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"Basic rules for writers: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."
Sunday, 16 September 2012
My Interesting Reads (weekly)
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Video: a (very) interactive newspaper
I'm indebted to Andy Dickinson for sharing this video on Twitter, of an interactive Lancashire Evening Post, created by UCLan and partners.
Paul Egglestone explains the why and the what of the project in the video, and also shows how the data of reader interaction is captured.
The last bit is so important thing; I understand (and suffer from) the Distraction of Shiny but it can be just that - a distraction.
Related articles
Paul Egglestone explains the why and the what of the project in the video, and also shows how the data of reader interaction is captured.
The last bit is so important thing; I understand (and suffer from) the Distraction of Shiny but it can be just that - a distraction.
Related articles
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
Future newsrooms, and lessons from Poland
So off I went to Thursday’s open mic SMC to find out more about the mechanics of how it operated (can you work out why, Reader?*) and sang for my supper by giving a 10 minute talk on journalism futures and digital newsrooms.
It wasn’t a formal presentation; I just jotted some notes down about what I want to achieve at the Daily Post, talked around that, and then fielded some smart questions from the audience.
The following day, I watched a fascinating video presentation on the future of media (of which more later), and after musing some more, I figured I may as well blog my thoughts out a bit.
The prompt notes I used for SMC are in italics, subsequent musings aren’t.
1. Academic Robert Picard says the “fundamental problem for media firms” is that of selling 19th and 20th century products in the 21st century, without altering the value of the offering, or relationships with customers.
His point being, you can’t have a seismic shift in the market - the sort of disruption that not only creates entire new platforms and turns production, consumption, and distribution on its head - then still expect the inherent value to remain unchanged. Or, indeed, for the customer/consumer base to remain unchanged.
Getting past the legacy issue, given the inherent costs and the structural, operational and cultural drivers, is not easy. But JRC is attempting it with their latest move; I will be interested to see how that develops.
2. The term Legacy, when applied to the Olympics, should be a good thing. When applied to Journalism, less so.
The legacy not only of infrastructure but of culture and practise is one of the biggest obstacles there is.
I hesitate to use the phrase digital evangelist but if you’re one of the people trying to work in new ways in a newsroom, I suspect at some point you or a like-minded colleague has uttered the phrsae: ‘But journalists are supposed to like Change; that’s why we went into this job. If we didn’t we’d work in a bank.”
I’ve said it myself... and I was wrong. Journalists are people, and people like Variety. That’s a very different thing to Change. Variety is interesting; Change is generally unsettling, at best.
3. Convergence is not about multimedia, it’s about users.
Specifically, users and customers. The collective formerly known as Them and Us.
This theme had previously been touched on at SMC by Laura Yates and Edwin Pink, who - while talking about the achievements and work of Liverpool’s tenantspin, in engaging older people digitally - observed “It’s never about the tech, it’s about the people.”
Convergence is a lightbulb phrase: Use it with someone who knows what it means, and it illuminates the conversation; use it with someone who doesn’t, and everything goes dark.
I think about convergence more as a service shift to meet audience needs, instead of deadlines.
So, for example, a converged newsroom would promote: Collaboration, transparency, accountability, reciprocity, partnerships; it would do this by making engagement and audience management integral, online and in real life (irl being *social media cafes or surgeries, for example); and asking, explaining, sharing, would be an editorial ethos.
My expected outcomes would be: Newsroom sees better engagement, culture change, openness, wider network; Audience has more trust, engagement, involvement, better value
I thought some more about this while watching the interesting video mentioned earlier. Editor Grzegorz Piechota, speaking at the 2012 Future Forum (it’s 50 minutes long, and worth the investment of time, I promise) said this about the changing internal structures of the Press: “Editors were responsible for the audience development and we [his newspaper company] simply believe that in the digital world cooperation between the editorial and the marketing side of the newspaper is becoming even more crucial than it was in print.”
Media, converge thyself.
4. We’re competing against Apathy
I don’t routinely worry about BBC getting a story up online before me - although it might irritate me - or buying a story from an agency I don't have the budget for, or hyperlocal sites establishing local news hubs. That’s not because I am indifferent hyperlocals or the BBC/ITV et al or dismiss what they do, it’s because competition are a reality; I've dealt with it all my working life in one form or another, and there is no monopoly on information.
But I do worry about apathy - about waning attention spans, disappearing audience who aren’t migrating elsewhere, they’re just... gone, and incorrect facts and opinion (Misinfopinion?) that has a half-life of seemingly forever. Just ask Morgan Freeman.
It doesn’t have to be incorrect, either. Media companies Facebook apps have resulted in all kinds of linkbaity non-stories from way back when appearing in my timeline as friends read and share them, apparently failing to spot the ‘2008’ dateline on them).
Kevin Anderson has also blogged about the ‘battle for attention’ here and sums up what bothers me far more purposefully. His considered post, which examines the clamour for audience attention and the bombardment of information we’re exposed to now, is recommended reading.
Finally, while considering how a digital newsroom could and should operate, I found inspiration once more in Grzegorz’s brilliant reality. In his speech, he explained how his newspaper sent 21 reporters to 21 schools to get the inside view on digital natives and education in Poland.
His newspaper galvanised Poland’s education system by making people a part of it. More than 20,000 teachers became involved in Gazeta Wyborcaz’s education campaign, more 7,000 schools participated and changed how they worked, and the government ripped up its policies and started again.
That’s what I call a result.
Now, aside from the rock of bureaucracy most regional editors trying to launch a similar idea would founder against, I can’t imagine having 21 reporters, let alone losing all of them for one week to do research.
Such a project is beyond most the resources of most press (regional, at least) but I can see a way of crowd sourcing investigations.
It would involve a lot of planning, a lot of goodwill, and a lot of mutual trust (these three things are not exactly what the media is known for) but it is not only do-able, it’s desirable. It is, quite possibly, essential for the survival of MSM.
Being able to say “we know how this should be done, and why this should be done - we even have an idea what is going to be found out as a result of doing it - but we can’t do it on our own” is a digital future that has to become a reality.
Finding the people who want to be involved, and asking them to do so, isn’t hard (although rejection is, obviously, but we're big enough to take it).
Wanting to know, and then wanting to understand, are common traits in us all; journalists in MSM have the advantage in that we’re trained and supported, and have an established platform to parade our work on, as opposed to having to create and build that platform.
But collaborative partnerships do give us opportunities to work across larger-scale stories that might seem out of reach, with mainstream media bringing the benefits of platform, audience, legal protection and guidance.
Audience...Content...Platform; that’s my Trinity, always in that order. One informs the other, informs the other. And that would be my future newsroom.
Sunday, 9 September 2012
Friday, 31 August 2012
My Interesting Reads (weekly bookmarks)
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Why RebelMouse May Just Make Twitter Work for the Rest of Us http://t.co/Baeb6gBJ @teamreboot: We’re the public de-nerdifier for Twitter.
- The Ann Arbor Precedent | American Journalism Review
Three years ago, Ann Arbor lost its Newhouse-owned paper and went all digital, and AJR says the results weren't good: http://t.co/K8zsY83w
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"This study examines how British weekly newspaper editors, an understudied group with long-standing ties to ³hyperlocal´ communities, regard the challenges of building, transforming, andmanaging knowledge in the midst of sweeping media change. Drawing on literature from mediasociology and knowledge management, it suggests that these veteran editors are profoundlyuncertain about how to translate what they believe about journalism, and know about creating it,into successful delivery of new products to new audiences"
- The Ann Arbor Precedent | American Journalism Review
Friday, 24 August 2012
Mocking up photos, and mocking readers
These are some the points commenters found objectionable about about The Sun's Naked Intern photoshoot
She was female
She was an intern
She was asked to make an impossible choice
The Sun did not ask a Page 3 girl to do it (Seriously. I guess Page 3 girls must just wander around the editorial floor at all times, filing their News in Briefs)
The subsequent statement about 'no cover up'
The paper then printed the actual photo
Most of these are good points. But, personally, the element I found most objectionable wasn't that the question had been asked, it's the fact that the whole tawdry affair - made, no doubt, with sniggers and self-congratulatory noises - puts fresh tarnish on the profession of Journalism.
Every time Fleet Street Muppets pull a stunt that shows they view their readers as fools - 'hand over your money, folks, we've been having a high old time getting our staff to take their clothes off' - it erodes what we're supposed to be about.
You might think the customers being mocked are Sun readers and so don't count. I'm not interested in news brand snobbery; I'm interested in the editorial decision.
And it's not about high-mindedness or having an over-inflated view of a newspaper's role; I am very aware that an incorrect fact in the splash might merit a complaint, but printing yesterday's Crossword is an Unforgivable Blunder for which the editor should be sacked.
But - and the Leveson Inquiry underlined this for me - the Press is a collective, as far as the public consciousness goes.
The repercussions of phone hacking outrages perpetrated by national tabloid journalists are still being felt at a local level; after all, most people will judge us all by the standards of conduct they saw displayed on the BBC's Leveson reports month after month
Photos of a prince displaying his innate good breeding to the world aside, I wish Thursday's The Sun front page had been a banner headline of a bit.ly link to the TMZ.com story. It would have made the point a lot more eloquently.
As it was, it just reinforced the idea that, for newspapers, the joke's on the reader.
The Sun published the Harry photo today - for me, any moral stance in that decision was eclipsed by the earlier lack of judgement.
Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Brevity is the soul of... any story
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| (Photo credit: ciboulette) |
While reading this article on the importance of story-telling, and why people need to avoid the trap of thinking Facebook is about link-pimping, the last paragraph caught my attention:
'"The best stories
represent a simplicity of purpose and tap into the audience’s
imagination so that they willingly go along for the journey. And the
shortest ones can sometimes be the best. Ernest Hemingway famously wrote
the six-word story: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
I hadn't come across that line before and I was quite floored by Papa's brilliance... until the internet disabused me.
Abashed by the fact I'd never heard of something he'd 'famously' written I googled the line.
Alas, it is thought to be an apocryphal story, without basis in fact - the origins are discussed here.
Still, if there's a more compelling argument for cutting out the verbiage in a 600 word article, I've yet to come across it.
On a not-unrelated note, I think Hemingway would have liked Twitter.
Abashed by the fact I'd never heard of something he'd 'famously' written I googled the line.
Alas, it is thought to be an apocryphal story, without basis in fact - the origins are discussed here.
Still, if there's a more compelling argument for cutting out the verbiage in a 600 word article, I've yet to come across it.
On a not-unrelated note, I think Hemingway would have liked Twitter.
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