We’ve had an ‘Applicant Day’ in my department today – and I discovered that some people studying a HND in Media were not covering new media. My reaction?

• Television production companies are now required to submit ’360-degree’ programme pitches that include a new media element. Often the budget for that is bigger than for the programme. Add to that red-button interactivity, streaming, mobile TV, and DVDs.
• Photographers routinely package their work on CDROM, or sell it online. A web portfolio is essential.
• Public Relations employees are required to understand viral ‘word of mouth’ technologies like social networking, blogging, promotional games, websites, and email.
• Radio has been going digital for some time now. Most radio stations are streamed online.
• The music industry has been transformed by the web. Some pointers for you: Napster; Kazaa; iPod; iTunes; mp3; MySpace; Last.fm; Radiohead.
• And there’s journalism… well. Just read every post, ever, on this blog. Ever.

What else did I say? Nag your tutors, and start swotting up in your spare time. Your college is doing you a disservice, but that shouldn’t stop you.

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Andy Dickinson is conducting a short survey to gather information about how video is produced in newspaper newsrooms and who does it. The results will be made available on his blog – www.andydickinson.net.

Sounds like a great idea – it’s a one-page job so quick to fill out. Fill out the survey here.

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I’m looking for help with the Online Journalism Blog. Things have exploded since the ‘News Diamond’ and the blog is at the point now where it needs to step up a gear. I’m looking for a volunteer worker to do a bit of research and information management, and possible interviews and articles, so that a) I can focus on the analysis side of things and do more postings of the ’21st century newsroom’ type; and b) we can maybe do some interesting experiments with online journalism that have been on the ‘To Do’ list for far too long. You don’t have to live in the same town, city, country or time zone as me. You just have to be interested in the news industry and the online environment, have an email address – and you’ve got to want to actually do the job.

This is probably a weekly thing — or an hour every other day, say — and it comes with no pay. There is no reason why you might want to do this, except perhaps as a work experience exercise or to put down on your CV or as a way to develop your contacts and knowledge. Or perhaps you have some ideas that the OJB will help you achieve.

I can promise that it’ll be interesting (or at least, it’s all about stuff that I find interesting anyway, so if you’re reading this, chances are that’d be true for you too).

As you might guess, this is part of an overall project to ‘build a team’, and if the past year is any guide, that may help open some doors for you.

I imagine this is going to suit someone young and enthusiastic with decent written communication skills, maybe tech skills, and a pre-existing interest in this blog. If you’re an academic, you might want to pass this on to your journalism students.

If there’s a reason you think you’d be right to do this, drop me an email: paul.bradshaw@bcu.ac.uk

PS: Idea and much of the text stolen shamelessly from my colleague Andrew Dubber. He knows what I’ve done and where I live.

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The Guardian are advertising for a Keyword Manager “to look after the labelling of our content online to ensure that it is consistent with the needs of the reader and the editorial values of the Guardian and Observer. The role requires attention to the demands both of a considerable content archive and of a fast-moving news operation, and involves work across media; from text to cartoons, video to podcasts. It would suit either a journalist with a particular interest in archiving, or someone with a background in information science who posesses a keen editorial sense.”

To quote William Gibson: “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”.

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A colleague of mine once wrote a hugely entertaining blog post entitled ‘How to go to uni‘. As the new term begins, here’s my supplement: How to be a journalism student. (Note: there is now a wiki if you want to add extra tips/corrections/clarifications). Also available in Polish.

1. Read the news. Amazingly, some journalism students don’t read newspapers. I don’t know why they want to write news, but chances are they won’t if they don’t read it. And yes, that means newspapers, in print or online. For the most part newspapers dictate the news agenda that broadcast news and magazines then follow. But yes, watch television news and listen to radio news as well, and read magazines. And do all of this often, and do it critically.
2. Forget you have an opinion. Do you think anyone cares what you think about the condition of trains? Or GM food? Or bullying? Unless you are writing an opinion column (which is unlikely) or a review, remain objective*. Think of yourself as a marriage counsellor: ask the questions and let your sources do the talking (and yes, objectivity is dead, but good journalism doesn’t go off on tangents or make unsupported claims).
3. Know the difference between news and features. News is new information. It is succinct and to the point – remember the inverted pyramid. Features typically come later, and tend to explore background/history, different angles, case studies/interviews, analysis, trends, and so on of a topical issue. If you’re asked to write a news story, do just that. Don’t write an essay.
4. Make contacts. Contacts are vital to your work as a journalist – not only should they be able to tip you off to what’s happening, they will also be a quick and reliable port of call when you need a quote or verification. Contacts are what get you the stories, and flesh them out. From a local vicar to the spokesperson for the Vintage Motorcycle Club, start adding them to a little black book (and spreadsheet), and start making phonecalls now: “Anything happening?”
5. Get a life. Journalists generally report about a particular area – politics, sport, the environment, science, health, education, communities, religion, technology, motoring, finance. If you haven’t picked an area, pick one, and start getting involved – join organisations, attend meetings, go to events, do things and talk to people. Stories don’t come with a convenient label: you need to be able to spot them – while experiences can make for great material.
6. Don’t sit around waiting for an email reply. People can ignore emails, and they generally do. A phonecall is much harder to ignore, and you’ll get more than a one-line reply. Learn to use the phone/mobile/Skype. In other words, be persistent.
7. Learn how to spell. Dubber makes this point about students generally, but for a journalist correct spelling and grammar says everything about your professionalism. Whether you intend to write for a textual medium or not a badly spelled CV or poorly constructed script will not get you that job. This is not about the pros and cons of good spelling, but simply that employers a) still think that it matters; and b) will use a range of criteria to filter out applications.
8. Be open to new experiences. So you’re interested in music. That’s nice, but if you think you’re going to land your first job on NME, you’re deluded. A journalist should be prepared to write about anything, and a good journalist should be able to do it with creativity and curiosity. One former colleague had jobs writing about technology, education, and cars before she landed her dream job on a women’s magazine – it’s par for the course. But it’s not a bad thing: it’s one of the best things about journalism! Don’t say you want to see the world but then complain when you have to go to Djibouti.
9. Read books. Another one from Dubber. Books give you two things: an understanding of the possibilities of language and storytelling; and an expansion of your knowledge of the world. Whether you’re reading an autobiography of Che Guevara or Day of The Triffids; a recent history of Africa or Tale of Two Cities; a popular science book or Hamlet, it makes you more interesting to potential employers; it gives you more ideas to play with; and it broadens your horizons. [see comments 15 and 17]
   Know what the rules are so you can break them. There is a laziness about a lot of professional journalism – the he said/she said piece; the ‘expert’ quote; overreliance on official sources; the ‘more research is needed’ exit line. You are a student of journalism, not a trainee. It is hoped you will question the profession, and improve it. Don’t take lists like this lying down, and question everything you read and hear.
10. Know what you want to get out of this – and chase it. A degree alone is not going to get you a job; your ability to write and research, your knowledge, and your ability to market yourself and network will be key. You must be motivated to study hard, and in order to be motivated, you must have a motivation, i.e. you must know what the reward is – exposing corruption? becoming editor of the Guardian? Sitting next to Paris Hilton? Then, you must be motivated to do more than study. Get work experience; start a fanzine, or a website, or a blog. Use Facebook to network. Go to events. Send off work. Pitch ideas to editors.

*Note: don’t mistake objectivity for presenting both sides equally – particularly where science is involved. Global warming, the MMR jab, and various other stories have heavy scientific consensus on one side, so don’t fall into the trap of presenting both arguments as if they have equal weight. See this article for more.

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This week’s Press Gazette contains an article by yours truly on ‘How a blog can put you on the road to success’. Click away for more. The original version below includes hyperlinks.

Whatever medium you want to work in as a journalist, a blog has become an essential tool in finding work. From building your portfolio to building your contacts; from raising your game to raising yourself above the competition, a blog can develop a number of key skills.

Those who don’t have a blog at all risk being left out of the game. As The Guardian’s head of editorial development Neil McIntosh recently wrote: “If you enter the jobs market without one, no matter how good your degree, you’re increasingly likely to lose out to people who better present all they can do, and have the experience of creating and curating their own site.”

Having a regularly updated blog demonstrates a number of things to a potential employer. Firstly, it proves your commitment: if you’re dedicated enough to write often, to get out there and find out what’s happening in your sector, you’re already one step ahead of other applicants.

Secondly, a well-maintained blog should prove that you have good knowledge in your particular area, and useful contacts. You should use your blog to seek out leads and publish good stories. Many local and specialist bloggers have better reputations than their print or broadcast counterparts because they have spent time cultivating a good range of sources, and because they read and report on everything that happens in their sector.

But commitment and contacts are not enough on their own to land you your ideal journalism job. Skill is vital – and this is where a blog can make a crucial difference.

Writing regularly for a blog helps you hone and improve your journalistic style. It provides a space for you to develop your ‘voice’ that rewriting press releases, for instance, won’t. The competition is fierce: you must be faster than other bloggers when you have a lead, or have better informed analysis when you don’t; you must have great sources, and a strong relationship with your readers (which is often the same thing); and you must write compellingly, and often.

Note that I’m talking journalistic style here, not ‘diary style’. A journalist’s blog should not be ‘What I did on my summer holidays’: posting about how drunk you were or your embarrassing personal habits is not the way to impress potential employers.

A good journalist’s blog should appeal to a readership beyond your friends, and have a clear focus. Typical examples include the niche blog (for instance a local music blog), the reflective blog (details that didn’t make it into your print or broadcast stories), and the running story (e.g. trying a recipe for every vegetable from A to Z). If you want to cover more than one niche, or write more than one type, create more than one blog.

Whether or not anyone reads your blog is not the primary goal, but if you do it well, and if you do it often – and if you do it well, and often, for long enough – you can build a reputation, and surprising things can happen: freelance work can come to you; you can be contacted by a journalist looking for ‘expert’ opinion; or, best of all, you’ll be at that interview, and the editor turns to you and says: “I’ve read your blog. It’s very good.”

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NOTE: See updates at the end

For many years the Association for Journalism Education (AJE) has debated whether its institutions should boycott the NCTJ. And for many years the NCTJ has all but ignored it. At this year’s AJE AGM the issue cropped up once again.

The complaints are copious, and I won’t list them all here, but revolve around some core issues:

• an increasing lack of relevance of the NCTJ training to the modern news industry;
• lack of academic rigour;
• and a lack of representation on the NCTJ board of the higher education sector, the NCTJ’s biggest customer.

Earlier this year AJE Chairman Chris Frost listed these complaints in a lengthy letter to the NCTJ. The reply disconcertingly resembled the automatically generated missives you get when you complain to a pub chain, largely ignoring the issues Chris raised.

The problem for journalism departments in the AJE is that NCTJ accreditation is not about education, but marketing. And as the market for journalism courses expands, the NCTJ logo becomes an important way to quickly establish new courses and differentiate older courses from the increasing competition. Courses become afraid to break away for fear of the impact on applications, and the result is that the NCTJ exercises power without responsibility.

The NCTJ is a private and commercial organisation. Its latest move – to establish a ‘gold standard’ accreditation for courses with a 60% pass rate – raised hackles both for its stench of league tables, and for the possibility that it will become yet another way of raising money, like the ‘awards ceremonies’ which require you to shell out for your gold statuette.

Colleagues on recently NCTJ accredited courses tell me that their contacts with the NCTJ revolve entirely around gathering money. Many have had to run the NCTJ courses in parallel with a full degree course, as they are unable to justify how learning shorthand is equivalent to first year degree study. The journalism degree I teach on, at UCE, decided not to accredit many years ago in large part because of this problem. We arrange shorthand courses for journalism students separately rather than incorporating it formally, and not having to accredit means we were flexible enough to offer subjects (including the critical analysis integral to any degree level study) that the NCTJ, with its particularly local, print ideas of journalism training, balks at. But we’re lucky: we’ve been established long enough to build a reputation and healthy application numbers.

The need for an NCTJ ‘badge’ seems to be something of a self-perpetuating myth: regional press editors continue to say that they require it, despite evidence that half of the new journalists they take on don’t have NCTJ training. Students and parents turn up at open days asking about it, thinking the NCTJ is a pass into journalism. Who tells them this? Careers advisers?

Magazines, the national press, broadcasting and online news operations generally couldn’t give a stuff about NCTJ. In conversation, editors on local newspapers are increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of NCTJ-trained applicants, while at the same time becoming more interested in applicants with video and online skills.

Meanwhile, the lack of career structure in local papers means we need to be training our students for the second, fifth and tenth years of their careers, when (unless things change) they have left their local reporting days behind and where flexibility, creativity, entrepreneurial ability and intellectual rigour – not just shorthand or local government – will have proved central to career progression.

If the NCTJ continue to refuse to listen to – or represent – their customers, if they continue developing at a pace that makes glaciers look nimble, and if they continue to put income before education, they may find universities’ patience runs out very soon indeed.

UPDATE (Sep 21 07): The Press Gazette editor’s blog contains some interesting comments about the NCTJ:

“Having recently finished an NCTJ course in newspaper journalism, I wasn’t overly-impressed. Whilst the course was fast-track, it mostly consisted of going over past exams papers – something which I could have done in my own time and saved myself the £1000+ fee. Shorthand was the only real skill that was passed on. Thirteen people failed the news writing exam despite good portfolio grades (surely some kind of scandal?) Resits cost £30 a piece and the NCTJ refuse to let you see where you lost marks unless you furnish them with further cash for the privilege. There needs to be a thorough investigation into whether the NCTJ is offering value for money to journalism students.”

UPDATE (Sep 2010): Strathclyde’s withdrawal from NCTJ accreditation is covered well here and in the comments, where the university’s own Brian McNair says:

“The problem with research-led universities such as Strathclyde is that they cannot incorporate the time-intensive, highly vocational, externally-written and examined NCTJ curriculum within their undergrad programmes, which is why so many have given up the attempt, or never bothered in the first place.

“And we did try at Strathclyde, believe me. I myself taught Public Affairs in my first year at the university, and managed to record a 100% pass rate for my students. This was not deemed good enough by the NCTJ when they came to ‘inspect’ us, because it had been done in less than their prescribed number of contact hours. Had they been more flexible in their approach to our teaching methods, maybe we would still be in the scheme.”

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On Thursday I’ll be presenting my paper on wiki journalism at the Future of Newspapers conference in Cardiff. As previously reported, the full paper is available as a wiki online for anyone to add to or edit. You can also download a PDF of the ‘official’ version.

Based on a review of a number of case studies, and some literature on wikis, the paper proposes a taxonomy of wiki journalism, and outlines the opportunities and weaknesses of the form. The following is the edited highlights:

A taxonomy of wiki journalism

There are key qualities that must be identified when examining the use of wikis in journalism:

• Whether the topic is defined by an editor, or a user
• Whether the first draft is produced by a journalist paid to do so, or by a user
• Whether the material could have been produced without using wiki technology
• Whether the timescale is finite (‘frozen’ for print publication), or infinite (ongoing)
• Whether the wiki draft is professionally edited further for ‘final’ publication (in contrast to those which are edited solely by users)

Based on variations in the above, we can identify five broad types of wiki journalism:

• ‘Second draft’ wikis: a ‘second stage’ piece of journalism, during which readers can edit an article produced in-house (Wired article, Esquire, LA Times wikitorial)
• Crowdsourcing wiki: a means of covering material which could not have been produced in-house (probably for logistical reasons), but which becomes possible through wiki technology (San Diego Tribune’s AmpliPedia; Wired How To Wiki)
• Supplementary wiki: a supplement to a piece of original journalism, an ‘add-on’: “A tab to a story that says: Create a wiki for related stories” (Francisco, 2006) (CNET’s India Tech Wiki; parts of the Wired How To Wiki)
• Open wiki: an open space, whose subject matter is decided by the user, and where material may be produced that would not otherwise have been commissioned (Wikinews)
• Logistical wiki: a wiki limited to in-house contributors which enables multiple authorship, and may also facilitate transparency, and/or an ongoing nature (Dewey Answers; N&Opedia)

This taxonomy can be mapped out as follows:

This taxonomy is not definitive, but indicative: it is possible, for example, to have a second-draft wiki that was ongoing (infinite), but the suggestion is that this would be atypical. The taxonomy aims to provide a conceptual framework through which to analyse examples of wiki journalism. It highlights the range of types of wiki journalism in their relation to ‘pure’ wiki-ness: Open wiki journalism, for example, has all the qualities that could be argued are inherent in the form; whereas Second-Draft wiki journalism has none. The taxonomy also highlights the closeness of certain types of wiki journalism: Second-Draft and Crowdsourcing types, for instance, are almost identical save for the fact that a piece of Second-Draft wiki journalism does not need the audience in the same way.

Strengths of wiki journalism

Wikis allow news operations to effectively cover issues on which there is a range of information so broad that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to summarise effectively in one article, or by one journalist, alone. Examples might include local transport problems, experiences of a large event such as a music festival or protest march, guides to local restaurants or shops, or advice.

Jay Rosen (2006) explains it as follows:

“A professional newsroom can’t easily do this kind of reporting; it’s a closed system. Because only the employees operate in it, there can be reliable controls. That’s the system’s strength. The weakness is the organization knows only what its own people know. Which wasn’t much of a weakness until the Internet made it possible for the people formerly known as the audience to realize their informational strengths.”

Internally, wikis also allow news operations to coordinate and manage a complex story which involves a number of contributors. News organisations interested in transparency might also publish the wiki ‘live’ as it develops, so readers can view as it develops, and look at previous versions, while the discussion space which accompanies each entry also has the potential to create a productive dialogue with users.

Wikis offer a way for news websites to increase their reach, while also increasing the time that users spend on their website, a key factor in attracting advertisers: user generated content has proved hugely successful in attracting readers, accounting for 60% of pageviews on some websites. When successful, a wiki can engender community. And a useful side-effect of community for a news organisation is reader loyalty.

Economically, wikis appear to offer the attractions of free “user generated” content, and, in the case of published articles, free subediting. But these attractions are misleading: the disadvantages of the form mean costs elsewhere, in maintenance and monitoring. Talking about wiki operations in general, Andrew Frank, a research director at technology consulting firm the Gartner Group, is quoted as suggesting (PDF) ”The assertion that these sites are cheap to run is questionable. For example, to sell a substantial amount of advertising, wiki sites might have to filter for objectionable content”. Jeff Howe also argues “Attempting to use crowdsourcing simply as a cost-saving measure [doesn’t work]. Communities must be cultivated, respected and deftly managed if they are to come together to create economic value. This takes talented staff, and a set of skills not taught in journalism or business schools.”

Weaknesses of wiki journalism

Shane Richmond identifies two obstacles that could slow down the adoption of wikis: inaccuracy and vandalism, “Particularly in the UK, where one libellous remark could lead to the publisher of the wiki being sued, rather than the author of the libel. Meanwhile, the question of authority is the biggest obstacle to acceptance by a mainstream audience.”

Vandalism, a problem known as ”trolling”, is a recurring issue in wiki technology. Wikis such as Wikipedia have generally taken a “soft security” approach, making damage easy to undo rather than attempting to prevent its occurence in the first place:

“When vandals learn than someone will repair their damage within minutes, and therefore prevent the damage from being visible to the world, the bad guys tend to give up and move along to more vulnerable places.” (Gillmor, 2004: 149)

The author of the Wired experiment also feels there is a need for an editorial presence, but for narrative reasons: “in storytelling, there’s still a place for a mediator who knows when to subsume a detail for the sake of the story, and is accustomed to balancing the competing claims and interests of companies and people represented in a story.”

A further complication for news organisations used to the deadlines and production cycles of print and broadcast is the long timescales involved in building a successful wiki and the communities needed to maintain it. Wikinews contributor Erik Moll notes the reduced incentive for readers to contribute to articles with a short shelf life: “Wikinews articles are short-lived, so there is a reduced feeling of contributing to a knowledge base that will last a lifetime”

Issues around authorship and remuneration also need addressing, although models do exist, including the Creative Commons initiative, and the system used by OhMyNews, which shares copyright and insists contributors disclose bank account details for payment.

Finally, one of the biggest disadvantages may be readers’ lack of awareness of what a wiki even is: only 2% of Internet users even know what a wiki is, although similar statistics were once applicable to blogs.

Conclusions

So far the most highly publicised experiments with the form (the ‘Wikitorial’; Wired’s wiki article; the Esquire Wikipedia article) have been of the ‘Second draft’ variety, relinquishing the least amount of control over content, and incorporating wiki technology into pre-existing work processes: the subject of the article is still chosen by editors, the first draft is written by a journalist, and only then does the wiki community take control, taking a role as a second journalist/editor in the process.

In these cases the article has also been ‘frozen’ at some point for publication, often only days after first being published online, something which could be seen as ‘unnatural’ for a wiki. Furthermore, freezing wikis reduces the opportunity to allow vandalism to be cleaned up over time, underexploits the ability to look at various ‘edits’ of an article/topic/event as it develops over a long period of time, and removes the opportunity to build an online community.

In contrast, outside of traditional news operations, Wikinews and Wikipedia have adopted an ‘Open’ model, relinquishing almost all control, with huge success for Wikipedia, but less for Wikinews, perhaps because of the inclusion of ‘short-shelf-life’ material.

Timescale appears to be a key variable in the success of wiki journalism as, between these two types on the wiki journalism continuum, the most successful models of wiki journalism have involved subject matter with a long shelf life, that builds, and taps into, a community that is wiki-literate and willing to contribute.

Community

This community, and the management of community, are crucial to the shape that wiki journalism takes. But creating a community is difficult and, once created, that community may not act in ways the wiki owner wants them to:

“Real community is a self-creating thing, with some magic spark, easy to recognize after the fact but impossible to produce on demand, that draws people together. Once those people have formed a community, however, they will act in the interests of the community, even if those aren’t your interests. You need to be prepared for this. [T]hey may well treat you, the owner of the site, as an external perturbation. Another surprise is that they will treat growth as a perturbation as well, and they will spontaneously erect barriers to that growth if they feel threatened by it.[...] Many of the expectations you make about the size, composition, and behavior of audiences when you are in a broadcast mode are actually damaging to community growth. To create an environment conducive to real community, you will have to operate more like a gardener than an architect.” (Shirky, 2002)

But investment made in building this community can produce significant results. Scott B. Anderson, director of shared content for the Tribune Co.’s interactive unit, says “This is a way that a newspaper can let its audience take part in its core mission: investigation”, and there are increasing examples of ‘crowdsourcing’ methods, of which wikis are just one, being used to build journalism projects that would otherwise not have taken place.

This inevitably raises issues of access, and the proportion and type of user who will contribute to a wiki. Nielsen’s research on participation inequality found a ’90-9-1′ rule whereby 90% of users are “lurkers” who do not contribute, 9% “contribute a little”, and 1% account for “almost all the action”, while McCawley (2007) notes: “there were more major contributors to the 1911 Britannica than there are to Wikipedia and the front page of Digg is controlled by fewer people than the front page of the New York Times.”

But Alex Bruns also argues that “In itself this does not undermine the project of open news any more than the fact that not everyone is a software programmer undermines the project of open source: even those who do not engage with the deliberations taking place within open news can still benefit from their outcomes as they emerge.” (2005: 74), while Pavlik asks: “Is the knowledge gap reason enough to resist the development and growth of online journalism? Definitely not. Although some segments of society are likely to benefit more rapidly than others, all groups will eventually gain. Moreover, even the classical media are subject to the same knowledge-gap effect [and] if anything, new media present a possible reversal of the knowledge gap by eliminating the barriers to entry into the journalism marketplace.” (2001: 144)

It could also be argued that the ’90% lurkers’ statistic is misleading, focused as it is on any one site, where most people are going to be ‘passing through’. In contrast, when the focus moves to individual people, the figures change dramatically: a Pew study in 2003 found that 44% of adult American internet users had contributed content online (PDF). Even with 10% of users contributing, the case can be made that a local newspaper with 40,000 print readers would not have previously expected to tap into an army of around 4,000 contributors.

Even so, the skills to manage a community and give a ‘voice to the voiceless’ become important, and to that end an increasing number of news organisations are creating ‘Community Editor’ roles. The case of the BBC’s ‘user generated content’ unit is worth noting here: the team of over two dozen staff not only manages incoming contributions, but also looks to balance proactive voices by physically seeking out others who may not have access to communication technologies. 

Blogs 2.0

The Telegraph are planning an internal wiki as a precursor to public experiments with the technology. The BBC has been using wikis internally for some time, particularly for product development and distributed team working within BBC Future Media & Technology, while a straw poll of senior media professionals shows enthusiasm about the potential of the technology in organisations including Channel 4, BSKYB, and FT.com.

Even of those opposed to, or unaware of, the use of wikis in journalism, Gahran notes that “Most [had] used, shared documents via services such as Google Docs or Zoho [...] Once they get used to the idea of collaborating on a document (any document, really) via the Web, wikis start to look more appealing and make more sense.”

A number of projects in 2007 indicate that we may be seeing a new stage in the evolution of wiki journalism. In terms of Rushkoff’s (PDF) three stages of development in the growth of participatory media - deconstruction of content, demystification of technology and finally do-it-yourself or participatory authorship - it could be suggested that some publications, in particular the San Diego Tribune AmpliPedia and Wired’s How-To Wiki, are emerging from the first stage of deconstruction of content and that, if wiki journalism is to become part of the online journalist’s toolbox, the next challenge is further demystification of wiki technology, with time and money invested in facilitating participation.

Wikis are blogs 2.0: like blogs, they provide an arena for readers to critique and correct, to self-publish, and to form communities. But while they share many characteristics with blogs and older technologies such as discussion forums, the significance of wikis lies in the way they move away from the linear call-response communication models that those technologies reflected. If blogs are a distributed discussion (PDF), then wikis offer a single place for that discussion to reach (ongoing) concensus.

The range of voices editing each other tends to result in a fact-based piece of work that represents the ‘Neutral Point Of View’ (NPOV) formalised by Wikipedia, and which, potentially, avoids some of the biases inherent in individual, commercial journalism. The networked nature of wiki technology allows for genuine collaboration and community, as well as holding enormous potential for transparency and a more impartial concensus. Whether this potential is realised depends on the investment and understanding that is brought to any wiki project.

In other words, wiki journalism will only flourish if as much time and care is invested in wikis as are invested in traditional journalism. Weaknesses such as vandalism and inaccuracy can be addressed if staff are assigned to monitor and facilitate the wiki – to prevent legal issues, to attract A-List contributors (and monitors), and build genuine online communities. This will involve a new skills set for those involved, and it will involve a fresh look at copyright, legal and ethical issues. Hardest of all, it will involve relinquishing control over what has traditionally been a news organisation’s biggest asset - content – in order to rebuild another that has recently been neglected: the community that may be key to journalism’s future both editorially and economically.

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Jobseeking journalists can add another bookmark to their browser from September 12, when Press Gazette relaunch es Jobs4Journalists.co.uk. The new site promises tailored job alerts and CV registration.

Other sites worth bookmarking include Journalism.co.uk, the Guardian Jobs Media section and Gorkana alerts. If you know of any others (particularly those for online journalists), please post a comment.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kerry for adding Source That Job

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In the second of a series of posts for the Online Journalism Blog, Student Online Journalist of the Year Jack Templeton writes about how important blogging has been to his career.

The News & Star made a plea on their website for bloggers in early 2005 while I was part way through my journalism degree.

It’s regarded as something of a cardinal sin but my blog largely comprised of neurotic, self-indulgent anecdotes that as a whole presented itself as yet another tedious journalist with aspirations of becoming a comedian.

While it wasn’t until later I fully appreciated the benefits of blogging in terms of posting my strongest work, unpublished interviews and reviews of gigs with live audio recordings, I think there’s still a lot that can be learnt in writing a ‘diary’ type blog. In my case, it helped me develop style and an ability to make the inane and dull come alive.

Around two months into writing it, I was invited into the office by deputy editor [now head of digital content development] Nick Turner who commented on how much he enjoyed the blog and as such wanted to offer me a summer contract to work on a range of website projects.

I find it really quite incredible that this one small blog was directly responsible for the launch of my career and particularly that I was doing it all while at university.

It should be such standard procedure for any young journalist to maintain a blog of published work that it almost feels embarrassing to describe what mine was.

When I signed up for my degree there was no online journalism module, but by the time I graduated it had fast developed into a huge selling point of the course. Entire lectures were now being taught to years below on the subject of blogging.

So, things are beginning to get interesting now as you’re starting to get more and more graduates at the start of their careers who understand the purpose of blogging, networking and online journalism.

I was told it a lot by journalists I met over the years, but never believed, exactly how much luck can form your career.

I was lucky that I quietly sneaked in and expressed an interest in online journalism and blogging while it was still widely regarded as something of a lesser product.

I was lucky that there was little to no competition from my fellow students in making the most of all these new opportunities.

And, most of all, I was lucky that I established the right kind of contacts at a time before the role and significance of online journalism was truly at the forefront of the industry agenda.

It’s to the credit of regional newspapers like the News & Star that they had the foresight to recognise exactly how drastic that change would be, even before Rupert Murdoch’s industry-awakening 2005 speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Their willingness through recent years to push blogging, RSS feeds, networking and other now common tools has always been borne from passion and not necessity, which I believe is the only attitude you can have.

This was one of the reasons why I chose to stay in Carlisle, ahead of London which is where my next ambition lies.

While I have been pleasantly surprised at the willingness shown towards me by journalists in something of a new role for the paper, I have been less surprised at the lack of enthusiasm for them to join me. Though, having said that, it would be unreasonable to expect them to when I haven’t quite found my feet with the role myself yet. While all in good humour, the general attitude in the newsroom towards blogging is one of ridicule, though, perhaps encouragingly, certain stories are being recognised – and unprompted by myself – to having blogging potential.

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