[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. More echo-chamber posting: here’s a story I’ve written for Journalism.co.uk about chatrooms being used to investigate some allegations. An updated version, with quotes from an ex-UK investigative journalist, should replace it by the end of the day.

Again, in the interest of transparency, here’s his thoughts in full:

“I have always been firmly against entrapment, if it involves setting someone up to commit a crime or an act of wrongdoing that they would not have otherwise committed. In my view, this is deplorable, and makes the journalist just as bad as the person they trap – if not worse.

“This should not be confused with going underground to ‘catch someone in the act’ . I have no problem with that at all – there are occasions when this is essential in order to get the proof you need to nail a wrong-doer. It’s a valid technique for an investigative journalist. I have used it in many investigations in the past and would do the same again – although I personally would only go underground if the evidence could not be obtained in any other way, and there was a clear public interest issue involved.

“As I understand it, the Spokesman-Review used computer technology and a level of deception to catch the Mayor in the act, and I have no problem with that at all. I don’t think they entrapped him. There was a genuine public interest issue – an under-18 was involved, and the Mayor appeared to be misusing his office by offering favours.

“I would have done the same in the same situation. This is a classic example of having to go underground as a last resort to obtain the evidence you need.

“I don’t think it raises too many ethical issues for a journalist in this country. It’s not really any different from bugging a phone – the PCC Code of Practice allows this in the public interest. And in terms of privacy, I would be surprised if anyone genuinely thought that an internet chatroom was a place where they had a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. New Media Age’s ‘Analyst Speak’ column by Paul Milsom of BMRB has a number of useful figures around readership of online newspapers in the UK. Here’s some snippets:

• A fifth of web users visit the online version of a national daily newspaperat least once a week – roughly 6m people per week.
• The largest audiences are for the ‘quality’ titles: the Telegrap, Guardian and Times all attract over 1.5m visitors per week
• Male majority among all audiences

There’s also some information about buying and lifestyle habits.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Always happy to quote my sources in full, especially when they’re as witty as Laurence Simon. Here’s what he had to say about Huffington.com when I emailed him in connection with an article I was writing for Journalism.co.uk on it:

“Huffington Post’s blog is what you get when you get rid of all the monkeys and have an infinite number of celebrities banging away at typewriters. The only change is that there’s a lot less monkey-poo being flung around. (Even though Jim Lampley and John Conyers are doing their best to fill the fecal void. Vegas oddsmakers and pollsters? STUPID!)

“Some people will think there’s an upper limit to collaboration, but if it’s done right, there isn’t.

“Command-Post had a few hundred posters combing sources and collecting them at the start of the Iraq war and the 2004 election, but it was better-organized.

“Blogcritics has a few hundred reviewers. It’s well-organized.

“Despite a group of investors and a 7-man team of codemonkeys, Huffington Post is chaos.

“They have comments on news stories and not on the blog. That’s backwards. And elitist. Walter Cronkite grumbling about another useless convention and three or four celebs patting him on the back or smirking is not a conversation or a debate. Open it up to the public… you know, like the convention itself? (HAHAHAHAHA yeah right. A political convention where the public isn’t involved… this isn’t the Monster Raving Loony Party!)

“There’s no individual RSS feeds for the various posters. For instance, I want to track just John “Kerry 311 / Bush 213” Zogby. How can I do that?
Seven codemonkeys and investors couldn’t anticipate that? Why? Because the designer of the site came off of Drudge and everything was Drudge talking about Drudge and where Drudge would be appearing with Drudge’s voice to talk about Drudge talking about Drudge.

“This isn’t one “anchor” figurehead virtually reading the prompter that’s filled by a dozen writers on his staff. This is a few hundred anchors all screaming at once.

“The future of the HP blog can be summed up in David Frum’s post on it.
He had an op-ed in OpinionJournal, and used the hype and traffic from Huffington post to link to his op-ed on another site.

“”Hi. Look at my other stuff. Bye. And buy bonds.”

“The site will stratify into alphas, betas, and fawning twits. Cronkite and Ariana will get their boots licked clean every time they post.
Huffington’s “beta” pros (David Frum, John Zogby) will exploit the site to redirect people to their pet projects and paying gigs. Huffington’s amateurs (Jim Lampley) will just natter away until the site ends up needing to partner with Air America, Kos, or Democratic Underground.

“We, the public, are Gammas. Mmmmmmm… soma.”

Meanwhile, LA Weekly prints a column proclaiming the “horrific debut” of the site and the decisions that led to its flop.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Yesterday Arianna Huffington* launched a 300-person blog, modestly named the Huffington Post. Unknown over here, it seems Arianna is able to draw on a raft of “famous showbiz friends” to post to said blog, including Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Geffen, Larry David, David Mamet and Walter Kronkite, plus plenty more I’ve never heard of. Personally the attraction of Larry David is enough to get me reading, but two days in the blog looks pretty slick.

*No, I didn’t know who she was either. According to this very useful article in the Washington Post about the launch of her blog, she “has been a Republican activist (as a GOP congressman’s wife), Democratic activist (she backed John Kerry), Comedy Central bedmate of Al Franken, syndicated columnist, author, anti-SUV crusader and gadfly candidate for California governor (she got 0.6 percent of the vote after a last-minute pullout). She envisions the blog as a big dinner party, with chatter “about politics and books and art and music and food and sex.”” As publicity-seeking stunts go, well, you know who she is now…

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Thanks again to the Search Engine Journal for pointing out Gigablast’s new Dedicated Site Search and Custom Topic Search facilities. The Site Search facility enables you to add a search facility to your website – although it does need to be registered with the search engine.

The Custom Topic Search allows you to create a search box that will search up to 200 sites that you specify, so instead of just enabling users to search your site, you can instead provide them with the facility to search a specialist set of sites relating to your topic area – watch this blog for something along those lines.

Of course Gigablast isn’t the only site to offer custom searches – Google offers the same service to non-profit institutions, to name one. If you know of any others, let me know.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Poynter Online’s Romenesko highlights just some of the issues raised by an article in the Spokesman-Review which used gay chatrooms to ‘expose’ the mayor of Spokane of using his position to “develop sexual relationships with boys and young men”. To quote further from the article: “[The mayor] offered a man he believed to be an 18-year-old – whom he met online at Gay.com – gifts, favors and a City Hall internship, Internet dialogues retained by the newspaper reveal. The 18-year-old was actually a forensic computer expert working for the newspaper.”

You can also read coverage of the journalistic issues at the Seattle Times, which includes responses from the Spokesman’s editor and professors of journalism ethics. It not only documents the reasons behind the decision, but also the dangers of it amounting to entrapment. It’s well worth reading in full, but here’s a key quote:

Smith of The Spokesman-Review said … “I would be lying if I said I’m not troubled by it. It’s a step we took with great reluctance,” after many newsroom discussions and after consulting with outside journalism-ethics experts.

Reporters and editors asked themselves whether they could obtain on their own the information they needed.

“What we were trying to ascertain was whether the man we were tracking on [the Web site] was, in fact, Jim West [the Mayor]. … We had allegations from three individuals that they had interacted with this person and that this person was West. But we needed more substantial verification than they were able to provide.

… From the outset, the newspaper decided to explain to readers about the use of the outside expert and fictional scenario but debated whether to publish the chat transcripts. In the end, it did so. “It was only fair that readers saw what we saw to see if we quoted people fairly, accurately and contextually,” Smith said.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Kaibatsu of GrabaGeek makes the point that: “Now Google is seeking patent(s) to rank news quality … The 4500 plus news sources will still be around but it will be harder to get your article’s headline noticed to the world. So [writers on] sites like Grabageek and Neowin who promote amateur journalism will have to work harder to pass the rank rating to get your article on Google news.”

Shame they didn’t link to their source about Google seeking patents… I had to find it myself.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. …if you convince your newspaper to podcast, as the Denver Post has. Get your Denver news on your ipod here.

UPDATE (May 10 2005): The Philadelphia Daily News also launches a podcast, as reported by Poynter.

UPDATE (May 16 2005): Now it seems they can’t resist the lure of hosting their own chat shows. And: podcasts become a trend.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Backfence.com being a citizen journalism site in the vein of Korea’s OhmyNews. Poynter reports on the site including an interesting advertising model that allows you to place your own display ads and classified ads, “and even Yellow Pages listings”. Worth exploring.

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. That’s the upshot of this article on Poynter online reporting that ABC News is to provide content for the new Playstation Portable (PSP). The chances of it catching on are slim, as the writer points out: “I’d be surprised if many people spent five minutes putting a 90-second video clip on a portable player when they could just watch it online to begin with.” But still, a trend worth watching.