At first glance, Sky’s decision that its journalists should not retweet information that has “not been through the Sky News editorial process” and the BBC’s policy to prioritise filing “written copy into our newsroom as quickly as possible” seem logical.

For Sky it is about maintaining editorial control over all content produced by its staff. For the BBC, it seems to be about making sure that the newsroom, and by extension the wider organisation, takes priority over the individual.

But there are also blind spots in these strategies that they may come to regret.

Our content?

The Sky policy articulates an assumption about ‘content’ that’s worth picking apart.

We accept as journalists that what we produce is our responsibility. When it comes to retweeting, however, it’s not entirely clear what we are doing. Is that news production, in the same way that quoting a source is? Is it newsgathering, in the same way that you might repeat a lead to someone to find out their reaction? Or is it merely distribution?

The answer, as I’ve written before, is that retweeting can be, and often is, all three.

Writing about a similar policy at the Oregonian late last year, Steve Buttry made the point that retweets are not endorsements. Jeff Jarvis argued that they were “quotes”.

I don’t think it’s as simple as that (as I explain below), but I do think it’s illustrative: if Sky News were to prevent journalists from using any quote on air or online where they could not verify its factual basis, then nothing would get broadcast. Live interviews would be impossible.

The Sky policy, then, seems to treat retweets as pure distribution, and – crucially – to treat the tweet in isolation. Not as a quote, but as a story, consisting entirely of someone else’s content, which has not been through Sky editorial processes but which is branded or endorsed as Sky journalism.

Curation vs creation

There’s a second issue here which is more about hard commercial success. Research suggests that successful users of Twitter tend to combine curation with creation. Preventing journalists from retweeting  leaves them – and their employers – without a vital tool in their storytelling and distribution.

The tension surrounding retweeting can be illustrated in the difference between two broadcast journalists who use Twitter particularly effectively: Sky’s own Neal Mann, and NPR’s Andy Carvin. Andy retweets habitually as a way of seeking further information. Neal, as he explained in this Q&A with one of my classes, feels that he has a responsibility not to retweet information he cannot verify (from 2 mins in).

Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. But both combine curation with creation.

Network effects

A third issue that strikes me is how these policies fit uncomfortably alongside the networked ways that news is experienced now.

The BBC policy, for example, appears at first glance to prevent journalists from diving right into the story as it develops online. Social media editor Chris Hamilton does note, importantly, that they have “a technology that allows our journalists to transmit text simultaneously to our newsroom systems and to their own Twitter accounts”. However, this is coupled with the position that:

“Our first priority remains ensuring that important information reaches BBC colleagues, and thus all our audiences, as quickly as possible – and certainly not after it reaches Twitter.”

This is an interesting line of argument, and there are a number of competing priorities underlying it that I want to understand more clearly.

Firstly, it implies a separation of newsroom systems and Twitter. If newsroom staff are not following their own journalists on Twitter as part of their systems, why not? Sky pioneered the use of Twitter as an internal newswire, and the man responsible, Julian March, is now doing something similar at ITV. The connection between internal systems and Twitter is notable.

Then there’s that focus on “all our audiences” in opposition to those early adopter Twitter types. If news is “breaking news, an exclusive or any kind of urgent update”, being first on Twitter can give you strategic advantages that waiting for the six o’clock – or even typing a report that’s over 140 characters – won’t. For example:

• Building a buzz (driving people to watch, listen to or search for the fuller story)
• Establishing authority on Google (which ranks first reports over later ones)
• Establishing the traditional authority in being known as the first to break the story
• Making it easier for people on the scene to get in touch (if someone’s just experienced a newsworthy event or heard about it from someone who was, how likely is it that they search Twitter to see who else was there? You want to be the journalist they find and contact)

Everything at the same time

There’s another side to this, which is evidence of news organisations taking a strategic decision that, in a world of information overload, they should stop trying to be the first (an increasingly hard task), and instead seek to be more authoritative. To be able to say, confidently, “Every atom we distribute is confirmed”, or “We held back to do this spectacularly as a team”.

There’s value in that, and a lot to be admired. I’m not saying that these policies are inherently wrong. I don’t know the full thinking that went into them, or the subtleties of their implementation (as Rory Cellan-Jones illustrates in his example, which contrasts with what can actually happen). I don’t think there is a right and a wrong way to ‘do Twitter’. Every decision is a trade off, because so many factors are in play. I just wanted to explore some of those factors here.

As soon as you digitise information you remove the physical limitations that necessitated the traditional distinctions between the editorial processes of newsgathering, production, editing and distribution.

A single tweet can be doing all at the same time. Social media policies need to recognise this, and journalists need to be trained to understand the subtleties too.

Terence Eden filmed the above video demonstrating O2′s phone security flaw. He put it on YouTube with the standard copyright licence. And someone at Sky News ignored that when they used it without permission. But what’s interesting about Terence’s blog post about the experience is the legal position that Sky then negotiated from – an experience that journalism students, journalists and hyperlocal bloggers can learn from.

Here is what Sky came back with after negotiations stalled when Eden invoked copyright law in asking for £1500 for using his video (“£300 for the broadcast of the video [based on NUJ rates ...] £400 for them failing to ask permission, another £400 for them infringing my copyright, and then £400 for them violating my moral rights.”):

“After consulting with our Sky lawyers our position is that we believe a £300 settlement is a fair and appropriate sum.
“Our position is:

• The £300 is in respect of what you describes as “infringement of copyright” rather than any “union rate”;
• Contrary to what you claim, we did not act as if you had assigned us all rights. Specifically, we did not claim ownership nor seek to profit from it by licensing to others;
• Criminal liability will not attach in relation to an inadvertent use of footage;
• English law does not recognise violation of moral rights;
• There is no authority that an infringement in these circumstances attracts four times the usual licence fee. To the contrary, the usual measure is what the reasonable cost of licensing would have been.”

This sounds largely believable – particularly as Sky were “very quick” to take the infringing content down. That would be a factor in any subsequent legal case.

Notably, the Daily Mail example he quotes – where the newspaper reportedly paid £2000 for 2 images – included an email exchange where the photographer explicitly refuses the website permission to reproduce his photographs, and a period of time when the images remained online after he had complained.

These are all factors to consider whichever side of the situation you end up in.

PS: Part of Eden’s reason for pursuing Sky over their use of his video was the company’s position in pursuing “a copyright maximalist agenda” which Eden believes is damaging to the creative industries. He points out that:

“The Digital Economy Act doesn’t allow me to sue Sky News for distributing my content for free without my permission. An individual can lose their Internet access for sharing a movie, however there don’t seem to be any sanctions against a large company for sharing my copyrighted work without permission.”

An interesting point.

In this guest post Ofcom’s Damian Radcliffe cross-publishes his latest presentation on developments in hyperlocal publishing for September-October, and highlights how partnerships are increasingly important for hyper-local, regional and national media in terms of “making it pay”.

When producing my latest bi-monthly update on hyper-local media, I was struck by the fact that media sales partnerships suddenly seem to be all the rage.

In a challenging economic climate, a number of media providers – both big and small – have recently come together to announce initiatives aimed at maximising economies of scale and potentially reducing overheads.

At a hyperlocal level, the launch on 1^st November of the Chicago Independent Advertising Network (CIAN), saw 15 Chicago community news sites coming together to offer a single point of contact for advertisers. These sites “collectively serve more than 1 million page views each month.”

This initiative follows in the footsteps of other small scale advertising alliances including the Seattle Indie Ad Network and Boston Blogs.

These moves – bringing together a range of small scale location based websites – can help address concerns that hyper-local sites are not big enough (on their own) to unlock funding from large advertisers.

CIAN also aims to address a further hyper-local concern: that of sales skills. Rather than having a hyperlocal practitioner add media sales to an ever expanding list of duties, funding from the Chicago Community Trust and the Knight Community Information Challenge allows for a full-time salesperson.

Big Media is also getting in on this act.

In early November Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL agreed to sell each other’s unsold display ads. The move is a response to Google and Facebook’s increasing clout in this space.

Reuters reported that both Facebook and Google are expected to increase their share of online display advertising in the United States in 2011 by 9.3% and 16.3%.

In contrast, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo are forecast to lose share, with Facebook expected to surpass Yahoo for the first time.

Similarly in the UK, DMGT’s Northcliffe Media, home to 113 regional newspapers, recently announced it was forging a joint partnership with Trinity Mirror’s regional sales house, AMRA.

This will create a commercial proposition encompassing over 260 titles, including nine of the UK’s 10 biggest regional paid-for titles. Like The Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL arrangement, this new partnership comes into effect in 2012.

These examples all offer opportunities for economies of scale for media outlets and potentially larger potential reach and impact for advertisers.  Given these benefits, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see more of these types of partnership in the coming months and years.

Damian Radcliffe is writing in a personal capacity.

Other topics in his current hyperlocal slides  include Sky’s local pilot in NE England and research into the links between tablet useand local news consumption. As ever, feedback and suggestions for future editions are welcome.

Liveblogging the strikes: Twitter's #n30 stream

Today sees the UK’s biggest strike in decades as public sector workers protest against pension reforms. Most news organisations are covering the day’s events through liveblogs: that web-native format which has so quickly become the automatic choice for covering rolling news.

To illustrate just how dominant the liveblog has become take a look at the BBC, Channel 4 News, The Guardian’s ‘Strikesblog‘ or The Telegraph. The Independent’s coverage is hosted on their own live.independent.co.uk subdomain while Sky have embedded their liveblog in other articles. There’s even a separate Storify liveblog for The Guardian’s Local Government section, and on Radio 5 Live you can find an example of radio reporters liveblogging.

Regional newspapers such as the Chronicle in the north east and the Essex County Standard are liveblogging the local angle; while the Huffington Post liveblog the political face-off at Prime Minister’s Question Time and the PoliticsHome blog liveblogs both. Leeds Student are liveblogging too. And it’s not just news organisations: campaigning organisation UK Uncut have their own liveblog, as do the public sector workers union UNISON and Pensions Justice (on Tumblr).

So dominant so quickly

The format has become so dominant so quickly because it satisfies both editorial and commercial demands: liveblogs are sticky – people stick around on them much longer than on traditional articles, in the same way that they tend to leave the streams of information from Twitter or Facebook on in the background of their phone, tablet or PC – or indeed, the way that they leave on 24 hour television when there are big events.

It also allows print outlets to compete in the 24-hour environment of rolling news. The updates of the liveblog are equivalent to the ‘time-filling’ of 24-hour television, with this key difference: that updates no longer come from a handful of strategically-placed reporters, but rather (when done well) hundreds of eyewitnesses, stakeholders, experts, campaigners, reporters from other news outlets, and other participants.

The results (when done badly) can be more noise than signal – incoherent, disconnected, fragmented. When done well, however, a good liveblog can draw clarity out of confusion, chase rumours down to facts, and draw multiple threads into something resembling a canvas.

At this early stage liveblogging is still a form finding its feet. More static than broadcast, it does not require the same cycle of repetition; more dynamic than print, it does, however, demand regular summarising.

Most importantly, it takes place within a network. The audience are not sat on their couches watching a single piece of coverage; they may be clicking between a dozen different sources; they may be present at the event itself; they may have friends or family there, sending them updates from their phone. If they are hearing about something important that you’re not addressing, you have a problem.

The list of liveblogs above demonstrates this particularly well, and it doesn’t include the biggest liveblog of all: the #n30 thread on Twitter (and as Facebook users we might also be consuming a liveblog of sorts of our friends’ updates).

More than documenting

In this situation the journalist is needed less to document what is taking place, and more to build on the documentation that is already being done: by witnesses, and by other journalists. That might mean aggregating the most important updates, or providing analysis of what they mean. It might mean enriching content by adding audio, video, maps or photography. Most importantly, it may mean verifying accounts that hold particular significance.

Liveblogging: adding value to the network

These were the lessons that I sought to teach my class last week when I reconstructed an event in the class and asked them to liveblog it (more in a future blog post). Without any briefing, they made predictable (and planned) mistakes: they thought they were there purely to document the event.

But now, more than ever, journalists are not there solely to document.

On a day like today you do not need to be journalist to take part in the ‘liveblog’ of #n20. If you are passionate about current events, if you are curious about news, you can be out there getting experience in dealing with those events – not just reporting them, but speaking to the people involved, recording images and audio to enrich what is in front of you, creating maps and galleries and Storify threads to aggregate the most illuminating accounts. Seeking reaction and verification to the most challenging ones.

The story is already being told by hundreds of people, some better than others. It’s a chance to create good journalism, and be better at it. I hope every aspiring journalist takes it, and the next chance, and the next one.

Some say that journalism students should simply be taught how to ‘do’ journalism rather than spending time analysing or reflecting on it. On Saturday Sky’s Kay Burley showed why it’s not that simple – when she berated someone demonstrating in favour of electoral reform (skip to around 2 mins in):

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELJh2bTK1ew]

This, and the copious other clips from a career history of walking a fine line (many say crossing it), are a goldmine for lecturers and journalism students – particularly when it comes to discussing broadcast journalism technique, ethics, and regulation.

It helps students to look at their own journalistic practice and ask: in trying to please my bosses or meet an idea of what makes ‘good television’, am I crossing a line? How do the likes of Jeremy Paxman manage to dig behind a story without losing impartiality, or becoming the story themselves (do they manage it?) What, indeed, is the purpose of journalism, and how does that carry through into my practice?

Journalism is easy. You don’t need to study it for 3 years to do it. You don’t need a piece of paper to practise it.

But professional journalism is also the exercise of power – “Power without responsibility,” as the quote has it (which continues: “the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”). We expect to scrutinise politicians and hold them to certain ethical standards yet cry foul when the same scrutiny is applied to us. Studying journalism – while doing it – should be about accepting that responsibility and thinking about what it entails. And then doing it better.

So: Kay Burley. Discuss.

Has online journalism become ordinary? Are the approaches starting to standardise? Little has stood out in the online journalism coverage of this election – the innovation of previous years has been replaced by consolidation.

Here are a few observations on how the media approached their online coverage:

Interactive graphics and databases

Just as the swingometer has come to characterise televised election coverage, the election map has become synonymous with online coverage. From the BBC and ITV to the Independent, Times and Guardian, everyone had their red, blue and orange pixels at the ready.

The more adventurous integrated swingometers into their maps, included calculators and search fields. The Telegraph’s was powerful; the Guardian’s integrated well with third-party tools such as The Straight Choice and Democracy Club. Sky went for style, with a handful of visualisations from poll results and timelines to historical results to how the House will fill up. But across the newspapers and broadcasters this was the same as in previous elections, only better and more widespread.

Blogs, liveblogs and microblogs

News websites were riddled with blogs, liveblogs, and more blogs, with CoverItLive used widely. Journalists seem more comfortable with the rough nature of blogging now, which suits the patchiness of election coverage well.

User comments were also much better integrated than in the past, while many included the ability to share on Twitter or Facebook.

Twitter itself was a natural feature in many places, done without fuss. The Sun featured a widget on their homepage; most others promoted specific election and correspondent feeds somewhere. The Mirror’s morning-after angle predictably looked at how the celebrities tweeted the election. And for all the trumpeting that this was turning out to be a TV election rather than a new media election, Twitter and Facebook played important roles as complements to the television coverage, forming part of the reaction measured by ITV; being drawn upon for questions on Channel 4 news; occasionally driving or puncturing the news agenda, as with #nickcleggsfault. It sometimes felt as if the print media were being cut out of the conversation.

Video

We’re now at a stage where experiments have been completed, problems solved, and online video is normal. The BBC live streamed their coverage onto their at-a-glance live coverage; as did ITV. The Mirror embedded video reports on its homepage; The Guardian had its own video but also embedded BBC coverage; The Sun embedded live Sky coverage. And Sky itself had a gallery of video highlights.

What was perhaps most surprising is that the election didn’t have a ‘YouTube moment’ – or perhaps it did, but I missed it.

That’s it?

Media organisations had had years to polish up their skills on all the above, and the result was professional, successful, and useful. Unlike previous elections, there seemed little to get really excited about, however.

One thing that was apparent was how news organisations appeared to be softening in their attitudes to the rest of the web: embedding video from and linking to competitors; pulling feeds from civic websites; working with users.

Some things did catch my eye, though. ITV’s integration of Facebook into its election page looked particularly interesting, allowing users to watch online and chat online, rather than having the TV on. The Times’ last-minute election chartporn showed just how far visualisation could go if pushed. And The Guardian’s #ukvote experiment and how others used its politics API showed where collaboration could be taken.

The most fascinating experiments came from outside of the mainstream media: DemocracyClub and YourNextMP did a fantastic job in mobilising people to identify and interrogate their candidates. Vote for a Change calculated if your vote could contribute to a hung parliament; My Gay Vote showed how parties had voted on LGBT issues; PoliticsPosters gave you a customised window poster based on your postcode; Election Champion crowdsourced where parties were spending money on billboards; and Vote Power Index highlighted the weaknesses of our voting system by telling you how much your vote was actually worth. Hyperlocal blogs came to the fore. And while most people overlooked the council elections, Open Election Data sought to make those more transparent. In fact the biggest missed opportunity was the council elections.

Did anything catch your eye particularly about election coverage online?

Finally, here’s Martin Belam’s excellent timeline of the ‘digital election’:

Tony Hirst takes a look at how different news websites are using interactivity to present different possibilities in the UK election. This post is cross-posted from the OUseful.Info blog:

So it seems like the General Election has been a Good Thing for the news media’s interactive developer teams… Here’s a quick round up of some of the interactives I’ve found…

First up, the BBC’s interactive election seat calculator:

This lets you set the percentage vote polled by each party and it will try to predict the outcome…

The Guardian swingometer lets you play with swing from any two of the three big parties to the third:

The Daily Telegraph swingometer lets you look at swing between any two parties…

The Economist also lets you explore pairwise swings…

The Times doesn’t really let you do much at all… and I wonder – is Ladbrokes in there as product placement?!

Sky doesn’t go in for modeling or prediction, it’s more of just a constituency browser…

The Sun probably has Tiffany, 23…

From elsewhere, this swingometer from the Charts & numbers – UK Election 2010 blog lets you model swings between the various parties…

As to what swing is? It’s defined in this Parliamentary briefing doc [PDF]

When Sky News needed a picture to illustrate a shooting at Waterloo Station, they found what they needed on Twitter: a photo of the crime scene taken by Joe Neale and posted to Twitter using Twitpic (used above, with permission).

Just one problem: they didn’t bother to tell Joe.

Naturally, other people who had seen the original image, did.

Joe explains in an email:

“I didn’t even know about it as I was in meetings all day but had friends telling me it was on the front of Sky News. I had to tweet Jon [Gripton, News Editor of Sky News Online] to get the name changed  (from “Joe on Twitter” to Joe Neale) which took about 5 hours, Jon then stated I should have received an email which I didn’t, then said I needed to email the editor which I did but with no response.”

To Sky’s (and Jon’s) credit, they didn’t dispute the claim. Because Joe used Twitpic he had the advantage of being able to refer to their terms of service, which specifically say copyright belongs to the owner.

But they haven’t exactly rushed to respond to Joe, and so after 2 weeks, Joe is taking his cause to Twitter with the tag #skypic, making the very salient point: “Newscorp use your photos without permission but have plans to charge for reading their content”, which has since been retweeted across the Twittersphere.

In an email he expands on that point further:

“I think this story is interesting because it points to the dangers of social media for the citizen journalist. I’m pleased that my picture has achieved good reach but I worry that the cooption of apparently free content from twitter by big media is something that may become endemic and devalue the rights in photography. Rupert Murdoch has announced people will have to pay to access his sites from 2010, meantime he doesn’t seem to mind not paying for material and happily infringes on other people’s work.”

I’m waiting for a response from Jon Gripton on this (feel free to post it in the comments, Jon). In the meantime, here’s Joe’s email to Sky’s Julian March which he tweeted in 140-character chunks today:

“My photo was used without permission on the sky news website on the 5th of August 2009, and was taken from my Twitter feed without my permission(I have 20000+ mainly UK based followers including a large section of press/media folk): [URL]

“I waited/requested a confirmation email from Jon Grip (via Twitter) regarding payment that he said had been send out (on the 5th/6th of August, which I did not receive) and was told to chase Phil Wardman (on 11th of August) who did also not reply to me. The communication between us can be followed on my Twitter feed (www.twitter.com/joe). I feel justified to bill you for the use of my photo as a week has past since my last correspondence with Sky but will not charge you for the hours I have spent chasing Sky as I do not think that is fair.

“The conditions for using my photo without permission are £300 for the initial use on the front of the site and then charged at 5% for each additional week it is present on your site starting from August the 5th which will continue as long as the photo is present.

“As it still ranks high in Google search and has no doubt done its part to generated a decent amount of revenue.

“Please find my invoice for £326.24 which permits usage of the photo up to today, Monday the 17th of August.”

UPDATE: Julian March has now been in touch with Joe.

This week the UK government released a report into social mobility. While mainstream reporting focused mainly on the broad picture, I wanted to read the original government report itself. Which publishers linked to it?

• The Telegraph: fail. Not one of the 4 articles I could find linked to the report.
• The Times: fail. Alan Milburn’s own piece about the report fails to link to it. These articles don’t either.
• The Independent: fail, despite having more articles on the issue than other websites.
• The BBC: links very clearly to both a summary (PDF) and the whole report (PDF). Curiously, however, both are hosted on the BBC’s own site.
• Sky: fail. Oh, and an appalling search facility – top result for a search on ‘Milburn Report’? From 2002.
• ITN: fail.
• Reuters: fail.
• Channel 4 News: no link on the video report, but there is a link below a line at the end of this story. You have to scroll to see it. Although it’s labelled as an ‘external link’ the PDFs are hosted on C4′s own site.
• The Guardian: mixed. This article didn’t and nor did this; but this one did – albeit in par 5, three pars after the report is first mentioned. Notably, 2 pieces on their blogging platform Comment is Free did - both in the first paragraph, no less, and to the Cabinet Office version.

I’ve written and spoken extensively on the importance of linking, but it comes down to 2 core reasons:

Firstly, Google will rank a page more highly if it includes more outgoing links.

Secondly, people will return to your site more often if they know they can expect useful links.

So, get your act together, please what are news organisations doing to address this?

The more interesting of the sessions at the BBC’s Future of Journalism conference came on the second day.

Head of BBC Newsroom Peter Horrocks spent most of his session fielding questions from employees concerned about how their particular corner of the corporation would be affected by multimedia newsrooms. That aside, general themes from his presentation and responses to questions included:

• a need for a broader range of skills, such as information design and software development
• While strong single-platform performers will be encouraged to continue doing well on that platform, everyone else will be encouraged to work across platforms
• a need to reach audiences the BBC (and other news organisations) are struggling to engage with, particularly young C2 audiences

User generated content

The second panel, on user generated content, was probably the most interesting of the two days – mainly because it was also the most diverse, including Sky’s Simon Bucks and Paul Hambleton from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation alongside BBC Sport Online’s Claire Stocks, Matthew Eltringham from the BBC’s UGC hub, and Chris Russell from Future Media and Technology.

Claire Stocks presented a ‘before and after’ view of UGC on the BBC Sport site, and noted how popular the banter was proving as part of live text commentary (which is itself hugely popular). There was now greater integration of video but she felt they could present the information better.

Chris Russell showed a rather nice visualisation of a UGC ‘continuum’ which highlighted where the BBC was doing a lot (comments, on demand) and where they were doing too little (voting, tagging and ‘collective experience’).

Simon Bucks and Matthew Eltringham both showed the importance of UGC in generating leads. When Somali pirates seized the Sirius Star, for example, UGC led to the BBC finding out the name of a crew member, his friends and details of his family. Comments on the Sky website, meanwhile, led to an expert writing a blog post about the Star. It was also comments on a Sky web chat that led to journalists reporting on the story of a couple divorcing in Second Life.

An injection of reality was provided by Paul Hambleton, however, who presented research which showed journalists’ expectations of news consumption moving from television and print to web and mobile were vastly different from consumers’ expectations of their own behaviour (while 96% of journalists thought viewers would read more online, around two thirds of viewers felt their behaviour would change in this way). There was a similar disparity between the value consumers placed on categories such as user generated content and investigative journalism, and the value journalists placed on the same (generally higher).

I’ll try to post some reflections from the rest of the day – particularly the data driven journalism sessions I was involved in – at a later point. If you attended the conference or watched the live intranet stream, let me know what you took from it.