On Monday The Guardian published an article about data journalism and the future of journalism. As part of that I was asked what university courses taught data journalism. I could only think of Glyn Mottershead at Cardiff and – probably – Steve Hill at Southampton Solent.

So let me ask: are you involved in – or study on – a course that covers any aspect of data journalism? That might be statistics, computer assisted reporting, or mashing, or something else. Please comment – I’d really like to know what’s out there.

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As part of an ongoing series on recent graduates who have gone into online journalism, Guardian Beatblogger Hannah Waldram talks about her education and experience leading up to her job, and what it involves.

I graduated from the Centre for Journalism at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies with a diploma in newspaper journalism in June 2009. During the course, I followed developments in online journalism – spurred on by my tutor Glyn Mottershead – attended journalism and hyperlocal conferences across the UK, started a personal website to showcase my work (hrwaldram.co.uk), played around with new online tools and invested in some new tech (Flip cameras, netbooks), blogged a lot, as well as various bits of work experience including the technology desk at The Daily Telegraph and Media Guardian.

I also bought the domain name bournvillevillage.com and began brewing ideas for a hyperlocal website for my hometown area in Birmingham.

After completing the course and while sending off applications for trainee reporter jobs, I continued to set up Bournville Village. There’s a vibrant network of bloggers in Birmingham who gave me advice, support and ideas, and the blog launched just in time for some unusual gun shootings in the area.

Bournville is bursting with local news and history and is poorly covered by the regional press – so the blog was well-received by the community. It was also a great way for me to practise my skills as a journalist. Soon I was offered three jobs – two in traditional media and one in new media. I went for new media.

I started working as a social reporter for Podnosh and online editor of westmidlandsdance.com for Meshed Media – in these roles I learnt a lot about civic engagement, online communities and multimedia journalism.

I am now the Guardian Beatblogger in Cardiff. You can read more about the local project here and Local editor Sarah Hartley explains the role of a beatblogger here, I also recently published some tools I use on the job here.

I’ve since passed on bournvillevillage.com to Dave Harte who is a runner in Bournville and helped out from the outset. Under his editorship the site continues to thrive and unravel the hidden stories of the area.

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If you want to skip the background, go to the next subheading

Last week the BBC Education website published a piece about a report into the use of technology by schoolchildren: “Tech addiction ‘harms learning’”:

“Technology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned,” the intro led, before describing the results of the study. No one other than the study authors was quoted.

But GP and Clinial Lecturer AnneMarie Cunningham, hearing of the report on Twitter, felt the headline and content of the article didn’t match up: “The headline suggests a causal relationship which a cross-sectional study could not establish, but the body of the text doesn’t really support any relationship between addiction and learning”, she wrote, and she started digging:

“It … was clear that none of the authors had an education background. The 2 main authors, Nadia and Andrew Kakabadse, have a blog showcasing their many interests but education doesn’t feature amongst them. They descibe themselves as “experts in top team and board consulting, training and development”.”

AnneMarie bought the report for $24.99 – the only way to read it – and started reading. This is what she found:

“I expected the report by university academics to follow a standard format but it doesn’t. It is 24 pages long and contains no references and no appendices. The survey instrument is not included.

“No response rate is given … ‘tech addiction’ … seems to have been a self-assessment … With regards to this addiction harming learning, there is no analysis relating to the perception of being addicted to outcomes in learning. In fact very few of the questions are related in any way to learning.

“It is hard to understand several sections of the report because of lack of access to the questionnaire. For example, with regards to plagiarism the authors state that “A high proportion of students (84.3%) openly admitted that they inserted information from the Internet into their homework or projects on a number of occasions.” The tone of this sentence reflects some of the bias which is found throughout the work. The authors don’t seem to be aware that if referenced it is acceptable to insert information from the internet into work, so the students would have no reason to be ashamed and fear ‘openly admitting’ this.

“… It is also reported that 28.5% of students “feel it acceptable to insert information from the Internet straight into schoolwork without editing or making adjustment, recognising that such behaviour is considered plagiarism.” It would help a lot to see how that question was actually worded in the survey, as in the figure it is simply represented as “Ok to “insert” information from the Internet straight into schoolwork- Yes/no”. That’s not quite the same!

“There is no analysis relating amount of time spent online (or perception of addiction) and likelihood to insert internet contents into work without reading it. It may be that those who spend less time online, have less skills in information literacy and are more likely to plagiarise.

“In summary this report tells us very little about internet addiction or learning. Do you think that someone writing for the BBC website actually read the report?”

Her blog post summarising this was passed around by numerous people on Twitter, including BBC journalists, journalism academics, and ‘bad science’ Twitter users like EvidenceMatters. The blog post itself amassed around 20 comments.

AnneMarie emailed BBC Education, and I emailed the BBC News website education editor, Gary Eason. AnneMarie also emailed Cranfield University (who were also criticised). After a week, we had had no response and the article remained unchanged.

But more importantly, people’s opinions of the ‘bad science’ reporting of the BBC remained unaddressed – and this is what this blog post is really about.

UGC and the news brand

Here’s why this interests me. Last year Alfred Hermida and Neil Thurman published a paper (PDF) on user generated content which included the following finding:

“The potential that UGC has to damage a newspaper’s brand remained a prevailing concern among some editors. The idea of publishing a comment without checking it first was described as “very dangerous” (Avery, 2006), while Bale (2006) said that not to moderate content would be an inappropriate brand risk.”

What the discussion around the BBC Education news piece highlights is the risk to a news brand in not publishing comments (as is the case – for now – on most BBC News reports. Indeed, I would add that not having bylines to all reports or contact emails makes the organisation look even more opaque.)

Today I chased up Gary Eason, and this was his response:

“So far as I know our reporter did obtain a copy of the report. I heard her talking to an author/authors.

“I wouldn’t claim it is the greatest piece of original journalism we’ve ever undertaken nor that the study was a groundbreaking one. It’s clear the report was based on a small survey, which feeds into an ongoing debate. We have done pieces in the past presenting a different perspective, e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6247853.stm, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6241517.stm, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7196836.stm.

“I’ve read the blog. “U may fault methodology, results true” is amusing but cuts both ways: it seems to me the results don’t fit her world view so she sets about rubbishing them. Is she seriously arguing that ‘cut-and-paste plagiarism’ is not a problem?”

Speaking to Gary further, he said that he was aware of some of the criticisms but does not tend to address online discussion unless they were libellous towards his journalists, “otherwise I’d spend all day doing something else”. He said he would re-read the blog post.

Of course having comments on the story would have allowed this discussion to take place in public, from the start, and provide readers of the article with some critical context, turning a single-source ‘He Said’ article into a ‘He Said-She Said’ piece at the very least. That’s a technical issue that is being addressed, but in the meantime the BBC brand suffers.

The phrase “A lie travels round the world, while Truth is putting on her boots” in this case applies both to the study that was being reported, and the belief that the BBC journalist hadn’t actually read it. Having and watching comments allows Truth to get her boots on that much quicker.

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UPDATE: From the comments: similar lists now available for Norway and Sweden.

I will soon begin teaching my annual module in Online Journalism and one of the first things I get the students to do is set up a Twitter account. It’s often a struggle to demonstrate the usefulness of Twitter, so this time around, in addition to following each other, I’m going to give them 10 people to start following from the off. This is the list I’ve come up with – would welcome your suggestions for others:

1. @davelee - former journalism student and excellent blogger who landed a plum job at the BBC after graduating. Get the point?
2. @channel4news - example of how a news organisation can use Twitter in a personal, conversational way, rather than simply republishing its RSS feed (see also: @r4news, @mashable)
3. @jemimakiss – likewise, example of a journalist using Twitter to involve readers in production, as well as just be a ‘real person’ (alternative: Mike Butcher).
4. @jayrosen_nyu – journalism professor at New York University with excellent links and analysis on the news industry and online journalism (see also: @jeffjarvis)
5. @digidickinson – Andy Dickinson, UK journalism lecturer and online video specialist. Ditto above. (alternative: @egrommet)
6. @bhampostjoanna – Jo Geary of the Birmingham Post & Mail, uses Twitter brilliantly, and is so switched on there’s a power surge every time she wakes up. (alternatives: Sarah Hartley and Alison Gow)
7. @shanerichmond – Communities Editor at The Telegraph, knows his onions. (alternative: Martin Stabe)
8. @documentally - vlogger, moblogger, social media man, has worked with Reuters and others
9. This is a local choice so you would probably have a local equivalent, but @peteashton founded local arts blog Created In Birmingham, which recently won Best UK Blog. Every journalism student should be following – and talking with – people like this in their area. One good place to find out is by searching twitter.grader.com for your area
10. Likewise, @tom_watson is a local MP, but is closely involved in campaigning for the release of government data to the public, and in the government’s digital communications generally. You may have a local or national equivalent.

Needless to say I’ll be suggesting they use services like Twellow, Twitterlocal and Twits Like Me to find other users in their ‘beat’, but I think it helps get someone into a conversation quicker if they can see what other people are talking about – and how.

Over to you – who would you recommend…?

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