions are raised in the comments beneath McGill’s piece, including this one about copyright law.

Last Friday Journalism.co.uk spoke to the NLA who said it was part of their new e-Clips service – ‘a feed of newspapers’ online content direct to cuttings aggregators and press cuttings agencies.’

Here’s the NLA statement in full:

“The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) today [dated June 2009] announced a new business-to- business clippings database for newspaper websites to launch in January 2010. It also has said it will extend its licensing remit to cover newspaper websites from January 2010.

“The new service, called eClips web, will offer a complete feed of newspapers’ online content direct to cuttings aggregators and press cuttings agencies. Powered directly from newspapers’ own content-management systems, eClips web will make web-based media monitoring faster and richer and provide a permanent record for PR and communications professionals.

“The NLA will also extend its licensing remit to cover local and national newspapers’ web content. David Pugh, managing director of the NLA, said: “We have two aims: to contribute to the growth of web monitoring; and to protect the rights of publishers. Research shows that 23 per cent of newspapers’ online content never appears in print and that the internet is growing in influence as a resource for news. So it is vital to have comprehensive monitoring coverage of newspapers websites and vital that the publishers are properly rewarded for their work.”

“From September 2009, web aggregators that charge clients for their services will require a NLA licence and be charged from January 2010, The press cuttings agencies that either ’scrape’ content themselves or buy in services from aggregators will also be licensed and charged. Client companies that receive and forward links from these commercial aggregators within their organisation will also require a licence.

“David Pugh added: “We have consulted extensively across the industry the incremental charges for web cuttings will be low and manageable. I stress this is not about individuals sharing links we think thats great for newspapers and promotes their websites and their readership. What we are doing is making sure that newspapers are rewarded fairly for professional use of their web content by businesses.””

Further notes:

“The NLA is owned by the 8 national newspaper publishing houses and generates B2B revenues for
1,300 national and regional publishers through licensing use of their content by press cuttings
agencies (PCAs) and their client companies.

“The new licences will cover all local and national titles with the exception of the Financial Times and
the News International titles. These will all, however, be included in the eClips web database.”

Trust 2.0 – reports of MJ’s death are not greatly exaggerated

Calls for Action — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:46:15 +0000

It was fascinating to watch the Michael Jackson rumours hit Twitter late last night (BST) and the mixed reaction to the initial TMZ.com report. An entertainment news site owned by AOL and renowned for having its finger on the pulse, but not quite big or well-known enough to risk the re-tweet or the MSM endorsement? Should we trust it, should we not

TMZ.com breaks news of the death first:

“We’ve just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.”

Many journalists were playing it safe, even with their own personal tweets. Even the ’semi-journalists’:

View mdlong24’s tweet

Then… a few comments about the weird news culture we live in. Compare the way you heard about Princess Diana to this, for example. This from Meg Pickard, the Guardian’s head of social media development:

View megpickard’s tweet

But were people being unduly cautious? Ashley Norris – of Shiny Media fame – offered this:

View shinyashley’s tweet

The Sun (by an unnamed ‘online reporter but it has now been updated and by-lined) and the Metro (by a by-lined reporter but the link is now dead) – and others too no doubt – tentatively go with ‘reportedly dead.’ And actually attributed TMZ. Then, phew, a mainstream media source finally gives us likely sources to cling onto. The LA Times.

23.35 BST (22.35 GMT): And the BBC goes for it on TV. In its special breaking television news report on BBC1 after BBC Question Time, and before This Week, they say that Jackson is reported to be dead: citing the LA Times as the main source, then TMZ.com, and then add that the Associated Press is also reporting the death.

Now everyone’s sure that he is dead. The Guardian gets this wonderfully comprehensive tribute article up very quickly.

TMZ were the winners of the night with publicity all round. Check out the quote from Alan Citron, founding manager for TMZ but who now works for Buzz Media in an email to Beet TV last night:

“TMZ has drifted into a lot of juvenile satire lately, but Harveys [Levin, managing editor of TMZ] still the best when it comes to serious celebrity news reporting. It’s highly likely that TMZ will own this story.”

This lovely tweet from @PJButta says it all:

View PJButta’s tweet

More views on TMZ and trust on Twitter.

As for the print? According to Paul McNally,

View paulmcnally’s tweet

What have we left out? Leave links and comments below, if you’ve got anything to add.

Google News Blog: New feature allows byline search

Calls for Action — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:10:43 +0000

Google News has updated its features to allow searching by an author or journalist’s name. You can also now click through on a report’s byline to see more work by that individual – and then set up an RSS feed for that term. Full post at this link… Similar Posts: How to get the most from Google News feeds Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk Google News search gets local ITN maps news items with Google mash-up Online Journalism Blog: ‘Wolfram Alpha for journalists’

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Google News Blog: New feature allows byline search

Calls for Action — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:10:43 +0000

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How Demotix’s contributors have covered Iran election protests

Josh — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:41:23 +0000

A quick update on the work of pro-am photo agency and news site, Demotix , during this week’s election protests in Iran. Around two dozen contributors have been participating in Demotix’s Iran ‘newshub:’ follow the link to see images. On Wednesday Demotix reported that one of its contributors had been arrested

A quick update on the work of pro-am photo agency and news site, Demotix, during this week’s election protests in Iran.

Around two dozen contributors have been participating in Demotix’s Iran ‘newshub:’ follow the link to see images.

On Wednesday Demotix reported that one of its contributors had been arrested. Andy Heath, the site’s commissioning editor, told Journalism.co.uk it is believed the contributor will appear in front of a judge tomorrow [Saturday] and that Demotix is currently seeking more information.

Turi Munthe, its CEO and founder, has made numerous media appearances in which he talked about the use of citizen media during these protests, including the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, BBC News, and the World Service. Reuters are also featuring Demotix content.

Munthe said: “In terms of sales, we have also hit a milestone. Reuters is syndicating our content all over the world. Yesterday [Wednesday] we were the lead image on the front page of the Wall Street Journal’s website (see below).”

“Iran is experiencing events not seen since the 1979 Revolution. Demotix was set up precisely to cover and report this kind of event, and we have been at the very centre of the storm.”

FT scoops six prizes at SOPA awards

Calls for Action — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:26:53 +0000

The Financial Times’ Chinese-language website, FTChinese.com, took the prize for best feature writing at the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awards last night. The site was one of six winners for the FT, which also took home gongs for newspaper design, digital journalism (for reporting on China and the Olympics) and scoop of the year. FTChinese.com’s winning effort was an article on 30 years of reforms in China

The Financial Times’ Chinese-language website, FTChinese.com, took the prize for best feature writing at the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) awards last night.

The site was one of six winners for the FT, which also took home gongs for newspaper design, digital journalism (for reporting on China and the Olympics) and scoop of the year.

FTChinese.com’s winning effort was an article on 30 years of reforms in China.

The title’s Mumbai correspondent, Joe Leahy, was also named journalist of the year at the event.

A full list of the award winners, which also saw the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek recognised, can be downloaded at this link.

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