Author Archives: Paul Bradshaw

The Human Journalism project in Spain

The journalist and photographer Javier Bauluz is the only Spanish winner of the Pullitzer. He has published a preview of his next project, focused on journalism and human rights, at periodismohumano.com.

“The responsibility of the crisis: the greed of a few and the lack of controls from whom should control them, the representatives of the people and the toxic journalism that reports the reality only in terms of the media corporations’ political and economic interest”.

Such is Bauluz’s view of the current media crisis.

He then describes a picture well-known to anyone who has ever worked in big media: “There are more and more tired journalists, many hostages in their newsrooms, doing and saying what they’re told”.

With this perspective in mind, Bauluz thinks that the only solution to reconstruct journalism is for groups of colleagues to get together and organise online, supported by citizens, foundations and philanthropists. So we can say that non-profit journalism is not only an American or English idea.

“First it was an option, now it’s a need,” argues the Pulitzer prizewinner.

Using the WordPress platform (and its open source benefits), periodismohumano.com will see daylight in the following weeks with the Universal Declaration of Human Right as their only flag and with all content available in all possible formats:

“If you want to save whales, you’re a member of Greenpeace; if you want doctors in Somalia, you’re a member of Doctors Without Borders; if you want quality information, you’re a member of Periodismo Humano (Human Journalism)”.

Video journalism in Africa – guest post

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Ruud Elmendorp, a video journalist in Africa, writes about his experiences in the job

“Monsieur le journaliste? Votre interview avec le ministre est a deux heure.”

Mister journalist? Your interview with the minister is at two. Thank you, I say to the lady on the phone. Finally I managed to arrange an interview with a minister in Rwanda.

Some hours later I set up my tripod and camera, and start asking my questions. There I am with a small digital camera – and myself only. The minister is told that I am a correspondent for Dutch national television – normally the type of media you would expect to come with a camera man, reporter and a boom operator for the sound. The very kind and distinguished minister doesn’t give a wink about my solitary presence, and comments profoundly on the issues I raise.

Just because he’s used to it.

Before 2000 I was the typical television reporter coming with a crew. When the small digital cameras entered the market I took the challenge to do it on my own. As early video journalists we for some reason were forced into an innovative and creative approach. We had to do something different to the traditional crews, and so we did.

That was before I moved to Africa. Continue reading →

The BBC and linking part 1: users are not an audience

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UPDATE: The BBC have started a debate on the issue on their Editors’ Blog

Ben Goldacre is experiencing understandable frustration with the BBC’s policy on linking to science papers:

Jane Ashley of the website’s health team, says that when they write an article based on scientific research:

“It is our policy to link to the journal rather than the article itself. This is because sometimes links to articles don’t work or change, and sometimes the journals need people to register or pay.”

In email correspondence defending their policy, Richard Warry, Assistant editor, Specialist journalism, adds:

“Many papers are available on the web via subscription only, while others give only an Abstract summary. In these instances, the vast majority of our readers would not be able to read the full papers, without paying for access, even if we provided the relevant link.”

This just doesn’t stand up. Here’s why:

An abstract alone is actually very useful in providing more context than a journal homepage provides
It also provides useful text that can be used to either find another version of the paper (for example on the author’s or a conference website),
It provides extra details on the authors, giving you more insight into the research’s reliability and also an avenue should you want to approach them to get hold of the paper.
Even for the ‘vast majority’ who cannot pay for access to the paper, they will still be taken to the journal homepage anyway.
Believing that the time spent pasting one link rather than another is better spent on providing “authoritative, accurate and attractive reportage” is a false economy. Authoritative, accurate and attractive coverage relies at least in part in allowing users to point out issues with scientific research or its reporting.
Catering for a ‘vast majority’ belies a broadcast media mindset that treats users as passive consumers. The minority of users who can access those papers can actually be key contributors to a collaborative journalism process. If you let them.

If it helps, here’s a broadcast analogy: imagine producing a TV package which captions a source as ‘Someone from the Bank of England’. That’s not saving time for good journalism – it’s just bad journalism.

Linking – and deep linking in particular – are basic elements of online journalism. Why can news organisations still not get this right? More on this here…

Print's advertising problem – tying one hand behind its back

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Last week Karl Schneider, Reed Business Information’s Editorial Director, spent an hour chatting with students in my Online Journalism class. Most of it is available on video here, but of particular interest to me was a point Karl made about how Reed separated its online advertising into a separate company very early on, and are now reaping the benefits (embedded above).

“Because we had print businesses to protect we spent at least as much time worrying about not doing something on the web that would undercut the money coming in in print as worrying about ‘How do we make this new stuff grow’ … One of the big revenue streams for us was recruitment ads … So when we started to do online jobs one of the big challenges was ‘How can we do this without damaging all of the money tied up in print?’ And very quickly we realised that if we worry about that, we’re going to be rubbish at online job ads, because we’re always going to be operating with one hand tied behind our backs. And we’ll be competing against pure-play onlines who won’t have that worry.

“So what we ended up doing was setting up our online jobs advertising operation as a separate business and allowed it to compete head-to-head with our print business, and it caused all sorts of internal arguments – but it was absolutely the right thing to do because we’re making more money now out of online jobs than we ever did from print jobs. Less per job – there’s a lot more job ads – but it took separating it off [as a separate business] to do it.”

I’ve written about this problem before. Although on paper there are economies to be made by combining print and web ad sales, that’s not a strategy for future growth.

Instead, it appears to result in a prolonged addiction to the dying cash cow of print ads (and, anecdotally, a frustrating experience for advertisers wishing to move money from print to online). Judging by the recent research into magazine ad sales (PDF) in the US (image below), the magazine industry may need to listen to Karl’s experiences.

87% of ad staff work across both print and web

Image taken from CJR research into magazine websites (link above). 'To' should say 'Two'

RSS feeds, advertising and selling attention

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Media organisations who only offer partial RSS feeds might be interested to look at a couple of posts from 2 websites with different experiences of monetising their feeds. First, Jason Snell of MacWorld:

“RSS doesn’t generate revenue directly. There are ads in RSS, sure, but they’re cheap and lousy and don’t have remotely the return as ads on web pages.”

Then, John Gruber of Daring Fireball (cached here if you find it as slow as I do):

“The ads in most sponsored RSS feeds are indeed cheap and lousy. The ads in DF’s [Daring Fireball’s] RSS feed are neither. They’re priced at a premium, and have attracted (if I do say so myself) premium sponsors.

“If you’ve got a model where revenue is tied only to web page views, switching to full-content RSS feeds will hurt, at least in the short term. The problem, I say, isn’t with full-content RSS feeds, but rather with a business model that hinges solely on web page views. The precious commodity that we, as publishers, have to offer advertisers is the attention of our readers. Web page views are a terribly inaccurate, if not outright misleading, metric for attention. Subscribers to a full-content RSS feed are among the readers paying the most attention, but generate among the least web page views.”

Snell’s response: “What works for [Gruber’s one-man] kind of site doesn’t necessarily work for our kind.”

It’s also worth noting the tertiary benefits of full RSS feeds. Offering full RSS feeds makes it more likely a developer is going to create something useful out of it (expensive development time for free), bringing more readers and attention to your advertising or, in the case of the BBC (which may have licensing issues holding it back), fulfilling its public service remit.

Do you or your organisation do anything interesting with your RSS feeds? Are they full or partial? I’d love to know.

(Note, OJB uses the <more> tag to to ensure the homepage isn’t dominated by a single post. Unfortunately, this results in partial RSS feeds. Some day I’ll sort this.)

The first Birmingham #data Coffee

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On Thursday I’ll be hosting Birmingham’s first ‘Data Coffee’. Guests include The Times’ Jonny Richards, Talis’ Zach Beauvais and a whole bunch of MA Online Journalism students.

There’s no agenda for the day – just turn up with questions and we’ll pick each other’s brains. I’m bringing my Mac and an intense desire to get to grips with Python.

It’s at Coffee Lounge on Navigation Street (free wifi). We’ll start to gather around 10 with the bulk of the day taking place from 12 onwards.

Summary of "Magazines and their websites" – Columbia Journalism Review study by Victor Navasky and Evan Lerner

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The first study (PDF) of magazines and their various approaches to websites, undertaken by Columbia Journalism Review, found publishers are still trying to work out how best to utilise the online medium.

There is no general standard or guidelines for magazine websites and little discussion between industry leaders as to how they should most effectively be approached.

Following the responses to the multiple choice questionnaire and the following open-ended questions –

What do you consider to be the mission of your website, does this differ from the mission of your print magazine?
What do you consider to be the best feature of aspect of your website?
What feature of your website do you think most needs improvement or is not living up to its potential?

– the researchers called for a collective, informed and contemporary approach to magazine websites with professional body support.

The findings were separated into the following 6 categories: Continue reading →

Hull Daily Mail hyperlocal 'smear' job backfires

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http://classifieds.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/ThisIsClassifieds/www/default.aspx?p28=thisishull&p24=GeneralClassifieds&p25=GeneralClassifieds&p2=&p3=000006&p4=000000&p5=000000&p6=X0100&p7=&p8=thisishull&p14=&p9=04/03/2010&p10=05/03/2010&p13=1&p12=Date&p16=Results&p18=&p27=False&endParam=1

Hull – GeneralClassifieds – Notices via kwout

The Hull Daily Mail’s article accusing a hyperlocal competitor of having a ‘porn business’ has been misfiring spectacularly over the past 24 hours.

The article ‘reveals’ that the founder of HU17.net has designed sites for the porn industry.

At the time of writing it has over 300 comments overwhelmingly critical of what is variously described as a “smear campaign”, “set up” and “character assassination” by HDM.

Some point to the hypocrisy of the attack from a newspaper which recently launched a campaign to back local businesses, while others point out that the newspaper has previously published glowing articles about a local sex shop.

A distinction is also drawn by some commenters between operating a ‘porn business’ and building websites for companies who then use them to publish porn. (I wonder if they’ve investigated their own printers to see if they are running a ‘porn business’?)

And many, of course, point out that the newspaper itself is happy to provide a platform for sex industry advertising in its own pages.

A commenter on Hold The Front Page remarks:

“Maybe some proper journalist should ring up the ad booking services at all Northcliffe titles and ask to place ad for personal services. Perhaps ask those who take the calls if they beleive that some of the girls who advertise are working girls. Ask for some anecdotal tales of girls canceling their adverts one week in 4 … I beleive there might be a story there worthy of a DPS in the the Mail on Sunday !”

That comment is particularly salient when reading the Hull Daily Mail’s justification for running the story:

“What Mr Smith has done is not illegal, but it is certainly not consistent with publishing a responsible local website carrying reports, pictures and videos of community events and activities, many featuring children. It is in the public interest that people know the truth about the man behind HU17.net”

Replace ‘Mr Smith’ with ‘the Hull Daily Mail’ and you get an idea where the backlash is coming from.

The comments spill over onto a response on HU17.net itself, which the publicity has clearly brought to a wider audience locally.

One comment suggests that ads for escort adverts are being removed from the Hull Daily Mail website as they are being highlighed in the comments – certainly there are a lot of dead links, which seems odd given that the Classifieds have a whole section devoted to ‘Escort Agencies’ (image above).

Whatever you feel about the story, the comments across both sites provide a real insight into how people perceive their local paper and the attempts of hyperlocal publishers to run a business and serve a specific community.

More coverage at Journalism.co.uk and The Register. And Journopig’s post pulls out some of the unnecessary and unsupported paedophile-innuendo running through the story.

UPDATE: Hull Daily Mail editor defends the story.