NUJ multi-media commission: ‘publishers don’t understand the web’
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 19 October 2007 at 10:43
Tags: NUJ
The current issue of the National Union of Journalists’ magazine, The Journalist, has the first extract from the report by the union’s Commission on Multi-media Working, which is due to be published in full next month.
“Interviews carried out by the NUJ commission have revealed that few publishers and broadcasters with a web presence understand the web,” The Journalist says in its introduction.
Somewhat inexplicably, The Journalist isn’t available online. So here are some highlights to ensure that this important topic finds its way into the vibrant online discussion between professional peers that is the journalism blogosphere.
“In the panic with which many newspaper owners reacted to the rush to go online, many enforced quite large scale redundancies, to slash costs to cover internet investments that would not pay off in the short term,” the commission report says.
The commission’s survey on NUJ chapels found that 50 per cent of chapels had experienced redundancies since the web operation was introduced; 75 per cent of chapels said their workloads had increased; 37 per cent said journalists were working longer hours. Only 34 per cent said the quality of new media was professional, 52 per cent called it adequate, and 14 per cent said it was poor.
The rest of the report extract catalogues a range of strange web workflow practices and a lack of proper editing procedures on web sites:
- Journalists at one “daily group in eastern England” told the commission that there were “no clear guidelines about what should go up when, whose job it is to put it up, who is checking it legally etc.”
- Journalists at one London magazine group reported the web was being run by an “open outcry system” — “The system is that when a writer has done a story, they shout ‘can somebody read this story?’ to check before it goes up.” On one occasion, a feature was put online by a technician rather than a journalist, resulting in a libelous headline that had to be taken down.
- A chapel at a Newsquest title in north of England told the commission that “stories are going online unsubbed” directly from a newsdesk.
- In some publications, “there are no experienced journalists working on the websites and copy is handled by web technicians“.
- The ease of copying and pasting leads to journalists under time pressure to “simply lump text across without proper consideration of its quality or reliability”.
- Running unedited press releases is always a problem, but the difficulty of editing video makes video news releases present a particular problem. One Newsquest chapel told the commission: “Police will send us video footage of a drugs raid. We would never run a press release from the police word for word, but we seem happy to do it with their video.”
- Single-journalist video reporting has clear drawbacks, the report says. “To have to seek out information and people to interview, then interview and photograph or film them, then have to write and voice the script, is an inefficient way of working and can never produce such good results as a team.”
- The report stresses the need for proper video training. “Untrained or semi-trained writers or photographers have been turning in such poor video material and taking so long to do it that even the meanest employers appear to be taking notice,” the report says. Several publications reported having to ease up on enthusiasm for video as reality caught up with quality expectations. However the report also acknowledges that “in centres where video training has be thorough, and the journalists are given proper support, work of high quality is being done.”
- Members from a regional daily told the commission: “There is real concern over lack of policy/guidelines and lines of responsibility between papers and web … things would be better if there was a dedicated video unit subject to the web team so decisions about what to cover and how could be integrated into the day’s news plan”.
- “The practice of reporters taking photographs is becoming widespread, to the detriment of the quality of images.”
Does any of this sound familiar? What is to be done?
Update: Blogger and Guardian columnist Jeff Jarvis calls the NUJ’s effort a “whiny, territorial, ass-covering, protecting-the-priesthood, preservation-instead-of-innovation faux report”.
The Telegraph’s community editor, Shane Richmond, isn’t impressed with the report, either. He also doesn’t like the two introductory articles in The Journalist.
Update 25/10:Roy Greenslade intends to leave the union over this. Guardian Unlimited’s Neil McIntosh weighs in as well.
Tags: NUJ
