@Beyond the Printed Word: MySun moderators tested on 152-page policy

Posted by Martin Stabe on 8 November 2007 at 14:12
Tags: News of the World, Sun, Sun Online, The Sun, The Sun Online, User-Generated Content, thelondonpaper

Danny Dagan, head of online communities at News Group Digital which runs MySun and provides moderation for the News of the World and thelondonpaper.

The Sun and its sister titles take a very strict line on moderating content submitted to their sites, its approach is that contributing under the tabloids’ brands is very different than blogging on Blogger, he says. It demands higher standards:

• News Group has a 152-page moderation policy for what it terms “reader generated content” on MySun community and article comments. Moderators are tested on the policy each quarter, and the results affect their bonus.
• There are seven moderators and a manager at News Group Digital. The skills needed to recruit them depends on how much editorial input they have to have - and these are not necessarily journalists. But at the Sun, the ability to pun is very imporant.
• Qualifications for night moderators are somewhat different from day moderators, Dagan jokes. They tend to like sitting alone in front of a computer at night and may speak fluent Klingon.
• The Sun has a strong ethos - it’s very British, and want to be very fun. This isn’t the same as having a blogging tool or a blog on blogger. BLogging on a tabloid means you’re making a statement.
• Justifying the cost of moderation teams is easy when you compare it to the spending on editorial production, and compare the number of page impressions and user loyalty that user generated content.
• A key piece of registration data the Sun gets a high degree of voluntary disclosure on is “What is my favourite football team”. The default is “I don’t follow football”, which provokes and indignat response from users &mdash 60 per cent of registered user tell the SUn their favourite football team.
• Between two and 200 comments are removed each day, depending on the topics being discussed.
• Volunteer moderation is problematic, because there have been employment tribunal cases of moderators seeking retrospective payment.
• Dagan declines to answer the most interesting question at the close of the session: the proportion of Sun Online users who register and use Sun Online.

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?