Posts Tagged ‘jim tucker’

The benefit of hindsight: Saving New Zealand’s newspapers

February 23rd, 2009

They say hindsight is a glorious thing. When looking back, everyone can be an expert. Should have done this, shouldn’t have done that.

If you could go back in time, let’s say five years, and set out a new strategy for a failing newspaper, what would you do?

Paywall? More blogs? Less blogs? Fewer editions?

Here’s a market where you can put the benefit of hindsight into real action: New Zealand.

As Jim Tucker writes, the Kiwi press has thus far dodged the slaughter of the ever-changing media world, keeping sales generally intact.

But that’s beginning to change. Jim’s figures — from the NZ ABCs — suggest all is not well:

While the downward trend shown in Audit Bureau of Circulation figures (about 4% over the past 18 months) is steady compared to the slaughter overseas, some of the bigger players are taking heavy hits.

The biggest, the NZ Herald, has dropped 7.1% (13,622) to 177,391 in the period mid-year 2007 to December, 2008.

The other major national player, the Wellington-based Dominion Post, has also taken a hit, down 6.2% to 90,279.

But these are ’safe’ figures, rather than the industry-defining declines we’ve had to deal with in the UK. So there’s still time.

Knowing what we know now, what would you do about it?

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Posted in Comment, New Zealand, Newspapers, The Future, The Web, main

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Why I can never trust travel journalism again

October 22nd, 2008

Trust in the media is something we talk about on a grand scale. The Queen having a strop, for instance, or the uproar over You Say, We Pay on Richard and Judy.

We dissect the issue of trust when there’s been a major breach. But what of the minor ones?

I’ve long since got over the fact that some content is magazines is made up. Those sex stories in lads’ mags, for example, are not really sent in to the title. Rather, some delightfully imaginative staffer pens out some filthy fantasy.

It’s a white lie. A fib. I can deal with things like that, because they’re damn entertaining to read. Not a problem if they’re not true — I’m not relying on Nuts for tips in the bedroom, thanks.

I’m a lot more concerned about something I learned just this week. Over on a forum I frequent, a member posted a dilemma. A press trip to stay in a hotel (for reviewing purposes) was all set to go ahead. Booked it, packed it, etc. But then the magazine folded. The now angry hotel wants the journalist to pay in full anyway. The journalist explains:

“The hotel (a very swanky expensive one) offered three nights on a comp basis half board plus four nights on a media rate.

I’ve promised them I will try very hard to get something placed elsewhere BUT they have come back and said the hotel now wants to charge me the media rate for all seven nights and it’ll only be B&B.

So the stay will now cost me around £600-700 extra. Not good news.”

Not good news at all. But by far the most alarming part of those paragraphs were the words ‘media rate’.

One member shares my concern:

“I might be missing something here but how can you review a hotel when the hotel knows you’re reviewing it?”

To which comes this reply:

“I’d love to be able to review in secret but given my editors aren’t in a position to pay my expenses, the only way most of us can do travel pieces is by being hosted on press trips of one sort or another.”

Which is backed up further by another member:

“Straight hotel ‘reviews’ are pretty rare in travel journalism, really…they’re much more likely to be just mentioned in the fact box, with maybe a name check in the text for letting you stay for free. The nature of the assignments (ie. they would cost several thousand pounds to do) mean that in fact almost everything within travel journalism is paid for by someone other than the journalist.”

Thus rendering them useless, no? If hotel staff know you’re there to review the hotel, you can bet you’ll be getting preferential treatment. Quicker food, the best rooms, friendlier staff. In fact, I bet in the staff rooms they’ll have a list of which rooms have people paying ‘media rate’.

One member points out:

“I wonder how many negative reviews are written by journalists on freebies. It’s no wonder sites such as Tripadvisor are proving so useful.”

Quite. It goes back to a post made by former-Press-Gazette-now-PaidContent journalist Patrick Smith, who questioned the validity of film critics:

“A more extreme and amusing example of obscure film-blurbism Guy Ritchie’s not-awful-but-completely-bewildering Revolver (about gangsters, unsurprisingly). The film was universally panned by critics, yet huge billboards appeared around towns declaring it ”Brilliant…Guy Ritchie back to his best!”

Fair enough if that’s what you think, except that the line is from The Sun’s online film e-zine Film First which had bagged a WORLD EXCLUSIVE interview with the director, as The Guardian pointed out at the time. Private Eye established that the “brilliant!” part of the quote was from none other than The Sun’s Page 3 girl Ruth (she makes a brief appearance in the film).”

Are journalists really going to pan a hotel when they know that if they big it up, they’ll probably get another free trip again soon?

Perhaps more worrying is this scenario from another member:

“I only adored one of the hotels (one was fine but naff, and the other was fine but austere) they only used the one for the hotel I genuinely loved. I still got paid for all my work.”

So not only can we not fully trust motives behind hotel reviews, we also don’t get to see the ones that don’t get a favourable write up. Why is this? If it’s a high-profile hotel which turns out to be a complete stinker, isn’t the press in place to provide the service of warning us?

From when I was in New Zealand, I recall Jim Tucker telling me about how he went around Wellington reviewing restaurants. This wasn’t a press trip, and I’m certain Jim didn’t let them know he was there to review the food. His reviews never saw the light of day. Why? Because he dared to criticise.

We often call for high-profile journalists to declare their interests. In fact, a member of the same forum that I’ve been quoting from here has suggested we produce a national register documenting those interests. Great idea, I say. And, let’s not forget Robert Peston who is being ‘looked at’ because of some of his financial coverage. I believe we’ll find that Peston is merely a brilliant journalist and an astute financial genius, but we just don’t know how cosy he is to the people he reports on.

They’re more serious examples. But why not apply this practice to all journalists? If a hotel review has conducted with the hotel’s prior knowledge, then I think we, as readers, have a right to know this.

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Posted in Debate, Ethics, New Zealand, Newspapers

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J-school debate: The best route to success?

September 3rd, 2008

What is the best way to train as a journalist? The debate is raging over on Mindy McAdams’ blog.

It’s widely accepted there are two main ways of getting into journalism. Route 1: A degree course of three years or more. Route 2: A trade school (or polytech if you’re in NZ. Or in the UK, this would be a college, I guess) for a year or so.

The third and so far unmentioned route is the ‘go it alone’ vision. It’s no secret that the world’s best journalists have landed via this method, but I’ll be discarding this one. Argue if you must.

The question is, then, which route is best?

I’m in the lucky position to have experienced both. I studied a degree in journalism at the University of Lincoln until this year (I graduate next week, expect a photo or ten!), and I also taught on a trade school course, out in New Zealand, at Whitireia Community Polytech.

The key difference here, I don’t really need to add, is that I was on opposite sides of the learning experience in Lincoln and Wellington.

I was lucky enough (honestly, it was a great debate) to enjoy this argument in real life over dinner with Jim Tucker and Martin Hirst.

On one side of the table, Martin defended degree courses. Three years at AUT, he said, not only gave you hands-on skills, but also the journalistic mind.

Jim’s course, however, was an intense practical endeavour. Students are journalists from pretty much day one.

At the time, I sided with Jim. Although I’d spent three years of my life at uni, not to mention a load of my own and my family’s money, I came to a conclusion that a trade school is the way to go. The course had one goal: to produce journalists.

You could argue — unfairly perhaps — that the trade school approach has somewhat of a production line feel to it. What they produce is journalists based on the designs of journalists gone by. Where a trade school lacks, I believe, is in creating thinkers.

Why are we doing this? Where did it come from? What will it become? — all questions that are rooted in studying ethics and history in detail.

During that dinner, Martin made the point that I could only make such observations about the two courses and their use in the world because I’d be lucky enough to have enjoyed both.

And let’s not forget that my position in NZ came about from this very blog. Would I have been discussing journalism in this way had it not been for my university education? I’m not sure.

But still, I put contacts, skills and value-for-money over all of that. And so still the trade school was winning.

I thought back to my uni life. I founded and edited a newspaper. I had a radio show. In fact, I dipped my finger in every available journalistic pie going. There are opportunities that can only be created by universities because of one simple reason: budget.

But that budget has it’s own unique cost. Universities are determined to fill their lecture theatres. I know Lincoln certainly was.

I’ve no doubt that universities have terrific journalism tutors, but what value is a tutor of any quality when they have over 100 students to serve? It’s impossibl to do it well.

With the small, trade school-sized classes of 20 or so, a tutor can really gain good rapport with all of them. At Whitireia, Jim and I would be thinking about stories that were coming in. “Ah, xxxxxx would be good for that story,” we’d often say. We knew our students. We knew their personalities. We knew that Dave plays golf at the weekend. We knew that Jono loved rugby — and that his girlfriend was a hairdresser.

Isn’t that how newsrooms work? Isn’t that how JOURNALISTS work?

There are two sides to this coin.

On one hand you have the might of university. The prestige, the money, the time and resources to really learn your subject. Whitireia could never, for example, install a great big radio studio like Lincoln did while I was there. The money just wouldn’t be there for it.

But on the other hand you have trade courses that involve little time-wasting, less money (let’s not forget: journalists shouldn’t just be those who have enough money to study away from home at university) and — from my experience at least — better 1-on-1 teaching.

When a j-school is small, it can swiftly adapt to new ideas. Take Whitireia’s NewsWire website. Designed, implemented and live within four weeks. The amount of ‘you beat us to it!’ comments we received when we went live tells you all you need to know about the speed in which a university curriculum can evolve.

“We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.” I hear it everywhere. I heard it in NZ, I hear it in the UK. Well if I was a journalism student I wouldn’t give two hoots about what you’re going to do. I want to go somewhere where it’s happening already.

And although I feel bad in criticising my own education here, I don’t think universities provide the best source of learning for journalists. Not by a long way.

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Posted in Debate, My Work, New Zealand

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Introducing NewsWire: If you run a journalism school, you need to do this

July 8th, 2008

NewsWire.co.nz is the new news website for the Whitireia Journalism School, New Zealand.

I built it. And, aside from the fee for hosting (pennies) and my own personal wage, we did it for FREE. And what’s more, it’ll stay free.

We created and launched the site within THREE WEEKS. That includes setting up the hosting, domain name, content management system, design, editorial structure, promotion and publishing software. Oh, and lets not forget that students creating the content have been training as journalists for less than six weeks.

I’ll cut to the chase: IF YOU RUN A JOURNALISM SCHOOL, YOU NEED TO DO THIS TOO. IT IS TOO EASY TO NOT BOTHER.

The simplicity of the operation is staggering. Using a series of free, open-source tools, we have created a multi-media news website that is already involving the community.

Now, when I was putting all this together, I constantly referred to the work of Mindy McAdams. Her how-to guides have meant some very tricky aspects of the teaching — setting up Audacity, for example — were made a lot simpler.

Now it’s one thing for Mindy to create those sorts of guides for her own students, but it’s another thing altogether to put those resources on the web, for free, for everyone to learn from.

So, inspired by Mindy’s example, I’ll explain everything that went into NewsWire.co.nz. Maybe some other journalism schools can follow Whitireia’s lead.

» Read more: Introducing NewsWire: If you run a journalism school, you need to do this

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Posted in Blogs, Multimedia, My Work, New Zealand, Social Networking, Student Journalism, TV, The Future, The Web

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Could the newspaper habit be dying out?

June 29th, 2008

Finally, Jim Tucker has started blogging. I say finally because I’ve listened to thoughts coming out of the man’s head for the past month and a bit and thought they’d make great blog posts. If only I could write them.

Anyway, blame a rainy Sunday, maybe, but it has happened. Read Jim Tucker’s blog, ‘Tuckr’, here.

He writes in one of his first posts about the habit of reading a newspaper. It’s very, very true — for some people. Some people just love a bit of Sudoku, don’t they?

I started to wonder what my newspaper habit is. I don’t have one. I pick up the paper, skim the news, then put it down. Sometimes, I won’t even get as far as that. I’m perfectly content getting all I need by reading the newspapers respective websites.

Apart from Mondays and Thursdays. Monday for the Guardian’s Media section. Thursday for its Technology. Specialist sections that I know I can only really enjoy when I pick up the print edition, because I want to read at length. I don’t need that with general news.

That is my newspaper habit. What’s yours?

Could more specialist sections be the way forward for newspapers? What is neccessary to recreate the newspaper habit for young people. What do we want?

Do we even want a newspaper habit?

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

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Outdated and useless wire services: BE GONE!

June 22nd, 2008


Reuters mobile journalism kit. I really, really want one. Picture: KevGlobal (Flickr)

This post is for the June Carnival of Journalism. Andy Dickinson has posed this question:

Is (digital) journalism better the more local it is and what does that do to growth?

And I’ll attempt to add my views on that question by bringing up an idea that’s been bubbling in my mind the last couple of days. I think this idea will affect growth.

Read on, if you please…

I won’t go into all the reasons why wire services are busted beyond repair. Go and read Flat Earth News.

I also made it perfectly clear — after my time working at Sky News Online — that I think news agency stories should be given the heave-ho. I still stand by that. As Jeff Jarvis has continually said, lets do what we do best, and link to the rest.

Anyway, I left that out there to stew for a while without offering much in the way of a solution to it all. Well now I have an idea.

In New Zealand, the NZ Press Association (NZPA) is in deep, deep trouble. It’s running out of moeny. And with no money, they’ll have no staff. Which, pretty much, is the state most wire services are in now. Minimal staff cover areas far greater than one person can ever cover effectively. Terrible. You can’t turn over well-researched copy when you’re that busy.

Meanwhile, local newspapers everywhere are also running out of money. Reporters are losing jobs left, right and centre. And the lack of adequate pay means good quality local journalists are drifting into the realms of PR. And who can blame them? A stay in one of Auckland’s flashiest waterfront hotels courtesy of Vodafone recently taught me all I need to know about money-printing license many of the top corporations have.

So you’re left to journalists who are not only underpaid, underexperienced and undermotivated, but also overworked: time that should be spent newsgathering is spent dealing with press releases or re-writing wire copy.

Here’s my proposal for how that should change:

Wire 2.0 – the NewsHub

Imagine a service, we’ll call it the NewsHub. The NewsHub acts as a collector of news, gathered in from local reporters up and down the land. It also acts as a distributor of news, sharing it out to other local reporters, who are in turn submitting their own local copy. Big stories will then be shared upwards to the national and international media.

And… that’s it. Simple. The NewsHub concept would improve journalism — both national and local — a thousand times over. Why? Because it will provide capital for more journalists to be hired, and will make it financially viable to send reporters out into the community.

Story Share ServiceOutlets that opt in to NewsHub would pay a fee — much like they do with current wire services. The difference here, of course, is that the fee would be pooled across the service. The income being spread to local newspapers/websites/whatever on the basis that the more you produce, the more you will earn.

In other words, the more good reporting you do, the more money you will have available to do it. Much like the manner in which a freelance photographer would distribute pictures.

Which would mean good reporters would suddenly become very valuable to local press. It could even mean — gasp — that local media outlets can afford to hire more reporters, knowing that a bigger news-gathering operation could be much more profitable than, say, telling one reporter to write up all those press releases or slave over an advertorial.

Not to mention the positive influence of good, old-fashioned journalism. Imagine a weekly local paper crammed full of insightful reporting, investigations, human interest and community spirit. I know my local papers aren’t doing this at the moment — are yours?

This focus would then filter up and up to the national and international press. ‘Flat Earth News’ stories would be snuffed out and eliminated quickly and effectively. National media could follow leads from local press as to the biggest stories, as local reporters would now be adequately funded to produce 24-hour coverage. They’ll be Twittering, blogging… the whole shebang. And the community will be right in there too, sharing all their content to reporters at a local level who then, through NewsHub, would distribute their content, turning it into what will be a very profitable exercise for all.

We don’t need traditional wire services. They were invented before we could all communicate without help. Example: If an explosion happens in Cambridge, a reporter for the Cambridge Evening News will be right on it. He’ll be monitoring tweets/pictures coming in from the incident. He will report on the situation, and as he does, he’ll be sharing it all via NewsHub. Earning money for the CEN as he goes. At what point does the PA need to be there? It’s a redundant service — only in existence because 1) until now, there hasn’t been a suggestion of an alternative and 2) because editors are too bloody petrified to ditch it. Come on, editors, own up.

As you’ll have noticed, these are skeleton plans at the moment. There is still plenty of thinking to be done, but to return to Andy Dickinson’s question (bet you’d thought I’d forgotten, eh?), by harnessing the power of local digital journalism and turning it into a mutual, lucrative business, local media can grow and grow. Easily. The only limit is in how much brilliant journalism we can, en masse, produce for the benefit of the rest of the world.

Click here to see a Powerpoint presentation (929kb) comparing the old model and the ‘NewsHub’ model (very kindly put together by Jim Tucker).

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Posted in Blogs, Citizen Journalism, General, Multimedia, My Work, New Zealand, Newspapers, The Future, The Web

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