Category Archives: twitter

Hyperlocal Voices: Cathy Watson, Uckfield News

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Hyperlocal voices - Uckfield News

Cathy Watson, an experienced journalist, first set up the Uckfield News 3 and a half years ago to promote her PR business, which it has since outgrown. The site is “reactive”, says Cathy, both in the directions that it has grown, and in many of the stories that it covers: “Where I see people hunting for information, perhaps on Twitter or Facebook, about traffic hold ups or fires I make the calls to find and post answers but I don’t make the traditional daily calls.”

This is part of the ongoing Hyperlocal Voices series of interviews.

Who were the people behind the blog, and what were their backgrounds?

I set up the blog but my husband, Paul Watson, now helps with it. We are both journalists.

I have worked as reporter, news editor, sub-editor, deputy editor and acting editor moving, within one company, between the Bury Free Press, Newmarket Journal and Lynn News and Advertiser. After moving to Sussex I worked as a freelance for the Sussex Express.

Paul too worked in all jobs across the newsroom before becoming an editor. He edited free newspapers in King’s Lynn and Wisbech before moving to edit the Middy, (the Mid Sussex Times at Haywards Heath) and then the Sussex Express.

Most recently he has been looking at the future training of journalists in managing a project led by the National Council for the Training of Journalists supported by the Broadcast Journalism Training Council, the Periodicals Training Council and the Society of Editors.

The project has included a survey of employers of journalists, relevant education providers and new entrants to the profession.

He continues to work as an editorial consultant for the NCTJ.

What made you decide to set up the blog?

I started a PR business, wanted to attract the attention of local businesses and thought it would help to have an Uckfield News page on my website. I updated it daily with nibs (news in brief).

When did you set up the blog and how did you go about it?

I started the news page three-and-a-half years ago using the free Microsoft Office Live platform. After about 18 months I altered the focus of the site to Uckfield News and a year ago had a bespoke site built.

What other blogs, bloggers or websites influenced you?

None. I didn’t know people were setting up ‘hyperlocal’ sites. Everything I have done has been reactive, people liked the news so I added more of it, I tested a shopping feature and it led to the listings, the listings are now leading to more features and people who pay to list (so supporting the site) are, where possible, sources for stories.

How did – and do – you see yourself in relation to a traditional news operation?

Uckfield is on the edge of circulation areas of three paid-for newspapers. They cover the town well but can’t pick up the ‘nitty gritty’ because of commitments to other towns.

I’m particularly interested in planning applications, change within the town, shopping and business news. I concentrate on reporting facts, leaving people to add their views in the comment sections at the end of stories, and on Uckfield News Twitter and Facebook pages.

I also mix paid-for ad features in with the news.

Where I see people hunting for information, perhaps on Twitter or Facebook, about traffic hold ups or fires I make the calls to find and post answers but I don’t make the traditional daily calls and tend to avoid “shock, horror, probe”.

What have been the key moments in the blog’s development editorially?

Adding shopping, business and history features. They are a good way of bringing people back to the site on a regular basis.

What sort of traffic do you get and how has that changed over time?

It doesn’t seem long since I was pleased to have four or five visitors a day! Growth has been slow but by the time we launched the new site a year ago we were getting about 1,000 unique visitors a month.

In our most recent peak we hit about 4,500 unique visitors, 9,000 visitors and 25,000 page views. The figures have settled again to about 3,000 unique visitors, 5,000 visits and 14,000 page views a month but the trend is upwards.

Paul and I have the desire to cover everything that moves because old habits die hard! But I am reining back because I don’t want to do this without advertising support. I have just had the site altered to accommodate advertising and hope to start building that side of the business.

My Henry Stewart talk about 'Blogging, Twitter and Journalism'

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I’ve recorded a 48 minute presentation covering ‘Blogging, Twitter and Journalism‘ for the Henry Stewart series of talks. It’s designed for journalism students and covers

  • How blogging differs from other journalism platforms;
  • Key developments in journalism blogging history;
  • What makes a successful blog
  • What is Twitter and how is it useful for journalists and publishers? and
  • Why RSS is central to blogging and Twitter and how it works

Quiz: Are you a socially networked journalist?

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Are you a social media journalist?
Photo by mulmatsherm (click to view)

I wrote this some time ago (the plan was to do it properly in Javascript or Flash) and rediscovered it while clearing out my office. It’s just a bit of Friday fun:

Quiz: Are you a networked journalist?

Are you powering down the Information Superhighway, fueled by Google Juice bought with Social Capital? Or are you stuck in the News Cycle Lane pedalling the Penny Farthing of journalism?

Are you among the widows of journalism past – or the orphans of journalism future?*

Do you know your tweets from your twats? Your friends from your Friendster? In just 7 questions this quiz will determine – once and for all time, eternally – your value as an professional journalist in the networked economy**. Go ahead.

Question 1: You witness a car crash involving a Premiership footballer. Do you:

a) Whip out your iPhone and take photos that go straight onto Flickr and Twitpic. Then create a new venue on Foursquare: ‘scene of car crash’ – of which you are now mayor.

b) Phone into the office to ask them to send a photographer, then whip out your notebook and try to get a quote

c) Phone an ambulance, then rush over to help him

Question 2: The Prime Minister calls a press conference. As you rush off to attend do you:

a) Ask people on your blog to suggest what questions you should put to the PM

b) Ask people in your office what big issues you should raise

c) Ask your partner if your flies are undone

Question 3: When you arrive at the press conference do you:

a) Look for a wifi signal

b) Look for someone to interview

c) Look for the toilets

Question 4: A major international story breaks while you’re in the office. Do you:

a) Start scouring Twitter, Tweepsearch and Twitterfall to see if you can track down someone tweeting from the scene

b) Pick up the phone and call a relevant international agency for their 30th official quote of the hour

c) Turn on the TV

Question 5: You’re about to go home when the editor asks you for an 800 word background feature on an ongoing issue in your field. Do you:

a) Open up your Delicious account and look through all your bookmarks under the relevant tags – and those of your network. Then check LinkedIn for contacts.

b) Flick through your contacts book. Then search Google.

c) Say no – you have to pick up your kids from school

Question 6: The newsroom post contains a vaguely interesting press release. Do you:

a) Spend 10 seconds googling to see if it’s online, then bookmarking it on Delicious with a key passage, which is then automatically republished with a link to the source on your Twitter stream, blog, and 24 different social networks.

b) Spend 10 minutes rewriting it for a potential filler for the next day’s paper

c) Read something else

Question 7: A notorious local dies, suddenly. Do you:

a) Shamelessly lift a picture from their Facebook profile, and aggregate everything under the #deadlocal hashtag

b) Go through the cuttings files to pull together an obituary

c) Send a card

Are you a social journalist? Check your results:

Mostly a)

Congratulations: you’re a social journalist. You are permanently connected to the online world of your readers and contacts. Permanently.

Mostly b)

You’re an old school journalist. Your equipment doesn’t need a battery and a wifi signal. But occasionally a pen will leak all over your jacket’s inside pocket.

Mostly c)

You’re a human being. Expect a P45 any day now.

A mix of the above

What do you think this is? A Mensa test? OK, so you’re complicated. Do us all a favour and find a pigeonhole to sit in for once.

*Sub editing joke.

**Because you need external validation from someone you’ve never met before, obviously.

PS: You may want to add your own questions – this would be welcome.

The foreign minister of Argentina on Twitter

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Argentinian politicians of all parties are now fervent Twitter users, as I stated in my previous OJB post, and they don’t hesitate in arguing shamelessly about all national matters in 140 characters.

The new foreign minister, Hector Timerman (@hectortimerman), is maybe the most enthusiastic Twitter user of all the government officials. Every day you can read him discussing with national journalists – and regular Twitter citizens – the administration’s performance.

So, generally, journalists that don’t agree with Kirchner’s  marriage policies bear the brunt of his anger through Twitter. That’s why Reynaldo Sietecase (one of the top national journalists) asked Timerman in his radio show about the risk of communicating things by Twitter “without any filter”.

The foreign minister of Argentina replied with irony: ¿Dont you think that now, while I’m talking on the radio with you, I’m also doing it without any filter?

The journalist pushed on and asked if Twitter didn’t make him waste time. Of course, Timerman raised the bet: “Actually, I waste much more time talking with you than on Twitter”.

News sites based on social media content in Latin America

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I have to admit I didn’t see this one coming… traditional media corporations in Latin America are launching news sites based exclusively on content originated in social media.

First of all, we have 140 – news of Twitter, a new web site lunched by Perfil in Argentina, intended as a site for “people who don’t have a Twitter account but want to find out what’s happening” in the microblogging world.

Twitter has had a tremendous growth in the country in 2010, thanks mainly to TV shows that sudenly began using Twitter as a live interactive tool with the audience.

Then local celebrities and world-cup football players joined the conversation, finishing the job of popularizing the social network, and now even politicians replace their traditional press releases with fleeting 140 character messages that sometimes end up in front pages.

140 was created by Darío Gallo, executive editor of Perfil.com and former Director of Noticias (the most popular political magazine of the country), one of the early adopters of Twitter in Argentina. He assured me the new project is receiving good reactions and traffic. Continue reading →

How to filter out Foursquare tweets

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Sue Llewellyn asks if there’s a way to filter out Foursquare tweets. There is.

The first thing to do is work out something that all the tweets share. Well, every Foursquare tweet includes a link that begins http://4sq.com – so that’s it.

If you’re using Tweetdeck this is how you do it. At the bottom of every column in Tweetdeck are 6 buttons. The second one in – a downward-pointing arrow – is the ‘Filter this column’ button. Click this. A new row appears where you can filter the tweets. Select ‘Text’ then ‘-‘ and type ‘http://4sq.com’ in the third box. You should see tweets automatically filtered accordingly.

Seesmic desktop has a similar filtering function.

And on iPhone a few Twitter clients have filtering options, including Twittelator.

Let me know if you know of any others.

The curious case of More! magazine, Twitter and the mocking retweets

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Here’s the strange tale of Blair and More! magazine. Blair is a fashion blogger who picked up a copy of More! magazine, didn’t like what she saw, and tweeted it.

More! then retweeted Blair’s critical opinions to their 11,000-plus followers – along with a couple of tweets that Blair had directed at a friend. Continue reading →

An experiment tonight in joining up politics #onlinepolitics

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Tonight I’m doing an experiment to create a conversation about politics across several different niches, with the idea of trying to broaden political debate.

My aim is to help pull together different aspects of politics and media – including campaigning, technology skills, scrutiny, how to report to a high standard, and local reporting – as a way of helping build participation online.

That’s a big subject, so I’m starting with one aspect that I can grab hold of and which should be of wide interest – making some income from political or other blogs – and a twitter chat on the hashtag #onlinepolitics from 9pm to 10pm, which will be captured on my blog using Cover It Live.

There is an introductory article for this chat published earlier today here, as a “starter for ten”.

Anyone is welcome to watch or join in.

I am @mattwardman on twitter.

A journalistic tour of the Argentinian Bicentenary

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On May 25th we celebrate the Argentinian Bicentenary. And while the big media aren’t showing any really interesting initiatives, we have Tu Bicentenario, an independent and experimental journalistic project that aims to give real-time coverage to the main events of the celebrations with social tools and user-collaboration.

With a highly customizable website that integrates different movable boxes, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Maps and mobile streaming, they are trying to facilitate the creation and publication of content not only by the creators but by the audience too.

The most interesting content that came out of the project so far -in my opinion- is the survey in pictures and videos of historic sites, contrasted with old images to show the changing of cities. This material is being geolocated in Google Maps.

Some Argentinean Google Maps users also upload 3D models of the most important sights so you can do a virtual tour of the country.

Dealing with live data and sentiment analysis: Q&A with The Guardian's Martyn Inglis

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As part of the research for my book on online journalism, I interviewed Martyn Inglis about The Guardian’s Blairometer, which measured a live stream of data from Twitter as Tony Blair appeared before the Chilcot inquiry. I’m reproducing it in full here, with permission:

How did you prepare for dealing with live data and sentiment analysis?

I think it was important to be aware of our limitations. We can process a limited amount of data – due to Twitter quotas and so on. This is not a definitive sample. Once we accept that (a) we are not going to rank every tweet and (b) this is therefore going to be a limited exercise it frees us to make concessions that provide an easier technology solution.

Sentiment analysis is hard programatically, given the short time span of the event in which we can do this manually. We had an interface view onto incoming tweets which we had pulled from a twitter search. This allows us to be really accurate in our assessment. This does not work over a long period of time – the Chilcot inquiry is one thing, you couldn’t do it for an event lasting a week or so on. Continue reading →