Both the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror today – among with several others in the US (including the New York Post, which credits the image to AP) and other countries – published an image purporting to be that of the dead Osama Bin Laden.

It clearly wasn’t.

Any journalist with a drop of cynicism would have questioned the source of the images – even if they did appear on Pakistan television.

It certainly passed the ‘Too good to be true’ test.

Instead, it was users of Reddit and Twitter who first highlighted the dodgy provenance of the image, and the image it was probably based on. Knight News and MSNBC’s Photo blog‘s followed soon after.

It took me all of 10 seconds to verify that it is a fake – by using TinEye to find other instances of the image, I found this example from last April.

But instead of owning up that their image was a fake, both The Daily Mail and Mirror appear to have simply removed the image from their site, leaving that image to circulate amongst their users. Ego, pure and simple.

PS: More on verifying images and other hoax material here.

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It’s barely 24 hours since the Cooks Source/Judith Griggs saga blew up, but so much has happened in that time that I thought it worth reflecting on how other publishers might handle a similar situation.

Although it’s an extreme example, the story has particular relevance to those publications that rely on Facebook or another web presence to publish material online and communicate with readers, and might at some point face a backlash on that platform.

In the case of Cooks Source, their Facebook page went from 100 ‘likes’ to over 3,000, as people ‘liked’ the page in order to post a critical comment (given the huge numbers of comments it’s fair to say there were many more people who un-’liked’ the page as soon as their comment was posted). The first question that many publishers looking at this might ask is defensive:

Should you have a Facebook page at all?

It would be easy to take the Cooks Source case as an indication that you shouldn’t have a Facebook page at all – on the basis that it might become hijacked by your critics or enemies. Or that if you do create a page you should do so in a way that does not allow postings to the wall.

The problem with this approach is that it misunderstands the fundamental shift in power between publisher and reader. Just as Monica Gaudio was able to tell the world about Judith’s cavalier attitude to copyright, not having a Facebook page (or blog, etc.) for your publication doesn’t prevent one existing at all.

In fact, if you don’t set up a space where your readers can communicate with you and each other, it’s likely that they’ll set one up themselves – and that introduces further problems.

If you don’t have a presence online, someone else will create a fake one to attack you with

After people heard about the Cooks Source story, it wasn’t long before some took the opportunity to set up fake Twitter accounts and a Facebook user account in Judith’s name. (UPDATE: Someone has registered JudithGriggs.com and pointed it at the Wikipedia entry for ‘public domain’, while a further Cooks Source Facebook page has been set up claiming that the original was “hacked”)

These were used in various ways: to make information available (the Twitter account biography featured Judith’s phone number and email); to satirise Judith’s actions through mock-updates; and to tease easily-annoyed Facebook posters into angry responses.

Some people’s responses on Facebook to the ‘fake’ Judith suggested they did not realise that she was not the real thing, which leads to the next point.

A passive presence isn’t enough – be active

Judith obviously did have a Facebook account, but it was her slowness to respond to the critics that allowed others to impersonate her.

Indeed, it was several hours before Judith Griggs made any response on the Facebook page, and when she did (assuming it is genuine – see comments below) it was through the page’s welcoming message – in other words, it was a broadcast.

This might be understandable given the unmanageable volume of comments that had been posted by this time – but her message was also therefore easily missed in the depths of the conversation, and it meant that the ‘fake’ Judith was able to continue to impersonate her in responses to those messages.

One way to focus her actions in a meaningful way might have been to do a ‘Find’ on “Griggs” and respond there to clarify that this person was an imposter.

Instead, by being passive Judith created a vacuum. The activity that filled that vacuum led in all directions, including investigating the magazine more broadly and contacting advertisers and stockists.

Climb down quickly and unreservedly

While being passive can create a vacuum, being active can – if not done in a considered way – also simply add fuel to the fire.

The message that Judith eventually posted did just that. “I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently [sic] it wasnt enough for her,” she wrote, before saying “You did find a way to get your “pound of flesh…”".

This “blaming the victim”, as one wall poster described it, compounded the situation and merely confirmed Judith’s misunderstanding of the anger directed at her.

An apology clearly wasn’t what people wanted – or at least, not this sort of reserved apology.

A quicker, fuller response that demonstrated an understanding of her community would have made an enormous difference in channeling the energy that people poured into what became an increasingly aggressive campaign.

UPDATE (Nov 9): As of a few hours ago Cooks Source appear to have published an official statement which includes a more fullsome apology. The statement doesn’t help, however, partly because it doesn’t address the key issues raised by critics about where it gets content and images from, partly because its sense of priorities doesn’t match those of its audience (the apology comes quite late in the statement), and partly because it is internally inconsistent. Commenters on the Facebook page and blogs have already picked these apart.

There’s also a wonderful ‘corrected’ version of the statement which does an impeccable job of illustrating how they should have phrased it.

Engage with criticism elsewhere

The Cooks Source Facebook page wasn’t the only place where people were gathering to criticise and investigate the magazine. On Reddit hundreds of users collaborated to find other breaches of copyright, put up contact details for the copyright holders, and list advertisers that people could contact. Someone also created a Wikipedia entry to document Griggs’ instant notoriety.

Even if Judith had shut down the Facebook page (not a good idea – it would have merely added further fuel to the fire), the discussion – which had now become a campaign and investigation – was taking place elsewhere. Engaging in that in a positive way might have helped.

A magazine is not just content

One of the key principles demonstrated by the whole affair is that magazines are about much more than just the content inside, but about the community around it, and their values. This is what advertisers are buying into. When I asked one of Cooks Source’s advertisers why they decided to withdraw their support, this is what they said:

“I would estimate that between the emails, [Facebook] messages, calls, and people following us on Twitter, we’ve been contacted by more than 100 people since I first heard of this about 5 hours ago. That doesn’t include many many people who commented on fb to our posts stating that we had requested to pull our ads from the publication. We are just simply trying to run our small business, which by most standards is still in its infancy, and being associated with publications like this that don’t respect its readers (who are all our potential customers) is unacceptable to us in light of their practices. What angers me even more is the fact that it is being made light if by the Editor herself. It is disrupting our business and linking us to something we do not support.”

Postscript: How it unfolded, piece by piece

Kathy E Gill has a wonderfully detailed timeline of how the story broke and developed which offers further lessons in how a situation like this develops.

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UPDATE 7: The official Cooks Source webpage now features a rather confusing statement on the saga, apologising to Monica Gaudio and saying they have made the donation asked for. The page claims that their Facebook page was “cancelled” and “since hacked”. It’s not clear what they mean by these terms as the original Facebook page is still up and, clearly, could not be hacked if it had been “cancelled”. They may be referring to the duplicate Facebook page which also claims (falsely) the original was “hacked”. In addition the statement says they have “cancelled” their website – but as the statement is published on their website it may be that by “cancelled” they mean all previous content has been removed. This discussion thread picks out further inconsistencies and omissions.

UPDATE 5: The magazine’s Facebook page has now been updated with a message from editor Judith saying she “did apologise” but “apparently it wasn’t enough for her”, shown below:

UPDATE 2: Reddit users have been digging further into the magazine’s use of copyrighted content. They’ve also identified a planned sister magazine, whose Facebook page has also been the recipient of a few comments.

UPDATE 6: Edward Champion has chased down the copyright holders of both text and images found in Cooks Source which appear to have been used without permission.

UPDATE 4: A list of mainstream media reports on the story is also being maintained on the magazine’s Facebook page.

***ORIGINAL BLOG POST STARTS HERE***

For much of today people have been tweeting and blogging about the magazine editor with 30 years’ experience demonstrating a by now familiar misunderstanding of copyright law and the ‘public domain’.

To the writer whose material they used without permission she apparently responded that “the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it!”

What makes this of particular interest is how the affair has blown up not just across Twitter and Reddit but on the magazine’s own Facebook page, demonstrating how this sort of mistake can impact very directly on your own readers – and stockists and advertisers:

Meanwhile, others were suggesting investigating the magazine further:

It all adds up to a perfect lesson for magazine editors – not just in copyright, but in PR and community management.

UPDATE 1: It seems that users are going through the latest issue and suggesting where the content may have been taken from.

UPDATE 3 On a separate topics page on the Facebook page the details are being collated.

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Telegraph.co.uk gets an amazing 8% of its visitors from social sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Stumbleupon, Julian Sambles, Head of Audience Development, has revealed.

The figure explains how the Telegraph is now the most popular UK newspaper site.

75,000 visitors a day

The Telegraph had about 28 million unique visitors in March, which means social sites are sending it almost 75,000 unique visitors a day.

Search engines are responsible for about a third of the Telegraph’s traffic Julian also revealed – or about 300,000 unique visitors a day.

This means the Telegraph gets 1 social visitor for every 4 search ones – an astonishingly high ratio.

You can read more of what Julian said about the Telegraph’s social media strategy here. The statistics were originally given for an article on social sites on FUMSI.

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In the first part of my model for the 21st century newsroom I looked at how a story might move through a number of stages from initial alert through to customisation. In part two I want to look at sourcing stories, and the role of journalism in a new media world. This post is also available in Russian.

The last century has seen three important changes for the news industry. It has moved…

• from a world of information scarcity to information overload,
• from a world where commercial and government bodies needed the news industry to disseminate information, to one where they can disseminate information themselves.
• from a world where members of the public needed the news industry for information, to one where they can access – and produce – it themselves

In this environment the professional journalist can no longer justify a role simply processing content from source to consumer.

Instead, the modern journalist’s role needs to move above the content.

What does this mean? It means two things:

• Readers can access commercial and official sources online. Some journalists, then, need to collate , synthesise and verify reaction from the blogosphere and other sources. They need to interrogate sources more, to challenge assertions more, and to investigate stories that are going unreported.
• Readers can produce opinion, analysis and reporting online. Some journalists, then, need to develop a community management role, to manage content – to bring together bloggers and sources, to set up aggregation, submission and collaboration systems, and to crowdsource stories that would otherwise be impossible to cover.

A large part of both involves what I would call distributed journalism.

Distributed journalism

Distributed journalism means letting go of one asset – content – to build another: community. It means cultivating contacts, not just a contacts book. It means understanding communities, and sometimes being led by them. And it means creating tools and systems as often as creating stories.

Here’s the graphic – note that it is not top-down or hierarchical:

The distributed journalist uses a number of technologies to manage different ‘types’ of contributors. For the ‘brain’, the ‘voice’ and the ‘ear’ tools are central to monitoring and identifying the best ones; for the accidental journalist, the ‘value adder’, the technician and the crowd, systems are more important.

Tool-monitored contributors

• The brain: journalists already use experts extensively. Traditionally these have been accessed through professional bodies and ‘ivory tower’ academic institutions. But this often means these sources are part of a narrow, political elite, which can have vested interests. New media forms allow people outside of those circles to publish – and develop – their own expertise, and develop their own reputations based on that. In this space, an ‘expert’ is not always officially denoted as such by an institution or organisation, but may demonstrate expertise through hands-on experience or through well supported arguments. The distributed journalist monitors those experts, subscribes to their RSS feeds, quotes when relevant and commissions when they need analysis. There is also an argument for leading by example: a distributed journalist who blogs is demonstrating they want to be part of the conversation, while employing an ‘enthusiast-in-chief’ who brings a reputation with them to lead a UGC site is a proven way to attract contributors.
• The voice: New media forms allow anyone to publish their opinion, which stands or falls by its own qualities. Separate to the expert, the voice writes well, compellingly, often wittily or in an entertaining fashion, whether or not they have expertise or personal experience – much as the traditional columnist does. Or they produce compelling imagery, video or audio. The distributed journalist identifies the blogger with a voice, brings them into the news organisation when they can, and links to them when they cannot. There is also a strong argument here for integration with other services – if you can allow users to tick a box that publishes their material to Flickr or add their RSS feed to your system, etc. then you are saving them time and effort, and showing you’re not just stealing their content.
• The ear: someone, somewhere, knows what’s going on in a particular community of space or interest. They may filter that to their blog, or Twitter account, or mailing list – or they may simply note what they see in a social bookmarking account. The distributed journalist subscribes to the RSS feeds or mailing list, becomes ‘Facebook friends’, and supports and encourages this filtering by linking and contributing when they can.
• And don’t forget the silent population: not everyone has internet access; not everyone has time to do these things. The distributed journalist must make an effort to give a voice to those people too. Partnering with groups who are in contact with those people is one good idea.

System-facilitated contributors

• The accidental journalist: this is the person who stumbles upon a news story – the archetypal citizen journalist – and captures it on a mobile phone, camcorder, or simply with their eyes. You cannot cultivate the accidental journalist in the same way as habitual producers – but news organisations have the biggest advantage in attracting them: their brand, reputation and reach. This is important: when the Cutty Sark catches fire, you want to be the news organisation the citizen journalist sends their pictures to.
  So what can the news organisation do? Be available, be a trusted name, and have a budget to pay if you need to. Set up channels of access – include journalists’ emails in their reports; provide simple uploading facilities on your website; and invest resources in monitoring submissions both to your own site and to other user generated content sites like YouTube and Flickr – because the accidental journalist will not always know they have a story. Finally, get involved in media training with your community, so that a) they can spot a story; b) they produce something of decent quality; and c) they think of you first, because you’re the one who taught them to do a) and b).
• The value adder: the value adder is hot on facts, hot on grammar, hot on spelling (but not on style or legal issues, which is one reason why you still need in-house subs). They pick up the mistakes, and they clean up vandalism. They annotate, adding bits of information – comments, useful links, tags (internally if you have a tagging system for users and externally if they use services like Delicious or Digg), or votes on whether a story is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
  Again, systems are key here – a responsive system for corrections; a commenting facility; tagging and bookmarking. And a culture of openness where feedback is welcomed and value adders thanked or recognised.
• The technician: this is the person who takes your stories, classifieds or raw data and maps them with Google Maps; who creates a comparison between your editorial agenda and what people are actually reading; who creates a Facebook app or a specialist RSS feed; or simply suggests an idea. The technician can add genuine creativity and value to content – but for them to do that you need to open up your systems - APIs, databases – so that they can mash them up with others, or make tweaks and improvements. You need to make the attributes of your story (location, age, score) available. And you need to provide support where you can.
• The crowd: the former audience is not just a group of people who can now talk to you. A conversation can only achieve so much. Crowdsourcing offers a way to cover issues and investigate stories that traditional journalism cannot match, by making users part of the newsgathering process.
  It seems to me that there are two main types of crowdsourcing project: one taps into a diversity of expertise (the engineer, the insider, the accountant) or experience; the other taps into sheer manpower – lots of people doing a small task each, like sifting through one part of a large amount of information, making a request for information, or conducting one interview. Systems that facilitate that process – like wikis, content management sytems, or even simple online forms – are important, but so is developing support structures and identifying the one percent of users who are regular contributors.

Naturally these categories are not exclusive – the brain may have a good voice (so to speak); the ‘ear’ may add value; being part of a crowd may lead someone to think of filming a newsworthy event when they stumble upon it. Investment in any of these areas should lead to feedback in others, not to mention knock-on effects on circulation, an issue I’ll deal with in part 4.

Read part three of this model: Five W’s and a H that should come after every story

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