Monthly Archives: June 2014

‘We need blogging, video, audio, or social media’ – and that’s just for an internship

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Spectator intern image

Image from The Spectator – next time will it be an animated GIF?

The Spectator is advertising for interns, and the message is loud and clear on digital skills:

“Just do some of the following:-

  1. Produce a two minute video with either our audio or your own explaining a topic you’ve read about on the Spectator’s website.

  2. Prepare a sample 200-300 word blog offering something new on a topic of your choice for publishing on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog.

  3. Choose a magazine article, and work out the best way to promote it on the website, Twitter, Facebook and beyond.

  4. Suggest three ideas for potential stories.

  5. Suggest two ways in which we could improve how the Spectator’s articles are promoted digitally.”

There is one option (number 4) for those who think they can avoid digital skills – but that is the exception to the rule. It’s also the exception to the preceding instruction that “All that matters in journalism is whether you can do it.”

What the list makes clear is: even to get a foot in the door, you must be able to do it digitally.

A fairy tale: ‘Giving your content away for free’ is not the problem – giving your audience away for free is

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handful of sweets

A grocer doesn’t give away content – they sell packages of content. Image by Agel Alcantara

Are publishers ‘giving away the grocery’? That’s the argument Richard Coulter, publisher of the hyperlocal paper and website Filton Voice, made In the lead up to yesterday’s BBC event on ‘The Revival of Local Journalism‘. His analogy, published on the BBC’s Academy site, described a grocer’s which opened a second shop ‘at the bottom of the hill’: Continue reading →

Panini sticker albums – a great way to learn programming and statistics

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1970 sticker album - image by John Cooper

1970 sticker album – image by John Cooper

When should you stop buying football stickers? I don’t mean how old should you be – but rather, at what point does the law of diminishing returns mean that it no longer makes sense to buy yet another packet of five stickers?

This was the question that struck me after seeing James Offer‘s ‘How much could it cost to fill a World Cup Sticker Album?‘ Continue reading →

Causing offence on social media – the best overview yet

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Susanna Rustin has written one of the best overviews I’ve yet seen of the growing number of legal cases involving individuals being put in jail for being ‘offensive’ – vital reading if you’re interested in media freedom and media law, given the obvious implications for journalism.

The key law here is the Communications Act 2003, specifically Section 127, which I’ve written about previously in 7 laws journalists now need to know.

Rustin summarises a number of cases where individuals have been prosecuted and jailed under the Act, and focuses in particular on two recent cases relating to social media updates posted following the stabbing of a school teacher.

“The cases of [Jack] Newsome and [Robert] Riley are different. They did not target or menace individuals, and lawyers and human rights campaigners have this week raised concerns about their being jailed for causing offence.”

Former director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer, provides some useful legal context and raises his own concerns around how “too many prosecutions for these kinds of offences can have the effect of chilling free speech”:

“There always used to be a protected space, so you could say things in private you could not say in public. With social media there is no protected space, and that’s what there needs to be a debate about. The notions around place and reaction just don’t work with social media. You could have a situation where two people in their living room make remarks to each other for which they would never be arrested, but if they make these remarks by email, they could be, as the legislation covers any public electronic communication system.”

Read the article in full here.

FAQ: Social media and media freedom

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More questions from a student as part of the ongoing FAQ series. This time it’s about the role of social media in ‘media freedom’, competition between social media and mainstream media, and credibility of citizen journalists…

1. What effects do you think social media, like blogs, Facebook, Twitter, have had on media freedom?

Given that media freedom is largely about the legal and political framework in which organisations operate, I’d say social media has had very little effect. An analogy would be asking what effect hammers have had on builders’ freedoms: it’s another tool which they can use, but whether they use it and how depends on what happens to them if they do. Continue reading →