Journalists’ use of Wikipedia and social networks

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 January 2008 at 09:01
Tags: Ethics, Facebook, Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Privacy, Wikipedia, Wikis

In yesterday’s Independent on Sunday, reader’s editor Michael Williams looked askance at journalists’ use of Wikipedia to confirm disputed facts.

After surveying the usual pro- and anti-Wikipedia arguments, Williams concludes by reading the entries about the Independent and Independent on Sunday “a subject I ought to know something about.”

“After the first 10 errors, I stopped counting. You have been warned!”

Meanwhile, Guardian readers’ editor Siobhain Butterworth has looked at how reporters use social networking sites, asking whether Facebook members have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The issue has arisen again after the paper, along with several others, published pictures drawn from Facebook showing 19-year-old Bilawal Bhutto in fancy dress.

“There’s no call, in these circumstances, for a heavyweight public interest argument to justify publication,” Butterworth concludes.

3 comments

Sambrook: transparency and humility essential to trust in journalists (audio)

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 September 2007 at 10:55
Tags: Andrew Keen, BBC, Fox News, Guardian, Richard Sambrook, Television, The Sun, The Sun Online

“Arrogance” was a major part of how the BBC “tripped up” in reporting the story that led to the Hutton inquiry, and journalists should show greater humility and transparency, the BBC’s director of global news, Richard Sambrook, has said.

Sambrook made the comment last night while interviewing Web 2.0 critic and Cult of the Amateur author Andrew Keen at the Frontline Club in London.

Sambrook’s remarks came during an exchange about trust in the media, after Keen had argued that journalists “should be more arrogant”.

“There’s a crisis of confidence in mainstream journalists,” Keen said.

“They need to be more arrogant. They need to remind people that they are seasoned professionals, the way doctors and lawyers and chefs do.

“Why apologise to the public? I see that more and more: The idea that we don’t know any more than you, so you should be telling us we should be reporting.If that’s true, all of you should just resign. Let’s just have the blogosphere.”

Sambrook disputed this view, saying that the real problem is that there isn’t enough humility or transparency in journalism.

“Yes, we do have expertise or skill, but we we’re not going to get the credit that may be conferred on that if we behave arrogantly or say ‘we know best’,” said Sambrook.

When Keen challenged Sambrook to offer an example where the BBC has been “really screwed up” or should have shown more humility, Sambrook mentioned the crisis that engulfed the BBC following Andrew Gilligan’s May 2003 Today programme report that the Blair government had, against the wishes of intelligence agencies, “sexed up” a dossier on the case for going to war in Iraq. That report was followed by the death of Gilligan’s source, Dr David Kelly, and led to the Hutton inquiry. Sambrook was director of BBC News during the crisis and testified before the inquiry.

“Personally, I think we got a lot of things right, but where we went wrong and where it became a crisis was because Andrew Gillian was sloppy — and he was sloppy probably because there was a touch of arrogance there. And the Today programme was overly defensive, probably because there was a touch of arrogance there.”

“Actually the story was right. Others may disagree with that, but I think the story was right but we tripped up because of our arrogance, which covered up a degree of sloppiness and let the government and other critics come in and the whole thing kicked off.”

Journalism’s gatekeeping function requires professionalism, not arrogance, Sambrook went on to say. Making decisions about what to report should be based on reassons, which should be open and transparent.

“If one of our journalists makes a statement on TV as a professional judgment, then I would hope they have some evidence or backing behind that to justify that - and by showing that evidence, the public can have faith in their professional judgment. If they just say ‘hey I’m a really clever person, I’m cleverer than you and I say this’, why would you trust them? I wouldn’t.”

See also:

• Comment is Free: Andrew Keen v Emily Bell: Is today’s internet killing our culture?

Edinburgh: ‘IPod moment’ could render print extinct, predicts Guardian editor

Posted by Colin Crummy on 25 August 2007 at 16:33
Tags: Channel 4, E-paper, Edinburgh 2007, Edinburgh International Television Festival, Guardian, ITN, Journalism, Podcasting

The newspaper industry could be rocked by its own “iPod moment” where a device reads text so well that renders print extinct, according to the editor of The Guardian.

At a session entitled “Who’ll Win the Web?” at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Alan Rusbridger said: “For the newspaper there will be an iPod moment where someone creates a device that is so brilliant at reading text, the newspaper becomes irrelevant.”

Rusbridger also said the death of The Guardian in print would “in some ways make life simpler” and said that he was confident his team would continue to produce the product within the same Guardian spirit elsewhere. “I’d be quite relaxed about it,” he added.

He admitted that The Guardian was tying up people experimenting with podcasts that gained few listeners but said it was because the newspaper was experimenting with everything. “There’s a fair amount of wasted effort at the moment but we’re learning all the time.”

The debate centred on whether print media or broadcasters might prosper in the digital age.

Rod Henwood, new business director at Channel 4 said: “In some ways we are less threatened than newspapers because free broadcasters don’t have paying customers to lose. We have paying customers to gain through the internet.”

He said that broadcasters could better retain exclusivity on products in a way that news providers could not. “News is very much commodised on the net. Immersive, long form video entertainment is harder to commodise. For broadcasters that have got rights that are their own, have a chance to stand out on the internet more than purely news providers.”

ITN chief executive Mark Wood said newspapers were more than just news and it was crucial to make those elements – like lifestyle sections - pay in a multimedia strategy.

Rusbridger said: “The BBC, CNN, ITN – it’s sort of an article of faith that they are impartial and unbiased. We can be as impartial and biased as we like and on comment is free we have thousands of robust opinions.” He foresaw this as “an interesting battleground” which would be partly settled by regulator.

New research on UK newspapers’ online business models

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 July 2007 at 14:11
Tags: Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, International Herald Tribune, Mail on Sunday, Star, Sun, Times, Times Online

National newspapers’ online editors and managers are increasingly seeing print and online editions as complementary products, and at some titles concern about cannibalisation has “diminished to the stage where they are not a significant influence on strategy”.

These are among the key findings of newly-published research in the business models of national newspaper web sites by Jack Herbert and Neil Thurman of City University.

Ironically, perhaps, given its findings about the diminishing importance of paywalls at newspaper web sites, the definitive version of the study is only available to subscribers of the academic journal Journalism Practice. Non-subscribers can download it for £14.

However, a pre-print version is available from City University’s web site.

The report is the result of interviews conducted last summer with the online editors or managers of the national newspaper web sites.

Sites are charging for news, columnists, archives, digital editions, e-mail alerts, mobile services. But in a buoyant advertising market, many of the sites are finding it advantageous to make more of their content available for free to increase overall traffic, the study finds.

None of the sites charge for general interest news, a finding the authors attribute to the “availability of this relatively generic content for free”

Times Online’s former editor Peter Bale told the researchers that the site had experienced a “huge” increase in traffic when it dropped pay barriers to overseas users and has also opened its archives.

Even those running sites with paywalls, like Independent online edition, FT.com, and Scotsman.com could see the potential benefits of dropping the barriers.

Advertising is the main revenue stream for national newspapers’ web sites, with up to 90 per cent of revenues coming from advertising. The study also found that revenue from online services and commercial partnerships is growing rapidly. It accounted for a third of total profits at Telegraph.co.uk, and was growing by 20 to 30 percent at Guardian Unlimited.

Several of the editors and managers interviewed indicated that they were increasingly unconcerned about cannibalising their print editions. Alan Revell of Associated Northcliffe Digital told the researchers that a survey of Daily Mail readers had found that they did not view DailyMail.co.uk as a substitute for the print edition, and that the site’s presence did not affect frequency with which they buy the printed edition.

Pete Picton, editor of Sun Online, told the researchers that the real competition competition was the Internet as a whole.

“[T]here is cannibalization by the Internet, not by the Sun Online per se,” he said.

The theory of cannibalization, the researchers found, is based on the assumption that that people stick with a particular news brand, regardless of medium. That idea may now be “completely dead”, Richard Withey of the Independent told the researchers. Simon Waldman of the Guardian agreed, stressing the behaviour of “promiscuous readers” online. Exactly: the attention economy is hungry for our lunch.

Some other key findings from the interviews with online editors:

• Digital editions are only providing marginal revenue streams and see them as an imperfect technology
• Email services were a growing area and editors were excited about their
  revenue potential
• Concerns about cannibalization “have diminished to the stage where they are not a significant influence on strategy” at the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.

Expert Eye: The new vids on the block

Posted by Ian Reeves on 24 May 2007 at 09:45
Tags: Belfast Telegraph, Computing, Eastern Daily Press, FHM, Financial Times, Guardian, Haymarket, Hull Daily Mail, ITN, InStyle, Journalism, Lancashire Evening Post, Magazines, Media Week, Mirror, Nationals, New Scientist, Newspapers, Northern Echo, Nuts, Roo, Sun, Telegraph.co.uk, Times Online, VNU, YouTube, Zoo, icBirmingham, video

Ian Reeves looks at how he printed press is experimenting with video, from locals to the big players.

11 comments

Bloggers’ reaction to the British Press Awards

Posted by Martin Stabe on 29 March 2007 at 16:57
Tags: British Press Awards, Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times

Here’s a shock: Some right-wing political bloggers have reacted badly to their journalistic bête noir, Polly Toynbee, collecting the gong for columnist of the year. on Monday night.

For the Devil’s Kitchen, this was a sure sign that “everyone else in the MSM is even stupider than Polly herself”.

He went on to claim:

If we needed any proof of the Leftist sympathies and utter mediocrity of the British MSM, this surely must be the clincher although I must admit that handing the National Newspaper of the Year to The Observer would also go some way to confirming the rightness of one’s utter contempt for the entire sorry industry.

DK quickly updated his post to acknowledge the reminder of another blogger, Bookdrunk, that more conservative papers have also won the award in recent years.

Of course, this just proves the point anyway:

If there’s one thing that bloggers who cover the media agree on, it’s that there’s plenty of mediocrity and outright hackery for the entire political spectrum.

Oh dear.

The bloggers who earn their living in the dastardly MSM were a tad more charitable.

Weber Shadwick chief executive Colin Bryne proves you can’t have it both ways. After years of complaints about bad behaviour at the Awards, Bryne was “left wishing for a bit of the old spicy behaviour and wondering why the lady in the gold bubble dress on the next table had to visit the loo every ten minutes”.

City University head of journalism and Press Gazette columnist Adrian Monck was left wishing for wifi — or at least mobile reception in the hall. In Monck’s comments, Neil McIntosh kicks off the much-needed debate about how we should reflect print-online convergence in next year’s awards. More on that important topic soon…

HarperPress editor Annabel Wright. Over at 5th Estate, she congratulates the Sunday Times’s Christina Lamb for winning the fourth British Press Award of her career as Foreign Reporter of the Year.

“Foreign correspondents seem to me a very particular breed, driven to take risks that would terrify most of us,” she writes, before posting excepts from the introduction of a book of Lamb’s journalism that will be published in July.

(more…)

Nominees announced for newspaper innovation gong

Posted by Martin Stabe on 21 March 2007 at 13:20
Tags: BBC, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, Guardian Unlimited, MEN Lite, Manchester Evening News, Newbury Weekly News, Newbury today, Pinkun.com, Reading Chronicle, Sunday Telegraph, Telegraph.co.uk, Times Online, telegraph, thelondonpaper

Reading Chronicle editor Simon Jones has good reason to be boastful: his paper’s Polish edition has been nominated for The Fujifilm Grand Prix Award for the “most significant contribution to future newspaper success” at the 2007 Newspaper Awards.

The Kronika Reading is certainly in good company. Other nominees for the award are the Telegraph’s new newsroom, the Financial Times’ mobile news reader, the Guardian’s afternoon PDF edition G24, and free papers MEN Lite and thelondonpaper.

Meanwhile,
BBC News Oniline, Guardian Unlimited, the Manchester Evening News, Newbury Today, Pinkun.com, Telegraph.co.uk, and Times Online are nominated for the “Electronic News Site of the Year”, an award described as “The Press Computer Systems Award for all electronic news sites”.

182 responses to the Freedom of Information consultation

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 March 2007 at 20:46
Tags: BBC, Crown Copyright, Ethics, Freedom of Information, Guardian, Investigations, Journalism, Mashups, NUJ, foi, foia

The Government has received 182 responses to its consultation on the Freedom of Information Act fees regime.

We know about five of these so far. One submission is Press Gazette’s petition, signed by more than 1,250 journalists who oppose the Government’s plans. Another is the Guardian’s strongly-worded defence of journalists’ use of FOI. The BBC has also made its opposition plain.

FOI campaigner Heather Brooke’s submission is posted on her blog. It’s a forcefully-worded piece which is notable for introducing two very practical arguments to a debate that is usually dominated by abstract polemics about the public’s “right to know”.

First, Brooke assaults the Government’s frequent claim that Freedom of Information Act introduces a net cost to the public purse and the economy as a whole. Instead, she makes a strong case that FOI — combined with a more liberal system for the re-use of public-sector information — would boost the economy by fostering a stronger private-sector information industry like the one in the United States. More transparency would also save the Treasury money in the long run by making public record-keeping more efficient and exposing waste.

Second, and perhaps more interesting to readers here, she argues that a strong Freedom of Information regime would improve British journalism overall, by encouraging “responsible, informative journalism, leading to an informed and civically engaged electorate”.

First, Freedom of Information means more accurate, factually-based reporting, including analytical computer-assisted investigative journalism:

The polemical style of much British journalism is due in large part to the difficulty obtaining official information. It is noteworthy that the UK lacks any organisation devoted to computer-assisted reporting – a type of investigative journalism that is well developed in the US and Scandinavia where freedom of information laws are much stronger and well-developed. I have worked with several organisations to try and build up this type of analytical journalism in the UK but the difficulties are enormous. …

Regular readers will know that I completely agree with her about this.

Brooke also makes the interesting argument that greater access to legitimate sources of information would reduce the need for journalists to resort to dubious or illegal methods for obtaining data:

If the government wants to encourage legitimate reporting techniques then it needs to provide an efficient and timely mechanism to make this type of reporting cost effective. This mechanism should be the Freedom of Information Act. In the US, the federal FOIA combined with strong state FOI and public records laws means there is no demand for an information black market. Having worked as a journalist in the US for eight years, I never once came across a reporter who had used a private detective to gather information. There was simply no need. All the information needed was available in the public domain.

By contrast in the UK, trying to access information legitimately couldn’t be more time-consuming and difficult. Obstacles are constantly put in one’s way and everything the government does encourages the creation of an information black market economy. Now we are going to jail reporters who access information illegitimately, but a more effective solution to this problem would be to create incentives to use legitimate information gathering tools. The main way of doing this would be to make the FOIA more effective.

The NUJ made similar noises about encouraging investigative journalism through Freedom of Information in a Parliamentary committee on media regulation this week. Its own 10-page response to the consultation has also been submitted.

I look forward to seeing the other 178 submissions. I hope I don’t need to file a request …

@Society of Editors: Google News and 85 years of video on your iPod

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 November 2006 at 11:12
Tags: 18 Doughty Street, Google, Guardian, Journalism

Asked to examine what the media will look like in 2020, Google News’ product manager Nathan Stoll says a major factor in the democratisation of media is the plummeting cost of online storage.

Storage capacity doubles every 13 months, he says, so by 2020 an iPod like device would have enough capacity to hold 85 years of video, more than has ever been created until now.

Stoll stresses that Google is a technology company rather than a content producer. A symbiotic relationship with newspapers and other producers of editorial content is essential for its business to work.

“Without a healthy base of publishers, there won’t be a base of high quality content for search engine users,” he said.

One way to ensure the existance of this sort of a vibrant media ecosysten, Stoll says, is to  reward and encourage high-quality content. In response to suggestions from newspaper editors, Stoll says, Google is working to improve Google News’ results to reward the originators of original journalism
But in the Q&A session, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said: “Nobody can decide wether Google is friend or enemy. It’s best to keep an open mind about it.”

Outgoing Society of Editors president Charles McGhee says the assembled journalists have let Stoll off the hook about potentially demanding revenue-sharing, as suggested by Andrew Neil on Sunday night.

Stoll responds that Google works with content producers in three ways:

1. Giving them choice about whether to participate, using robots.txt to opt out or opting in when they have a subscription wall;
2. Fair dealing: only using headlines to drive traffic to content producers while licencing content that need to be used as a whole, such as the maps on Google Maps; and
3. Helping publishers build sustainable businesses around the traffic driven to the m by Google users.

McGhee is unimpressed, and points out that the Belgian papers attempted to opt out and demand licencing with their lawsuit against Google. Stoll replies that there are many misunderstandings about the Belgian case and that Google is still talking to the Belgian papers.

Moderator Alistair Stewart points out that newspapers have very little leverage with Google. Alan Rusbridger agrees, saying that “Google will only shake in their boots if all the world’s publishers got together on this”.

As the converation continues, the editors express their concern about how journalism will be paid for when it is disaggregated by tools like Google. Rusbridger looks at Stoll down the table and draws laughs when he quips: “Believe me, you don’t want Polly Toynbee’s wage bill!”

Relaunching and circulation: The ugly truth

Posted by Martin Stabe on 4 November 2006 at 17:43
Tags: Guardian, Independent, Journalism, Observer, Times

Mark Friesen of Newsdesigner.com has a fascinating post that visualises the effect of relaunches on newspaper circulation.

Graphing the before-and-after ABC figures of several American newspapers that have recently undergone expensive redesigns, the continued — and sometimes worsening — downward trend is unmistakable.

But here in Britain, the relaunch effect appears to be slightly more positive.

Friesen also plotted ABC figured from the Times, Independent, Guardian and Observer in the same way. It shows the Times and Indy posting circulation gains since embracing the compact format. The Guardian and Observer achieved big circulation spikes when they relaunched in the Berliner size, but have since tumbled back to their circulations of around a year before the relaunch.