Former home of Headlines and Deadlines

Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Twitter hashtags; lots of curation but where's the context?

Hashtags give me headaches.
Not the #somethinghasjusthappenedandIamtweetingit hashtag or the #iamaddingahashtaginanironicwayhere or even #myfootballteamisplayingandIwanttofeelpartofthetribe - it’s the interesting hashtags that are being shouted into a void that perplex me.

Curation is an important word for journalism at the moment; we’re all about the curating of content and adding context around it.

But hashtags often do little add context, although they do add volume. I can get a sense of amplification - of importance - from how many (and who) is tweeting a hashtag but finding out what they are doing, where and why can be tricky.

I follow a lot of people on Twitter, and they go to a lot of events or follow a lot of sport, and they tweet about it with hashtags.
Sometimes I’m not interested (#F1 I’m looking at you) in which case the Tweetdeck filter or Proxlet extension on my Chrome browser is a godsend.
But sometimes I am interested and would like to know more; that’s when it can get frustrating, because finding out what a hashtag is can be a nightmare.

Occasionally this sort of thing pops up in a stream...

But often I just see interesting looking conversations happening around an unknown event with a #hashtag that doesn’t link to anything other than a stream of other people using the same hashtag.
If I know the people I can try to backpedal down their tweet stream far enough to see what they’re up to but it's a hit-and-miss approach with no guarantee of success.

Brizzly has a ‘why?’ hyperlink next to the trending topics that explain why each is being talked about and it can be very useful; it adds a layer of knowledge that takes a hashtag beyond curation into explanation. Trends Map is also great for spotting local trends, but there’s nothing around hashtags themselves that allows the creator to explain what they are.

There is a site called Twubs which allows you to register a hashtag but it doesn't really do what I need it to; ie. tell me what that hashtag is about. It does aid discovery by others in that it's added to the Twubs directory, but mainly it's to stop Corporates stealing hashtags off each other.

Ideal world scenario: When you write a hashtag you can select an option to explain what it’s for, which generates a comment box to enable a short description, like the name of the conference, or a football match or a breaking news event. Thereafter, anyone hovering over that hashtag sees a pop-up explanation.

So, dear Twitter app developers (or just Twitter, God knows it would be nice if you actually did something for your own site rather) please could you build something that brings the endless game of What Is This Person Talking About to an end?

Or, if something like that exists, will someone tell me and put me out of my misery?
#justsaying

Sunday, 15 May 2011

An attempt to turn a newspaper inside-out

How do you turn a newspaper inside out? That's been the question bugging me for about a week and I've found myself thinking about it more and more in the context of the Register Citizen Open Newsroom project.

I broached the subject with Glyn Mottershead and Neil MacDonald over a pint recently; this is how it unfolded.

Me: "You know, like, you have skin and, uh, it contains everything and you can't see your organs and stuff..."

Glyn: "Er..."

Neil: "I'm going to the loo."

Me: "Well, that's like a newspaper. It comes out and it's complete and finished and it presents this skin to the world. And it would be great to turn it inside out, show what's underneath."

Moderating comments on Facebook

How do you moderate a community on Facebook? Should the same policy exist as for a title's website moderation or do the disparate fans and friends it has there require different handling?
I use Facebook for content, for sharing information, for instant polls, news gathering and just taking the temperature of the public mood on an issue but wall comments can sometimes be horrific. From wildly inappropriate link-sharing to libelous comments to outrageous Anglo Saxon to attacks on other users or writers... I've seen these shoulder their way onto Facebook pages associated with newspaper titles at one time or another and have had to sort it out - sometimes with an un-friending and a block.

Stretched newsrooms with small digital teams have to juggle the management of website comments, as well as the importance of participating in conversations on Twitter and managing @ replies and Facebook wall posts.

I've had a few Twitter mates DM-ing me recently for advice/thoughts/verbal chicken soup over dust-ups with members of the Online Community on Facebook (usually football or crime related, where emotions are running high), and I sympathised and offered some thoughts on what to do.
The new e-guide from Buddy Media: How Do I Respond To That? The Definitive Guide to Facebook Publishing and Moderation is useful; once you get past the corporate language and the fact that it's not written for newspapers but for business it contains some helpful advice.

The Buddy Media report highlights, in a nutshell, are:

Don't...

Forget to check your Facebook page regularly - you have a space where users are commenting in all sorts of language and ways that may or may not be appropriate
Turn a volatile thread into a back-and-forth argument with someone
Respond to one person but not others
Ignore requests for information
Automatically get rid of negative comments - respond and give the community a chance to engage as well

Do...

Respond to comments on accuracy/ability of journalist
Take advice on brand value/stance before you respond on issues (eg. political)
Block haters; life's too short
Moderate by communication; encourage the Facebook community to flag inappropriate posts
Have a clear strategy so all page admin know how to respond in situations
Create a written policy about what types of posts you don’t want to receive, and place it prominently on your wall or page

To which I'd add

Turning Facebook chat on gets you lots of interaction
There's nothing wrong with auto-posting links but do also show there's a human, not a bot, behind status updates
Indulge in a little curation and share things from other media
If you have breaking news in your status update, FBers will expect you to update them there too as it progresses

Wednesday, 4 May 2011

Attribution: It's not just for quotes

I was thinking about the importance of attribution today after reading Mike Glover's take on the issue in his post on the coverage of Bin Laden's death and the "outrageous gullibility of the media in the wake of the Bin Laden incident".
It's a thought-provoking piece of writing and well worth a read. (Also, incident is a great word, isn't it? Covers everything from the reported death of the world's most wanted man to a pub brawl).

Anyway, attribution of information when constructing a story is vital; journalists tend to be the questioners of eye-witnesses, rather than eye-witnesses themselves. Sometimes we're several links down the chain, and sometimes the report of several statements gets prosed into appearing as a presentation of stone facts.
Tempering a slew of facts with acknowledgements that the information has come from a third party is helpful for readers, I suspect, but attribution with regards to content is an equally thorny issue.
YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Twitpic, Facebook, Twitter, Storify, ManyEyes visualisations... just a tiny fraction of created content that lives on the internet, in the wild, that journalists can use to source or display information. But when it comes to reusing this work - the attribution - it's so important to show genesis, or at some point the accusations of making a smash-n-grab raid on social networks will come.
I'm probably a little obsessive about attribution, or showing source as a) I would hate to be accused of pillaging other people's content and b) it's easy to get permission or show original ownership. Things like a quick tweet exchange over the use of an image on Twitter, a link back to the video owner's YouTube page, a link and a nod to the person who made the Storify you've embedded or the ManyEyes vis - so quick, so simple. So courteous.
Flickr is a different matter; I wouldn't use a Flickr photo on this blog without checking the Creative Commons licensing and giving clear attribution. Professionally, I wouldn't consider a Flickr photo unless the owner had given me express permission (either by joining a group with a consent form - like the Liverpool Daily Post's Flickr group has - or through direct contact.

Long form journalism thoughts inspired by Doctor Who

Interesting stuff on the Guardian site this week, courtesy of Dr Who commenters.
An article on the Media section about the lower-than-expected stats for the show's latest outing led to a host of comments, with three that particularly caught my eye.

First teganjovanka who highlighted Moffat's contention that "TV programmes are really just publication dates"

Then feelinglistless* who suggested the combined ratings figures should be reported once we have the stats, the whole stats and nothing but the stats.

And finally madbloke points out that newspapers are shifting away from ABCs to overall reach across multiple platforms

I can take or leave Doctor Who but I thought the point (especially the 'publication date') being made here was interesting - that multiple platforms allow greater audience discovery, and offer a longer shelf-life than ever before- and one that you could easily apply to some stories on digital platforms.
There are articles which have the potential to live and shine online far beyond that of their print counterpart simply because they become promoted by audiences elsewhere, and draw in views for months - sometimes years - afterwards.
And it's the wordy features - the so-called Big Reads - that do the best. These sort of stories aren't what you'd necessarily see as the sonic screwdriver in the digital toolbox, but it would be a shame if the opportunities inherent in long form or narrative journalism were overlooked by digital teams as we scramble to be the first, or the most innovative, or the most data-driven.
Long reads can disappear into the black hole of the news lists, further down than the hard news, where they may not get the SEO love, added content or promotion of the more in-yer-face news articles. Or they are channelled into Features or Lifestyle where a dedicated reader might hunt them down.

I'm going to experiment with some of the WalesOnline long reads over the next month or so - I want to see how they perform when we showcase them on our site, promote them elsewhere, maybe think about putting them together a bundle that would work as an zine or on an e-reader.
I want to see if it makes a difference when we promote the bookmarking/Read It Later tools more heavily for the narrative pieces, maybe try offering print-as-pdf options and generally look at giving people more ways to tackle the 1,000+ word articles that we have every day. I like the Longform.org site very much; maybe we should try our own sort of site using Tumblr or Wordpress.
I'm not pretending this is a wildly original scheme but in the world of regional newspapers extraordinary stories are told every day, which don't get near the front page because they aren't current, or contain shattering facts. They are just good reads, and they are, in almost every case, about people.

I blogged recently that I can get most of the information I need off Twitter and link sharing and that still stands. I get the gist of everything from the Royal Wedding to the situation in Libya, with information broken down into chunks and supplied to me with in-build peer recommendations.
But I still read novels at the rate of around two a week. I'm a sucker for wanting to hear stories (why else do we become journalists?) and when it comes to fact or fiction I like a good long tale, with flowing narrative and identifiable characters.
The newspaper industry contribution to long reads is usually made by feature writers and found in supplements, or on the centrespread of your local paper. On that paper's website, you might find it in any number of sections (if you're lucky or patient).
I like the idea that long reads can have a place in a busy, link-driven, mobile world. I'm not sure where they fit yet, but I'm going to have a go at finding out. And I'm open to suggestions about how to go about that.

* Although he doesn't know he features in this post, feelinglistless is a friend of mine, Stuart Burns, and a bloke who who knows his media and his scifi. He's also a pretty awesome blogger.

Tuesday, 26 April 2011

Back to school

I wrote a post about how I felt like it was time to start learning again in March 2010 and now, finally, it's going to happen; next month I start up where I left off with UCLan's Journalism Leaders Course, with the ultimate goal being an MA.

The first assignment pack arrived this month, which has made the whole thing seem more real and brought home to me just how much work it will entail.
It's a bit daunting but I think the pressure of studying, combined with getting to grips with my not-quite-as-new-as-it-was job, will probably be a good thing.
There's a phrase I tend to overuse and it may not make much sense but it means a lot to me: "We don't know what we don't know".

Last time I was at UCLan, there was so much I didn't know I didn't know that it was a pretty life-changing experience - how I work, where I work, what I think about a job I've done for years have all changed as a result of a 12 month course. It propelled me into a future I hadn't really thought about too much.

And now I'm going to start finding out a whole bunch of new things I don't know I don't know. It should be fun; I hope it will make me a better journalist.