Sunday, 19 May 2013
Advice from the Green Ink Brigade
I disagree with them (of course!) but it's not worth the time or energy to start a dialogue there - I'd rather explain to our readers why they should care.
But we should all care; it's not about press freedom, it's about personal freedom and resisting the default "no" issued way too often when the world evolves, and institutions struggle to keep pace with it.
And I have a problem with the complacent nay sayers (I'm looking at you, 'Kendo Nagasaki' and your ilk). And, although this has changed massively in the past two or three years, there are still some working in newsrooms and still acting as though industry change has been created with the sole intention of making their lives more difficult, chewing over that resentment like it's gum.
Still,the Green Ink Brigade of unknown letter writers is a part of the fabric of the newsroom. Most of them have shifted to email but there are still the treasured letters that arrive from Planets Unknown, like this (he writes to us at least once a week and appears to use a stencil):
I think if he/she ever stops writing to us, we'll be a bit worried.
And it's possible to take a lesson from the GIB. After all, if colleagues in your newsroom think you're showing GIB tendancies for wanting to do crazy things like, oh, run a story on the website before it's been in the newspaper, I'd suggest you don't let T H E B A S T A R D S get you down...
Sunday, 12 May 2013
My 'interesting reads' roundup (weekly)
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This is a new paper by Francois Nel (Director: Journalism Leaders Programme, UCLan) on Business model innovation and integration in the British local newspaper industry. Makes fascinating reading.
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15 Steps For Changing Newsroom Culture - 10,000 Words
Bullet point advice for making change happen is always useful. "It’s not about frivolous, pie-in-the sky ideas. It’s about rapidly testing new ideas to start building toward new standards. You are building the future through experiments. Experimentation is just as important as those mission-critical roadmap projects"
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- http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2013/04/the-begrudging-death-of-the-social-media-superstar/
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Is Your Social Media Editor Destroying Your News Organization Today? | The Awl
Of all the things calculated to irritate, the Social Media Gobshite is in my top 5. When something happens they feel the need to have ALL THE WORDS - but with zero self awareness and maximum fatuousness. See also http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2013/04/the-begrudging-death-of-the-social-media-superstar/ "Over the last few years, most media companies have taken on social media editors, lots of them young-ish, lots of them "digital natives." (Some neither, of course!) Many of their jobs are construed as helping newsrooms do social media best: working with writers, working with official social media accounts, those kind of things. Some of them are more like lone Internet addicts. At the more "straight news" outfits, most of them play it pretty straight. Some of them misplace their resources: for instance, there was a big vogue for media organizations moving onto Tumblr. And then everyone found out that, while it was nice to have a stand-alone Tumblr publication, that it literally didn't do a single thing for a news organization. Didn't bring traffic, didn't bring non-Tumblr attention: they operate in a black hole, essentially. If you like reblogs of your gifs, great! But this was a thing news orgs had been sold on. At lots of media organizations, decision-makers don't know where to start with social media. And lots don't know where their social media editors should stop and start in their work."
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Harriet Harman urges overhaul of media ownership rules | The Guardian
I don't know what to make of a minister who holds at least 4 jobs - MP, deputy leader, shadow deputy prime minister and shadow culture secretary - complaining about a newspaper owner having his finger in too many pies.
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Tweeting your way into prison | David Banks
Good points, and useful examples (including ones from my neck of the woods) from David Banks on the social media legal pitfalls "We are all publishers now, but mainstream publishers know the law, and even they get into trouble reasonably often. Setting up a Twitter or Facebook account is the work of moments and if memory serves does not entail a run-down of the legal pitfalls that await the unwary."
Sunday, 5 May 2013
My 'interesting reads' roundup (weekly)
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Educating the competition out of journalism | AndyDickinson.net
Andy Dickinson asks some searching questions of news organisations and J-schools. Got me thinking - and clarified some thoughts I had about the issue.
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5 qualities of innovative leaders in today’s media | Poynter.
What qualities distinguish successful leaders in media today? asks Poynter. And then Tom Rosentiel answers the question... "The strongest pull in the news industry, as in any disrupted business, can be to preserve the part of the business that, though shrinking, provides the biggest share of revenue. Innovators, such Clark Gilbert at Deseret Media, know this is a seductive mistake and focusing most of your energy on preserving what is shrinking is a strategy for slow death. The innovators I see behave differently. While they work to preserve the legacy, they focus more energy on the part of their business that is growing, even if it’s small. They work on how to create the space and the forgiveness in the company to do that."
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Police are in a quandary over the naming of suspects | David Banks | Media | guardian.co.uk
At what point did the police decide to stop naming (or confirming the names) of those charged with offences, asks David Banks. I'm with him - it's just another chip away at the ability to report what's happening. "With the recent upsurge of calls for offenders to remain anonymous until convicted, it is worth noting that if Stuart Hall had not been named when he was arrested, he might never have been brought to court. None of his victims knew one another. "And now one police force is refusing to name people who have been charged. There is a huge danger of secret justice replacing rights of the public, and indeed defendants, back to Magna Carta. It is time someone put a stop to this frightening trend.""
Saturday, 4 May 2013
A blatant bit of job advertising
Friday, 3 May 2013
Election apathy? Real time audiences disagree...
Visitors were following updated story of the 'locus in quo' jury visit to Machynlleth as the April Jones murder trial continued, the live coverage of the Anglesey elections, and the more general breaking news live blog.
This was how early afternoon traffic looked -
Later in the afternoon, when the court proceedings ended for the day, it looked like this...
Meanwhile, this was the Most Read widget
Local elections covered live, and covered well, are compelling content and give good dwell time on - more than 3 minutes each - per page in this case (Anglesey, by the way, bucked the turnout trend - a breakdown of the island's voting showed: Seiriol 56.1 Talybolion 48.7 Twrcelyn 53 Ynys Cybi 45.7).
Readers of the breaking news live blog typically went on to next read the Anglesey election live blog, and then visited several April Jones articles via the jury visit article).
Since it launched last October, our live coverage has gone down well with readers, but has had some parts of the industry (people who comment on industry websites, mostly) looking in askance.
The common theme of those unconvinced by the blog is to question where the merit - or the money - is.
Personally, I think that's obvious; it's what readers value and want.
We cover stories live, readers stay on our site for longer, are more likely to hop around the site more, and potentially use the social sharing - and that keeps advertisers interested. (Hint: Don't ask where the money is, ask where the audience is. We have to make sure the money-generators are in the same space...)
Last Spring, as I settled into the job and got down to meeting people, a common complaint was that the website wasn't updated enough - or at all on a Saturday.
Now, 12 months on, as I continue to meet people, if the conversation turns to 'what do you think of the Daily Post?'' nine times out of ten the live content will be highlighted, favorably, at some point.
I love the live element of our role, and how it has helped - and continues to help - us change the way we work to meet what the audience wants.
And, of course, with Chartbeat showing us there are 250-odd people whiling away their day following the real-time updates of a local council election, it means we can make better informed print decisions around our coverage- and promote that coverage accordingly to the online readers.
Sunday, 21 April 2013
My 'interesting reads' roundup (weekly)
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The 5 Stages of Disruption Denial
Disruption is an apellation that's flung around a great deal. Music is a disrupted industry... media is a disrupted industry... But handles get in the way of actually stopping and understanding what that means. Newspapers are in a state of disruption - the dictionary defninition is To throw into confusion or disorder or To impede progress. Disruption is not a bad thing - confusion and disorder can be catalysts to change - but that second definition 'impeding progress' is happening way too much. Tied inextricably to fear of change, disruption within print media is one of the biggest impediments we face. This, from HBR, breaks down disruption into 5 stages, and applies them to something straightfoward - Twitter. (who would have called Twitter straightforward five years ago?!). I recognise all of these stages; the trick is to get past them " Too often however, our response is to ignore and forget change, to fake our way through it, to pretend an engagement and a mastery we do not have. And that's bad. That means we are not getting better at change, but steadily worse. We are denying disruption, instead of adapting to it."
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Mathew Ingram reflects the pros and cons of newsgathering a live event on social media. "there were plenty of fake news reports to go around on Monday, from reports of suspicious vehicles to the arrest of alleged perpetrators — just as there were during superstorm Sandy and the school shootings in Connecticut. But does that invalidate Twitter as a news source? And should the service try harder to filter out bad information and highlight verified news reports? I think the answer to both of these questions is the same: No."
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The newsonomics of recycling journalism | Newsonomics
Ken Doctor tackles the delicate subject of Content Marketing and asks why so few newspaper organisations are investigating whether it offers revenue opportunities for them. "As news companies rediscover the power of their own content, there is new revenue to be gained. How much, not whether to seek it, will be the major question."