Online Journalism Blog

The leaked DNA test on 13-year-old alleged dad Alfie Patten has revealed a big problem with court-ordered reporting restrictions in the internet age. (NB This is a cut down version of a much longer original post on blogging and reporting restrictions).

Court orders forbidding publication of certain facts apply only to people or companies who have been sent them. But this means there is nothing to stop bloggers publishing material that mainstream news organisations would risk fines and prison for publishing.

Even if a blogger knows that there is an order, and so could be considered bound by it, an absurd catch 22 means they can’t found out the details of the order - and so they risk contempt of court and prison.

Despite the obvious problem the Ministry of Justice have told me they have no plans to address the issue. [Read more]

Do you have a link problem? You can handle linking. It’s just one post/article/page without a link. You can link whenever you want to. Or can you?

Where are you on this scale …? (Originally posted here.)

1 Don’t link to anyone

Link to other sites? But people will leave my site. They won’t click on my ads. They won’t read other pages. I’ll leak page rank. No way.

2 Add URLs but don’t make them hyperlinks

OK, that’s a bit ridiculous. If I’m talking about other organisations, I can’t pretend they don’t have a website. I know, I’ll put web addresses in. But i won’t make them hyperlinks. Brilliant, yes?

3 Add an ‘external links’ box

Even I’m finding that no hyperlink thing annoying when I go back to an old page and have to copy and paste the damn things.

I suppose I should have some links on my page. I’ll put them in a box. Over there (down a bit …). I’m going to use some sort of internal redirect or annoying javascript, though, to make sure I don’t pass any page rank. Mwah, hah hah.

4 Put some links in the copy

I don’t seem to be getting many inbound links. I guess I’m not playing fair. I know, I’ll sort out my workflow so that it’s possible to add links easily inside the actual copy. But I’m still not passing any pagerank. I’m going to put “rel=nofollow” on every link.

5 Give my users some google juice

Commenters seem thin on the ground. Maybe I’ll let them link to their own sites. I’ll use some annoying javascript to hide the links from google though. Most of my commenters are probably spammers, and I can’t trust them to police their own community, after all.

6 Link when I have to. And remove nofollow and any other annoying tricks

That seemed to make everyone happier. There are a few proper links on my pages. And people seem to want to link to me now that I’m playing fair with my links.

7 Acknowledge my sources

Oops. Spoke to soon. Been outed as pinching someone else’s idea and not attributing it. From now on, I’m going to make sure I always link to everyone I should.

8 Enlightenment: Make linking part & parcel of what I do

Internet. Inter as in inter-connected. Net as in network.

I get it now. I’m going to become a trusted source for information and advice, AND of what else people should read elsewhere on the internet. Blimey, more and more people are visiting my site and linking to it. [Read more]

Last week I spoke at the BBC College of Journalism’s Future of Journalism conference about the future newsroom, and the News Diamond specifically. Chair Louise Minchin asked the following question: did these new production processes mean journalists would become more passive?

It is a great question. On the surface that’s what would appear to be happening: in posting alerts and blog drafts you are inviting the input of the audience and therefore being more reactive. [Read more]

Here’s another one for that book I’m working on - I’m trying to think: what have been the most significant events in the history of journalism blogging?

Here’s what I have so far (thanks Mark Jones and Nigel Barlow):

• 1998: The Drudge Report breaks the Monica Lewinsky story. While Drudge denies the site is a blog, it demonstrated how the nimbleness of an online operation could scoop the mainstream media.
• 2001: September 11 attacks: while news websites collapse under the global demand, a network of blogs pass on news and lists of survivors
• 2002: Trent Lott forced to resign after apparently pro-segregationist statements made at an event and initially ignored by mainstream media, were picked up and fleshed out by bloggers
• 2003: Invasion of Iraq: Salam Pax, the ‘Baghdad Blogger’, posts updates from the city as it is bombed, providing a particular contrast to war reporters ‘embedded’ with the armed forces and demonstrating the importance of non-journalist bloggers
• 2003: Christopher Allbritton raises $15,000 through his blog Back-to-Iraq 3.0, to send him to report independently from the war, demonstrating the ability of blogs to financially support independent journalism (called the ‘tip-jar model’).
• 2004: Rathergate/Memogate: CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcast a story about George W. Bush’s National Guard service, and within minutes a section of the blogosphere mobilises to discredit the documents on which it is based. Dan Rather eventually resigns as a result.
• 2004: Asian Tsunami: more blogs mobilise around a disaster, of particular significance for video blogging
• 2005: July 7 Bombings, London: mobile phone image of passengers walking along Tube tunnel posted on MoBlog (although was first sent to The Sun), and goes global from there. A significant moment in moblogging.
• 2006: The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service cites the blog run by the New Orleans Times Picayune during Hurricane Katrina. The flexibility of blogs during a disaster which stopped printing presses and delivery trucks was driven home (h/t Bob Stepno).
• 2007: Talking Points Memo blog breaks story of US attorneys being fired across the country, demonstrating the power of involving readers in an investigation, and carrying it out in public (h/t Albert in the comments).
• 2007: Dave Winer wins his $2,000 bet (made in 2002) that blogs will rank higher than the New York Times for the top 5 news stories of 2007 (h/t Bob Stepno), demonstrating the importance of blogging in news distribution.
• 2007: Myanmar protests: the clampdown that followed democratic protests in the country was seen around the world thanks to blogging, moblogging, and social networking sites. Journalists were not allowed in the country. Even after the government cut off the internet, bloggers located outside the country continued to post material. (h/t Sandra Fish in comments)
• 2008: Peter Hain resigns over donations revealed by UK political blogger Guido Fawkes, who in 2006 broke a story on an affair by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott which he claimed lobby correspondents were sitting on
• 2008: Chinese Earthquake: a key moment for microblogging, as news of the earthquake spreads on Twitter (and Chinese IM service QQ) quicker than any official channels.
• 2008: Collapse of Northern Rock: BBC correspondent Robert Peston breaks one of the biggest stories of the year - not on TV, but on his blog.

What have I missed? This is a horribly Anglo-American list, too, so I’d particularly welcome similar moments from other countries.

As far as I can see, there are 3 types of reasons for blogging:

• editorial (leads, sources, speed, multimedia); 
• commercial (distribution, SEO); and 
• professional (portfolio, personal brand).

Why did you start blogging? Why do you continue to blog? Was it a personal or an organisational move? How has it proved its worth (or not)?

From the Baghdad Blogger to Twittering the Chinese Earthquake, plenty has been written about the potential of blogs to allow Western readers access to foreign voices: the ‘Parachute Journalism’ of ‘Our Man in Tehran’ is appearing increasingly anachronistic and paternalistic next to the experiences and thoughts of those caught in the crossfire.

Despite this, mainstream media portrayals of countries like Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China remains largely superficial.

This is the problem that Antony Loewenstein seeks to address with The Blogging Revolution (Amazon US) - a book which is as much about bloggers as it is a demonstration of what blogging has made possible. [Read more]

Elections bring out the best in online journalism. News organisations have plenty of time to plan, there’s a global audience up for grabs, and the material lends itself to interactive treatment (voter opinions; candidates’ stances on various issues; statistics and databases; constant updates; personalisation).

Not only that, but the electorate is using the internet for election news more than any other medium apart from television (and here are some reasons why).

PaidContent has a good roundup of various UK editors’ views, and decides blogs, Twitter and data are the themes (more specifically, liveblogging and mapping). [Read more]

France is currently paralyzed by yet another strike. Unlike the ones you’re used to when visiting my country, usually from railway or airport staff, this one was launched by lawyers and judges alike, united against their government minister, Rachida Dati (read more here).

Traditional journalists have been covering the event as it unfolded. Google News brings you more than 300 bland and unsurprising articles.

The only place where you can read what’s going on in France’s judicial system is a blog. Maître Eolas, a lawyer who opened his blog 4 years ago, just published 64 testimonies from justice professionals. He even renamed his blog ‘Daily news from angry justice professionals’. [Read more]

The second part of Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report is out, with more obvious headlines: the more you post, the better your blog does. Here’s the detail from TechCrunch:

“Blogging is a volume game. The more you post, the more chances there are that someone else will link to one of your posts. (Technorati rank is based on the number of recent links to your blog). The majority of the Top 100 blogs tracked by Technorati post five or more times per day, and a full 43 percent post more than 10 times per day. Meanwhile, 64 percent of the 5,000 blogs ranked lower than 600 post two to four times a day, which is still a serious commitment.”

For ‘Technorati’, you can also read ‘Google’, as it also ranks pages based on how many incoming links they have (among other things).

This really only confirms what own experience - and those of millions of others - suggests. But I would add a caveat.

While regular posting definitely increases blog traffic, a well considered, high quality post can be just as effective. Posts like the 21st Century Newsroom series generate a constant stream of visits to this blog, for instance. Another point is that frequent posting can result in good posts being buried beneath other ones when people check their RSS readers.

The best strategy, it seems, is a balance of frequency with quality.

Last week I was at a magazine publishers talking about social media platforms, when it was put to me that the platform I was talking about was “mainly used by Valley types”, and why should journalists invest time in a platform when the majority of readers of more conservative titles don’t use it?

It’s a recurring question - so much so that I have decided to present my answer here. I’d welcome any additions. [Read more]