Ever since I first heard about the concept I’ve been intrigued by ‘20 per cent time’. It’s an initiative spawned by Google, who urge all their employees to take out 20 per cent of their day and spend time on something completely unrelated to their assigned jobs.
So, for example, a graphic designer at Google might spend his 20 per cent trying a spot of coding, as he may have had an idea for a new feature on an existing Google product.
The BBC also tried it out, this time giving 10 per cent (stingy buggers) to some of their stuff to try other bits and bobs on the site. Not quite the flexibility of the Google-time, but handy nonetheless — it has so far produced iPhone podcast pages.
All well and good, but how does that relate to journalism? Well let me recall a discussion I had with Jon Grubb, the editor of the Lincolnshire Echo. He very kindly commended me on my efforts with The Linc, and went on to say how it was great that we were out there finding stories. In some cases, we were even making stories.
Now that’s not to say that we were making them up — although there is a University press office that might argue that point — but instead we were bashing our noggins together and saying: “Look, we don’t have a good lead story. What can we do to find something out? Who do we not speak to enough? Who needs a voice?”
It shows: Our last issue was our most successful. Our lead story came as a result of our own research into drugs use on campus. A full-page feature was down to Dan Clough wondering if it’s a ball-ache to get around Lincoln on a wheelchair. It was. So we spoke to a load of people — and Danny even made a short documentary. Another full-page feature came as a result of Sadie Geoghagen speaking to as many single-parent students in Lincoln as she could. None of these stories would have ever come from a newswire. They were all too humble — and nice — to toot their own horns and come to us. Indeed, often the people with the most important stories don’t believe they are important enough. It is up to us to find them.
When I discussed this with Jon Grubb he agreed. But then I stressed that newspapers, particularly regionals, are not encouraging journalists to go out. There is always another press release to get typed up. He agreed. I brought up the example of Andrew Gilligan who is literally given free-reign at the Evening Standard. If he wants to follow up a story for three weeks… he bloody well can. And boy does it pay dividends: the Standard had a triumph with the Lee Jasper debacle (and arguably won the election for Boris), and Andrew won Journalist of the Year.
Gilligan is an exceptional example. I see Andrew’s skill as being rare — you could practice his methods all you want, but you won’t be as good. Just as if you practiced heading a ball for 15 hours a day, you still wouldn’t be as good as Alan Shearer.
What I’m saying is we need to give journalists a chance. If every reporter at every paper had 20 per cent to spend following their own nose on a story, heaven knows what gold we might find. We always hear the phrase ‘more bobbies on the beat’. How about ‘more journos on the beat’? Sounds great to me. If I was a regional reporter I’d want every parent at every school to know my face, and I’d want every copper to know my name, so that if anything happened that the public should know about, they wouldn’t be afraid to call as they’d know me as being an good, honest bloke.
20 percent is roughly one day a week. Is that too much to ask? If newspapers stick strictly to it, I believe the initial stresses of being a person down each day would be over-turned when the lead stories come rolling in by the bucketload.
Let’s see it happen!
Spot on Dave, unfortunately it doesn’t seem like this will happen because local/regional papers are driven remorselessly towards very tight profit margins. It’s a shame, as the best journalism is often the well research local story.
On a positive note, student papers aren’t under that pressure and where local papers are failing – student papers with good teams should be able to be out there in the student community, and the local community, picking up some great stories.
At Pluto I’ve actively encouraged our writers to go out there and find stories – and the essay-writing ring that we smashed was an example of just that. Sadly though, the number of students willing to think on their own and not just re-write the first thing given to them is declining.
Hi Dave – before my experience on local papers ended 10 years ago, ‘off diary’ stories were what made the paper and in an area where there were two competing evening papers, were the lifeblood of the newsroom – God help you if your ‘rival’ got the exclusive – I’m not sure that has vanished entirely despite the pressures of churning out stuff. ‘Off diary’ stories may still be expected alongside the other stuff though – adding even more pressure on reporters.
I would say that on the Express & Star, Birmingham Post and Birmingham Mail, the management are still very, very keen on ‘off diary’ stories and all of these strong regional papers have a proud record of producing stories that can make a difference locally or spark national follow ups and debate.
Also have you looked into Sunday papers much? I have worked on two regional Sundays and you couldn’t touch anything that had been mentioned elsewhere – everything was pretty much ‘off diary – relying on cultivating contacts and getting out and talking to people etc. These regional stories are still making page leads in the nationals.
You’ve also reminded me that part of my training was being driven to a village, dropped off for the day and coming back with as many stories as possible – do you do that sort of thing these days?
Good luck with everything, starting out wanting everyone to know you as a ‘good honest bloke’ is pretty admirable in my book – but you will meet some of the most awkward buggers out at the school gates or at the local nick – so good luck with that!
Great idea. But for local newspapers, I’d go further: make it 80/20, with journalists spending 80 per cent of their time on stories, and 20 per cent on writing up press releases. After all, as LInda points out, that used to be the model.
And if newspapers say they can’t afford this, maybe they can’t afford not to.
Writing press releases is really just copy-crunching. In some cases, it’s not much than topping and tailing. Yes, it has value, but not as much as a story.
And is it a doomed business anyway. Pretty soon, they’ll all be out-sourced to the journalistic equivalent of call-centres.
Never happen? It already is.
So could this be the model? One day a week, you process copy from your workmate in New Delhi. And for the rest of the week, you’re on the beat.
Good thing, bad thing?
That depends. If the bean-counters see it as a way of cutting costs, then it will only accelerate the decline of newspapers.
But if it could liberate local journalists to add real value to their newspapers by getting out and finding stories (which is what people want to read anyway) then it might halt – and maybe even reverse that decline.
Doesn’t all this come under the banner of ‘investigative journalism’? What was once the lifeblood of the journalism profession must obviously be dying out.
If we sat and rewrote PR all day, then who’d be in charge of the news? It would become dictated for us, and journalism courses like my own would be dedicated to the mindless recycling of news from local industry and business.
That, strangely enough, is exactly what we’ve been doing all semester at Sunderland. ‘News Writing’ consists of a two hour lesson, every week, where our tutor comes in and hands us a press release. He leaves, then returns about 90mins later to collect them all in, before dismissing us. The evaluation at the end was fun to say the least.
Strangely enough, it was ideal preparation for the NCTJ test, which had us doing exactly the same thing.
Bernie: Fantastic point. Outsourcing, in any industry, is normally seen as a terrible idea leading to a lack of quality for whatever service it provides.
However, in this instance, I think it might be a great idea. Why not have machines drilling out this sort of copy while the local journalists get out there and get stuck in.
I think it could be time for the wires to perhaps produce a secondary service. Wire stories tend to come in ebbs and flows and aren’t really in acceptable written form… why can’t someone within the wires sort this out?
Dave, I don’t know what you are referring to when you say wire copy isn’t in acceptable written form – the point is it has to be adaptable to different papers’ styles. Do you really mean PA and Reuters and so on? Are you really saying it’s all crap? I’m sorry I can’t understand this.
No no, not saying it’s crap at all. More saying that a lot of it — particularly breaking news — is in little bitty bits, that no paper could ever publish.
What would be good, I think, is for a post-wire production side to Reuters/PA/whoever that would re-write copy that could be published without need for in house journos to worry.
Very good report,You learn new stuff every day.