Dave Lee / jBlog

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What a difference a video makes

March 1st, 2008

What a week.

Monday saw my first ever lecture. Kristine Lowe explained to the students why we should all blogging. The ‘Do’s and Don’t’s of Blogging’ was my part — I spoke for 20 or so minutes. I think it went down well: a good new Lincoln blog appeared the next day. I’m glad at least one person caught the ‘buzz’.

My lecturers had some very kind comments for me afterwards, which I’m delighted about. It certainly bodes well for my New Zealand trip in May.

Hopefully by Monday I’ll have a recording of my talk, so I can stick it up on here for you all to enjoy/disagree with!

Then we had an earthquake. Awesome. I was up in my room at the time, about to go to bed, when all the empty cans on my desk rattled about and fell off, and then it got even more violent. In case you haven’t heard, Lincoln was right on top of the epicentre, so we got a good hit. All very exciting.

Then I posted THAT video. I remember thinking, at the time, that if I could get the video online quickly I’d stand a good chance of getting some hits in.

And then it all kicked off.

I woke up in the morning to find 20 emails from YouTube. Comments… and plenty of ‘em. It’s really quite funny, apparently, and I started to wonder quite how far this might all go.

Then I got a message from Julian March, saying how much he enjoyed it, and that he’d love to mention it on the Sky News Editors’ Blog. Which he did. I did what every cheeky student journalist should do in this situation — and applied for some work experience.

Then the Guardian got involved. “Give them a job at sky,” says the post on the Media Monkey blog. Couldn’t agree more, chaps.

Then, through the wonderful medium that is Facebook, I got this message: “In case no-one from Sky has got in touch with you to let you know, your video has caused a great deal of amusement within the newsroom. As I’m sure you can imagine, Sky likes nothing better than to beat the BBC to a story.”

That was from the Sky News presenter that night, Faye Barker.

Some more blogs got going. Journalism.co.uk wrote about it (although, mysteriously, the entry has now gone). Paul Bradshaw added his thoughts on the matter here.

Perhaps the most bizarre reaction was from a group of Sunderland students who emailed with some great comments after seeing the clip in a lecture. “I have been in a lecture since nine this morning, i’m tried, i’m irritable and I havn’t washed in days. But by god, the video you posted made me forget all my sorrows and now I feel clean again! Thanks for the emotional wash Dave pet,” wrote Lisa, who gloriously added ‘pet’ at the end too. Love it.

Back to Sky. I was contacted by Rob Kirk — editorial development manager for Sky News — who asked me to give him a call. Last time I’d spoken to Rob was while he was on his holidays, I was covering a story for Press Gazette about an internship he was running. Anyway, I gave him a ring, and he has asked if he can use the clip in a promotional video for Sky. Unbelievable.

Even more unbelievable is that he has invited me down for the day, and also offered to try and fit me in for some work experience in the near future; hopefully around Easter.

Which, I don’t really have to tell you, excites me a lot. Especially when I hear that they’ve been inspired by Jeff Jarvis this week. It seems that Sky might be the newsroom I’ve dreamed of: Multimedia everywhere. I’m not sure what I could possibly contribute to the whole situation, but I’m certainly looking forward to visiting. Just the very nature Sky got in touch tells me they are all tuned in: Julian sent a private message on YouTube, and Faye used Facebook. Says a lot, I think.
To top off the week (which, by the way, included a 2000 word essay and an ‘interview’ assessment day…. I almost forgot my course existed until they came along and knocked me into shape..), we did the SU Election Liveblog for the newspaper. And it went extremely well — some really good content, and over 2000 hits. A great result.

In retrospect, this whole affair with the video has been a strange one. I stick by the reasons for making the video — I still find it shocking — but do feel a bit ‘dirty’ for slating the BBC. It’s like the England football team. Sometimes I’m flabbergasted at how awful they are yet, after a good sleep, I find myself supporting them even more.

I could make a 2-hour long video about all the things the BBC does brilliantly. Better than Sky. It just so happened that on this occasion the BBC fell on their face in a massive way. I’m yet to hear any response from BBC, but this blog has been linked to via this url which I can’t access. It’s the BBC’s intranet. I’m dying to know what’s being said — so if anyone can find out, that would be great.

To finish this point on a lighter note, I’d like to tell a little story. I work, part time, at a Staples store in Lincoln. It’s a dull job, but one thing happened today that will live with me forever.

We’ve just had CCTV installed, and like many places, we have a monitor at the front of the store to make it obvious people are being filmed. Today, a little lad aged about 4 or 5, saw this screen. Like most children, he found it fascinating. Unlike most children, however, this particular lad found that the funnest use of this technology was to, er, drop his trousers. Bless the little fella. I hope for his sake he eventually grows out of it.

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Posted in Design, Ethics, General, Multimedia, Sport, TV, Tabloids, The Future

Five things that can make a newspaper website absolutely postively wonderfully great

December 16th, 2007

My own thoughts on newspapers, at this stage in my blog/career/life, may not hold much gravitas against some of the big opinions out there, but with my impending trip to New Zealand in May, I thought it’s about time I started actively collecting some thoughts on online journalism.

Over the next few months, I’ll be posting some ideas that I hope will make up a big part of what I can teach when I get over there. As ever, I appreciate everyone’s feedback. I’m toying with calling a new category ‘Dave Lee Down Under’ … but that might be a little, excuse me, shit. But who knows.

Tonight (or rather, this morning… my sleep patterns have been manic ever since that poxy Ricky Hatton fight…), I want to just simply lay down five things that I feel make newspaper sites great. Not all newspaper sites do these things. In fact, only a couple manage them all, so I guess it will give me something to aim towards when I get stuck in out in NZ.

Some of these are probably strikingly obvious; but then I think if there aren’t many sites doing it, then maybe it’s worth being reminded of them.

So here we go…

Five things that can make a newspaper website absolutely postively wonderfully great

1. Embedded video. It’s the broadband age. You don’t need to ask me if I want Windows Media Player, or Realplayer… or anything. Stick it in my browser. Make it load quickly. Make it load the rest of it while I’m watching the start of it. And, for crying out loud, give me a volume adjuster that goes beyond ‘on’ and ‘mute’.

2. A special way of telling us something BIG is happening. Odd one, this, but there’s something really brilliant about how the BBC homepage transforms when a big story is breaking. When there’s a big, single headline on the newspage, you know something has really kicked off. I’ll come clean here and admit I’m not sure how the UK papers handle big stories breaking on their sites. My natural instinct is to go straight to the BBC. I think we all do, no? Sky News have great presentation on their site, but the ‘Top Story’ graphic seems to be the same whether it’s a story on a missing dog or a missing serial killer. There’s an element of ‘boy who cried wolf’ about it.

3. Comments comments comments, and NO, I don’t want to sign up… or even sign in. Laziness? Maybe. News is quick. Blogs are quick. Everything about newspaper websites should be quick, and yet, for some reason, I’m forced to sign up in order to add my own view on proceedings. Yes, Daily Telegraph, I’m pointing at YOU. I don’t want to sign up to My Telegraph. If I want to save stories, I’ll use del.icio.us, which does it much better.

4. YES… get blogging, but please, be serious about it. I don’t think it’s essential that newspaper sites have blogs. I really don’t. So newspapers shouldn’t feel obliged to just blog because it’s the “thing to do” these days. Come up with a good angle. A solid background to which you can build. Local papers are god awful at this, when really, local press is perhaps in the best position to fully utilise the blogging world. Take my local paper, The Hunts Post. I learnt an awful lot there in the short placement I had, and it’s a fantastic paper. One of the best local campaigning rags I’ve ever come across. But then there’s the blogs. Urgh. The one I linked to there was the first I came across — but I need not go further. A look at his latest posts brings up such gems as:

First of all, let me congratulate you. By clicking on the links you have, you have put yourself among the elite few who read this blog.

And unfortunately I think the emphasis there should be on few – in the six weeks or so this blog has been online, it has been viewed a total of 14 times. I suspect around half of those are either by me or by people I know, so if you don’t fall into that category you can consider yourself even more special. Well done.

Ouch. Kill it, Archant. KILL IT!

5. Show me who you are. Another fairly random one, but I think this is quite important. In TV, each report is signed off by the reporter: “This is Bob McBobstein, BBC News, Baghdad.” Good. Each newspaper article — give or take the odd one — is given some credit to its reporter. Even better, I find is when we get to see the person. A little photo. It’s strange, but I prefer reading articles on Comment is Free when I can see the person’s face. I’m sure I’m not alone in this… otherwise I guess they wouldn’t bother putting a picture on there.

In local news, this is very important. Although on an entirely different scale, I was stopped at university the other day by someone who said “Hey… you edit the newspaper, don’t you? Have you done something on this…?”. As it turns out, we hadn’t. But now we will. They wouldn’t have known who I was had my picture not been in the newspaper. A small headshot of a reporter speaks volumes to me. It says: “This is me. I’m passing this information to you, and I’m so confident in it, that I’m prepared to put my name and face to it.”

A good example of this? Andrew Gilligan’s latest triumph.*

****

And that’s it. Easy. Of course, this list is not exhaustive — I could have written about having navigation menus that are too bloody long, or adverts that wobble in from the right hand side and refuse to go away without making lots of noise. But those five seem to strike a chord with me. Maybe they do for you too.

* We think, maybe, not sure yet… perhaps. Probably.

30 comments »

Posted in Blogs, Multimedia, My Work, Newspapers, Student Journalism, TV, Tabloids, The BBC, The Future, The Web

The Daily Beechams

November 23rd, 2007

It might just be because I was reading Piers Morgan’s book this morning (which, amazingly, has altered my opinion of the man. He’s gone from ‘complete tosser’ status to just a mere tosser now), but I find this new addition to the Daily Mirror incredibly tacky.

But then I suppose real news doesn’t put food on the table anymore.

1 comment »

Posted in Newspapers, Tabloids

Good Reads: New-look NME not hitting the right notes

August 12th, 2007

[Steph Senyszyn] New NME design: “Poor efforts by the work experience kids.”

A fellow Lincoln Uni journalism student is less than pleased with the new-look NME. £2.10, Steph argues, is extortionate for a weekly music mag. Quite right too.

Leads (almost) seamlessly on to…

[THE OBSERVER] Net closes in as glossy magazines lose their lustre

With a few exceptions, the popularity of magazines is fading.

[JEFF JARVIS] The emergence of media tribes

Monster post from Jeff Jarvis exploring the concept of ‘media tribes’. Who is most trusting of the media? Older people, according to a study, gather most of their news from television and, as a result, trust the MSM (mainstream media) a lot more than one of my peers who digests news from a variety of sources via the internet.

53% of Americans believe that stories are often inaccurate. Jeff blames this, partly, on George Bush. Seems fair — if the media reports a speech by Bush verbatim and then finds it to be full of inaccuracies, then that can’t be blamed on the media (although it would be easy to feel resentful about it).

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Posted in Blogs, Ethics, General, Newspapers, Student Journalism, TV, Tabloids, The BBC, The Future, The Web

McCann coverage

August 9th, 2007

Roy Greenslade agrees with Deborah Orr. The coverage of the Madeleine kidnap/murder is wrong. Is this something a group (NUJ?) should be getting together to discuss?

As Deborah and Roy say, the press made more attempt at ripping every possible story from this situation — rather than reporting it responsibly and ethically.

2 comments »

Posted in Blogs, Ethics, General, Newspapers, TV, Tabloids

Journalists could be terrorists too

August 8th, 2007

Don’t worry — I’m not trying to scare you here. I’m not a terrorist. But I could easily be one if I wanted to.

So with that in mind, I do not think it’s unreasonable that two Mirror journos had their homes raided by the police after trying to plant a bomb. Even when it was clear they were journalists.

The most frightening thing about UK terrorism is that it seems to span all professions. It’s a bit cocky — and very dangerous — for us to assume journalism is exempt from all that.

Yes, we know that they weren’t terrorists. Hell, the police probably knew that too. But the point is they could have been, and the police were making doubly sure — a sign that the security forces the Mirror tried to expose is actually doing fairly well.

1 comment »

Posted in Ethics, General, Newspapers, Tabloids

Top 10… Journalists with Facebook groups dedicated to them

July 27th, 2007

Cracking post over on the Press Gazette Axe Grinder blog this week: T op 10… Journalists with Facebook groups dedicated to them.

In first place, a personal favourite, Jon Snow (left). At number seven, Piers “I’m a complete tosser but Dave won’t say anything TOO bad about me because he doesn’t want to ruin any future career paths” Morgan with the best group: “I fucking hate Piers Morgan”.

Which you can join here.

In other less-fun news, this post by Roy Greenslade gives a fairly solid voice of reason over the Daily Mirror’s bomb story that went completely wrong.

A lot of commentators have said the journalists should not be prosecuted. They were acting in the public interest, supposedly. It’s a tough one. One comment on the Greenslade blog makes the point that if there are doctors and pilots involved with terrorism groups then of course, there could be journalists too. Making a journalist exempt from the terrorism act is giving the go ahead to them all.

What should happen is a government body is informed that a journalist will be doing this, so that if he is caught, everyone can get a pat on the back safe in the knowledge it was just a bit of role-play and they all did well.

Only problem with that is that I wouldn’t trust the body not to tell the security forces responsible in order to save face. But then we have to keep them on their toes.

Tough one.

One more thing: All these blogs are meant to be pretty good. I haven’t got round to reading them yet — apart from Mindy McAdams’ — but I will do.

Oh, and another thing (sorry). I’m in ‘talks’ (ok, I sent an email and they said maybe) with our university radio station about setting up a podcast network to go with the newspaper I founded last year. This would, if I’m not mistaken, make us the first university in the UK (world?!) to have it’s own podcast website produced by students. Any advice?

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Posted in Blogs, General, Multimedia, My Work, Newspapers, Student Journalism, Tabloids, The Future, The Web

50,000 Guardians… how many more?

June 11th, 2007

Today marks the 50,000th edition of The Guardian.

It has, for the last two years or so, been my newspaper of choice for most days of the week.

That’s not important. What is important is that with anniversaries such as this, it gives us a chance to look back at the legacy of The Guardian.

Last Saturday, we were treated to a pull-out showing some of the major front pages in the paper’s long history. Looking at these, two things were apparent:

1. The Berliner wasn’t a success

Yes, it looks very pretty and is easier to read on the train; but now The Guardian looks like a cross between a parish newsletter and a lifestyle magazine. The look has had an effect on the content too. G2 seems to get fluffier by the day. I’m not asking for serious features everyday, but I can’t remember the last time I read a good hard-hitting feature.

When something shocking/important happens, I instinctively find myself reaching for The Times instead.

2. Tabloids act as a far greater chronicle of history, and will live on

For Christmas, I was given a really impressive looking book with replica copies of tabloids on the day major sporting stories broke. If there’s one thing the tabloids do well it’s reflect public opinion like no other medium — even the internet. It’s the newspapers’ trump card, maybe the only one they have left.

The ‘quality’ dailies need to learn how to do this. They can without dumbing down. They can without burying their opinions on page 20. Comment pages in the qualities are extremely poor. Sometimes two or three columnists will focus on the same issue of the day. While it’s good to have some great analysis on a major event, this seems to happen every time Gordon Brown/David Cameron makes a speech. The Guardian has plenty of comment out there, Comment is Free is evidence of that.

In my view, if quality dailies are going to survive, they need to take one course of action out of a possible two. These are:

Either…

- Do more of what they’re good at already. Media on a Monday, Technology on a Thursday, Film on a Friday. All fantastic sections from The Guardian. The Times’ football coverage on a Monday is exceptional. The New York Times pullout in The Observer is a bit odd, but still nice to read.

If they pick certain subjects and cover them in a way no other place can, then the readers will come flocking.

Or…

- Not be afraid to say what they think. The Independent knows how get its views across. It’s effective. If you agree with the Indy’s point of view, you feel empowered. If you disagree, then you still read it anyway. The important point here is that you’re reading the thing regardless.

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Posted in Design, General, Newspapers, Tabloids, The Future, The Web

The Linc: Issue 2

April 20th, 2007

I’m happy to tell you all that Issue 2 of ‘The Linc’ has been sent to the printers. Officially, it’s issue 2. But it’s the fifth issue we’ve made since I founded The Linc last year. Complications are horrible, but must be overcome.
The web edition can be downloaded at thelinc.co.uk. Criticism more than welcome. I know there are many, many areas in which we can improve. In fact, I’m going to write about them now, while they’re fresh in my head.

But first, let me describe what other publications we have around uni. We’ve gone from having one slightly mediocre magazine on campus last year, to having two magazines and a newspaper this year. Not bad progress — our student media is growing up as fast as our university, it seems.

Bullet Magazine

Bullet is the original SU publication. It is, at present, the leading publication on campus. Sadly there isn’t a web presence for Bullet at the moment, so you’ll just have to imagine how it looks.

I like it. It has come a helluva long way since last year. You can put that down to the new editor and new team, no doubt, as I know they have been working pretty tirelessly on tightening things up from a standards and content point of view.

They’ll be the first to admit it isn’t perfect, though. Its design has never been too pleasing, with inconsistencies cropping up throughout – which is a pet peeve of mine (and every magazine/newspaper designer, I’m guessing).

The content is getting better. It relies on reviews and features to get the space filled. Often the odd interview will crop up (Bullet get the pick of the ‘celebs’ playing at the Engine Shed), and these are normally well written pieces.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Kate and the team can do next year as they try to take Bullet forward.

Ziggurat Magazine

Ziggur…what?! My thoughts exactly, but the title works. No-one is quite sure what it means, or why that name was picked, but then looking through the magazine it’s clear that mystery is what Ziggurat is all about.

Sticking their neck out from the offset, Ziggurat announced itself on the scene with the slogan ‘Better than Bullet’. A weird claim to make considering its style is nothing like Bullet’s.

I do like the gutsy distribution of it, however. News stands were hijacked and fill with the mag seemingly overnight. We arrived to a campus full of the mag. And now they’re all gone.

I’m not sure where it’s being printed, though, as it looks like it’s produced by a team armed with lots of A4 paper and a staple gun.

See some Ziggurat content on their website/blog here: zigguratmagazine.com.

The Linc

And now, The Linc. My publication.

It would be easy — and typical — for me to big up my own work here. I’m not.

While I’m proud of what I’ve done with The Linc, I still see that we have a long long way to go before it’s the newspaper I always envisioned.

Issue 2 is better than the first. So that’s a step in the right direction, at least.

Where we still fail is visually. I don’t have a team of photographers, so I’m scooping photos from free stock websites, and a handy picture agency we have access to. Not good enough. One of my main priorities is to organise a picture desk as soon as possible.

Another concern is the news. I’ve got features and reviews bursting out of my eyeballs, but good news stories are critically hard to come by. I’m in the process of getting signed up for mailing lists for local events, but the key is making this relevant to students. A tough job, but one I think we can manage with the right team in place.

Which reminds me I need to hire a news editor for next year. After our first attempt with several section editors — which fell on its face — I opted to edit the entire thing myself. Then, for issue two, I handed over control of sport to Gary, who now deals with content there. It’s no coincidence that sport is the best section of the paper by some distance.

A good news editor would help the news section improve leaps and bounds.

And I really have to hire some proofreaders too. The rush element that we faced for Issue 1 is back to haunt us with Issue 2. Not to worry — we’ve done our best with the time we had.

Here’s to Issue 3!

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Posted in General, Student Journalism, TV, Tabloids, The Future

Iran Rants

April 8th, 2007

Much has been made today about the news that the Iran captives have been given permission by the MoD to sell their stories.

Most commentators that appeared on TV were ex-soliders or seamen etc, and they seemed unanimously against the idea (at least I think it was unanimous, I spent most of today cramming chocolate into every last inch of belly — so I didn’t see too much TV).

There was one person, though, who made a very valid point about those condemning selling stories. They were all famous. And how did they become famous? By writing books, articles and whatever else about their experiences in combat… selling their stories.
Which lead me to think it wasn’t that they were annoyed with the stories being told, but rather the manner with which the ex-captives would go about it. Is there anything less gracious about sticking your story in the pages of the News of the World rather than amongst the hardbacks in Waterstones?

You could argue, successfully I’d say, that the tabloids would stretch and skew the story and make it a tad more dramatic to make it seem even worse than it perhaps was. But that is unavoidable. A solider writing his or her own book will also exaggerate to a point — except it won’t be in big bold headline font. An all round classier way to make money.

I’ll be looking at the coverage these captives get with great interest.

Some other reads from today…

[THE OBSERVER] Lesley Thomas: Posh girls fight, borrow and steal too

I was debating bringing attention to this piece as this post will be categorised as ‘Good Reads’ — and this load of drivel certainly isn’t.

Drivel is maybe a little harsh. But this author has written about her anguish over the portrayal that it was only black women rushing into that Primark opening on Oxford Street last week. I hadn’t noticed. I don’t think anyone had, really, so this column is really just an excuse for her to say “Hey! I’m black! Let me write!”. Sadly The Observer replied with an optimistic “Hey! She’s black! Let her in!” attitude.

I’m not suggesting for one minute that the only reason she writes for The Observer is her colour — of course not — but I do resent having my intelligence insulted by an article that is so blindingly obvious that it beggers belief why Lesley Thomas thought we weren’t aware of it.

[GUARDIAN UNLIMITED] Bobbie Johnson: Blogs turn 10

Wow. Ten years these blogs things have been hanging about. Which makes me part of the old school, I think, as I started my first blog back in 2001. I took it offline a few years later and had it made into a book! Highly recommend.
This article from the Tech Guardian’s Bobbie Johnson takes a look at some of the defining moments in blogging history. The thing I like about this is the sheer range of things that are deemed historical. Iraq bloggers to prosititutes to teenagers pretending to be dead. All very different events with one thing in common: people talked about them.

[GUARDIAN UNLIMITED] Roy Greenslade: Celebrities playing paparazzi in surreality TV show

Shamefully, I’d never heard of this Greenslade man, but it appears he’s 1) very famous 2) very clever 3) doing just what I’m trying with this blog… but a lot better.

So, jealousy aside, I can admit that his post on the new ITV show ‘Deadline’ (in which a load of celebs run around trying to make a magazine) is pretty much spot on.

One commenter points something out as well: It’s a magazine, with a team. The team will, eventually, get kicked off until there’s a winner. Which leaves the problem of what happens when the team is too small to run the bloody magazine?!

We’ll see. Or rather, we won’t. It’s on ITV2, and who’s watching that? No-one.

One final thing, I’ve added a comment spam filter to this site so that now I won’t be advertising for viagra, sex toys or hot latino women. Well, not on this blog at least.