Suzanne Kavanagh reports on key insights and highlights from the Periodicals Training Council (PTC) Academies and Industry Forum, at Bauer Media’s central London office.

Editorial is at the heart of management at Bauer, said the company’s CEO, Paul Keenan, who explained how they work across media and events for brands and are embracing digital.

Keenan provided several insights into the industry and Bauer’s business – helpful information for anyone applying to get into the industry:

• There are 3600 consumer magazines published each year; 85% of revenue comes from the top 250 titles
• And of the top 250 titles, 50% are new
• 500 magazines are launched each year; 500 magazines fail each year – there is a high churn rate
• New launches are the lifeblood for creativity & help advertisers reappraise their strategy
• Digital is either an extension of editorial strategy and added value or a business with a model & multiple revenue streams

Recent brand extensions and product developments have included:

• The launch of a new online luxury shopping site Cocosa, born out of Grazia, with 250k members in UK
• The Grazia Live office at Westfield shopping centre
• Motorcycle News, which sells 110k copies per week, has set up a transactional money making website selling bike insurance
• Motorcycle News also has an iPhone app on way which will provide the average and top speed per journey and – crucially – how far over you leant on your bike!
• The More Facebook Group Challenge where readers adopt a newsagent, improve the presentation of More instore and submit photographs, going out to over 50k Facebook group members.

There were some useful tips on what Bauer looks for in new entrants to editorial from Keenan and Matt Swain, editor of Trail magazine: there have been structural changes in the industry – there are now fewer people with increased demands on their time – which has led to a shift in working. Journalism courses need to shift how they prepare students for working in the industry.

4 skills to get in and get ahead

Matt Swaine, former Cardiff University lecturer, outlined the four skills students need to get into the industry and get ahead:

1. Understand design (including how print can excel, how good design can save time, and the curatorial role of harnessing the power of great images)

A good writer needs to be able to visualise what a feature will look like – even at the initial stage. Pictures are as important as the words in telling a story.

Be able to sketch out feature openers. Headlines need to work with a strong opening visual.

Make collecting and assessing published magazine spreads an integral part of the course and design awareness should be part of the final assessment of *every* course.

2. Get to grips with digital (what it can and can’t do)

Understand what print does well and what the web does well (e.g. SEO). It’s *not* about repurposing content anymore. Anyone can set up a really meaningful web presence in under two hours now and it’s not worth teaching HTML anymore (you wouldn’t teach students how to make paper…)

Trail has experimented with video starting with a video camera and higher post-production values, but it took too much time and only gained 5k views. So they moved to a reader competition to shoot a video of favourite walks. They received c.100 entries and the shortlist was shown at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival. It plugged into a community of enthusiasts and was a great way to get content cost-effectively. A great example of exploring the strengths of different platforms and user generated content and how they can drive subscriptions.

Courses need to encourage digital experimentation. However, good ideas should be judged by how they meet reader needs.

3. Know your readers

A typical question in an interview (for Men’s Health magazine): who reads this magazine? The answer? It’s not just about demographic info, it’s more about getting under the skin of the reader: their hopes, their fears, their needs. Be able to conceptualise who they are and communicate that. Encourage students to describe readers in these terms.

Get students to expose their work to real readers (you can do this via Twitter, online forums and via a website). Get them to go out and meet readers and let them assess the quality of their work. Build your contact book for your niche, get round an over-reliance on the web. People are where great stories lie.

4. Entrepreneurial skills

Develop business sense. How do you extend brands? How do people make money from online? What other titles could be launched? What else do readers want and how do we provide in ways that generates revenue? How do we extend beyond print?

Swaine’s one key piece of advice? If you do one thing with your students, make sure they meet their readers, but not in focus groups, just talk to them.

Changes in production

Geoff Campbell, MD of the Mens division and Stuart Williams, MD of music & entertainment ran through some of the developments in the editorial production process since they’ve set up Bauer’s production ‘hub’. They have managed to streamline the reprographic house production process and have got picture editors working together on negotiation and supplier selection.

They manage variable production workflows while minimising freelance support. They still use freelance support for generating editorial content. Mojo, for example, has a core editorial team of 10, with two regular freelancers and a pool of 60-70 other writers they use.

Perhaps the most anticipated speaker of the day was Jane Bruton, editor-in-chief of  Grazia. She provided 11 reasons why Grazia has been so successful:

1. 10 hot news stories each week (mix of A list, high fashion + news)
2. Build a ‘no-brow’ team – the newsiest fashion tean + fashionable news team!
3. Create your own soap stories
4. Leave an emotional memory (people like us)
5. Nailing trends
6. Stimulate debate
7. Rev up the pace
8. Sound like a weekly
9. React to the times (recession response etc)
10. Have good covers and finally…
11. Be brave (cites recent Florence Welch augmented reality issue)

When asked about whether or not Grazia takes interns and work experience placement, she confirmed that they do, but advised hopeful applicants to not just approach the editor. Find the right person in charge of organising placements and make sure you do a stunning cover letter.

The final session was presented by Charlie Watson, head of digital content and Julian Linley, creative director. Watson outlined the four media trends for digital:

1. Google (friend or foe): an emerging tool. Google Trends allows you to compare key words/brand (inc. key word suggestion tool). A free tool that gives you an instant idea of what people associate your brand with.
2. Multimedia: they have defined 16 different types across their brands and markets which has an impact on the content distribution cycle
3. New revenue streams: revenue diversification – editorial and marketing have to increase their business and financial savvy. Watson has created the following graph to illustrate the different models. 
   
4. iPad – a mix of heaven + hell? Apple get 30% from app store and there are questions around the commercial reasons why they won’t support Flash.

Linley explained how most of their success online has been where they add value rather than replicating what’s in print and where they have a loyal readership. He cited the recent example from More magazine, where they asked their Facebook members to choose a cover star. They wanted Gaga. They got her. It was one of their bestselling issues ever.

PHP Freelancer

In my MA Online Journalism session this week I’ll be looking at mobile journalism. As part of that, below I’ve compiled 4 lists of things I think a mobile journalist needs: hardware, software, systems, and mindset. I’d welcome anything you can add to this.

In the spirit of mobile journalism, I will also be streamed the session live on Bambuser from 9am UK time on Thursday, for around 45 mins – if you can join us online and chip in, please do. I’ve embedded the player below (skip past it for the lists of things a mojo needs).

A note from the comments

Some comments rightfully point out that this list is potentially terrifying. I’m not suggesting you need all these things – my favourite response said that you needed a Posterous blog, a smartphone, and lots of batteries, and I’d go along with that. But here are a whole lot of potential things to explore when you get itchy…

Mobile journalism – hardware

• Smartphone with camera, video, audio, unlimited data plan
• Digital camcorder, e.g. Flip, Kodak Zi8
• Digital dictaphone or Zoom
• Portable mic
• Portable mini tripod?
• Batteries (including extra mobile phone battery)
• Extension lead – and chargers
• Portable chargers, e.g. solar
• Bluetooth keyboard
• Mifi and/or 3G dongle
• Eyefi card
• Wifi laptop or netbook with webcam

Mobile journalism – the software

• Apps for your phone and services you can email or text to. Good ones include…
• Shozu
• Spinvox – blog via voice
• iBlogger
• Audioboo
• Twitterfone
• Twitvid
• Twibble – GPS twitter updates
• Zyb – synchronise contacts and calendar
• Opera Mini; on iPhone use bookmarklets on Safari like ‘Read Later’, ‘Post with Tweetie’, ‘Save to Delicious’, ‘Share on Tumblr’
• Qik, Bambuser, 12seconds – streaming video
• Posterous – blog via email
• ZoneTag – geotag images
• JoikuSpot – create wifi hotspot from 3G phone
• Google Maps

Mobile journalism – the systems

• Email must be set up – more than one account as backup (Google Mail occasionally goes down)
• Useful phone no.s, e.g. Twitter, Twitterfone
• Useful emails, e.g. Twitpic, YouTube, Twittermail, Facebook, Posterous etc.
• Map of wifi hotspots
• Map of mobile and 3G coverage
• Blog via email or text – Postie plugin/Posterous/app/etc.
• Pulling RSS feeds from Twitter/Flickr/YouTube/Posterous/Tumblr/Google Docs
• Embedded players for livestreaming/liveblogging
• Geotagging information for mapping
• Mashups
• Preparation: web-based video/audio/image editors
• Collaboration – preparing the users, hashtags, tweeting, feedback

Mobile journalism – the mindset

• ‘Always-on’ approach – tweet on the go; share images; stream quick video. Think humour, art, quirky, as much as ‘news’. Prepare yourself and users for when you need it.
• Play with new mobile tools – follow TechCrunch etc.
• Try out mobile apps
• Find the stories that are not online
• Be part of a mobile community – follow people like @documentally @alisongow @ilicco @patphelan @moconews
• Be creative with mobile, not formulaic: the rules aren’t written yet

PHP Freelancer

Information is changing. The news industry was born in a time of information scarcity – and any understanding of the laws of supply and demand will tell you that that made information valuable.

But the past 30 years have seen that the erosion of that scarcity. Not only have the barriers to publishing,  broadcast and distribution been lowered by desktop publishing, satellite and digital technologies, and the web – but a booming PR industry has grown up to provide these news organisations with ‘cheap’ news.

Information is changing. Increasingly, we are not seeking information out – instead, it finds us. The scarcity is not in information, but in our time to wade through it, make meaning of it, and act on it.

Information is changing, and so journalists must too. In the previous parts of this series I’ve looked at how the news process could change in a multiplatform environment; how to involve the former audience; what can now happen after a story is published; journalists and readers as distributors; and new media business models. In this part I want to look at personnel – and how we might move from a generic, hierarchy of ‘reporters’, ‘subs’ and ‘editors’ to a more horizontal structure of roles based on information types.

Quality versus quantity

The strategy of many news organisations so far has been to simply require existing journalists and editors to do more – to make videos and podcasts, take photos and write blogs; to scour social networks and forums and video sites; to encourage user generated content and audience participation. Some have created new positions for community editors, Flash developers and even ‘Data Delivery Editors‘, but those positions are still relatively rare – and the skillsets to do those jobs, even rarer.

I’ve identified 6 journalist roles based on 3 core types of information that I see journalists dealing with in a networked environment. Perhaps you can suggest other roles – or other types of information: This is by no means a complete list.

The 3 types of information:

• Feeds (RSS) – not just from news sites and blogs, but anywhere. This post on Passive Aggressive Newsgathering has more.
• Social networks – online and offline. You might have called them ‘contacts’ before, but the online element puts things on a different scale and footing. And here’s why: contacts should now be as likely to seek you out, as vice versa.
• Databases - publicly available, accessed through processes such as Freedom of Information requests, and built in-house.

The 6 new journalist roles:

The Aggregator-Sub

In the traditional newsroom, the sub sat between the journalist’s content and the reader. In the 21st century newsroom, this is inverted. In a world of information overload, those subbing skills take on a new role to collect feeds together (aggregating), identify the useful and relevant stuff (filtering), publish it (bookmark-blogging), identify legal issues and verify where necessary.

In other words, what many bloggers have been doing for years in providing a ‘pre-filtered web’ by highlighting the good stuff in their RSS feeds – and for this reason, the Aggregator-Sub may be an existing blogger employed part time or paid a syndication fee (presumably with some training in areas of concern such as law and house style).

The Aggregator-Sub could also perform an important role in the newsroom, highlighting useful leads for other journalists to pursue, or building widgets that present selected aggregations of feeds. A good example is Jemima Kiss’s Newsbucket.

The Mobile Journalist (MoJo)

As news organisations cut the budgets and focused on efficiencies, reporters found it harder and harder to justify time outside the office, becoming increasingly reliant on public relations and official sources in their pursuit of regular, reliable copy.

Ironically, one of the most positive developments of networked technologies is to enable journalists to leave the office while still being connected via mobile phone and 3G/wifi-enabled laptop.

The MoJo, then, is permanently ‘on the road’, Twittering as they go, streaming live video from their phone and posting raw audio from the field. They have a brief to dig out the people and stories that are offline – and give them an online presence. Reuters have experimented with this, as have Gannett, and Trinity Mirror are investing in N96s and wifi laptops for their Midlands reporters. As Chuck Myron says:

“It’s a smarter way of doing business. I’m in the field where stories are happening instead of sitting at my desk, waiting for a phone to ring. I don’t miss important calls, either, since I’ve got a cell phone that’s always in my pocket and not ringing away at my desk while I’m out of earshot at the copier. Technology has made people more mobile, and journalism has to react.”

The Data Miner

The investigative journalist of the 21st century is someone who can work with databases and spreadsheets, picking out interesting patterns, pushing the powerful for data, and having an understanding of the vagaries of statistics. Adrian Holovaty’s ChicagoCrime.org is the godfather of the form, while the New York Times recently launched its own Visualisation Lab. More recent examples include Stephen Grey, Heather Brooke, Louise Acford, and Dominic Casciani.

For an idea of the job spec, here is what the Chicago Tribune was asking of applicants, and here is what the Roanoke Times expected the person to do. For examples of database journalism in action, see my Delicious bookmarks on the topic.

The Multimedia Producer

For all the quality versus quantity arguments, there is nothing inherently wrong with some journalists becoming jacks of all trades (after all, that’s what they have had to be editorially). An understanding of how a story or issue can be explored on a range of media makes a significant difference in how you come up with story ideas and gather information.

The Multimedia Producer has this understanding, and most likely technical skills across audio, video and image production, blogging, using databases, mapping and mashups. They may not do all the work themselves – for example, working with Flash developers on database-driven interactives, or asking a MoJo to get a particular piece of video – but they can see the possibilities.

Here’s a job description from the Roanoke Times (again); another at The Day; and here’s an interview with Regina McCombs of the Star Tribune about her Multimedia Producer role.

The Networked Specialist

This is the specialist reporter for the 21st century: now it’s not just about knowing their subject area, and the big names, but also being visibly networked in that environment, blogging, vlogging, bookmarking and commenting across their specialist parts of the blogosphere.

The successful blogs – Mashable, TechCrunch, Daily Kos, Boing Boing, TPM – are past masters at this: not just reporting on what’s happening, but engaging, passing on, and acting as a crossroads of traffic.

Community Editor

I said earlier that the online element puts community contacts on a different scale and footing. Sources become collaborators, co-writers and distributors, and the Community Editor’s role is to manage that, building communities, helping start or fuel conversations, preventing them turning nasty, supporting users, inviting guidance and help, and assisting them in certain projects.

There are plenty of journalists performing a community editor role, including Shane Richmond at the Telegraph, Joanna Geary at the Birmingham Post and Mail and Andrew Rogers, head of UGC at Reed Business Information. I’ve been conducting a series of interviews asking community editors for their top three lessons.

The obligatory conceptual diagram

As you can see, the different roles relate to expertise in different types of information. Databases are used particularly by the Data Miner and the Multimedia Producer; feeds by all except the Data Miner (it’s not essential to what they do but could be fed into it, for example a Google Spreadsheet has an RSS feed); and social networks are important in the work of the Community Editor, Networked Specialist and MoJo.

But as always, this is a work in progress. What unusual jobs have you come across as news orgs move to new media? How is information changing, and how does that affect journalists’ roles?

PHP Freelancer

Nokia have unveiled the N97 and Robert Scoble makes a compelling case for its superiority over the iPhone. Curiously, many of his points mirror ones I had prepared in a blog post comparing the iPhone to the N95, giving me the perfect excuse to finally publish it.

The iPhone is overrated. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Yes, it’s got great usability, but for a journalist it just doesn’t compete. And here are 10 reasons why:

1. A crappy camera. 2 megapixels is terrible – the N95 has 5. Not to mention auto-focus, flash, etc. etc.
2. No video camera. Inexcusable in the YouTube age. Yes there are workarounds but…
3. You have to jailbreak the iPhone to use streaming services like Qik. Installing Qik (or Bambuser, or Shozu) on the N95 is pretty straightforward. The fact you have to jailbreak the iPhone at all says a lot about Apple’s attitude. Nokia’s Symbian operating system is open (if not open source yet).
4. You can’t save webpages. Once again, you can on the N95.
5. No alternative browser. Opera Mini is great on the N95.
6. Battery power. You can at least have a spare battery for the N95.
7. No recording of audio. You can on an N95, and email it to Posterous for instant podcast.
8. Walled garden for apps. Apps on the N95? Get them anywhere, without the worry that Nokia will lock them out in the future.
9. Fiddly keyboard. Particularly difficult when there are…
10. No external keyboards. You can buy a number of cute bluetooth keyboards for the N95 which make it possible to type updates and blog posts very quickly.

PHP Freelancer

My live coverage of the Investigative Journalism Goes Global conference seemed to polarise opinion among the Twitterati. The Guardian’s Neil McIntosh and Charles Arthur, the BBC’s Bill Thompson, and Pete Ashton all unsubscribed from my updates – and those were just the ones I know about.

At the same time, however, a number of other people tweeted their thanks for the coverage, including Mark Comerford, Alison Gow, Nick Booth and Mark Hamilton.

Summed up in two tweets, the debate went something like this:

“nmcintosh: Sorry @paulbradshaw – Twitter isn’t the place for liveblogging. Am unsubbing.”

“gmarkham: @paulbradshaw I like it. easy enough to ignore those that don’t tweak something in the mental wiring.”

But was this “liveblogging”? For me, it wasn’t. If I was liveblogging, I’d do it on a blog. Perhaps you could call this livemicroblogging.

Why didn’t I liveblog? Well: been there, done that. Where would be the learning in it? I wanted to experiment with mobile phone journalism, and around the potential conversation that could be had (and that liveblogs don’t do as well) via Twitter. Here were some of the tweets that people sent:

“davidcushman: @paulbradshaw what social media does he use? [to keynote speaker John Pilger]

“davidcushman: @paulbradshaw investigative journalism is the only journalism – discuss?

“amonck: @paulbradshaw Little conference reading for you – sorry I can’t make it, shud be some City folk there http://tinyurl.com/69yc3l

“amandachapel: @paulbradshaw | De-professionalizing journalism doesn’t just reduce cost, it eliminates the genre.

“stevebridger: @paulbradshaw I spent 6 months on www.afterwilma.info – newspaper journos engaged with it. Would use Twitter now

“lalorek: @paulbradshaw Yes we do see ourselves as part of the fourth estate. Many of us believe in investigative journalism. Check www.ire.org

“lalorek: @paulbradshaw or some of the new models emerging like www.propublica.org or www.tpmmuckraker.com or www.muckety.com and many more.

Twitter lended the conversation an immediacy and access that liveblog comments simply don’t (although CoverItLive provides a halfway house).

The problem? Twitter wasn’t sending me @replies.

Well, at least it was working at all.

Things fall apart

I love things going wrong. It makes for some very useful lessons. Here are just some:

1. @replies were not reaching me – I did tweet this early on but overlooked the fact that not everyone will have seen that tweet. Solution 1: keep asking for direct messages; Solution 2: set up a twitter account taking the RSS feed of a Summize search for @paulbradshaw and feeding that through Twitterfeed. Then subscribe to text messages from that feed. Sadly Twitterfeed restricts you to a maximum of five tweets, only arriving every half hour, so there will be some limit/delay to the conversation.
2. The venue had no 3G connection or open wifi, which meant I had no internet or email access even from a mobile phone – so liveblogging was not technically possible anyway (it also meant my hopes of using livestreaming tools Qik or Bambuser bit the dust). Solution: arrange to text a blogger elsewhere.
3. Twitter overkill – yes, this must have been bloody annoying for some, and I should have set up yet another separate Twitter account for my live coverage, as Amy Gahran has (thanks Jay Rosen). But if you only have one mobile this runs the risk of you only getting messages directed at one of your Twitter accounts. In that instance, I could rely on my users to just switch me off for a while – perhaps even direct them to Twittersnooze, which will do it for you (thanks Dan Thornton and Jon Bounds).
4. I also should have hashtagged the tweets – at the time I decided not to because no one else was covering this, but for those coming into the coverage mid-stream, a tag like #IJGG would have sent a semantic signal that this was part of event coverage.

A final point: it’s well worth investing in a bluetooth keyboard for your mobile phone (no, I didn’t do all of this with my thumbs) – oh, and the ‘Cmd’ button is very useful indeed.

Let me know what you think about live coverage on Twitter – or take the online poll.

PHP Freelancer