Category Archives: faq

FAQ: Online journalism ethics, accuracy, transparency and objectivity

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Answers to another set of questions around ethics and online journalism, posed by a UK student, and reproduced here as part of the FAQ series:

Do you believe online journalism presents new ethical dilemmas and should have standards of its own?

Yes, I think any changing situation – whether technological or cultural – presents new ethical dilemmas.

But should ‘online journalism’ have a separate code? I don’t see how it can. Where would you draw the line when most journalists work online? Ethical standards are relatively platform-agnostic, but journalists do have to revisit those when they’re working in new environments. Continue reading →

FAQ: The stream as an interface; starting out in data journalism

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Here are the latest answers to some questions – this time relating to these predictions for 2012:

Q: What are the advantages of “stream” as an interface for news website homepages?

The main advantages are that it’s very sticky – users tend to leave streams on in the same way that they leave 24 hour news channels on, or keep checking back to Facebook and Twitter (which have helped popularise the ‘stream’ interface).

If you compare that to the traditional story layout format, where users scan across the page but then leave the site if there’s nothing obviously of interest, you can see the difference.

I think there’s room for both, but if you want to know what’s new since the last time you looked, the stream works very well. And it’s not difficult to combine that with subject or region pages that show the most important news of that day, for example.

I think it can work for every kind of news: the stream says ‘Here’s what’s new’ across all topics; the ‘layout’ says ‘Here’s what we think is important’ – in other words, it performs a more traditional ‘snapshot’ function akin to the daily newspaper layout.

2) What are the skills a reporter should have in order to be a top-notch, first-rate data journalist?

The basic skills are the same as any journalist: a nose for a story, and the ability to communicate that clearly. In data journalism terms that means being able to interrogate data quickly and then focus on the most important facts within it.

That will most likely involve being able to use spreadsheet formulae to work out, for example, the proportion of time or money being spent on something, or to combine different datasets to gain new insights or overcome obstacles put in your way by those publishing the data.

You also need to be able to avoid mistakes by cleaning data, for example (often the same person or organisation will be named differently, for example), and by understanding the context of the data (for example, population size, or methodology used to gather it).

Finally, as I say, you need to be able to communicate the results clearly, which often means pulling back from the data and not trying to use it all in your telling of the story (just as you wouldn’t use every quote you got from a source) but keeping it simple.

FAQ: Niche blogs vs mainstream media outlets

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Here’s another collection of questions answered here to avoid duplication. This time from a final year student at UCLAN:

Blogs are often based on niche subject areas and created by individuals from a community. Do you think mainstream media outlets are limited by resources to compete? Or are there signs they are adapting?

I think they are more limited by passion, and by commercial imperatives. Niche blogs tend to be driven by passion initially, and sometimes by the commercial imperative to target those niches, whereas mainstream outlets are built on scale and mass audiences – or affluent audiences who still don’t really qualify as a niche.

They are adapting as the commercial drive changes and advertisers look for measurements of engagement, but it’s hard, as your next question fleshes out…

Communities by nature need conversation, and this often visible online in forums, blog comments etc. Can it be argued niche blogs are better at engaging communities and providing a platform for conversation?

…yes, but more because they often build those communities from the ground up, whereas established media platforms are having to start with a mass audience and carve niches out of those. It’s like trying to hold a community meeting in the middle of a busy high street, compared to doing it in a community centre.

… If so, do you think the success of blogs are as a result of people wanting conversation instead of a ‘lecture from journalists?

Not necessarily – I think blogs succeed (and fail) for all sorts of reasons. One of those is that blogs have made it easier to connect with likeminded people across the platform (in comments, for example, without having to fight through hundreds of comments from idiots), another is the ability for users to input into the journalistic process rather than merely consuming a story, and another is the ability to focus on elements of an issue which may not be accessible enough to justify coverage by a mass audience publication – and I’m sure there are as many other reasons as there are blogs.

Finally, with the emergence of Twitter, along with other methods of contact, are journalists now becoming more involved in conversation with communities of interest or is there still a reluctance from journalists to be involved?

Some recent research in the US suggested that Twitter is still being used overwhelmingly as a broadcast platform by journalists and news brands. But there are also an increasing number of journalists who are using it particularly effectively as a way to talk with users. My own research into blogging suggested a similar effect. So yes, there is reluctance (talking to sources is hard work, after all, whether it’s on Twitter, the phone, or face to face – and for many journalists it’s easier to avoid it) but the culture is changing slowly.

FAQ: How can broadcasters benefit from online communities?

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Here’s another set of questions I’m answering in public in case anyone wants to ask the same:

How can broadcasters benefit from online communities?

Online communities contain many individuals who will be able to contribute different kinds of value to news production. Most obviously, expertise, opinion, and eyewitness testimony. In addition, they will be able to more effectively distribute parts of a story to ensure that it reaches the right experts, opinion-formers and eyewitnesses. The difference from an audience is that a community tends to be specialised, and connected to each other.

If you rephrase the question as ‘How can broadcasters benefit from people?’ it may be clearer.

How does a broadcaster begin to develop an engaged online community, any tips?

Over time. Rather than asking about how you develop an online community ask yourself instead: how do you begin to develop relationships? Waiting until a major news event happens is a bad strategy: it’s like waiting until someone has won the lottery to decide that you’re suddenly their friend.

Journalists who do this well do a little bit every so often – following people in their field, replying to questions on social networks, contributing to forums and commenting on blogs, and publishing blog posts which are helpful to members of that community rather than simply being about ‘the story’ (for instance, ‘Why’ and ‘How’ questions behind the news).

In case you are aware of networks in the middle east, do you think they are tapping into online communities and social media adequately?

I don’t know the networks well enough to comment – but I do think it’s hard for corporations to tap into communities; it works much better at an individual reporter level.

Can you mention any models whether it is news channels or entertainment television which have developed successful online communities, why do they work?

The most successful examples tend to be newspapers: I think Paul Lewis at The Guardian has done this extremely successfully, and I think Simon Rogers’ Data Blog has also developed a healthy community around data and visualisation. Both of these are probably due in part to the work of Meg Pickard there around community in general.

The BBC’s UGC unit is a good example from broadcasting – although that is less about developing a community as about providing platforms for others to contribute, and a way for journalists to quickly find expertise in those communities. More specifically, Robert Peston and Rory Cellan-Jones use their blogs and Twitter accounts well to connect with people in their fields.

Then of course there’s Andy Carvin at NPR, who is an exemplar of how to do it in radio. There’s so much written about what he does that I won’t repeat it here.

What are the reasons that certain broadcasters cannot connect successfully with online communities?

I expect a significant factor is regulation which requires objectivity from broadcasters but not from newspapers. If you can’t express an opinion then it is difficult to build relationships, and if you are more firmly regulated (which broadcasting is) then you take fewer risks.

Also, there are more intermediaries in broadcasting and fewer reporters who are public-facing, which for some journalists in broadcasting makes the prospect of speaking directly to the former audience that much more intimidating.

How I hacked my journalism workflow (#jcarn)

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I’ve been meaning to write a post for some time breaking down all the habits and hacks I’ve acquired over the years – so this month’s Carnival of Journalism question on ‘Hacking your journalism workflow’ gave me the perfect nudge.

Picking those habits apart is akin to an act of archaeology. What might on the surface look very complicated is simply the accumulation of small acts over several years. Those acts range from the habits themselves to creating simple shortcuts and automated systems, and learning from experience. So that’s how I’ve broken it down:

1. Shortcuts

Shortcuts are such a basic part of my way of working that it’s easy to forget they’re there: bookmarks in the browser bar, for example. Or using the Chrome browser because its address bar also acts as a search bar for previous pages.

I realise I use Twitter lists as a shortcut of sorts – to zoom in on particular groups of people I’m interested in at a particular time, such as experts in a particular area, or a group of people I’m working with. Likewise, I use folders in Google Reader to periodically check on a particular field – such as data journalism – or group – such as UK journalists. Continue reading →

FAQ: Mobile Reporting

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Another FAQ:

What good examples of mobile reporting have you seen?

It’s hard to say because the fact that it’s mobile is not always very visible – but @documentally’s work is always interesting. The Telegraph’s use of Twitter and Audioboo during its coverage of the royal wedding was well planned, and Paul Lewis at the Guardian uses mobile technology well during his coverage of protests and other events. Generally the reporting of these events – in the UK and in the Arab Spring stories – includes lots of good examples.

Could it become a genuine niche in journalism or just offer an alternative?

Neither really – I just think it’s a tool of the job that’s particularly useful when you’re covering a moving event where you don’t have time or resources to drive a big truck there.

Do you think more newspapers and print outlets will embrace the possibilities to use mobile technology to “broadcast”?

Very much so – especially as 3G and wifi coverage expands, mobile phones become more powerful, the distribution infrastructure improves (Twitter etc.) and more journalists see how it can be done.

But broadcast is the wrong word when you’re publishing from a situation where a thousand others are doing the same. It needs to be plugged into that.

Do you think the competition that mobile reporting could offer could ever seriously rival traditional broadcast technology?

It already is. The story almost always takes priority over production considerations. We’ve seen that time and again from the July 7 bombing images to the Arab Spring footage. We’ll settle for poor production values as long as we get the story – but we won’t settle for a poor story, however beautifully produced.

Have you seen any good examples of how media orgs are encouraging their staff to adopt mobile reporting techniques?

Trinity Mirror bought a truckload of N97s and N98s and laptops for its reporters a couple years back, and encouraged them to go out, and various news organisations are giving reporters iPhones and similar kit – but that’s just kit. Trinity Mirror also invested in training, which is also useful, and you can see journalists are able to use the kit well when they need to – but as long as the time and staffing pressures remain few journalists will have the time to get out of the office.

What are the main limitations that are holding back this sector – are they technological, training related or all in the mind?

Time and staff, and the cultural habits of working to print and broadcast deadlines rather than reporting live from the scene.

What advice would you give to individual journalists thinking of embracing the opportunities mobile reporting offers?

Start simple – Twitter is a good way to get started, from simple text alerts to tweeting images, audio and video. Once you’re comfortable with tweeting from a phone, find easy ways to share images, then find a video app like Twitcaster and an audio app like Audioboo. Then it all comes down to being able to spot opportunities on the move.

FAQ: Self-regulation of online media

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Another series of questions I’ve been asked – with my answers, published here because I don’t want to repeat myself…

1. You have written that people read blogs and other user generated content because they trust the person not the brand; they link or contribute to that content because ‘a journalist invested social capital’ and trust is related to their reputation, knowledge and connections. In a sense I guess reputation, knowledge and connections is what also underpins trust in curated content (e.g. Storyful). My question is whether this informal reliance on the dynamics of social capital is enough to differentiate what Storyful refers to as the ‘news from the noise’ both for ‘curated’ news and online journalism more widely. Or would, for example, a self-regulatory Code be helpful in making this differentiation transparent?

I think a more sophisticated way of looking at this is that people draw on a range of ‘signals’ to make a judgement about the trustworthiness of content: that includes their personal history of interactions with the author; the author’s formal credentials, including qualifications and employer; the author’s network; the author’s behaviour with others; numerous other factors including for example ratings by strangers, friends and robots; and of course the content itself – is the evidence transparent, the argument /narrative logical, etc.

A self-regulatory Code would add another signal – but one that could be interpreted either way: some will see it as a badge of credibility; others as a badge of ‘sell-out’ or pretence to authority. The history of previous attempts suggest it would not particularly succeed.

I’m by no means an expert on trust – would be interesting to explore more literature on that.

2. The PCC has welcomed online journalists to join it – is there interest among the online journalism community? I appreciate the level of antipathy expressed in the blogging community when this was raised late 2009, but I wonder whether the current consultation in relation to live electronic communications for court reporting by accredited journalists could raise the significance of notions of accreditation (through the PCC or independent to it) for online journalists.

Many people blog precisely because they feel that the press does not self-regulate effectively: in a sense they are competing with the PCC (one academic described bloggers as ‘Estate 4.5’). It has a bad reputation – to stand any change of attracting bloggers it would have to give them a genuine voice and incorporate many of the ethical concerns that they have about journalism. I don’t see that happening.

Accreditation is a key issue, however – or at least respectability to advertisers; some bloggers are moving away from calling themselves ‘blogs’ as they look for more ad revenue. But they are a minority: most do not rely on ad revenue. As access to courts and council meetings is explicitly widened, accreditation is less of a problem.

3. If on-line journalists were to consider self regulation what would be the key principles that might inform it: accuracy, fairness, privacy? What of harm and in particular protection of the under 18’s? Or are such notions irrelevant in the world of social capital?

This post – http://paulbradshaw.wpengine.com/2011/03/07/culture-clash-journalisms-ideology-vs-blog-culture/ – is a good summary of how I think the two compare. Most bloggers see themselves as fiercely ethical and you will frequently see them rise up to defend the vulnerable – sometimes unaware of their intimidatory power in attacking those they see as responsible. You will also see them correcting inaccurate reporting.

If anything these notions are more important in a world of social capital: my accuracy, fairness and treatment of the vulnerable dictates part of my social capital. If I make a mistake, my social capital can be damaged for a long time to come – we don’t yet have any concept of our social crimes ‘expiring’ online.

FAQ: Journalism vs blogging

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Here’s the latest in my attempt to answer questions publicly so that I can lazily point people to the answers when they ask them again. These are from a Norwegian student at London Metropolitan University:

Do you consider yourself a journalist? Why?

Yes, when I produce journalism. That is: finding newsworthy information and communicating it to others. I find G Stuart Adam’s definition best here – sadly no longer online but copied below: Continue reading →

FAQ: Data journalism, laziness, information overload & localism

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I seem to have lost the habit of publishing interview responses here under the FAQ category for the past year, but the following questions from a journalist, and my answers, were worth publishing in case anyone has the same questions:

Simon Rogers, Editor of the Datablog, said that he thinks in the future simply publishing the raw data will become acceptable journalism. Do you not think that an approach like this to raw data is lazy journalism? And equally, do you think that would be a type of journalism that the public will really be able to engage with?

It’s not lazy at all, and to think otherwise is pure journalistic egoism. We have a tendency to undervalue things because we haven’t invested our own effort into it, but the value lies in its usefulness, not in the effort. Increasingly I think being a journalist will be as much about making journalism possible for other people as it will be about creating that journalism yourself. You have to ask yourself: do I just want to write pretty stories, or allow people to hold power to account?

In a world where we can access information directly I think it’s a central function of journalists to make important information findable. The first level of that is to publish raw data.

It’s interesting to see that this seems to be a key principle for hyperlocal bloggers – making civic information findable.

The second level – if you have the time and resources – is then to analyse that raw data and pull stories out of it. But ultimately there will always be other ‘stories’ in the information that people want to find for themselves, which may be too specific to be of interest to the journalist or publisher.

The third level – which really requires a lot of investment – is to create tools that make it easier for the user to find what they want, to make it easier to understand (e.g. through visualisation), and to share it with others.

Do you think that alot of the information can be quite overwhelming and sometimes not go anywhere?

Of course, but that isn’t a reason for not publishing the information. It’s natural that when the information is released some of it will attract more attention than other parts – but also, if other questions come up in future there is a dataset that people can go back and interrogate even if they didn’t at the time.

At the moment we have a lot of data but very few tools to interrogate that. That’s going to change – just in the last 6 months we’ve seen some fantastic new tools for filtering data, and the momentum is building in this area. It’s notable how many of the bids for the Knight News Challenge were data-related.

Additionally, do you tihnk The Guardian continue to pursue stories from the masses of data as consistently as they have done in previous years?

Yes, I think the Guardian has now built a reputation in this field and will want to maintain that, not to mention the fact that its reputation means it will attract more and more data-related stories, and benefit from the work of people outside the organisation who are interrogating data. They’ll also get better and better as they learn from experience.

And why do you think that smaller news resources struggle to use this sort of information as a source for news?

Partly because data has historically been more national than local. Even now I get frustrated when I find a dataset but then discover it’s only broken down into England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But we are now finally getting more and more local data.

Also, at a local level journalists tend to be less specialised. On a national you might have a health or environment or financial reporter who is more used to dealing with figures and data. On a local newspaper that’s less likely – and there’s a high turnover of staff because of the low wages.

FAQ: 3 questions about paywalls

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Questions from a UCLAN student on paywalls, published here as part of my FAQ section:

1.A tabloid’s cover price barely covers the distribution costs, showing all profits are aquired through advertising: Given that The Sun & Daily Mail still sell 5million copies between them, how much do you think making companies advertise across two platforms (print and online) has damaged the business model of journalism to force solutions in paywalls?

Firstly, most tabloids actually make the majority of their profits through cover price. This makes them unusual compared to most other newspapers, which rely more on advertising, but the advertising-cover price split in profits varies widely between publications. Continue reading →