Life on the internet

Found this at cartoonist xkcd‘s site.

Exam break

Exams, essays and job interviews dictate: Media Notes is taking a break for a couple of weeks or so.

Until then, a few articles for you to peruse:

Heather Brooke, the unsung hero of freedom of information in Britain, on why the MPs expenses info came from a leak, rather than investigative journalism.
Key Quote:“This is the kind of journalism I like doing. But it’s almost impossible in this country. There is so little public information made public.”

Meanwhile, the Telegraph continues to profit from said leak, with sales apparently up by 220,000 copies in four days. In today’s Observer Peter Preston argued that the impact of the story shows that newspapers proves the ‘dead tree press’ critics wrong.
Key Quote: “How much do big headlines on paper still count? You only have to ask the question to see the residual value of presses thundering on.”

To continue the theme, the Wall Street Journal thinks it knows who sold the Telegraph the info. Apparently an ex-British army officer named John Wick, a “thoroughly agreeable man”.

On the web, trainee reporter Mark Coughlan said journalism education needs a kick up the arse. On a similar theme, Sunderland student Josh Halliday interviewed NCTJ bigwig Glen Oldershaw about the pressures on the industry and how training centres are reacting. And Sheffield trainee Rich Parsons said that learning shorthand is archaic, and that it is symptomatic of a dying industry that newspapers cling to such outdated practices.

Key Quote (Parsons):“It frustrates me beyond belief that the business models for journalism are so stuck in the past. Editors think they’re screwed now, wait till mobile browsing really takes off and kindles become affordable to everyone. Then lets see people justify cutting down 70,000 trees for a week’s production of the New York Times.”

Back in a couple of weeks.

Montgomerie takes on the BNP

Centre-right blogger and Conservative Home editor Tim Montgomerie launched an online campaign against the British far right this week. There is nothing British about the BNP is an attempt to tackle the growing threat of the British fascists in the run-up to the European elections at the beginning of June.

Another centre-right blogger, James Forsyth of Spectator’s Coffee House, said:

The strategy of trying to deal with the BNP by denying them the oxygen of publicity is out of date. The BNP now has alternative ways to reach voters than through the mainstream media. So, we need to take the BNP on, to make sure that people know that a vote for the BNP isn’t a protest against political sleaze or the establishment but a vote for racism and thuggery.

The jobs crisis – Part II

(Also see Part I: Crisis, crisis, what to do?)

This post was also published at Journalism.co.uk

The Guardian’s Media supplement is getting thinner, Hold the Front Page is looking sparse, and yesterday’s daily journalism.co.uk email had no trainee jobs at all. As the 1,888 journalists who are now on the dole will no doubt testify, this is crisis time.

At Sheffield University the journalism department has finally clued on to the fact that very few of its graduates this year will get reporting jobs. Prof Peter Cole told students recently: “It is not going to be an easy year, and it’s pointless to pretend otherwise. But there are plenty of things you can do and we need to be positive and upbeat as well as realistic.”

Most of us have given up other careers, taken out massive loans and worked damned hard to go into journalism, and the prospect of doing “other things” is down-heartening to say the least. But as I’ve discovered while working in news rooms in Sheffield and London in the last few weeks, people are being laid off all over the place, and there are only a handful of openings for trainees.

Yesterday's trainee job round-up from journalism.co.uk

So what to do? The Sheffield department has put on two crisis talks for job seekers recently, trying to provide us with a Plan B. At the first talk tutors from the different journalism disciplines told students to consider any media job (such as PR) until the journalism industry resurfaces. See Kyle Christie’s report for more details of the discussion.

This week the department invited a number of local editors and industry notables for Part 2 of the lecture series. It was well attended, as everyone realised that the speakers are the people who are reading our job applications.

And the advice was good. There were the usual offerings for those of us who are carpet bombing the idustry with applications: keep CVs brief, sell yourself but don’t go over the top, offer story ideas with your cover letters (Peter Genower, former IPC weeklies editor-in-chief); be super friendly and enthusiastic (Graham Moorby, BBC Look North news producer); be aware that you have 30 seconds to impress (Bob Cockroft, Barnsley Chronicle editor).

But there were also some encouraging, and less obvious, insights. Peter Genower told us that there is no such thing as a recruitment freeze. Even if a company is not recruiting, there are ways of worming your way in and making yourself indispensable. Graham Moorby stood by the time-established tactic of taking lots of unpaid work experience (although obviously you have to find a way of funding it).

Bob Cockroft advised that budding reporters should look at subbing jobs as ways in to the industry. As he pointed out, there are a lot more subbing jobs around at the moment than reporting jobs, and he argued that design and editing are a great addition to a reporter’s toolbox, rather than completely different jobs.

Interestingly, when I asked Cockroft how editors would view journalists who had taken a PR job (as we all, let’s admit it, are considering at the moment), he said that it would not be seen as a negative move. “Everyone knows there are no jobs around at the moment,” he said. “So if you take what you can get and then come back to reporting, I don’t thing anyone would look badly on it.”

As I’ve argued before, there are jobs out there, although admittedly not many of them. In the last few weeks, working in busy, understaffed newsrooms, I’ve realised that you just have to put yourself out there and impress, learn all the skills (design, web, video, damn good writing), and network (online and off) and opportunities will come up. And when the money runs out PR offers an acceptable port while the storm passes.

I’ll finish by quoting an article by Ed Walker, a hyperlocal blogger who was forced to leave the professional journalism route:

“If you do find yourself in a ‘non-journalism’ job, just remember it’s not the end. You can still be a journalist, you just might have to do it as a hobby to start off with and then see when the break comes. When it comes, take it with both hands.”

Jimmy Carr: ‘You’re not a proper journalist’

In these days of coverged journalism and multimedia, reporters are used to being told to go out with handicams to get footage for their websites along with their copy.

An East Anglian Daily Times reporter covering a Jimmy Carr court appearance was doing exactly that yesterday when he was told that he wasn’t a “proper journalist” because his video camera wasn’t big enough!

An irate Jimmy Carr, who was in court for allegedly speeding, told the reporter: “That’s not a proper camera. You’re not a proper journalist. Look at that – that’s from home.”

But Jimmy, it’s not the size…

Jimmy Carr mocks video journalist

Story via Jon Slattery.

UPDATE 8pm: EADT seem to have taken the video off their website. If anyone can see it on YouTube, let me know. It is very funny.  

UPDATE 10pm: Oh, it’s back. If it disappears again please let me know. Thanks.

The new Evening Standard

"Sorry": the Standard's relaunch campaign (pic Annie Mole)

Last week I was back in London, doing some work for the Press Association. It was great to be back in the city; I love Sheffield, but there are lots of things I miss about London.  One thing I hadn’t missed, however, was rushing around on the tube. The main problem is that when it’s really busy, you don’t have room to read your paper. As a news addict, this is a nightmare, and I always search for the next best thing – the adverts on the walls.

It took me three days to work out what the ‘Sorry’ advert was for. At first I thought it was some strange Sony rebrand (the font, you see). When I realised that it was for the Evening Standard, I was pretty shocked: apologising for the efforts of a former editorial team seems pretty insulting (former editor Veronica Wadley thought so too), and as Stephen Glover has pointed out, it is not a great plan for keeping loyal readers on side.

The Standard, under the new ownership of Alexander Lebedev (who had trouble paying his Russian journalists last week; London reporters, watch out) and editorship of Tatler veteran Geordie Greig, relaunched on Monday with a new design and a promise to focus on good news (hence the ‘Sorry for being negative’ campaign).

As a wannabe quasi-Londoner I have had a love-hate relationship with the Standard. In a city swamped with trashy freesheets it is an island of solid journalism, and has some very good columnists. The paper’s blatant smear campaign against Ken Livingstone during last year’s mayoral election, however, really stuck in the gullet, and I always thought the paper was far too close to owners and stablemates the Daily Mail.

So I have high hopes for the new-look Standard under Greig and Lebedev: the redesign is a little odd; they ran a terrible marketing campaign; and the idea of ‘positive news’ risks a dangerous editorial skew. But London deserves a quality paper, and without DMGT’s control the Standard has the resources and freedom to offer it one.

MORE ON THE STANDARD RELAUNCH:

Dave Lee and OrganGrinder on the redesign

Freelance Unbound on the relaunched Standard’s commercial chances 

Fleet Street Blues argues that investigative journalism could keep the Standard above water

Weekend links

It seems a long time ago now, but here are my links from the weekend papers and blogs.

WEEKEND LINKS

The weekend papers all took the Telegraph’s lead, and listed the sordid details of our MPs’ expense claims. But apart from the lists of cleaning bills and taxi fares, the commentators were keen to work out where the Telegraph got the info, how much they paid for it, and whether it was right to do so. Despite Peter Mandelson’s charge that the story was a “classic smear”, the heavyweights of media punditry –Roy Greenslade, Peter Preston and Charlie Beckett – came out in support of the scoop. It emerged that the details were offered to The Times for £300,000 back in March, but they declined. The Indy thinks the Telegraph paid £150,000 for them, but the FT puts it closer to £90,000. Not since Smeargate has a single organisation (if we can call Guido Fawkes a news organisation) so closely controlled the news agenda. No matter the cost, it was a bargain for the Telegraph.
Key Quote (Peter Preston): “Joe Public is voting in three weeks’ time. He needs to know about JP’s toilet seats and Hazel’s flat-screen TVs now. Sign the cheques and batten down the hatches, then: publish and be damned.”

The other big media story of the weekend was Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that the era of free internet news is over. Which is understandable when you realise The Times was losing £1 million every week even before the recession kicked in. What’s astounding, however, is how quick everyone has jumped on the paidcontent bandwagon. “It’s impossible to fund an online content business through ads alone,” said the FT’s Rob Grimshaw. It’s “lunacy” to even try, agreed the Indy’s Steven Glover. Guardian chief exec Carolyn McCall wasn’t far behind, suggesting that specialist parts of guardian.co.uk could soon be converted to subscription-only. Chris Tryhorn offers an intelligent examination of the arguments for moving away from free content in today’s Media Guardian.

Elsewhere, a war of words between the Guardian and the Independent, sparked by a Guardie article that the Indy would soon collapse, got a little out of control. Stephen Glover pointed out that whatever the Indy’s financial woes, the article was a little rich considering GMG’s announcement they are sacking 50 journalists in a bid to cut costs by £10 million a year.
Key Quote: (angry Indy journo): “We don’t need £5,000 sofas and ‘media hubs’ to feel superior to others; we’ve got more journalistic integrity than you lot could ever aspire to.” 

An even more fiery battle broke out between the editor of the Evening Standard, Geordie Greig, and his predecessor, Veronica Wadley, over the Standard’s controversial ‘We’re Sorry’ campaign. That deserves an entire post of it’s own, but until then, check out a decent  article on the fight here.

‘Youtube if you want to’

Undeterred by criticism of his last appalling effort at new media communication, Gordon Brown has taken Hazel Blears’ advice to “Youtube if you want to,” and given it another shot.

In contrast to the previous Downing Street video, featuring a three-and-a-half minute monologue, the Labour broadcast has him out and about, tackling the recession.

Reporting swine flu

“Not only have the public lost all faith in the media; not only do so many people assume, now, that they are being misled; but more than that, the media themselves have lost all confidence in their own ability to give us the facts.”

This is Ben Goldacre, discussing the media’s coverage of swine flu in today’s Guardian. Goldacre, an NHS doctor and writer who spends his time highlighting the terrible standard of health and science writing in the press, is pretty convinced by this swine flu business.

What interests him, however, is parts of the media’s insistence that this is all hype.

As Goldacre says: ”For so many people, their very first assumption on the story is that the media are lying. It is the story of the boy who cried wolf.”

He has a point. As a profession we are pretty bad at reporting health. Just check out this site to see what I mean.

For a decent guide on reporting the swine flu crisis, peruse this post, courtesy of Fleet Street Blues. As they point out, “you may have to rein in your usual tabloid instincts on a story of this magnitude”. It’s worth taking your time, working out the facts, and checking and double checking.

Alan Rusbridger on the future of journalism

Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor-in-chief, on the future of journalism. Event at the Institut für Medienpolitik in Berlin.

Key quote: “Always look to see what the technology journalists are doing, because that’s how we’re all going to be working in five years’ time.”