Court orders that make court reporting redundant

Children and Young Persons Act 1933 (c.12)

39. Power to prohibit publication of certain matter in newspapers.

— (1) In relation to any proceedings in any court . . . F6, the court may direct that—

(a)

no newspaper report of the proceedings shall reveal the name, address or school, or include any particulars calculated to lead to the identification, of any child or young person concerned in the proceedings, either as being the person [F7by or against] or in respect of whom the proceedings are taken, or as being a witness therein:

(b)

no picture shall be published in any newspaper as being or including a picture of any child or young person so concerned in the proceedings as aforesaid;

except in so far (if at all) as may be permitted by the direction of the court.


Court reporting has been a focus of intense debate in recent weeks. First there was the live tweeting of Julian Assange’s first appearance in a British Court (points awarded to The Times, although most of the world’s media seems to be claiming credit for that one) hotly followed by the interim guidance from the Lord Chief Justice with regards to live text-base reporting, as document puts it.


All this let to some intense debate among media commentators, across every platform you care to think of, around the whole issue of court reporting, and how the Law of the Land is achingly behind developments of the last century, let alone this one.
Then half the online world convicted a man who was arrested and later released without charge in relation to the Joanne Yeates murder investigation, and the debate shifted to the new Hot Topic - Contempt of Court and social media. 

That’s an important issue and (I reckon) the inability to control what people say on social media will play a significant part in forcing  an update to our antiquated legal system. But, away from the Hot Topics of tweeting in court, and inappropriate Facebook wall posts, an issue that really needs a brighter spotlight shining on it is surely the scattergun dispensing of reporting restrictions that regularly occurs in magistrates and crown courts, under the aegis of the Section 39 Children and Young Persons Act 1933.

The Leaving of Liverpool

"Farewell to Prince's Landing Stage
River Mersey, fare thee well"*

 So that's it - I am a Liverpool Daily Post and Echo staffer no more. After countless news conferences, telephone calls from people who start their conversation "Wori'is,is..." and cups of coffee, I have cleared my desk drawers and turned in the company N97.

In 1996 I joined my first daily, the Gloucester Citizen, and was told I was replacing someone who had Gone To The Liverpool Echo. That was the first inkling I had that this was an aspirational thing. So I investigated further and discovered that not only was it an incredible newspaper, it was also an incredible city.Years later, when I was a news editor, I saw an assistant editor job on the Echo advertised and - nothing ventured - I applied for it.
I didn't get it of course.

But I was invited to join as news editor, for six months, to cover a secondment. I snatched editor Mark Dickinson's hand off... and after I'd been here three months he told me the job was mine for good.
With the Echo I got to work on incredible stories, from international headlines - the Ken Bigley kidnap and murder in Iraq, the disappearance of Madelaine McCann, the Miracle of Istanbul - one of the best nights of my journalistic career - and the (first) sale of Liverpool FC.

Two years later the editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, Mark Thomas, offered me a job as his deputy and I crossed the Rubicon. It was a strange experience to stop being in competition with the Post; it took about a fortnight to settle in and start saying "we" instead of "you". I got to edit front pages, work on commercial projects and understand the strategy behind an AB morning title, and where it fitted in alongside the brawny Echo.
Two years after that, the newsrooms merged and I was back working on both titles, with a new digital team and a new philosophy. It was hard, and it didn't work the way that we'd all hoped and wanted it to immediately (and it still has its' moments) but gradually change was effected. The city was changing too - it staged its first Twestival, followed by TEDx Liverpool and a host of other events - How?Why?DIY! and Ignite Liverpool, and Social Media Cafe Liverpool - among them.

I've made a lot of friends, I've made a lot of discoveries and mistakes, and I've learned more than my frazzled brain could hold at times.
The best thing, other than the friends I've made, to come out of my move to Liverpool was the new direction my career took; as a result of the TM Journalism Leaders Course at UCLan I became aware of digital journalism. And if it seems mad that it took a course to make me realise you could do more than basic Googling on the internet, let me add that I wasn't particularly non-techie or hostile; I genuinely didn't realise the possibilities that existed. I think there were a lot of journalists in the same boat, not all of them got lucky and had their employers pay for a reprogramming like mine did.

Digital journalism is just Journalism but with an awareness and willingness to use new tools to help you open your ears and eyes more widely, and with more conversations taking place around you and involving you. It's connected , networked , social journalism- whatever label you want to give it. Digital journalism connects us; it's not about Being First Online First (file that one under AZ Shooting Fail) or Making Video, or requiring everyone in a newsroom tweet whether they want to or not.

Writer (and former journalist) Terry Pratchett once used the phrase 'Old gods do new jobs' to describe a change; that makes sense to me. Notebooks become netbooks, cameras become smartphones with megapixel cameras and HD video, contacts become Facebook  fans and Twitter followers but these are only new tools for storytelling and connecting. Journalism is what it has always been - finding things out, asking the right questions, sharing the information. The tools change easily; changing ourselves as individuals, or our culture as an industry, proves more demanding and time-consuming.

And so on to Wales and new challenges as an editor for the first time. The blog goes on, with the same idea of helping me make sense of the world of journalism, and the problems, discoveries and excitements will continue I suspect - only the geography will change.
I can't wait.


Lyrics: The Leaving of Liverpool
Image by David Le Masurier via Flickr

A tale of one, possibly two, stabbings and maybe a glassing. Or not.

I was working as editor on the Post and the Echo newspapers on the day of the Liverpool FC v Everton FC derby match, when there was an announcement during the match that Anfield Road was closed because of 'an incident', and people should avoid that area when the left.

Soon after the rumours started: A man was stabbed...a man was dead... an Everton fan had been stabbed by a Liverpool fan... two Everton fans had been stabbed... one Everton fan was dead, another fighting for life..you get the picture*.
I was tracking the story across Twitter and Facebook, and I couldn't believe what some people were posting - without a shred of evidence that anyone was stabbed, let alone dead.
I thought Storify might be a good way to illustrate bow what started out as a crowd announcement became - in the space of around 30 minutes - a massive swirl of misinformation culminating in an RIP tribute page on Facebook.(Update: The Storify embedded in this post doesn't seem to show up in rss readers)
Interestingly, we were tweeting the official police confirmation that a man had been assaulted at the King Harry pub, but the noise of the networks swept the grains of truth away without regard. I also found a Mirror journalist at the game had asked a policeman, who was refreshingly off-message, but still rumours flew back and forth. 'Everton fan stabbed to death' tweets were still being posted after 11pm and no doubt they will continue tomorrow.



* This was what happened

Police appeal for witnesses after fan suffers broken jaw in attack before Merseyside derby http://bit.ly/fRsKr9less than a minute ago via twitterfeedLiverpool Echo
LivEchonews

And how the next day's Echo carried the story on the front  page:

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What readers think of Big Numbers

Sometimes a picture (or three) is worth a thousand words...


First we have this...

Followed by this...

And finally, courtesy of a quick Google search covering the last two working days, this...

Sometimes it's convenient to wrap up the big numbers for a headline (and the bigger the number, the better the headline, right?) but the fact is that it can be meaningless to a reader. Not saying I'm going to completely stop putting Big Numbers in headlines, but I'll certainly think about whether I'm making it easier or harder for readers to decipher whether justice was done*. After all, a ten-strong gang jailed for a total of 100 years could well equate to10 years apiece, and each defendent might serve seven years of that sentence. Which is actually not that long.

* So well done Click Liverpool for a nice clear intro, which I didn't spot it until after my screengrab.