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My new job at the BBC (and what it means)

October 29th, 2008

Today I spent my first day with the BBC Future Media and Technology team. From 4th November I will be co-editor of the BBC Internet Blog, a behind the scenes take on how the BBC is trying to keep on top of technological developments in news gathering, production and publication.

Exciting times. I can’t begin to describe how much I’m looking forward to shedding some ideas across the BBC. Hopefully I can make an impact.

We already have some pretty cool projects on the go. I’ll be posting more about those at another time. What I’m looking to mention quickly now is what I hope to achieve with my work on the BBC Internet Blog. And, as I’ve done in every step of my career, I’d like to draw on the blogosphere’s input.

My main aim, and one that is shared enthusiastically by everyone I’ve met at the Beeb so far, is to immerse the BBC actively into social media. We do it well already, I reckon, but we can still come leaps and bounds to best make use of what’s out there.

I’ll be aiming to ramp up the use of del.icio.us and other similar services, so long as it’s useful to readers.

I’ll be looking for ways to help organise all the personal output from BBC journalists. There are loads of brilliant bloggers at the BBC who write in an extra-curricular fashion. I think this content needs to be publicised heavily. Why? Because it’s informative, it’s useful and, when we consider who funds the BBC, it’s very important. Not to mention interesting.

All in all, I think I use some of my own knowledge to ramp up efforts with social media. And the BBC Internet Blog is the best place for it to begin. Suggestions welcome in the comments or by email.

If you’re wondering where this leaves jBlog, well fear not. I still have free reign to post here however I please. I am yet to read the blogging guidelines, but I’m told they are very reasonable.

And finally, I’d like to publically thank Martin Stabe for getting me involved with this position.

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Posted in Blogs, My Work, Social Networking, The BBC, The Future, The Web

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Regionals should get their houses in order before trying to stop others

October 21st, 2008

I don’t think it’s fair that some of the local press is getting in a strop with Sir Michael Lyon’s plans for better regional BBC content.

Read this article in today’s Times for a bit of back story:

Newspaper groups are unhappy about BBC proposals to introduce ‘hyper-local’ news websites, covering a town or county, which they believe will stifle their digital growth, at a time when their profits are crumbling in the wake of the economic downturn caused by the credit crunch. The plans, though, have to be approved by the BBC Trust, which Sir Michael heads.

That paragraph, on its own, seems to present a good point from the regionals. Why should the BBC juggernaut — and it is a juggernaut, despite its well-publicised hardships — trample on the local press with its own hyperlocal offerings?

Chief exec of Trinity Mirror, Sly Bailey, has been doing the rounds lately. She’s been here there and everywhere defending newspapers. Her interview in Press Gazette was especially interesting — but since it’s not online, nobody can read it. Figures.

She pops up again in the Times piece:

Ms Bailey accused Sir Michael of holding “outrageous views” and making “an astonishing attack on the local press” and said that “research shows consumers rate regional press as more trusted than any other media, including the BBC”.

I trust my local paper. Why would I have any reason to disbelieve that a school put on a production last week? Or that someone is now 100 years old? I’m not dismissing local press as being trivial here, but my point is that it’s a lot harder for the BBC to maintain that trust when they deal with far more complex topics.

Here’s my main criticism of Sly and co.’s argument:

If the BBC doesn’t go ahead with its hyperlocal plans, will it mean local newspaper sites will improve?

I think we all know the answer.

My two most local newspapers — The Hunts Post and Cambridge News — aren’t doing nearly enough to engage with their readers online. The Hunts Post is a great newspaper. It has a small team. Too small, I’d argue, but that’s another issue. I don’t blame them for not spending too much time interacting online, because the paper still has a very strong print audience.

But the Cambridge News? Cambridge is a city of early-adopters. I once read that, as a percentage of total population, Cambridge has more people registered on eBay than any other European city. Sorry I can’t verify that with a source, but anyone who knows the city well wouldn’t find such a statement hard to believe.

Cambridge is a home to huge centres for the likes of Microsoft. Does its newspaper reflect that? I’d argue no, not at all. Their ‘blogs’ aren’t even blogs at all. Why is there not a news blog? Or a sports blog? Or, considering Cambridge is a hub for science in the UK, why not a science blog that is written in the same style as Bad Science in the Guardian?

If the paper has a Twitter presence, it’s not publicised enough. If they’re on Facebook, they’re doing a pretty poor job at making themselves known.

Now, it’s all well and good saying what’s wrong with a site. It’s another to prove it can be done better. Well there’s proof in Matt Gooding’s Cambridge United Blog. Matt writes for the Royston Crow — another newspaper starved of any kind of progressive internet publishing. I wonder if they know they have the likes of Matt in their ranks? A waste of brilliant blogging talent.

More to the point, though, if Matt is doing his Cambridge United blog in his own spare time, for free, using tools that are available for no fee, then why isn’t the Cambridge News? They couldn’t possibly complain of budget constraints. You know, even if they just aggregated his blog. Or linked to it. Or ANYTHING that acts as a service to readers to let them know that some brilliant, opinionated writing is out there.

The moral of this whole tale, of course, is that regional press haven’t dealt with the internet. It scares them. They don’t know how it works.

A friend of mine was recently told not to mention the internet in a job interview with a regional because “the editor doesn’t like it”. The editor should be sacked this instant. When I mention this tale on Twitter yesterday, I got a load of replies saying ‘I bet it was…’. All were wrong. But it goes to show that it isn’t an isolated problem.

If I was to meet Sly Bailey tomorrow, I’d tell her to wake up. Rather than have a go at the BBC for moving with the times, why not look into providing better websites yourselves. It doesn’t cost much. The site I created for Whitireia Journalism School in Wellington, New Zealand, earlier this year proves that so much can be done with so little time, effort and money.

I’m biased, of course, but I’d say Newswire.co.nz is a far better local news site than Cambridge News. Newswire’s total cost? About £200, plus my wage. Cambridge New’s total cost? I dread to think.

What will be most telling will be the response to my criticisms. There won’t be any — except maybe from Matt Gooding and those at Newswire. Why? Because they’re in control of their online identities. The likes of the Cambridge News won’t be aware of anything I’ve said. I hope they can surprise me, I really do.

I’ve used the Cambridge News as my example, but to steal a Sarah Palin-ism, I think it’s fair to suggest that Cambridge News is a microcosm of the UK regional press.

Many regional papers would be happier if the internet didn’t exist.

But here’s the good news: There’s still time. It can still be turned around. There is enough money in the kitty, and enough readership to give any regional paper some online success. Whether they rise to the challenge or not is up to them. If they don’t they’ve only got themselves to blame.

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Posted in Blogs, Debate, Multimedia, New Zealand, Newspapers, Social Networking, Sport, The BBC, The Future, The Web

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My dream job lies with the ‘Huffington Experiment’

October 17th, 2008

(This post forms part of the Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists topic for October: What is your dream journalism job?)

I was considering not entering this round of TNTJ posts. You see, the thing is, I’m looking for a job. And while the whole world of journalism seems to be at your mercy while you’re studying, many of us will find that opportunities seem to seize up somewhat when you ask for the ‘m’ word.

Yup, I’m talking about money. Nobody has any. Every job I see is short-term this, casual that, freelance this, temporary that. It seems the staffer is dying a slow, painful death.

So that’s why I was hesitant about writing this post. After all, if I came on here and outlined a dream job, I am, potentially, putting any employment opportunities that come my way at risk. I don’t want someone to arrive at this site (or my own blog) with the purpose of perhaps offering me an interview or even job and then being talked out of it by my ambitions of something else, something greater.

But let’s be clear. Ambition in this world is like currency. With ambition, you can straddle the days of photocopying or pint pulling safe in the knowledge that it’s all a means to an end.

Every employer out there should be looking for ambitious people. People who get an itchy backside if they stay in one position for too long. You know, maybe journalism is destined to be a short-term contract kinda industry anyway. How fresh can Bob’s input be, when Bob has been at his desk for 20 years? Bob doesn’t believe in video, blogs or social media. He’d much rather get out and talk to real people, he’ll protest, but you’ll be watching him for a long time before he gets out of his chair — and that’ll be to go home.

Journalism can’t afford to have Bobs anymore.

My dream journalism job would be to play some part in the next step in what I have been calling ‘The Huffington Experiment’. Do you read the Huffington Post? You should, there’s some really great stuff on there.

It may be sickening Liberal, yes, but one thing the Huffington Experiment shows is that online newspapers WORK. They work very well. What the Huffington Post does well is showcase its own journalism alongside good journalism elsewhere. It’s what Jeff Jarvis has been banging on about lately — the link culture of the web.

Readers aren’t fools. They know that they can find stories on many sites. They won’t just stick to one place. If I were to narrow my reading habits greatly, I’d say I was a Guardian reader. But a quick look at my viewing history today will show you that I have read the Times, the Telegraph, the BBC and even the New York Times all in the past two hours. Has the media junkie ever been so well served?

So we should stop pretending that our website — whoever we may be working for — is looked upon as the best source by our readers. It won’t be. It’ll be one of the sources, yes, but not the definitive one.

So then, back to me (ha!). The next step of the Huffington Experiment is where I want to be. Bring the style and drive of the Huff Post to British shores. Quite frankly, I don’t care if I edit the thing or just write for it. All I need to know is that it’s there.

Take the overheads out of printing and distributing and channel them into brilliant journalism. Hell, why not use a model similar to that of Spot.Us? We won’t subscribe the the outdated wire services. If the wires have a good story, then we’ll just, y’know, link to it.

We’ll use cheap yet powerful tools to produce stories that are spearheaded by passionate, talented journalists. Journalists whose spirits haven’t been splattered all over the office walls of some management monkey who is demanding 500 words of regurgitated copy by the next hour.

Creating Britain’s first fully-online national newspaper. Seeing it flourish as a hotbed for the country’s finest news, features and opinion. Bringing everyone in Britain to the forefront of what should have happened years ago — interactive, people-powered news.

That’s my dream journalism job.

(But in the mean time, folks, you can download my CV here!)

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Posted in Blogs, My Work, Newspapers, Social Networking, TNTJ, The Future, The Web

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How should we be using Twitter?

October 11th, 2008

Twitter. For months we weren’t sure whether it was useful or not, but it seems journalists have come to accept that it is very handy indeed. If nothing else, it helps recreate a little of the newsroom banter that, some argue, we have lost over the years.

But from a journalistic point of view, what should we be doing with Twitter? How should it be used? How often should we update?

So many questions. I’ll outline my thoughts here. I encourage everyone reading this to do the same, either in their blogs, or in comments.

Let’s compare some approaches. For this, I’ll divide Twitter feeds into two types: journalist or organisation.

Organisation feeds are those that aren’t tied to an individual. Example: BBC News

Journalist feeds are those that are maintained by a specific journalist. Example: the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss

Organisations

So, you’re a mainstream media news organisation. You want to use Twitter. Good! But first you need to a) convince your journalists it’s a good idea, which can be very tough, and b) find a good strategy for when to update, and, crucially, what to update with.

Let’s deal with b. The main BBC News feed appears to update as and when a new story goes online. Given the frequency of updates on the BBC, this means your Twitter update feed is quickly dominated by the Beeb. This leaves little room for what Twitter is best at: conversation! The BBC feed has 4,241 followers. And how many is it following? Just one.

The confusing thing is that this seems to be a BBC News feed too. But that one seems to be an experiment by a tech-savvy employee. But the user doesn’t need that. If the Beeb is using Twitter, it needs to make it clear where the official feeds lie. Right now it’s a mess.

I used to subscribe to the BBC News feed. But now I don’t. If I want to see the latest news on the BBC website… I’ll look at the BBC website. The Twitter feed, I’d argue, adds nothing to the BBC user experience.

But I do subscribe to BreakingNewsOn. Rather than giving me every update imaginable, BreakingNewsOn just pops up with breaking news. And when I say breaking, I mean breaking. It’s lightning quick. It can be a fun game seeing a BreakingNewsOn update, and then seeing how long it is until MSM sites pick it up. It can be as long as half an hour.

Even more impressively, I’ve not known BreakingNewsOn to make any serious errors. This has gained it a good reputation — it has 7,488 followers. And, interestingly, it follows 846. In other words, BreakingNewsOn is getting involved in conversation.

I’d argue that this is how it should be done. A breaking news BBC feed, please. Not just another RSS powered aggregator.

Journalists

This is where it gets much more interesting.

Twitter was designed with the personal user in mind. ‘What are YOU doing?’ it asks.

For journalists, the dilemma is about how personal you make your feed. I think it’s important for journalist Twitter feeds to be as human as possible. They don’t stop when the working day stops. Quite the opposite — they should be an all-day sort of exercise. I’ve already mentioned Jemima Kiss in this, but I think of all the journalists I follow, she’s got it sussed. A while ago she asked whether she should have two feeds. One for Jemima the Guardian writer, and one for Jemima the person. Everyone rallied in with a resounding ‘no!’.

We like our reporters to be real people, don’t we?

Twitter feeds add a new dimension to how we can report. I often read of people saying how it can be used as a collective tool, but I’m sure it’s not that. It’s about personalities. It’s about journalists that live and breath their profession. Not in an obsessive work-is-life kind of way, but in a dedicated I’m-an-expert-and-a-fan kind of way.

And that’s that sort of reporter I want to listen to.

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Posted in Social Networking, The Future, The Web

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It’s time to relieve the stress of RSS. Newspapers, make your own readers!

September 30th, 2008

In the past week, Paul Bradshaw wrote what he called one of the most important posts he’s ever made. Here it is.

In it he describes how the era of the awkward, socially backward geek is nearly behind us. They’re not geeks, he says, they’re early adopters. And you’d better listen to them if you want to stay a step ahead of the game.

What Paul didn’t mention in his post, and what I feel is worth pointing out, is that as well as being early adopters, geeks are also early rejectors too.

In other words, listen to the geeks. If they use something for a long time, then it’ll slowly become mainstream. If they ditch it, then you should ditch it too.

This theory stacks up for almost any example I can think of. Except one: RSS.

Really Simple Syndication. Now, you and I know it’s brilliantly simple, but for some reason it has yet to hit the mainstream.

So why hasn’t it taken off? I’ll offer up some reasons for debate:

  1. People don’t know what it is. This, as I see it, is the most minor problem — people can learn. I asked my Dad if he’d ever heard of RSS. He said no. More needs to be done by news companies to make sure people like my Dad know what RSS, and why it is of use to him.
  2. We’ve got the language all wrong. Feed this, feed that. Subscribe to this, subscribe to that. The word ‘feed’, in everywhere other than the internet, means the reverse of RSS. When you feed something, it requires YOU putting something in. You feed a paper shredder with paper. You feed your dog by giving it biscuits. And then there’s subscribe. We’re on a newspaper website — is it unreasonable when non-tech-savvy users associate the word subscribe with handing over money?
  3. RSS readers are too complicated. Using RSS is messy if you don’t know what you’re doing. Sign up to a service (or download a program) and the first thing it’ll ask you to do is add a feed URL. Feed URL? Normal people don’t know what a feed URL is. You’re scaring them off.

Why can’t feeds just be called ’stories’? Why don’t we ‘follow’ stories instead of subscribe to them?

Why are we relying on explanations like this to educate readers?

Newspapers need to make and market their own RSS readers.

Think about it. Make an RSS reader, and invite people to sign up. Once set up, offer a huge array of simple one-click subscribes, sorry, follows. You could even make this follow list user generated — if you find a lot of people are manually adding feeds, then these can be added to the simple one-click list.

And if you’re wondering how it makes money, then think of it this way: “Hello Mr Website Owner, for £loadsa-wonga we’ll add you to our list of feeds,” you say.
“Wow! Great! Now I have thousands of new readers clicking on my ads!” say they.

What’s more, just think of the hits. Now that your readers don’t need to go to each of their favourite sites to read new stuff, they’ll spend more time on your site. And with all those reading habits you’ll be able to target adverts like never before, right down to knowing if Bob from Newquay keeps making the type bigger. Maybe he wants some new reading glasses?

It solves all the problems I’ve described in this post. First, you’ll have a nice new budget to advertise your ‘Story Follow’ service, thus people will know what it is. Second, because you’ve made the technology you can strip out all the horrible terms like feed and subscribe and replace them with friendlier ones. Words that makes sense. And finally… users will feel at home using a website from a brand they trust.

Everybody wins.

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Posted in Blogs, Multimedia, Newspapers, The Future, The Web

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What’s the difference between online and broadcast video?

September 21st, 2008

What’s the difference between online and broadcast video?

Plenty, I’d say, but judging by some of the online video published by even the biggest news companies, I’d hazard a criticism that no-one quite knows what should be in a good online video.

Before we look at what we can change, let’s consider what we can’t:

1. Size: For TV journalists, size is determined by the size of the viewers’ telly. No problem there then. For online, the YouTube size has become somewhat of a standard, although some other video providers are now giving us a slightly bigger window. Also, as connections get even quicker, it’s safe to assume web video will get bigger too… but for the forseeable future at least, web video is a helluva lot smaller. Important to keep that in mind, always.

2. Quality: On a TV, you don’t have to worry about filesizes, bandwidth or pixellation. It’s irrelevant. But for web, the quality is, in the present day, not up there. So this leaves out some typical production techniques. Captions, for example, sometimes don’t work so well.

3. Length: The web wins on this account — a story can go on for as long as it’s deemed important, be it thirty seconds or thirty minutes. But, like a news article that is written and then edited, do we run the risk of losing ‘tight’ video journalism? I say it’s a danger – sometimes the harsh realities of having a one minute slot on the News at Ten would be enough to force reporters to cut out all but the most relevant segments.

There will be more, but I think those three are most important. Feel free to add your own.

But what I want to ask the blogosphere is what reporting techniques should be dropped when making video for online, and which should be adopted?

My two pence for to kick things off:

Drop: The piece-to-camera. Needless moments of a story that advance the story no further than if it were a simple voice over with more effective footage being shown instead.

Adopt: Extended content. Who says a video story has to be just one video? Produce one clip that edits everything into bitesize chunks, but the provide the raw material for consumption as well, should the reader want to see it. Full interviews, for example, are interesting if you take an added interest in one particular story.

I’m interested it hear what you all think. Inspired by Gnooze and the work of David Dunkley Gyimah, I feel myself leaning towards the art of VideoJournalism — this is the first stage in collecting my thoughts as to whether I’d make a good one.

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Posted in Multimedia, My Work, TV, The Future, The Web

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Robert Fisk: “To hell with the web, it’s got no responsibility”

September 18th, 2008

Legendary reporter Robert Fisk recently gave a public lecture in Wellington, New Zealand, and offered some very strong personal thoughts on web journalism. Newswire reports:

“Mr Fisk said the internet had led to the erosion of quality writing.

He recalled being challenged about a quote of his that had been published on a website – although he had never said it. “But I read it on the internet,” was the response, to which Mr Fisk simply hung up.

Often “misquoted or requoted” on the internet, he is furious when people cut pieces out of what he has said or written, especially if someone uses ellipsis to indicate something has been cut from a quote, when they have actually culled 380 words.

Gordon Campbell – political editor of Scoop and host of the evening – attempted to defend the internet, taking the microphone off Mr Fisk several times to reassure the audience of the benefits of web journalism.

At one point, Mr Fisk retorted: “To hell with the web, it’s got no responsibility.”

I wonder what his problem is. I have always admired Fisk. He’s an exceptional journalist. But like so many exceptional journalists who have earned their living reporting for newspapers, I don’t think he understands what blogs actually are.

Let me ask you this: Why do we report news? To inform, yes. To educate, yes. To apply a sense of public voice… absolutely. For reporters like Robert Fisk, a blog should make him weak at the knees with excitement. If you read Reesh’s piece in full, you’ll come across this statement:

“British-born Fisk (pictured), a journalist who has lived in the Middle East for 30 years, describes as disgraceful a newspaper cutting off the bottom part of a photo of a man holding his dead daughter. By not showing the bone protruding from her leg, the newspaper got away with the caption: ‘A man carries his wounded daughter.’”

With a blog, he could have posted that picture in full.

In fact, everything Fisk claims is wrong about Middle East reporting would be solved if he posted his work on a blog as well as just in a newspaper.

Fisk’s work achieves the goal of informing and educating whoever reads it. But if we’re looking at ABC figures, that puts it at 235,289 on average per day. That’s a very small percentage of a small country.

I say if we, as journalists, are to really do our job as the world’s mouthpiece, then Fisk needs to embrace the web, before the web consumes him.

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Posted in Blogs, New Zealand, Newspapers, The Future, The Web

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Web advertising needs to be measured in exposure, not clicks

September 7th, 2008

Here’s a thought that’s been bugging me ever since I read Daniel Victor’s very interesting post about monitizing the web.

And this weeks announcment that the brilliant (and I mean brilliant) Who Ate All the Pies? will be closing made this problem a matter of urgency.

Web journalism is the best there is. I say this with confidence because not only can it emcompass all the other mediums — TV, radio, print — it can also add a whole lot more. Ergo sum, web journalism is the best there is.

So why does it not make any money?

I think it’s because we know, and share, too much.

What do I mean? Many things. To make it easier, I’ll use a massive brand here in the UK, mobile phone network o2.

Their marketing arm is massive. They sponsor everything and anything. And, as they originally were an online-only phone company (BT Genie), they have a heavy online advertising presence.

Let’s look at what they’re doing.

Perhaps their most famous endorsement was (now Fly Emirates took it over) Arsenal Football Club (left). This came, in 2004, at a nifty price of £6 million. o2 had their logo branded across the home, away and third strips of the club — as well as all the other bits of merchandise available. Lots of exposure, for sure.

And that’s not all. o2 also sponsor ‘The o2‘, probably the country’s best music venue. Kanye West is performing there at the moment. The complex also boasts a load of very nice restaruants, a night club, an artificial beach and a cinema. Not a bad endeavour.

Plus the odd event. The o2 Wireless Festival is one the biggest UK music events in the festival calendar. And the English and Irish rugby teams.

What do all these things have in common? They are, of course, designed to achieve maximum publicity. Arsenal won the Premier League — the most watched sporting competition in the world — with o2 on their shirts. So yes, great publicity for the brand.

But more importantly, they all feature immeasurable success. What does that mean? It means that despite, in theory, all these campaigns being brilliant for the public image of the company, they have no possible way of translating that publicity into results. o2 won’t ever know how many mobile contracts they sold as a result of their sponsorship of Arsenal. They won’t know how many people watched the England rugby team in the World Cup and thought ‘YES!’ you know what, I’m going to get an o2 contract tomorrow.

And the same can, and should, be said about traditional advertising. Does the local DIY shop know how many customers it gains by being in Yellow Pages? No. Does it know how many come to the shop because they heard their ad on the radio? No. All the DIY shop owner cares is that somehow, by doing all that, his shop is making money.

This is why the web isn’t making any money. I’ll stick with o2 for this part of my argument.

If I return to Who Ate All the Pies? there is an advert for o2 on the right hand side. Using the ad, I can sign up to get four free sim cards for pay-as-you-go mobiles. So far, so good.

And, even if I don’t sign up, the o2 brand is prominently promoted on the page — just like it is on an England shirt, or a billboard etc etc.

The BIG DIFFERENCE is that whenever someone clicks on that ad, it’s logged. Whenever someone signs up for a deal, that’s logged too. o2 and Shiny knew exactly who was clicking, when they were clicking, and how long they looked at the site (probably). Hell, they’ll know if the majority of users had IE or Firefox, Windows or Linux, a fat belly or a toned one.

And, judging by the fact that Pies has suffered a premature death, I’m guessing o2, and other advertisers, weren’t happy with the statistics.

What we need to sell is image and exposure, not clicks and statistics.

I can’t click on a Rugby shirt, and nobody is monitoring the amount of ‘eyes’ on a billboard. We don’t know if those massive adverts at Piccadilly Circus actually make more money than they cost to hire — but ones thing for sure, it sure does raise the profile of the companies that are up there.

For the internet to start bringing in money, we need to offer a way for a brand to expose itself. Clicks shouldn’t be the be all and end all. At the moment, websites are boasting of click-through rates or unique page visits. What they should be selling is the reputation of their company as a quality and respected source of news, commentary, humour… whatever. They should be saying that it’s not all about clicks, it’s about your brand being out there. While users may not be clicking to sign-up, they are seeing your logo, your branding… they know you exist. When they think of a mobile phone operator, they will think of o2, as long as you advertise enough.

Let’s register the success and value of online advertising in the same way we treat billboards. It’s all about exposure, not statistics.

If I was an advertiser, I’d be looking into online before anywhere else. Advertising on some of the countries most highly-read sites can cost less than, say, painting one Sky van with a picture of the Simpsons.

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Posted in Blogs, The Future, The Web

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The world reports the news, Intelligent Aggregated Editorial reports the world

September 6th, 2008

It’s too late for me to write too many words. But here’s an idea I have. It’s called Intelligent Aggregation and I think it could create a brilliant news website.

Very much a work in progress. Please click to enlarge the diagram below.

diagram

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Posted in Blogs, Citizen Journalism, Multimedia, My Work, Newspapers, Social Networking, TV, The BBC, The Future, The Web

The best reporting at the US elections, from an unlikely source

September 5th, 2008

Back in January of this year I wrote a review of Gnooze, a quirky news site featuring the wonderful Marta Costello.

I remember thinking “she’s really on to something” back then. In a typical late-night surfing session, I decided to check in on Marta. See what she was up to. I wondered what she made of the elections.

I found this incredible report. Watch it. To the end. The final few scenes really are gripping stuff.

I’ll ask you all a simple question: Have you seen a better piece of reporting from any of the major news organisations at the RNC?

I ask you now. When Marta was out there, reporting from the middle of that protest, where were all the major networks? Where were the journalists earning hefty amounts of money to tell us what is going on in the world?

I’ll tell you where. They were in lovely mini-studios, enjoying fine food and great drinks. Patting themselves on the backs for a job well done.

To steal a popular webby sorta phrase: Journalism FAIL.

Honestly, I’m gobsmacked by what gnooze has done. If newspapers around the world were serious about a) good journalism and b) involving REAL young people in their product, they’d be snapping up the likes of Marta Costello in a heartbeat.

Indeed, once upon a time, they did. But Marta left. She could do a better job herself, she insisted, and so went forth and created gnooze.

Scarily, I think she’s proved herself right.

Something to think about, eh?

This is what newspaper video should be all about. Why it isn’t is a mystery to me.

I’ll be posting more about gnooze soon — I believe it holds the key to the ‘how do we monitize all this?’ question that is gaining increasingly important momentum around the web.

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Posted in Blogs, Multimedia, TV, The Future, The Web

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