Why join the NUJ?

The NUJ is stuffy, out-dated and, for journalists like me (i.e. non-print, non-ancient), largely irrelevant.

That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Many disagree – good – but many don’t. Problem is, while the disagreers are frowned upon as being poor team players, I doubt any of us don’t want the NUJ to be a roaring success.

A crucial part of resurrecting the NUJ lies with communication. On the social networks, they’re doing OK. Good not great. Every now and then they’ll pop up in my Facebook inbox and ask me to send a message of support, or to sign a petition and so on – the usual union-y type things.

But that’s where it ends. I don’t know how they got on (badly, usually, but the Union has to publicise this as well).

More importantly, I don’t feel, in any way, part of a community of journalists. Or at least, I didn’t when I was a member – I cancelled my subs when I left university.

That’s why the upcoming vote for the new editor of the NUJ’s magazine, ‘The Journalist’, is so very important. A good magazine can go a long way to solving all the problems I spoke of above. With a strong website, it’ll grab in people like me – the future of journalism and the NUJ – and re-ignite debate among the journo masses.

If you want this to happen, you should vote for Michael Cross.

I’ve known Michael for a few years now. I met him through the brilliant networking site Journobiz (a site which, incidentally, feels more like a union to me than the NUJ ever has). As a very successful freelance journalist, his advice has always been extremely valuable in steering me along the right path. Not to mention his encouragement which is always genuine and sincere.

But that’s not why you should vote for him. After all, he’s not going to spend his time giving everyone advice. But what he will do is put tons of creative energy into the Journalist, drawing on years of knowledge that has made him wise and experienced – but not old-fashioned or in denial about journalism’s future. He’s a man that loves the print press, but isn’t in love with it. He knows that good journalism is good journalism – and, above all else, he knows what makes journalists tick. He knows what we need to know. And he knows how to tell us.

If you’re a member of the NUJ, I urge you to vote for Michael Cross.

But it did have its uses — I could look at it if I ever wondered what steps were needed in order to banish myself to Hell for serial dishonesty.

But here’s a checklist that could actually come in very useful. If you’re like me, you might scoff a little at the thought of having a help-guide for your articles, but taking a look at that list I don’t think there are many journalists among us that haven’t cocked up at least one of the items.

If you can’t make it out, the message reads:

“To protect our younger customers, you have to be over 18 to buy imitation firearms. Please don’t be offended if you get asked to prove your age at the till.”

It’s only fair, I guess. If someone came up to me wielding a Power Gear Quantum Fazer, I’d be shitting myself.

It was my first major contribution as a BBC employee since starting. Nick added his thoughts on his own blog here, but I thought I’d add some other thoughts in addition. I say addition as I pretty much agree with what Nick has said.

1. Video. I love video on the web — but something didn’t quite sit with our contributions. With a little while between the inception of iPlayer Day (it was planned before I arrived) and the actual day itself, I feel the luxury was a little too comfortable.

Compare it to, for example, a footballer lining up to take a shot. Often, the longer he has to tee it up, the more likely he is to fluff it. Same for cricketers who gather high catches. With so long to think about something, it is only natural to over-think — and miss.

We were caught between a rock and a hard place. Do we create video that was rough and ready, gritty, had tinny audio and wobbly-ish composition? Or do we create professionally shot ‘interviews’? In retrospect, I think we should have gone with the first option. It’s what our readers expected.

And then, of course, in an overwhelming determination to impress, I forgot the basics. Something I don’t feel I’ve done ever since I went to do an interview for our local paper without a pen.

2. Social media. Social media lovers are strange beasts, aren’t they? I should know, I am one. It’s hard to know how we would be able to harness the web 2.0 world, given that a) It’s harder for a MSM company (or corporation in this case) to appeal to the charity-style of contributions found in social media and b) There wasn’t much incentive for contributions other than mild discussion.

A day or two before the event, I believed we’d secured an incentive. A top BBC figure was going to answer Twitter questions. We were to record the clip and post it online — all within an hour.

By Thursday, for various reasons, that incentive was gone. As a result, I feel our social media input ranged from predictable (“I’m a Mac user, and I hate you”) to the nice (and appreciated) but rather mundane (“I love iPlayer!”). I’d have liked a little bite to some of the submissions — and I believe giving the opportunity to pose questions via Twitter would have been our headline moment of the day.

Above all, I feel I let myself down when it came to social media promises. In our initial brainstorm, we chucked around ideas that were exciting, and very d0-able. So far so good. But various ideas for mash-ups and interactivity were quashed by limitations. Given the chance to do all this again, I’d be far more conservative — not because I couldn’t deliver what was promised, but because in the situation they were to be placed, they weren’t deliverable. There are many reasons — but take the ability to use Google and YouTube out of the equation, and mash-ups are much more difficult.

3. Journalism or PR? I was both, I think. The thing is, it was clear from the offset that iPlayer is an immensely popular product. It has done for on-demand video what the iPod did for MP3 players. People don’t say ‘have you got an mp3 player?’ they say ‘have you got an iPod?’. There are adverts all over the Tube for audiobooks which read “Download for your iPod or MP3 player”. They are, of course the same thing. iPlayer is now in that realm.

So the battle was already won. We didn’t have to convince anybody. The teams involved in iPlayer have done extraordinarily good jobs in the past year — and so are very proud.

The by-product of all this happiness and iPlayer-lovin’, of course, is that the blog content read like reams to reams of good PR. It wasn’t intended that way — over my dead body etc — but it was hard not to be over-positive about something that has been such a roaring success.

But I still think I could have applied my journalism hat a little more. Had I been a little more cutthroat, I would have cut the beginning and the end of the video with Anthony Rose, head of online media, and just included a short clip of him talking about iPlayer 3.0. That’s what people had come to see.

The fact lots of exciting information about how iPlayer 3.0 would be social media-based has passed a lot of bloggers and journalists by — and I think the format of the video is to blame: The first six minutes or so consistent of Anthony talking generally about the service. In the video, Anthony spoke about Broadcast 1.0. Well I think the manner of the clips we used were Web 1.0. In future, I’d have much preferred to find him at his desk, ask him two questions, and upload it to the web before I’d even returned to my chair. That’s Web 2.0. That’s exciting media.

But in hindsight, we were all learning. I was learning about high-quality production values — mistakes made on Friday were flagged before I’d noticed. This isn’t something I’m used to, but something I’m feeling increasingly humbled to be a part of. Many people within the BBC were coming forward to point out mistakes. Not because they were being picky, or harsh, but because it’s their BBC too. And they’re not going to let everyone else’s hard work in maintaining the respect of the BBC be let down by me putting in a broken link.

I was learning about how the BBC is put together. Who’s in charge of what, who reports to who. Indeed, in this respect I was well and truly tied. I didn’t know who did what — and there was little time to find out.

A great shot is one that isn’t necessarily technically perfect, but one that captures a defining moment.

Well today I stumbled across this set of pictures. Sometimes it’s nice, when you immerse your working day (and indeed, your non-working day) in news, to remind yourself that just because something isn’t newsworthy, that doesn’t make it any less enthralling.

Beautiful work.

The hardest part is finding other journalists to drink with. There something very satisfying about drinking with journalists. We have the honour (no, really) of working in an industry that is, by and large, rather interesting.  So getting together can be really quite fun.

Now there’s a brilliant new site called JournoDrinks. No prizes for guessing what it’s about. Head over there now to see if there’s anything you can make it along to. And, while you’re at it, subscribe to the Twitter feed, @journodrinks. If you know of any events that aren’t listed, you can get them added by emailing partypartyparty@journodrinks.com.

Great stuff. Apologies for the lack of bloggage lately, I’ve been a busy bee. More on that another time.

I went in to pay. “That’s £2 please,” asked the cashier.

“£2!” I said. “It’s air for crying out loud, it shouldn’t be that expensive!”

“Well,” he replied. “That’s inflation for you.”

Anyway, thanks to — I’m not kidding — Dr Magoomagraf, who also uses this brilliant theme, the sidebar is now neatly tucked up as it should be.

I’m very grateful. I have a habit of changing my theme every four weeks seconds, and when I finally found one I LOVE, it looked odd in IE. But now it’s fixed, hooray!

As a token of my gratitude, I’m pointing you all in the direction of ZooInMyBelly.com, a truly magical site that makes eating fun for children. And, if I’m honest, adults too. Now I’m not sure which animal in my belly appreciates steak, chips and beer, but they’re going to get very well fed.

Exciting times, folks. The hysteria surrounding these American elections really does make the British politics system Palin comparison. Geddit? (Sorry.)

After a brief Twitter chat with a friend, I thought it would be a good idea to make a little guide to all the best places to follow news and opinion as the action unfolds.

So here we go. If you have suggestions of your own, please comment/Twitter/or email. This is by no means a complete list — more the places I’ll be keeping an eye on as the action unfolds. Items listed in bold are personal recommendations.

VIDEO (streaming) – I’ll try and update these on the night as/when they go live

BBC News Channel (UK ONLY)
BBC US Election special section (Video link to come once online. My colleagues on ‘The Editors’ have explained all the things they have planned)
Sky News – Deadline USA (it’s not online yet, but look out for a CoverItLive! page on Sky, it could be good)
Fox News (US ONLY? Not working for me in UK)
CNN Politics
Al Jazeera English (Al Jazeera is also running this Facebook app)
ABC News (potentially awesome. Loads of video, but no live feed it seems. Judging by the comments on their lead story — 26,000 and counting — ABC could be the place for heated debate)

SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter Election 08 (good for an overall snapshot, although I’m convinced it’s going to go down during the night)
Digg Elections 08 (great for the more quirky/viral viewpoints)
Election applications on Facebook (official election day ‘event’ is here)
Wikipedia (dedicated section that could be a handy resource… or may descend into mindless vandalism)
TwitterVoteReport (this’ll be the grand old duke tonight. When it’s up it’ll be up, but boy, when it’s down it’ll be very down. Hopefully it can stay alive — fantastic idea)

PRINT

Times Online: White House 2008 (The London Times is so confident in its coverage it’s been forced to take out a Google ad. Ahem)
New York Times: Elections ‘08 (nothing too exceptional here, but it’s hard to knock the quality of writing in the Times)
USA Today: Politics (some real nifty interactive features here. And they’re in partnership with ABC News too, so expect some good video)

WEB

Yahoo! Elections (shaping up to be exceptional coverage. Forums, RSS feeds, blog feeds, interactive quizzes and applications. I’ll have Yahoo! open for much of the night. Hardly surprising they’re expecting a big turnout)
MSNBC Deadline Dashboard (I like the name of this… ‘dashboard’. A dashboard is certainly what it is. Change the page to your heart’s content. And turn the USA blue…)

OPINION + BLOGS

Huffington Post (heavily pro-Obama, but plenty of lively writing from big-name bloggers)
Caucus Blog (New York Times)
Guardian Comment is Free US (more of a group blog feel to it for varying viewpoints)
Guardian Deadline USA
Tomasky (Guardian)
Justin Webb (BBC)
Mof Gimmers (Shiny Media)

SATIRE

The Onion

OTHER

PoliticalBetting.com (have a tipple on the results)

OTHER LISTS

Chrys Wu’s list gives good detail on what the American newspapers and channels are doing.
Journalism.co.uk are in on the act with a good round up of webby coverage.
The ever-present Paul Bradshaw considers who’s making the best effort