A one man brand

As someone pursuing a career in journalism to escape the rat-race of Sales and Marketing, I was slightly dis-heartened when our latest guest lecturer started talking brands.

Rick Waghorn, a former Norwich Evening News football correspondent, has set up myfootballwriter.com, a site which allows football fans to follow and respond to what their local football writer is saying about their team as soon as it's written.

This means they get the latest updates, match reports, transfer rumours, national embarrasments (below), and all the rest, without waiting for the next edition of the local paper.

The reasoning behind this venture is that Rick's audience reached the point where they valued his views above those of the paper/broadcaster he writes for. Therefore when Rick parted company with the Norwich Evening News, his audience followed him to his new outlet...myfootballwriter.com.

You see, the journalist has effectively become a brand...potentially bigger than their paper/broadcaster.

Examples such as Robert Peston and Jeremy Clarkson seem to back this up. Peston is now generally accepted as the voice of the 'Credit Crunch', with some going as far as saying he was too in touch, perpetuating the crisis he was meant to be covering. And, argues Rick, the Telegraph's readers aren't interested in the paper's views on motoring, they're interested in Clarkson's views on motoring.

So, logic dictates that if one of these 'brands' parts company with their 'platforms' the audience follows.

We learned how Rick has since mastered the arts of broadcasting (by podcasting), distributing (by web-hosting), managing a community (his readers), twitter-ing, blogging, marketing, search engine optimisation, selling advertising space, hiring, firing and paying staff, managing finances and becoming the managing director of his business. All this on top of bringing his audience the latest news about their cherished football club.

Leaving the "Jack of all trades, masters of none" debate to one side, I'm not sure how accurate Rick's analysis of the brand issue is. Robert Preston is heavily associated with the Credit Crunch because the BBC provided him every possible medium available. He was able to break news of Northern Rock's collapse on TV, radio and online virtually simultaneously.

His contacts, which he spent over 20 years cultivating as a journalist and stock broker, and his talent as an investigative reporter, which was recognised by various awards during those years, meant that he got the story first. The BBC's ubiquity meant he was able to cover the story 'in 360 degrees' for a huge and varied audience.

To me the brands seem to be co-dependent. The reporter builds his reputation on the back of a big media outlet's. He gets access to relevant people on the basis of his association with the organisation, and whistle-blowers are more likely to approach a big media company with a story than an unknown individual. In return, the outlet benefits from the reporter's skill and professionalism. Their ability to tell the story impartially, accurately and quickly.

While in some instances there may reach a point where a journalist is respected enough by his audience for them to follow him to a different publication, the fact remains that the majority of journalists depend on the outlet to provide support, resources, and an existing brand reputation.

After all, if it wasn't for the Norwich Evening Post's advertising budget, Rick's face wouldn't have been on the hoardings at Carrow Road promoting his column to their fans, and he wouldn't have had the chance to build a following.

While myfootballwriter.com may yet thrive because it offers supporters a new, 24/7 way of following their local team, I'm not sure the majority of us will be able to build a sizable brand on the back of our web presence alone.

Community management: When The Conversation gets out of hand.

Today's guest lecturer was Shane Richmond, Communities Editor for mytelegraph.co.uk, the 'communities' section of the Daily Telegraph's website.

As Shane said, his job title is only partly accurate, as although he's responsible for providing a platform (to use the jargon) for communities to develop, he actually does very little editing. Freedom of expression is a core tenet of the Daily Telegraph's right of centre readership, and therefore undue censorship will not be tolerated! Sub-ing the pages would be impossible with the number of posts received each day (...there are about 30,000 user blogs, and the journalists' blogs and articles attract a further 2,000 comments from the public a day.)

This level of interactivity provides one of the most difficult challenges currently facing media outlets; while on the one hand traffic generates advertising revenue, it also poses the problem of moderation.

One example of this dilemma is bbc.co.uk's old Football Forums, which allowed fans of all teams to discuss whatever was going on at their beloved club. Transfer gossip, injury news, takeover rumours...all in one place.

It provided a place to rant about the players, the management, the owners, Arsenal's latest dirty trick.

But it also provided the perfect place to bait fans of rival teams. Wind up merchants were rife, and brought with them a constant headache for the team of moderators whose job it was to enforce the Forum's rules.

In the end the forums were closed down and replaced with the current 606 message boards. They no longer feature 'Team Boards', only moderators can start threads or conversations, and opening hours are restricted.

The BBC was able to implement measures which were generally unpopular with its users because it doesn't depend on traffic to make money. Commercial providers do not have this luxury, and must instead try to find a more even balance between practicality and popularity.

Mytelegraph.co.uk does this by allowing/requiring its users to self-moderate. Comments on some sections of the website are read before they're published, but the majority of the blogs and the rest of the site rely on readers flagging up comments which they deem abusive or illegal.

The comments left on Shane's blog post explaining his moderation method provide a quick glimpse of the problems that come with justifying removing or not removing particular comments.

Potentially illegal messages left on blogs and forums have come to the fore in the last week, with the leaking of the BNP membership lists and the naming of Baby P's parents.

Each case represented a different kind of legal problem, but both involved highly emotive subjects and ultimately the threat of danger to those involved.

The identification of Baby P has been banned by the High Court, but that hasn't stopped dozens of posters on various message boards publishing their details. Anyone with one finger and the ability to use Google can find their names in a matter of seconds.

The same tools will help you find the BNP Membership list, the publication of which also flies in the face of a Court Order taken out by the BNP months ago.

In Smith v ADVFN PLC Justice Eady accepted that defamation laws may have to change, with messages on online forums being considered slander rather than libel.

The advent of the internet era may also mean changes need to be considered for contempt of court legislation. We may already be at the point where these changes begin to take place; whether or not action is brought against ISPs who allowed the publication of the BNP Membership List will serve as an interesting test of the effectiveness of the current contempt of court laws.

Defamation Laws have changed significantly since the days of the Guttenburg Press, when lies about the spread of disease were the major concern for a population ravaged by the plague. The focus moved from slander to libel as various means of mass comunication developed. The laws had to adapt again in the mid-20th Century as TV and Radio proliferated, and it seems now, less than a hundred years later, the laws will have to be looked at again to ensure their effectiveness in dealing with the challenges that come with a global conversation.

Employment in South Wales

This post is now a blog...click here to see it.

Blogging about Blogs

The subject of this week's Online Journalism lecture was 'Blogging: Reporting in the Web 2.0 Era'. Quite appropriate considering the medium has just been declared dead by some commentators.

The guest lecturer was Adam Tinworth, Head of Blogging at RBI, who gave us an insight into how publishing companies are adapting their business models to fit the modern shape of their industry.

Many of the criticisms of the current state of blogging come from 'amateur' bloggers, who feel they're being sidelined by pro's who supplement their articles in printed publications with blogs. Hearing how Adam trains staff at RBI to blog gave us a different perspective on this arguement, with very contrasting conclusions...

Adam began by emphasising the importance of engagement, or being part of a conversation, pointing out that being on the web is not the same as being part of the web. It's meant he's had to encourage his writers to shift their mentality, from simply writing articles they now have to engage thier audience in a conversation.

The amount of money that major publishers are putting into blogging indicates that they don't believe the format is dead...if anything the opposite. However the resources of major publishers will doubtless make it difficult for bedroom bloggers to compete.

But that doesn't mean they should give up. Adam's definition of the qualities of a good blogger requires them to be:

• Inquisitive


• Communicative


• Honest


• Enthusiastic


• Social


• Informed

None of these qualities are exclusive to professional journalists (in fact some might argue that many journalists are completely devoid of one or two of these qualities!) so there's a lot of room for 'amateurs' to prove themselves by writing about subjects they are able to be enthusiastic about, in a well informed, honest way.

Proof of this is FlightBlogger, aka John Ostrower, who set up a blog about the aviation industry. At just 21, his knowledge, enthusiasm and contacts meant he was often breaking news before the professionals. As a result RBI signed him up and he's now one of their most popular bloggers.

Conclusions I draw from this are that while the proliferation of blogging means that the medium may have become over-saturated, and companies with huge amounts of resources have encroached on the 'citizen journalist's forum', quality will shine through and can still provide an outlet for amateurs with the skill, and desire, to succeed.

Digital storytelling

I've been having a quick look back at my previous blogs, and realised I could be accused of being fairly negative with a lot of what I've written...it's not intentional, just my natural cynicism shining through.

However, I'm pleased to say that our lecture on Digital Storytelling was not only quite an eye-opener for me, but Daniel Meadows' enthusiasm for his chosen medium proved infectious.

Until now, when I looked at YouTube, I thought 'video clips', but it turns out I should have been thinking 'digital narratives'. The popularity of sites like YouTube, Metacafe, and more recently Qik reflects the growing use of video as a method of expression, and runs parallel with the advances in commonly used technology.

The fact that most mobile phones now come with integrated video cameras means that it's much easier for people to quickly capture video and upload it to their computers. The wider availability of broadband means more people can view the videos easier, so it's only natural that this form of media has become more popular.

Evidence of this can be found in coverage of the current US Elections. Both campaigns have made use of YouTube to get their election message to a wider audience, with Obama and McCain both seeing that they can reach a younger demographic which doesn't always engage in political debate in traditional media. Members of the public have also posted videos which have had at least as much, if not more impact than official campaign videos.

I couldn't finish without a touch of cynicism though...and unfortunately the digital video format was effectively undermined in our Reporters and the Reported lecture on Friday, when guest speaker Nicolas Brett came to talk to us about the future of Magazine Journalism. A number of the slides in his Powerpoint Presentation depended upon video clips illustrating his points. Unfortunately, the University's network wasn't up to playing them, and, despite the best efforts of the tech assistants, turning the computer off and back on again didn't help. Eventually he resorted to describing the videos, which didn't have quite the same impact.

Alas, the future remains the future. Should be good when it all works though!

Losing on aggregate

Until a couple of years ago, if someone had mentioned 'aggregate' to me, I'd have expected them to either be talking about European football results or concrete. Now though, it's a term that's becoming more and more common in media usage.

Today Matthew Yeomans spoke to us about journalism in the future, the shape it will take, and what factors will shape it.

As he said, no-one knows...and if they claim to, they're lying.

But the growing commercial pressures on media outlets, combined with the easier access to more news sources that the web brings with it, mean that news aggregation is a quickly growing trend.

Services like Google News, Yahoo! News, and countless others enable websites to offer a comprehensive overview of news from around the world, without the need to employ a single journalist. They simply take content from other outlets, and put it all in one place.

These, and RSS feed readers like Google Reader, allow consumers to customise their 'front pages' so they can see what's happening on all of their chosen news websites/blogs on one browser.

Matthew explained to us how he had previously been editor of the ag, a blog on Time magazine's website which used RSS feeds to aggregate news on a range of issues from around the world.

Time was able to provide their readers with news which was relevant to them, in real time, and only pay one person for it. Sounds great! Right?

Maybe not if you're a journalist.

And probably not if you're a reader.

If one person is responsible for the entire content of what is effectively an online newspaper/magazine, what happens to all the journalists? Sure, there'll be someone, somewhere, working for a news agency or PR Company churning out the press releases which are being coming through the RSS, but who's going to double check whether the story's true? And who'll be finding the stories that don't simply promote the official line? Who will be digging through the dust-bins looking for dirt? Who'll be finding the stories we're not meant to hear about?

The danger is that the news aggregators and RSS feeds make it even easier for PR companies and governments to manipulate the media and set the agenda, and there are less and less 'independent' journalists to scrutinise what's being said, in which case, we all lose.

Casting a wider net

Network journalism, crowd sourcing, citizen journalism...whatever you call it, we're being warned 'it's coming, fast, and it's going to change journalism.'

These concepts exploit the web to gather news, information, and opinion from a range of people around the world, allowing journalists to quickly build a network of contacts with a variety of expertise, interests and regional knowledge.

But hang on...hasn't networking been used as a journalistic tool since the original pamphleteers?

From what I can gather, networked journalism is simply a logical extension of this process, the key advance being that it provides journalists the means to reach a larger, potentially global number of contacts at the press of a button.

Any journalist will tell you the most important tool they own is their address book. How they get in touch with those contacts is up to them, and largely a matter of convenience and personal preference.

But, the argument goes, these tools are 'democratising' the media, giving Joe the Plumber (who incidently, isn't a plumber) the chance to have his voice heard alongside the 'elite few' in the media. Which is all good and well, except that the vast majority of the public don't even have access to the web, and most who do use it to look at cats falling in fish tanks rather than reporting news.

The problem with the 'democratising' argument is that the people who are vocal online, tend to be the same people who are vocal in traditional media. I.e the campaigners, activists and 'retired Colonel from Tunbridge Wells', as Andy Williams pointed out in his lecture on User Generated Content. If anything it could be argued that this gives an even less impartial view of the news than traditional news outlets (with the possible exception of Fox News)

But, as Alison Gow points out on her blog, networked journalism doesn't just change the newsgathering process, it changes the dissemination process too. Sites like OhMyNews! and NowPublic (and countless others) allow readers to link to articles they find interesting, and share them with an audience they think will appreciate them too.

Rather than threatening the traditional role of the journalist, the use of networking in this way could in fact add a whole new dimension to it. For example, while reporters for regional media outlets will still keep their local audience as their priority, they'll also be aware that what they are writing could be picked up by global audiences who might in some way be affected.

According to Alison, network journalism could impact all aspects of journalism, changing the entire story gathering and telling process.

Whilst her description of the web 2.0 process emphasises the added benefits of using social networking, Twitter, blog translators and the like, I worry slightly that the focus on exploiting all of these tools may leave traditional journalistic values in the shade.

An (admittedly slightly pedantic) example can be found in step two of her revised lifecycle; while 'verification' is explicitly referred to in the 'old' style of researching a story, the 'new' step two instead relies upon crowd sourcing and blog translations to confirm the accuracy of an article. I admit I could be getting hung up on symantics here, but I think it points to a wider problem:

With all the crowdsourcing, online surveys, photo-sharing, social bookmarking, blogging, Dipity-ing, Twittering, pod-casting etc., is there a danger the traditional news values of reliability, accuracy and impartiality fall by the wayside?

Perhaps this will be the defining distinction between 'citizen' journalists and professional hacks.

UGC...Breaking news or shameless plug?

Prospects for Thusday the 2nd October...

• Gordon Brown is about to announce a cabinet re-shuffle
• The global economy faces complete melt-down
• 9 US banks are 'part-nationalised' under part of a $700bn bail-out plan
• David Cameron claims he's a 'man with a plan' at the Conservative Party Conference
• House prices fall for an 11th consecutive month
• The euthanasia debate continues
• Vice-presidential candidates Palin and Biden go head to head in their campaign debate
• North and South Korea open peace negotiations
• Missing explorer Steve Fosset's belongings are found

But wait. Stop press. Hold the front page. All of this takes a back seat on the BBC News agenda, because they've discovered university students drink, sometimes enough to make them sick!

The initiation ceremony story dominated the BBC's news output, getting included in most of the day's TV and radio bulletins and with Victoria Derbyshire's 5live phone-in asking 'Should initiation ceremonies be banned?'

As the day went on, and I saw more and more of this story, I found myself asking 'Why is this story getting so much exposure when there seems to be so much other, more 'newsworthy' stuff going on?' I accept that as a journalism student I don't have the editorial judgement of the BBC Editors, but surely on a day when the world's leading proponent of the free-market has had to part-nationalise huge sections of their finance industry, house prices continue to plummet, and a key member of the 'axis of evil' is tring to get back into the fold, should our attention be focussed on the antics of drunken teenagers?

And then I came across this.

As we were told in our Online Journalism lecture last week, the BBC is going to great-lengths to justify their investment in User Generated Content (UGC), and their UGC-Hub, where BBC staff receive, filter and publish messages, photos and videos sent in by members of the public.

It's an interesting development, the results of which could shape the career path my colleagues and I embark on when we finish our course.

But is it right that the BBC shoe-horn stories into their output because they originated in the UGC Hub?

-----------------------Update 14/10/08-----------------------------

Stumbled across this old, but funny and relevant clip from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe. Worth a look. (contains swearing)

Kicking and screaming into the 21st Century…

Wikis…rss…blogs…they sound like terms of abuse you'd expect to have hurled at you from 'yoofs' on the back of a bus, but in fact they were the subject of our first Online Journalism lecture here at Cardiff University.

Having avoided the Myspace craze, and rarely using Facebook for anything more productive than playing Scrabulous, I was slightly apprehensive when we were told we needed to sign up to various Web 2.0 and social networking type services.

They're all relatively easy to write-off as passing fads, but on further inspection, it soon becomes clear that Web 2.0 isn't just a way for teenagers to share happy-slapping videos. In fact it's causing what some commentators claim to be the biggest shift in journalistic attitude since the launch of the television.

Over the past few years a growing number of media outlets have been encouraging readers, viewers and listeners to respond to reports and articles using online message boards and forums. The BBC, The Guardian, the Sun and countless others have embraced this form of interaction to engage and gather feedback from their readership, not to mention gathering further revenue from their advertisers. What was once a one way conversation is now an endless dialogue. Links

But this is really just scratching at the surface of Web 2.0. After all, these are just an extension of the letters pages or radio phone-ins.

Where Web 2.0 really comes into its own is when it’s used with a bit of creativity.

With economic doom and gloom currently dominating the news agenda, the Financial Times has been given the perfect opportunity to showcase its webby award winning ‘Alphaville’, a live blog updated by a team of reporters, and added to by a mass of contributors, as and when news happens. With the market tracker displaying the generally downwards movements of the precarious stock indexes, the interaction between the team and their audience proves an informative and (strangely, for an economy dunce like myself) enjoyable experience. Especially if something big is going on, like global capitalism collapsing.

The BBC Sport website exploits a similar concept with its live text feature, which combines with its 606 message boards to provide minute by minute updates and banter between fans and the reporter during live sporting events.

But Web 2.0 is not just providing new ways of reporting the news, it’s also providing new ways of gathering it.
The recent Democratic primaries between Obama and Clinton garnered global attention, with millions of politicos around the world waiting for the results with baited breath. And it was innovative use of ‘social-networking and micro-blogging service’ Twitter that allowed the LA Times to break the news first to their followers. By getting activists at the polling stations to update their status with the results, they were able to be collated and distributed within seconds, far quicker than by traditional means, and to a much wider audience.

But for every benefit provided by these new and ever changing services, there is no doubt a plethora of criticisms which can be levelled at them. Even in its relative infancy, this new form of interacation is plagued by horror stories of Web 2.0 gone wrong. Newsreaders being hounded out of their jobs by blogswarms, Twitter-ers (allegedly) harassing one another, mis-informed ill-intentioned bloggers spreading fallacy as fact and millionaire football club owners taking legal action against bloggers expressing opinion.

But if used properly and professionally, the benefits of these online tools can far out-weigh the drawbacks.

Take ‘churnalism’, the current buzzword used to describe the growing trend of news outlets simply filtering and regurgitating press releases and agency copy. According to research carried out at Jomec for Nick Davies’ ‘Flat Earth News’, in a random two week period, 60% of the stories in four of the UK’s leading (broadsheet) newspapers were entirely or mostly copied from press releases or agency copy (pg 52).

Davies paints a pretty depressing picture of the future of journalism, where commercial considerations and the need for speed leads to quantity prevailing over quality, with reporters chained to their desks sifting through Press Releases and banging out 15 stories a day, leaving no time to source new stories, or even verify the ones they’re being spoon fed by PR and press agencies.

But perhaps Web 2.0 provides a ray of hope.

Maybe 21st century newsgathering will still mean a journalist needs to have many sources, but they’ll be thousands of miles away, blogging about the atrocities of a distant despot. The tabloid journalist of the future might be rummaging through your outbox instead of your dustbin. Technological advances could mean that the commercial model of the future evolves to such an extent that more resources are available to genuine newsgathering, where hacks can go back to digging and investigating, exposing scandal and upholding the public interest.

Or perhaps these are the over-optimistic ramblings of a journalism student, hoping the next year, and all those tuition fees, won’t be a waste.

And just when I thought I’d got to grips with it all…I found out web 3.0 is on the way.