Category Archives: faq

FAQ: How can news organisations compete at a hyperlocal level? (and other questions from AOP)

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These questions were submitted to me in advance of the next AOP meeting, on ‘Microlocal Media’, and have been published on the AOP site. As usual, I’m republishing here as part of my FAQ series.

Q. How can publishers compete with zero-cost base community developed and run sites?

They can’t – and they shouldn’t. When it comes to the web, the value lies in the network, not in the content. Look at the biggest web success story: Google. Google’s value – contrary to the opinion of AP or Rupert Murdoch or the PCC – is not in its content. It is in its connections; its links; its network. You don’t go to Google to read; you go there to find. The same is true of so many things on the internet. One of the problems for publishers is that people use the web as a communications channel first, as a tool second, and as a destination after that. The successful operations understand the other two uses and work on those by forging partnerships, and linking, linking, linking. Continue reading →

FAQ: What do you see in the future for investigative journalism?

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Here’s another collection of questions from a University of Montana student that I’m answering here as part of my FAQ section:

Q: What do you see is the future for investigative journalism? Do you still see it as having a home at newspapers?

I think the future of investigative journalism is already here – it’s just unevenly distributed,as William Gibson would say. Nonprofit organisations (such as Amnesty or Human Rights Watch) are an increasingly significant source of investigative journalism. Then there are the more general investigative journalism operations, funded by foundations and donations, such as ProPublica. Crowdfunding projects such as Spot.us are going to be increasingly important. And then there are crowdsourcing operations such as those done by Talking Points Memo and, of course, my own project Help Me Investigate. Continue reading →

FAQ: What is the difference between monetising content and monetising audience? (etc.)

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Another set of questions from a student (based on a discussion I did on Radio 4’s Today programme with Will Hutton) which I am answering in public:

1) What is the difference between monetising content and monetising audience?

What a great question. Monetising content means selling content or, more often, a container of content. So most news organisations sell a ‘newspaper’ as much as ‘news’. Although wire services like PA sell ‘news’ and, sometimes, ‘information’, their clients ultimately re-sell that as a print package. Continue reading →

FAQ: Why do you blog? And other questions

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Here’s another collection of Q&As from a correspondent, published here to prevent repetition:

1. How do you feel about the opinions published in your blog being used by journalists in the news?

I’m not clear what you mean by this question, but broadly speaking if my opinions are properly attributed then I am fine with it.

2. Why do you blog?

I started blogging out of professional and creative curiosity – at that point it wasn’t an online journalism blog. I continued to blog largely because I started to feel part of a wider community – I particularly remember comments from Mindy McAdams and links from Martin Stabe. Now I blog for a combination of reasons: firstly, it is hugely educational to put something out there and receive other people’s insights; secondly, it leads to meetings and conversations with very interesting people I otherwise wouldn’t meet; thirdly, it’s a useful record for myself: forcing myself to articulate an idea in text means I can identify gaps and come back to it when I want to make the same point again.

3. Do you consider yourself a journalist when blogging in that you source news and broadcast it?

Yes. But how much I “source news” and how much I “broadcast” it are subject to further discussion.

4. What do you think about information put on social media websites, such as photos and personal details, being used in mainstream media?

I assume you mean without permission? I think there’s a lack of proper thought on both the part of the individual and the journalist. On a purely legal front, it’s breach of copyright, so media organisations and journalists are in the wrong. On an ethical front, journalists need to realise that a social network is not a publishing platform, but a conversational one. If someone puts information there it is often for an intended, personal, audience. The closest analogy is the pub conversation: it is being held in public, but if someone listens in and publishes what you’ve said to a much wider, different, audience, then that is unethical (public interest aside).

5. When blogging, are you aware that you are putting your opinions and thoughts out there for the world to see? Do you censor what you say because of this?

Yes. And yes. ‘Censor’ is probably the wrong word: I choose what I say; I generally don’t talk about my personal life or meetings which I assume are confidential.

6. Do you think a news piece sourced from blogs is as worthy as a piece sourced from investigative journalism?

To properly answer this I’d probably need lengthy definitions of what you mean by ‘worthy’, blogs, news, ‘sourced’ and investigative journalism. And even then I think to impose broad-brush distinctions like these is a flawed approach. A news piece sourced from blogs can be investigative; ‘investigative journalism’ can be ‘unworthy’. Judge each case on its own; don’t dismiss the value of something because of the packet it comes in.

Are there too many journalism courses?

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I took a phonecall recently from a journalist writing an article on the increase in journalism degrees. The question – are there too many? – is one of those that recur every so often, so I thought I would lay out some of the thinking behind it and why I think the question itself is flawed.

What and who are journalism degrees for?

The first problem with the question is the implicit assumption about what journalism degrees are for; that journalism courses exist ‘to train people to enter the news industry’. If the news industry is shedding jobs, the question suggests, why should we have so many journalism degrees?

But journalism degrees do not exist just to train people to enter the news industry. This is the difference between ‘education’ and ‘training’. Off the top of my head, here are just some of the things I think they do. Feel free to add more:

  1. Build core academic skills such as research, conceptual knowledge and critical skills
  2. Build practical skills such as communication, research, and production
  3. Develop creative skills
  4. Develop project management skills
  5. Develop teamworking skills and the ability to work on initiative
  6. Build a critical understanding of news processes and relationships of power
  7. Provide space to explore how journalism and publishing is, and might be, different (particularly important when it is in crisis)
  8. Allow people to find out whether they want to work in the news industry
  9. Allow students to achieve a degree in an area they find challenging and fulfilling
  10. And yes, to train people to enter the news industry
  11. And the PR industry
  12. And any industry that involves professional communication

There are a huge range of journalism courses – from those that are purely theoretical with no practical work, to those that are almost entirely practical, and those that have a mix of both. Ultimately, there are a lot of journalism courses because there are a lot of people who want to study journalism, and their motivations are as varied as the courses themselves – for many it is simply ‘something I am good at’. If it was simply to ‘get a job’ then they could do a training course for much less.

Journalism is not the same as ‘the news industry’

A second assumption underlying the question is that journalism and news publishing are the same. They are not. I’ll save the ‘What is journalism?’ discussion for another time, but if we can agree that it is more complex than ‘working for The Sun’ and closer to ‘finding information and crafting it into meaningful narratives’ then that’s the point I want to make. And jobs requiring the skill of journalism are not limited to ‘the news industry’.

While mainstream broadcasters and publishers are shedding jobs, you see, other areas are recruiting. AOL has increased its journalists from 500 to 3000; Microsoft has entered the arena with MSN Local; there are in-house and business-to-business magazines; the hugely-expanding area of SEO is hiring content creators; and any company that doesn’t pay an SEO company is realising it needs to produce regular content for that website it paid for.

In an article in the latest issue of The Journalist, Vivien Sandt puts it well when she points out a number of job ads for journalists: “The skills required do not differ substantially from those of a sub-editor or journalist. But none of the advertisers is a traditional media company.”

The biggest problem with journalism degrees is not that there are too many, it is that too many of them are ignoring these parts of the media ecology.

‘Disappointed’ students

Assumption number 3 underlying the question of ‘too many journalism degrees’ similarly involves employability, but from a supply perspective rather than that of demand.

‘Students come into journalism degrees expecting jobs in publishing,’ it runs. ‘And there are no jobs.’

Notwithstanding the points I’ve made above about jobs, there are some other points to be made here. I’m sure that most people studying drama hope to become actors; that most people studying art hope to work in the creative industries; even that many people studying English Literature hope to become writers.

Not all of them will. Shit happens. Some people are not very good; some people don’t try very hard; some people are just coasting along on the path of least resistance – we can’t design that out of our education system without excluding those that work hard, who are talented and dedicated and want to achieve great things. A degree isn’t the promise of a beautiful career – it is the promise of an opportunity for personal development which relies on your own commitment and ability as much as that of the lecturers, support staff and university.

The philosophy industry is pretty dead right now, but I don’t hear people saying ‘There are too many Philosophy degrees’.

FAQ: questions from Maite Fernandez

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A few months ago Uruguayan student Maite Fernandez interviewed me about online journalism. I always try to make these responses public for other students who may have the same questions, so here are the answers as transcribed by Maite:

1) How do you think the net affects the transmission of news?

One major way lies in distribution. Print news spent decades setting up a distribution infrastructure (typically delivery vans, vendors/newsagents and paper boys); broadcast news did the same with distribution over time (scheduling and running orders). But online, distribution is networked – and it is done by readers and, to a lesser extent, the journalists themselves. As I’ve written elsewhere, we are all paperboys now. Continue reading →