Monthly Archives: July 2014

Hyperlocal Voices: Matthew Duffy, Coventry Culture

Coventry_Culture___Telling_The_Story

Not all hyperlocal sites cover everything that’s happening in the patch, some focus on specific subject areas. The latest in our series of Hyperlocal Voices sees Damian Radcliffe look at Coventry Culture. As the site celebrates its first anniversary this month, founder and editor Matthew Duffy tells him about his journey over the past 12 months. Continue reading

Four examples of different threat models

My post on threat models for journalists is quite lengthy, so I thought I’d put the sample threat models from that in their own, separate post. Here they are – note that these are very simple, sketchy threat models and you would want to expand on these. But hopefully they provide a starting point. I’d also recommend checking out this resource from Privacy for Journalists.

What info do you want to keep? Passwords. Why might someone want it? To spam. What can they do? Guess password, phishing. What might happen? Damage to brand, trust.

A basic threat model for anyone with access to a key social media account – or colleagues who do.

What info do you want to keep? Communication with sources. Why might someone want it? To prevent publicaiton, smear. What can they do? Guess/hack password, phishing, legal avenues. What might happen? Story killed, credibility, trust.

This is an example of a threat model for anyone who deals with protestors, complainants, or others who might be targets of others

What info do you want to keep? Identity/location of sources. Why might someone want it? To intimidate, attack, smear. What can they do? Guess/hack password, phishing, metadata, mobile trail, more. What might happen? Source attacked, imprisoned, trust.

When dealing with whistleblowers, leaks, or sources in oppressive regimes, you need to protect identity and location. Here’s a sample threat model for that.

What info? Documents. Why? To prevent publication, identify sources. What can they do? Guess, hack, phish passwords for cloud services. Legal avenues etc. What might happen? Story killed, credibility damaged, sources don't trust.

When working with documents, you may need to prevent others getting access to them. Here’s a sample threat model for that.

Why every journalist should have a threat model (with cats)

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you

If you’re a journalist in the 21st century you have two choices: you can choose to be paranoid, or you can choose to be delusional.

The paranoid journalist assumes that someone is out to get them. The delusional journalist assumes that no one is.

In this post I will explain why and how every journalist – whether you’re a music reporter or a political correspondent – can take a serious and informed look at their security and arrive at a reasonable evaluation of risks and safeguards.

Don’t panic. I promise that by the end of this piece you will be less anxious about security, and no longer paranoid. I also promise to use lots of lolcats. Continue reading

SEO recruiters look for journalists as Google gets fussier

content marketing trend

Searches for ‘content marketing’ according to Google Trends. Since February the term has been at the peak of its popularity [Tweet this image]

In a guest post for OJB, Nick Chowdrey looks at why increasing numbers of SEO agencies are hiring journalists.

As online marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) practices have evolved, journalists have become increasingly sought-after by the agencies that compete to improve their clients’ rankings.

“For a long time there was a very poor practice in online marketing,” says Joe Sharp, Head of SEO at Hearst Magazines. “Generic advertorials were duplicated across multiple sites with strategic links engineered to increase SEO value. Continue reading

Over 1000 journalists are now exploring scraping techniques. Incredible.

Scraping for Journalists book coverLast week the number of people who have bought my ebook Scraping for Journalists passed the 1,000 mark. That is, to me, incredible. A thousand journalists interested enough in scraping to buy a book? What happened?

When I first began writing the book I imagined there might be perhaps 100 people in the world who would be interested in buying it. It was such a niche subject I didn’t even consider pitching it to my normal publishers.

Now it’s so mainstream that the 1000th ‘book’ was actually 12: purchased by a university which wanted multiple copies for its students to borrow – one of a number of such institutions to approach me to do so.  Continue reading

Making digital journalism pay: doable. Making a living: difficult

SA Mathieson, who has previously written for OJB about crowdfunding journalism, was one of three speakers at an NUJ Oxford event on how to make digital journalism pay. In a guest post for OJB he sums up the key points.

It is perfectly realistic for journalists to make money out of digital journalism, but the problem comes from making a decent living.

That was the theme to emerge from the NUJ Oxford event on making digital journalism pay. 

Speaking first, Tim Dawson, vice-president of the National Union of Journalists and a long-time writer and editor for The Sunday Times, has literally written the book on this area: Help Yourself – new ways to make money from writing. (It’s also available free for NUJ members – details here.)

He outlined some of the methods for raising money, which can be divided into three types: advertising-funded, marketing for other business and reader-funded. (More on his New Model Journalism site here.)

Continue reading

Staffordshire Council just made a very persuasive case for the value of Freedom of Information

Yesterday Staffordshire County Council controversially published details of “The cost of “Freedom of Information” to local people. The titling of that page gives some clue to its intent: FOI is a ‘cost’, and it’s you, local people, who pay.

But I think the list – despite its obvious agenda and related weaknesses – is actually rather brilliant.

Why? Because it shows just how flexible a tool FOI is, how widely it is used, and perhaps raises questions to be answered about why it has to be used in the first place.

staffordshire FOI requesters

Staffordshire’s top 10 list of FOI requesters includes a parish council, elected MP and local and national media

The top ten requesters, for example, throws up not just news organisations but a politician, a parish council, and the right wing campaign group TaxPayers’ Alliance. Continue reading

Curation vs aggregation, and why news organisations can’t be ‘the next LinkedIn’

“We are not a magazine company,” he exclaims, unprompted. “We are a media company with a portfolio.”  “We want to build the next LinkedIn, the next Gilt [a US commerce site], the next Facebook,”

M Scott Havens, senior vice president of digital, Time Inc

What does it mean to be a platform? Time Inc’s M Scott Havens is the latest to express a desire to move into the platform industry, telling The Guardian:

“We want to build the next LinkedIn, the next Gilt [a US commerce site], the next Facebook,”

Platforms came up at the BBC ‘Revival of Local Journalism‘ event last week too. Why weren’t regional newspaper publishers doing more to become ‘platforms’ for their local communities? Continue reading

BBC College of Journalism website now available outside the UK

The BBC College of Journalism has announced that their site will now be available to users outside of the UK.

The site features a wealth of content including particularly wide-ranging resources on online and multiplatform publishing. The pieces on mobile video and audio, advanced research and verification are particularly recommended.

The announcement says the site will be freely available “for a trial period of at least 12 months”, although even if the paywall is later reinstated the College does have an equally useful YouTube channel.