Introducing the social media treasure hunt

Concerned that journalists spend too much time behind their desks in the virtual world.

Well Paul Bradshaw is as well so much so that he has devised a Social Media Treasure Hunt for students on his online journalism course.

The game says Paul will

* Get them meeting people in person rather than virtually – a much more effective way of building social capital

* Get them away from a desk. It seems to me that most people approach online journalism as a deskbound job – actually, it opens up enormous opportunities for production on the move: moblogging, liveblogging, photoblogging

* Get them to open their eyes, ears and noses. These students have spent 18 months learning how to be journalists – looking for angles, structuring a story. Now I’m asking them to unlearn some of that when they approach a blog: put out unfinished material; observations; raw material. Sharing – not processing. That can be a hard habit to get into.

Read more about the rules here

Labour's election machine prepares

Beware if you are a journalist wanting to attend Labour functions during the election campaign.

According to Sam Coates writing in the Times

The Labour Party are organising accreditation so journalists can attend their general election press conferences.
In addition to home address, home telephone number, work or mobile telephone number and e-mail address, which is already stretching it somewhat, they have just ask for:

» Passport Number (if you have one)
» National Insurance number
» Driving Licence number (if you have one)
» Your private and company vehicle registration numbers
» A passport style photo in an appropriate digital format

Don't get distracted

Something I suffer from,being distracted whilst writing but 10,000 words offers some solutions and remedy to improve your writing and concentration.

No 2 is something that I definetly agree with

Write down ideas when you have them-

Everyone has that moment when they have a brilliant idea but, because they didn't write it down, cannot recall it later. Don't let this happen to you again by keeping a notepad with you at all times.

A call to arms-get off that chair

A call to journalism's arms from Mark Luckie over at 10,000 words.

Get out of the newsroom and into the community he says reminding us journalists that

Now that e-mail, Google, and other internet technologies are a permanent fixture in newsrooms, many more journalists are doing their work from the comfort of their chairs.

As he says

California Watch, the investigative reporting team for which I serve as a multimedia producer, announced the "Open Newsroom." For one day, the California Watch team is hitting the streets in neighborhoods around the state and inviting readers to come chat with us, share ideas, or just share a cup of coffee.

The ten commandments

Jim Lehrer has published his 10 commandments of journalism( Ht-Hattie Garlick)

See what you think

1) Do nothing I cannot defend

2) Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me

3) Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story

4) Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am

5) Assume the same about all people on whom I report

6) Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise

7) Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything

8) Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions

9) No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously

10) And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business

As the internet grows so must the need for the professional journalistr

A Marxist call to arms by Tim Luckhurst, Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent in the Independent this morning.

Whereas according to Tim,we thought

There will be no further need for newspapers or broadcasters to host debates and represent public opinion. The internet will let every citizen speak for themselves. The masses will seize the means of media production. We will witness an era of revolutionary change.

and that this would lead to the end of the independent capitalist media barons

In fact they are alive and well and we need them to guarantee the journalist's role in the Fourth estate

Democracy cannot thrive if state or commercial power is left free to scrutinise itself. It needs honest, authoritative reporting of the kind Britons have become accustomed to receiving from newspapers and broadcasters. And the internet makes surveillance and intrusion as easy as it makes information sharing. That creates a greater need for the scrutiny only professional journalism can guarantee.

One thought for the New Year

As we end the New Year,Reporters without frontiers reminds us that

76 journalists killed (60 in 2008)
33 journalists kidnapped
573 journalists arrested
1456 physically assaulted
570 media censored
157 journalists fled their countries
1 blogger died in prison
151 bloggers and cyber-dissidents arrested
61 physically assaulted
60 countries affected by online censorship

Journalist recounts suicide attacks

Over at the committee to protect journalists,Mohamed Olad Hassan, a reporter for the BBC and The Associated Press, and chairman of the Somali Foreign Correspondents Association, recounts his experience covering a deadly ceremony in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. Olad narrowly escaped death after a suicide bomber killed at least 23 people on December 3 at the graduation ceremony at Hotel Shamo.


Three journalists were killed in the attack and Mohamed recounts a typical graduation scene

Proud parents beamed at their graduating loved ones, who were also sitting in the hall. Journalists, particularly the cameramen, were right in the front for a good view. People were making speeches, and we were taking notes, as usual.

Then,he says all this brightness turned to darkness.

All I remember is being covered in dust. Some debris apparently from the roof of the hall hit me and there was no light anywhere. I looked across and the young guy sitting next to me was dead. The seat he had been sitting on was mine. We had changed positions for one moment, when I had left momentarily to move my recorder nearer to the speakers. That’s when the explosion occurred. It was my luck not to be sitting in that chair.

Humble pie in Wigan

I would have to agree with Jon Slattery's comments on this article in the Guardian this morning.

I was trying desperately to stifle a laugh on the bus as I read it.

How can you make a pie eating contest sound like cold war negotiations?

Try Martin Wainwright's interpretation

"The world pie-eating championships proved once again to be a controversy-strewn battleground today as the sole woman competitor stormed out and officials banned gravy after rumours of doping with cough mixture."

A fascinating study of online distribution and collaboration in Kigali

Publishing Kigali Wire

View more documents from Graham Holliday.

Five don't for multi media journalists

1.) Don’t think of your video as an afterthought. Good video might save a story, but poorly shot wallpaper video will certainly ruin one.

2.) Don’t complain about carrying gear. There are hundreds of darn good reporters out there who are carrying resumes right now who would kill to be carrying gear.

3.) Don’t forget what it’s like to be a viewer. See each day’s story as if you were watching it from home. Did you get the take home message across? Did you like video? Did it all make sense? Would you want to watch it again? Would you need too?

4.) Don’t rush the writing. That’s where real mistakes are made.

5.) Don’t use being a one man band as a crutch or an excuse. It’s the wave of the future and a great skill to have.

via Deb Wenger

The art of headline writing and A/B testing

I always think that the headline of a blog post, newspaper article, news release or other piece of written material is the most essential thing to pay attention to when you write that content.

writes Neville Hobson,and in these days of Search engine optimisation, I couldn't agree more.

But have you heard of A/B testing

From direct mail to web design, A/B testing is considered a gold standard of user research: Show one version to half your audience and another version to the other half; compare results, and adjust accordingly. Some very cool examples include Google’s obsessive testing of subtle design tweaks and Dustin Curtis’ experiment with direct commands and clickthrough rates. (”You should follow me on Twitter” produced dramatically better results than the less moralizing, “Follow me on Twitter.”)

Tweet it or sleep on it?

We have all been guilty of it,perhaps me more than many but is it right to live blog or live tweet at events.

The advantageous are all there in giving an audience instantaneous access to what is going on

But here is the downside

Suddenly there is no concept of news values. Only just how many tools can we use to spread the thin story just about as thinly as possible? There is never any thought of "what is this worth?" or "is this a story?"Just keep on spreading.

I would add to that the context and the time out aspect where it is often good as a journalist to reflect on what has been heard or viewed.

It is a battle that journalism has to contend with in this 24 glare that we live under.Getting the balance right is important and maybe it is up to journalists to set the parameters.

Court reporting service is saved

Court reporting is one of the facets of good hard local reporting and this story from Hold the Front Page caught my eye

It tells of how

James Brewster from Strand News, which covers the Royal Courts of Justice in London, wrote to local newspaper newsdesks across the UK appealing for unpaid bills to be actioned straightaway.

His company has covered the Royal Courts of Justice for the past 20 years and is the only agency dedicated to reporting from the High Court and Court of Appeal.

So it was good to know that James' letter has done the trick as least for the time being by staving off the immediate threat of closure

The seven laws of journalism

Welcome to the seven laws of journalism,at least according to Danna Walker,Associate Professor in Residence for Journalism in the USA

Here are her tips for budding journalism students

1.Journalism isn’t dead. Yes, journalism as we knew it once is gone,but we can’t live without cars, and we can’t live without news and information.

2.Money counts. If you’re going into journalism, learn the basics of business. Yes, news sites are giving away content for free, but that is changing and your time is worth cold, hard cash.

3.Grow a pair. think of yourself as a first responder. You walk toward the danger, even if the danger at the time is simply approaching a big-name politician in a Capitol hallway.

4.Life is hard (so deal with it)if you want to get a story, you’ve got to be able to keep appointments, dog people, and spend time developing and writing it.

5.You’re a story factory. Care about your audience. Your world is your assembly line.

6.Use technology as a means to an end.

7.people fought and died so you could do what you do, and a lot of people all over the world would kill to be able to do it, You have rights in order to “do” journalism, so flaunt them.

An Iraqi journalist in Tuscon Arizona

A casr of turning the tables as an Iraqi journalist makes his home in the United States.

Mudhafar al-Husseini has been in the country for more than three months but as he says

I first realized that life in America was not as easy and smooth as it appeared in Hollywood movies.

noting that he was

astonished by several things I never imagined about life in America. Life is very serious and practical here, and people don't have much time to talk on the street, in markets, or even in public places. It seems everyone is busy with his or her own business and daily concerns.

And on the war

I was also surprised that most Americans know nothing about the reality of the war in Iraq. I sometimes find it hard to explain, because Iraq is a complicated place. I think it's the history, the civilization, and the old sand of that country that makes it harder than others to be understood. These aspects were not considered at all before the war. You have to study Iraqi history well and get to know the culture more before dealing with the people on a long-term basis.

Source-CJR

More debate on the middle class journalist

There is plenty of comment about Alan Milburn's Unleashing Aspiration report which I commented on yesterday,especially the part about journalism being a middle class profession.

Roy Greenslade comments on it too this morning describing the time when he was training as when

The working class "masses" were on the move, leading eventually to the middle class becoming the nation's dominant social class.

So according to Roy

By the late 1980s, entrance to journalism was also increasingly dependent on academic qualifications that ensured that almost everyone needed a university degree.
This was not such a problem until, say, the middle 1990s, because working class entrance to tertiary education improved year by year.

Then higher education became expensive and became a barrier to those from lower class backgrounds.

Should it matter? Well journalism should be a representation from all walks of society so that society quite simply can be represented.

On the other hand journalists need to be educated.It is not just journalism courses that will be barred to those who cannot afford to pay.It will be higher education as a whole.

As Milburn's report states it isn't just journalism that is being demeritocrized,the problem is deep in society and the current recession will only enhance that problem.

Reader's comments devalue journalism

Interaction and two way communication are held up as one of the reasons why publishing online is a good thing for journalism.

Not though according to Douglas Bailey, president and founder of DB Media Strategies Inc who argues that

[A]s satiated as I am with the enormous and varied flow of available information, I’ve concluded there’s one outlet that should be abandoned: those comment forums at the end of articles on newspaper websites.
…these forums are insidiously contributing to the devaluation of journalism, blurring the truth, confusing the issues, and diminishing serious discourse beyond even talk radio’s worst examples.

Via CJR

Bloggers rather than journalists

There is a good piece on why journalists should blog (via Adrian Monck) from Felix Salmon whos suggests that there are three reasons why they should and one of those is bad.

Lots of companies are hiring bloggers these days, ranging from huge media concerns like Reuters to small start-ups. Pay can be good, and there’s no real difference any more between what a full-time blogger gets paid and what a full-time journalist gets paid. The work can be hard, and the blog can end up eating your life, but at the same time there can be an enormous sense of freedom when you’re given a blog of your own.

But one proviso

people want to hire bloggers, not hire journalists and then cross their fingers and hope that it turns out those journalists can blog. All to often, in such cases, they can’t.

An element of fraud but the whole system of higher education needs to be looked at

One of the themes of this blog has of course been the future of journalism education.

The proliferation of journalism degrees in the UK brokered by considerable demand for the product has coincided with the biggest downturn in the profession.

This will no doubt lead to many disappointed graduates not being able initially at least to pursue their chosen career.

What is the solution?

Well there are too parts to this problem.Universities have a responsibility to tailor their output to the job market.Not just in journalism but across the board.The drive to send as many people down the degree route will result in a generation of dashed hopes.Coinciding with the recession,the market is simply not there.

This has led to the criticism of universities of following the doctrine of bums on seats.The introduction of top up fees in 2006 has extended this philoophy.

As for journalism itself,the universities will say that they are simply responding to demand for courses.

Yesterday saw a controversial article appear in the Times Higher Educational supplement in which Tim Luckhurst, professor of journalism at the University of Kent said that

there was “an element of fraud in journalism education and Universities are conning students by accepting them on journalism courses when they have no realistic prospect of working in the profession.

There is a certain truth to this but that can be addressed by changing the content of courses more in line with the skills that are required.The emphasis on shorthand for example needs to be looked at and the career path of preparing a student for a trainee ship on a paper must also be examined.

These should be replaced by the cottage industry skills of blogging and freelancing as well as using social media for promotion.

Another possibility would be to combine journalism with another skill so that the aspiring journalist is no longer "jack of all trades master of none" but has a subject area with which to write.

Course leaders reading this will say that we are in a employment blip but there are structural changes taking place and universities need to adapt and tailor their output to them.