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

Some conflicting thoughts on Facebook

Facebook has been on my mind this week.
 First of all it published some advice to the Meeja on how journalists can get the most out of using the social network which, while a little heavy on the exclaimation marks, seems useful and has some good pointers. It's a best practice guide for reporters who want to know more about using Facebook in a professional capacity, to promote their work, seek feedback, guage public opinion, crowdsource ideas and more. Plus it allows them keep their personal/professional networking somewhat separate (we've all seen examples of what happens when Facebook Status Goes Bad).

Then, via Paul Bradshaw's OJB, I came across a blog post on the BBC College of Journalism site that made me reconsider all of the above.

Blogging Macca

The live blogs keep coming; we're blogging the Liverpool Sounds concert on Sunday with words and images (but maybe not live streaming as there organisers are confiscating cameras and 'recording equipment'. Boo!
So that will be sorted out today and Sunday will see various Post & Echo people Twittering, texting and phoning in their experiences to the live blog, along with readers. Should be really exciting.
In other news Ben Johnson has apologised to the Post and Echo journalists for calling us all lazy. He rang both papers to say he meant to say the national press, not the local ones, so I guess I can forgive him for that.
Don't know if my hard-working friends on the nationals will be so kind about his work next time they get to write about it though...

Royal liveblog and Press walk-out

Today the Post and Echo liveblogged the Queen and it was a LOT more slick than the second [text ammended - see comments] one we tried. It featured videos, photos, reporters Twittering news in - we certainly learned a lot from the LDP liveblog.
I can even see the funny side of a post being accidentally put on the publicly-facing site by a twat who perceptively named himself/herself T.W.A.T (I told one manager it stood for Tunbridge Wells Automotive Trust and it was a well-known anacronym - for a few beautiful seconds he believed me.
Then the Post editor Mark Thomas, Echo editor Ali Machray and I went to the opening of the Liverpool Cityscape painting at the Walker Art Gallery. It was a gathering of the great and good, who had rocked up in the name of Art, fizzy wine and nibbles.
Then artist Ben Johnson got up to make a speech... and 20 minutes later was still talking, oblivious to his audience's growing distraction.
People had stopped listening... right up until he thanked the press office for "having to deal with bloody lazy press" and "managing to drag lazy reporters in so they could see what we were doing".
Well, the bloody ACRES of coverage this inflated ass has got in the local media doesn't bear telling. So Mark, Ali and I signalled our appreciation of his comments by Walking Out In A Huff.
The look on the Glitterarti's faces was, in a word, picturesque.

superlambanana woe

Strange day today; Liverpool could be about to lose its much-loved Superlambanana http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/ and general consternation abounds over exactly who forgot to check with the artist that it was a loan, not a gift, to the city. The Daily Post broke the story which was then picked up by our sister paper, the Liverpool Echo. So now it's running on both websites and has a link on both forums so readers can comment. And this is where it gets a bit odd. So far five people have posted views on the Echo site... precisely none have posted on the Post's site. I'm trying to work out why people are more drawn to the Echo than the Post forums - they are, afterAre we stuffy or is there a higher quality of debate? Or is it just that the Echo is seen as a more knockabout forum for rows? I'd love to know what's going on... maybe I should just post a message on the forums and ask people to tell me - but I'm wary of trespassing in what should be a space for readers. Seems to be a case of 'if you build it, they will shun'.