Tomorrow I’m chairing a discussion panel on the Future of Journalism at the first London Linked Data Meetup. On the panel are:

• Martin Belam (Information Architect, The Guardian; blogger, Currybet)
• John O’Donovan (Chief Architect, BBC News Online)
• Dan Brickley (Friend of a Friend project; VU University, Amsterdam; SpyPixel Ltd; ex-W3C)
• Leigh Dodds (Talis)

What questions would you like me to ask them about data and the future of journalism?

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While everybody in journalism is wondering how the future of media looks like, entrepreneurs try to shape it. They develop new products and services that maybe could be the next big thing in journalism. OJB asks those entrepreneurs three simple questions in a series of interviews. First up: Shafqat Islam from NewsCred.

For everyone who has never heard of NewsCred: it’s an online platform that aggregates articles from lots of media – newspapers, magazines, blogs. NewsCred users can build a personalised online newspaper by selecting media and topics they want to read from and about.

The platform says it collects “all the world’s credible news, in one place”. It’s up to users to decide which news is credible and which isn’t. They can vote those articles down if they think it contains false facts or bias. A negative vote on a article doesn’t only influence the article but also the reporter that wrote it and the medium that published it. Based on the all the votes for a certain medium or journalist NewsCred ranks the credibility of media and journalists. And of course that ranking influences how prominent news is brought in the personalised newspapers.

How did you came up with the idea for your startup?

“Before we had any idea Iraj Islam and I always talked about the press. We were discussing biased articles that came across or false facts in the media. Soon we realised all our friends had lots of issues with the media transparency just like we had. We wondered if there was something like a online track record about media and journalists. A platform that would give insights into biased stories and false facts published by media and journalists. We found out that such a platform didn’t exist yet. So we decided to build NewsCred to introduce that level of accountability.”

“Initially we wanted to build a platform that collects data about those biased story and false facts and we would then analyse this data. The platform would present the user all kinds of graph and charts so they could see which source is credible and which isn’t. But soon we found out that it’s very hard to judge which source is credible and which not – just based on numbers. Even if you have all kinds of data. That is when NewsCred morphed into the what it is nowadays: a platform where readers can voice their opinion and join in discussions about the credibility of news media.

What did you learn news startups and about media?

“That it’s very hard to scale a business. Just doing a consumer website isn’t enough to monetize NewsCred. We ask ourselves the same question as newspapers and news websites do: how do I make money out of this consumer website? Advertisements just aren’t enough.”

“We think we’ve found a way to monetize NewsCred. I can’t say much about it yet, but it comes down to using our underlying technology to help other web publishers improve their websites, acquire new users and increase their user engagement.”

“I’ve also found out that nobody has the answers to the defining questions about the state and future of the media. To find those answers we all have to work together. Startups, evangelists, pioneers, critics, news corporations – they all have to work together.”

What is the future of journalism?

“I believe that openness will be very important for the future of journalism. News corporations should start to experiment with sharing their data, building platforms and API’s. Google showed us that  you can be open and still build a profitable company.”

“I’m very optimistic. I don’t think newspaper organisations will go away. Sure, newspapers will disappear – within 2, 3 or maybe 5 years newspapers are really gone. But the core competence of newspaper organisations isn’t the newspaper itself. It’s the typical kind of journalism they produce. And there are tremendous opportunities for them online to present the same kind of journalism but then via a different medium.”

Want to be the next news startup featured in this series? Send an e-mail to paul [AT] paulvereijken [.] nl.

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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.

But that’s only half the story. Journalists who grapple with social media have to be more active in many other ways: digging up stories and leads remains important but thinking you have the definitive version is increasingly problematic.

Posting Twitter alerts and blog drafts rather than just a finished ‘package’ means a little more work, a little less passivity. The payback is feedback.

Ultimately the production team has become increasingly porous, involving experts, witnesses, accidental contributors, and anyone else who can add something valuable (what I’ve previously called Distributed Journalism).

As journalists we used to be active in seeking those people out – and we used reliable, often official, channels to do that, meaning we were often too reliant on particular sources. Now sources are increasingly coming to us and the work is in making ourselves visible, accessible and trustworthy; and in filtering and verifying the information they provide.

That’s not ‘more passive’ journalism, it’s getting out of your silos and making contact; it’s moving from being a conduit to a stimulator. It’s moving from a linear production process to a networked one, and too few journalists are doing it.

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I was privileged to be asked to speak at the BBC’s Future of Journalism conference last week. A largely internal event organised by the BBC College of Journalism, the event had little outside publicity and consequently very few people from outside the corporation attending. This was a shame, as not only were there some fascinating contributions from speakers both inside and outside of the BBC, but it also meant no one could contribute to the discussion via email unless they were watching the intranet video stream.

I had hoped to liveblog it, but the wifi signal was too weak – instead you can find some coverage from the time on my Twitter account and those of Daniel Bennett and Jon Jacob. Below are some of the reflections from the first day’s events.

Tagging

I arrived too late to catch the first panel on Multiplatform Reporting from the Field – but you can find a roundup on Charlie Beckett’s blog.

Instead, I went straight into the panel on ‘The Newsroom of the Future‘, where I spoke about the News Diamond model. This was reasonably well received, with one particularly interesting question which I’ve blogged about separately.

Fellow panelist BBC Head of Editorial Development, Multimedia Journalism, Pete Clifton spoke about the changes the BBC newsrooms have been through (from platform-based to programme-based) and those they can expect. In addition to a planned move to a new content management system, Pete was clearly concerned about how the BBC had fallen behind in the search engine optimisation stakes, and talked of a future emphasis on tagging and metadata. He showed an overview of the metadata on New York Times stories – dozens of categories ranging from byline and title through to location, organisations, and image size (clearly much of it automated).

Blogging and the BBC – having it both ways

Robert Peston was clearly the star guest in the panel on blogging. Joined by Paul Fletcher, Giles Wilson and Alex Trickett, this was an all-BBC affair.

Giles Wilson emphasised the value of blogs in making the BBC accountable and transparent, and listed 7 ‘golden rules’ of blogging: having a single author; being authentic; responding to comments; being impartial; obeying the laws of the blogosphere; not expecting blogs to do everything; and providing support for blogging.

Peston was a great champion of blogging, claiming that his blog (which, it appears, began as an internal email) was “the cornerstone” of everything that he did – although this didn’t stop him holding back publishing stories online until the same time as, or just after, they were broadcast.

But then he did a strange thing: he claimed his blog wasn’t really a blog on the basis that he only published solid news, and no opinion or rumour.

Clearly there remains some suspicion of blogs in the BBC. The corporation, it appears, don’t call their blogs ‘blogs’ because of a belief that the audience don’t like the term (although as Jason Cobb pointed out in a tweet, “BBC radio loves to promote blogs (5Live) – why does TV shy away from the dirty B word?”). At the same time, they are clearly designed to look like blogs for those who know what they are. It seems they want to have it both ways.

Further, while the BBC innovated in journalism blogging in the days when individuals such as Nick Robinson and Robert Peston could start up a blog, now staff have to gain the approval of a social media panel before they can start a blog. 

And clearly, that need for impartiality, and a very palpable fear that something said on a BBC blog will be used against them by the press, are real handicaps in the ability of the BBC to join the conversation. Alex Trickett of BBC Sport spoke of his envy of blogs who don’t have the constraints of “the BBC way”. “We are still quite corporate.”

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