Journalistic.co.uk - the UK digital journalism blog

Just back from a great evening at the LSE where myself and a panel consisting of Suw Charman, blogger; John Lloyd, Editor, Financial Times Magazine; Professor Robin Mansell, Dixons Chair in New Media and the Internet, LSE discussed and debated issues of blogging and journalism.

We started at 6.30pm, finished at 8pm and I left at 9.30pm. A fantastic crowd of people from all backgrounds were there including students and media folk.

Will discuss the themes of the evening sometime on Tuesday as I’m rather tired and need some sleep…

There’s still some time to book a ticket to attend a panel discussion I am taking part in on Monday evening.

From a previous posting, here’s the details:

I was very kindly contacted by Francesca Valli who asked if I was interested in taking part in a panel at a LSE Media Group Event that would look at blogging.

Well, the event ‘The Fall and Fall of Journalism’ will be taking place on 28 February at 6.30pm.

Here’s the details:

A panel of speakers will debate whether the traditional role of journalists is being usurped by simply anyone who has access to a digital camera, camcorder and the internet. This debate will explore the new phenomena of citizen reporting, blogging and other new technology/new media-enabled reporting.

Date: Monday 28 February 2005
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theathre, Clements House, Aldwych
Speakers: Leslie Bunder, Editor, journalistic.co.uk; Suw Charman, blogger; John Lloyd, Editor, Financial Times Magazine; Professor Robin Mansell, Dixons Chair in New Media and the Internet, LSE.
Chair: Angel Brown

You can book a ticket here.

It may be over 200 years old, but The Observer newspaper is taking some very innovative steps to engage with its readers via the new Observer blog.

Edited by leader writer and Observer.co.uk editor Rafael Behr along with other Observer editors and journalists, the blog provides an insight into editorial decisions made and the thought processes behind them.

It’s still early days for this concept to develop, but initial impressions are that it is a great idea and one that if it takes off will be replicated across other newspapers as they aim to get closer to their readers.

As well as getting information on what is going into the paper, we also get the eating habits of various Observer staffers with a recent entry from executive editor Kamal Ahmed talking about how how he was denied a fish and chips supper by Observer political editor Gaby Hinsliff as she thinks he needs to lose some weight.

I’m looking forward to future entries and I’m sure other newspaper groups will be looking at this to see how they can use blog technology to enhance their existing websites and print editions.

In early November, The Independent relaunched its website with a great new look and some excellent functionality.

I especially liked the way you could view a story in one column or two columns plus it also had some tabs to click on to increase the size font of text.

Overall, it was a leap forward in web design for a national newspaper. But it didn’t last that long as due to some techincal problems, they had to slim down the site and revert back to an older design.

We were told that the new look and features would be added again over time and while the design seems to be back on track, the functionality I really liked is still missing.

I originally emailed web editor Martin King in November to find out what was happening but despite two emails, Martin never got back to me.

I told him how much I liked the new site and the new layout and when would that be returning.

Of course, he may have responded and it never got past my spam filters, or may email to hyim never got past his email filters. You can never know with email.

I do hope The Independent will bring back those features, maybe it is just an oversight?

Any idea Martin if these features are coming back?

My personal blogging tool Wordpress, and indeed the tool that is used by many 1000s of bloggers has now been upgraded with a whole host of new features and functions.

I haven’t had time myself to install the new version - I’m still using 1.2 - but by all accounts it is pretty good. Better ways to protect yourself against spammers and the ability to easily create static pages are just two of the new features.

If you want to try it out without any commitment or indeed installation on your own server, have a look at Open Source CMS.

Here’s an interesting story from News.com that came out last week, but somehow didn’t enter my radar until today.

Wiki Media Foundation, the group behind the Wikipedia online encyclopedia project, said Friday that search giant Google has volunteered to host some of its content on company servers.

This makes interesting reading for a number of reasons.

1. Google gets to host more content. Wikipedia content is created and generated on the principle of sharing to the widest possible audience via the GNU Free Documentation License, it means potentially that Google gains content without any huge investment other than web hosting and related technology. And its likely that Google has spare capacity in the hosting area that it can use on other projects. So the cost to Google is likely to be minimal.

2. Unlike the Google News service which pulls in headlines and the intros to a story, this arrangement has the potential to encompass other Wiki related projects including the much talked about Wikinews.

3. Depending on how Wikinews develops, if it becomes a global version of OhMyNews, Google then gains access to community generated news which it can then syndicate via its other properties including blogger.com.

4. Google starts to emerge as a fully fledged media company using user generated content and information as its foundation. Look carefully at what blogger.com is and indeed what the Wikimedia Foundation does - offers content written by its community of users which they agree to it being shared.

Google is making some smart moves by buddying up with the Wiki people. But what if they then invest a bit of money into the content side of Wiki by sharpening it up with some full-time editorial staff instead of just offering some hosting? Watch this develop.

Simon Waldman and others have blogged about the recent meeting media mogul Rupert Murdoch had with 50 senior executives from his News Corp in New York.

The meeting centred around what News Corp should be doing these days when it comes to the internet.

As many will remember, News Corp spent as much as a few billion dollars investing and developing various online ventures, many of which died and generally failed to provide a return on investment.

One of those sites, FiredUp was an online auction, but failed to take on the mighty eBay, there was also Delphi, LineOne and many others.

So now, Murdoch and News Corp are taking a new look at what they should be doing.

The internet is far more mature than it was when it first pumped big bucks into it and lost big bucks at the same time.

The internet is making an impact on peoples media time with consumption of newspapers and TV dropping. Much of that can be attributed to the internet as people now use this form of media much more than they did in the late 1990s/early 00s.

Murdoch is a smart man and News Corp is a smart company. They will look at what is happening now from the growth of blogs through to RSS feeds and develop a strategy that will see them get out their chequebooks and invest in businesses that offer synergy with their businesses.

These businesses will be the ones that have seen readers and viewers of Murdoch properties desert to.

Murdoch will look carefully at what investment he needs to give to keep News Corp at the top of its league. Expect to see money being pumped into blogging, news feeds and mobile content.

Murdoch will look at ways to gain back readers and viewers of his traditional media services through the web and other online services. He knows that if he doesn’t do it now, these media refuseniks will drift off to other online outlets and everything is about timing. That time is now.

No sooner do I blog about the problem that has been affecting the Food Standards Agency sites including food.gov.uk that it seems to be back up.

But it doesn’t appear to be stable, as one minute it is up and the next down.

And others are concerned about the whole issue as this newsgroup posting comments on problems trying to access the site.

Next time the Government decides to issue a warning to consumers and the media, they need to make sure they are able to cope with it.

While this was an issue, thankfully, it was not as major as it could have been. But this Government warning and the way they have used the web was a complete and utter shambles.

Surely on the day of a major food alert the Government would make sure it had servers that could cope with the huge amount of people coming to the food.gov.uk website? After all they issued a notice to advise people to visit its website for more information.

Since announcing yesterday that a certain dye called Sudan has entered the food chain and could be dangerous, the food.gov.uk site and other related sites to the Food Standards Agency have been down and not able to show results.

What is going on here? How can you tell people to visit the site for information and fail to put into place a way to actually show the information. Why is the site down? So far no answer to that question.

So two major issues here.

1. Consumers not able to get information
2. Media not able to get information to inform the public

If you want to try and access the Agency websites, your best option is to use Google and click on cache in order to view the page which Google stored the last time it visited the site.

Here’s a link to the main food.gov.uk as Google cached it.

So atleast this should provide a means to find out more about the Agency and get hold of some additional information and phone numbers to find out more.

But why allow this problem to happen in the first place? Surely they would have known that people would be visiting the site once the alert was issued?

A few years back, Red Herring was the journal covering the internet economy, but then the dotcom bust came along and suddenly it was no more. Lack of advertising and huge editorial costs meant it faced major problems.

But now, I see it alive and kicking having undergone a few changes and plans to ship the US edition to the UK in March.

Netimperative writes:

Red Herring was reintroduced in the US in October last year as a bi-monthly title. Until then, the magazine hadn’t been published in print for 18-months and was only available online. Since the start of the year, the title has gone weekly in the US and publisher Red Herring Inc is now expanding it into the UK, in the hope of pushing it into other European countries as the year goes on.

I remember a few other magazines of that time, Industry Standard, Upside and Business2.0. I never was much into Red Herring as it was too US-focused, so while I welcome its return as a weekly, if they are just shipping it to the UK and not localising the content, what is the appeal?

I took part on BBC Radio 4’s PM show last night at 5.45pm and talked about some of the issues and concerns people may have about blogging in the wake of former CNN boss Eason Jordan resigning and the impact, if any, that blogs had on his decision.

Along with myself Stuart Purvis, former ITN chief executive spoke about his take on blogging.

You can listen to a repeat via the PM Show website.

Key points about blogging and its impact on journalism:

1. It supports journalism as another digital media outlet. It sits alongside TV, radio and print.
2. Journalists should embrace the technology and use it. If they don’t then others will.
3. There are good quality blogs out there with great writing worthy of any media.
4. It provides another source for stories.
5. With the addition of audio and video, blogs can develop into powerful media outlets.

Like others, I’ve been following the ongoing saga of Eason Jordan, executive vice president and chief news executive of CNN who had to resign following some comments he was said to have made about the US military and the killing of journalists in Iraq.

At a recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jordan made his views in an off the record type of comment which was picked up by a blogger and eventually it found itself being carried by mainstream media.

Eason decided to resign rather than let the issue get any further.

He said: “I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq.”

Being “off the record” there is no official version of what he really said. But highlights a number of important issues such as is there really such a thing as off the record and also how mainstream media initially did not get the story but it took a few blog postings to raise awareness of what or wasn’t really said.

So what can we learn from this? There is no such thing as off the record and never underestimate the power of the blogging network.

More info at The Guardian and also a piece by Gary Younge.

Well, after a week in New York, back in London and ready for some more updates.

One thing I noticed in New York was the attention blogging is getting. That is a good thing.

This is also now starting to happen in the UK.

Blogging is good and getting the recognition it deserves as a form of media.

As you may have worked out by my previous post, I’m in New York at the moment.

So excuse any lack of regular updates as I unwind here with my wife. Back into the UK on Tuesday night.

By the way, if you are planning to fly across the Atlantic, choose Virgin. Not only are the planes clean and fairly comfortable, but the range of inflight entertainment even in economy is amazing.

On the flight out here to New York, we had a choice of around 40 films which you could watch when you wanted and even pause, fast forward, rewind etc. Talk about being really cool. Plus, they have the full first series of Little Britain and The Office for your viewing pleasure.

Only downside, the inflight web access service was not working so could not check that out and also, Virgin say you can send SMS via the inflight entertainment system, but don’t mention how much it costs.

They do say it costs $9 a minute to make a phonecall, but why couldn’t they say what the SMS costs before a person swipes their credit card through the system as this is the only way to find out.

‘Cos everywhere I go with my laptop there’s free wireless connection. From hotels and coffee shops through to the street, it is simple and easy to get connected.

I’m writing this blog entry from my hotel room at The Barclay Intercontinental and was given the choice of four networks to connect to.

Back home in London, you need to literally second mortgage your home to get connected. Well, not exactly, but depending on who you use BT or T-Mobile or one of the other providers, it can cost a few pounds an hour, £10 a day or an as much as you can use monthly package for around £40.

Here is New York, it is really a matter of switch on your laptop and wait to get connected without the need to pre-register or pay anything.

And why are businesses giving it away for free? Well, there is no such thing as a free lunch, but there is such a thing as giving your customers extra value for the money they spend with you.

The hotels know it is a competitive advantage to offer the connection as it encourages people to stay with them. The cafes and snack shops know it is a way to get people to walk in and buy something to eat and drink.

It is a way to gain extra loyalty from your customers and it does work.

Maybe London businesses should starting trying it.

I was wondering who was behind the UK’s first weather blog - Rising Slowly - and lo and behold, it is none other than fellow digital media writer Giles Turnbull.

The former PA staff technology writer who went freelance a few years back is writing Rising Slowly for Mink Media.

I always thought it would be a good idea to blog the weather, after all it is such a universal subject and one that fascinates all of us.

So well done Giles in being the first to do this and for making it a good read as well.

And memo to myself: Why didn’t I register Weatherblog.co.uk when I had the chance!

Happy birthday to regional journalism site Hold The Front Page.

The site was originally launched by Northcliffe Electronic Publishing in 2000 and is now jointly owned by Northcliffe, Newsquest, Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press.

Despite the involvement of these four leading players, Hold The Front Page says it is “editorially independent and all-inclusive”.

As the only site dedicated to regional newspapers, Hold The Front Page is a great resource for anyone in this field of journalism or looking to get into it. It also is very passionate about the stories it covers on the regional press and the people working in it.

One area the site is proud of is the number of jobs they carry. In the last year, over 1000 jobs have been advertised for both large as well as small regional papers.

So happy birthday to you Hold The Front Page and many happy returns!

I missed the first programme in the new series The Desk, but did catch the second programme.

Presented by journalist and marketing hotshot Tyler Brule, The Desk is on BBC4 and goes out on Tuesday with a couple of repeats later in the week. This is the first media show in years and according to its own marketing blurb: “promises to go beyond the spin “.

Brule has a great background in media which should have been a good reason for him winning the pitch but on the small screen, the show is not very engaging to the viewer, it is bland and fails to go beyond the spin.

But while I did like some of the coverage it gave to citizen reporting with a segment on South Korea’s OhmyNews, the rest of the coverage was nothing out of the ordinary by covering issues such as the war in Iraq.

I had thought and indeed hoped that The Desk would take a more UK-focus, rather then the global perspective it had on the show I viewed. There was a segment on how the Michael Jackson trial was being covered by the media, but that story and angle being taken had been featured many times already.

Likewise the issues affecting journalism and the media today should be covered. It needs to look at the role of the media. Overall, The Desk comes across as not very focused. It needs to become more UK focused, at least for its UK audience. And here lies the problem, The Desk has been sold into other countries including Canada and Sweden. Maybe that’s why they have tried to give it a broad world approach rather than trying to make it more local with better and relevant content.

I understand that Brule is trying to engage media in the widest possible way by featuring advertising and marketing as part of its remit, but it seems to be lots of things without being anything you won’t know about or find out elsewhere.

A media show, is something that should be on TV, but it needs to have focus. It should look at issues from a different perspective and offer the viewer a better insight into the media by really going behind the story. The Desk doesn’t really do this.

And that is the issue, The Desk doesn’t quite know what it is or what the audience wants from the show. is it about journalism, or is it about marketing/advertising. Putting the two together doesn’t work. They need shows on their own not mixed together.

How to cover the media on TV is a tough task, but The Desk is not the way to do it in its present format. I wonder what the other pitches were like to the BBC to win this coveted slot.

Maybe the BBC should have allowed all the pitches to make one show each to use as a first series and based on that, could have seen what works well with the audience.

I don’t think I really missed much from the first programme and even though I caught the second show, I may end up missing the rest of this series if it continues in this format.

I was very kindly contacted by Francesca Valli who asked if I was interested in taking part in a panel at a LSE Media Group Event that would look at blogging.

Well, the event ‘The Fall and Fall of Journalism’ will be taking place on 28 February at 6.30pm.

Here’s the details:

A panel of speakers will debate whether the traditional role of journalists is being usurped by simply anyone who has access to a digital camera, camcorder and the internet. This debate will explore the new phenomena of citizen reporting, blogging and other new technology/new media-enabled reporting.

Date: Monday 28 February 2005
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theathre, Clements House, Aldwych
Speakers: Leslie Bunder, Editor, journalistic.co.uk; Suw Charman, blogger; John Lloyd, Editor, Financial Times Magazine; Professor Robin Mansell, Dixons Chair in New Media and the Internet, LSE.
Chair: Angel Brown

You can book a ticket here.

Journalism.co.uk has undertaken a nip and tuck to make it much easier to use and be able to showcase its content better.

The site, now offers users the ability to increase/decrease the size of text to make it more comfortable to read. (Note: to Journalistic.co.uk - we should do that!)

“In terms of the design, we have strived to make the site more accessible, with easily resizable text based on relative rather than absolute font sizes, and all functions easier to find and use by our advertisers and readers,” said Journalism.co.uk publisher John Thompson.

Journalistic.co.uk verdict: Overall, a nice new look that works well. One small thing, when doing a search, the search results appear in the old template. But apart from that, Journalism.co.uk has a wealth of archive and background information that should prove valuable to anyone interested in the industry. And the increase/decrease text feature is a winner.