Posts Tagged ‘newswire’

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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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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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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