The NUJ Commission on Multimedia Working: reading the report
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 6 December 2007 at 10:21
Tags: NUJ
The long-awaited report of the NUJ commission on multimedia working was published today on the union’s freshly-redesigned website.
This is the final version of the document that caused a bit of a furore back in October when excerpts were published in the union’s in-house magazine alongside a comment piece, provocatively entitled “Web 2.0 is rubbish“, by Commission member Donnecha DeLong. During the ensuing debate among bloggers, Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade and Telegraph communities editor Shane Richmond both publicly renounced their union membership.
It’s no surprise then, that the final report is peppered with reminders that the union is not anti-technology. And indeed, reading the voluminous and wide-ranging document, and it’s safe to say that DeLong’s views are not entirely representative of the seven-member commission that produced the report. In a glowing final chapter, the commission sings the praises of social networking, RSS, widgets and mobile applications and the need for journalists to keep one step ahead of their employers in understanding the changes and developments in industry.
What is hard to overlook, however, is that the report consists largely of a catalogue of concerns about the way publishers are implementing their digital strategies. Journalists, it says, are being asked to do more, often working longer hours for little extra pay. Often the increased workload comes as employers are shedding newsroom jobs — although the report does acknowledge that at some publications, new jobs have been created for web editors and video journalists.
Most worryingly, the report catalogues how journalists with insufficient time, resources, or editorial workflow procedures are pressured to cut corners in the online production process, including practices that would never have been tolerated in print-only or broadcast-only newsrooms:
- Journalists on a daily group in eastern England told us: “There are no clear guidelines about what should go up when, whose job it is to put it up, who is checking it legally etc. In some cases reporters are effectively having to act as subs for their own material before posting it to website.”
- Some titles at a business magazine group in London are operating a haphazard “open outcry” system to get stories checked: “The system is that when a writer has done a story they shout ‘Can someone read this story?’ to check it before it goes up. It depends entirely on there being someone to do it. On one occasion a news feature went up to the website and there was no-one on the newsdesk to write a headline so it was done by a technician and it was libellous … It had to be taken down.
- Telegraph journalists said: “Editors are forced to think in terms of online picture galleries, Your View feedback, podcasts etc as well as the paper. Therefore … less time to devote to briefing writers and editing copy.”
- At present many newspapers that insist on National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) qualifications, for example, are prepared to accept much lower standards of training for such website material as video.
No doubt there will be some skeptical response to the document, as NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear has written today.
The section likely to arouse controversy in the blogosphere is the one dealing with user-generated content. That section repeats the union’s call for publishers to adopt its proposed code of practice on witness contributors, a document that caused just a bit controversy when it was introduced last year. Another section describes the increased need to interact with readers as a burden on journalists time. This is unlikely to impress those see virtue in news becoming more of a conversation between journalists and a less-passive audience.
Do any of the commission’s finding it all sound familiar? Has it got its recommendations right?
Tags: NUJ
