The Hyperlocal Voices series continues with a look at Pits n Pots, a site with its own Wikipedia entry. The site – set up in frustration at the lack of an opeb public forum in the local media – is frequently given as an example of the best of hyperlocal blogging.
Who were the people behind the blog?
Tony Walley & Mike Rawlins, we don’t have interesting ‘job’ titles, we are simply Mike & Tony.
Tony Walley is a company director & broadcaster. Tony has run a successful aluminium stockholding firm in Staffordshire for around 20 years and is politically active. He has worked as a local radio broadcaster mainly covering sport, off and on for around 10 years.
Mike Rawlins is a serial web meddler who had been working in Transport & Logistics for around 18 years. He decided to leave the rat race and to live the dream of being a photographer and a full time serial web meddler 2008.
We have 3 other casual writers who cover various subjects for us.
What made you decide to set up the blog?
The coverage of local politics in the local media at the time was poor to say the least. Commenting on anything that was published in the local media was subject to a policy of censorship rather than moderation. Tony decided that there needed to be a forum where people could discuss local politics in an adult manner without being censored.
When did you set up the blog and how did you go about it?
Tony Walley and I founded the site in September 2008.
What other blogs, bloggers or websites influenced you?
Pits n Pots was one of the first sites in the political scrutiny forum so it is difficult to name other sites as being influencers.
How did – and do – you see yourself in relation to a traditional news operation?
We like to think we have the same ethos as traditional news operations, wanting to provide news and views to interested parties, but without the need to sex up or sensationalise stories.
We don’t carry any significant advertising and don’t need to sell papers.
We research and write our articles because we feel there is a gap in the market.
How are we different? We run very light and are able to react to stories very quickly where the local press can only really publish once a day even on their website. We are able to be far more experimental with new platforms and technologies than the traditional media.
How are we the same? – We are the same in so far as we have a desire to put news in to the public domain.
What have been the key moments in the blog’s development editorially?
Our coverage of the EDL rally in Stoke-on-Trent was another key moment. This was the first time we really worked closely with the police. Our YouTube channel was the second most viewed news channel for 2 days after the rally.
What sort of traffic do you get and how has that changed over time?
Depending on the stories on the day we can get anywhere between 3000 & 5000 unique visitors each day.
I’ve only just come across this post by Robin Sloan applying the economic concepts of flow and stock to online news:
There are two kinds of quantities in the world. Stock is a static value: money in the bank, or trees in the forest. Flow is a rate of change: fifteen dollars an hour, or three-thousand toothpicks a day. Easy. Too easy.
But I actually think stock and flow is the master metaphor for media today. Here’s what I mean:
Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.
Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.
Sloan’s argument is that ‘flow’ – constant updates – is very much the focus of attention at the moment, but that ‘stock’ should not be neglected.
It’s a very appealing metaphor – not least because research suggests that users’ consumption of online news matches it. A previous study by Associated Press backs Sloan’s argument, finding that users were overwhelmed by constant updates but hungered for more depth. It recommended that publishers invest more resources in deeper reporting – in other words, in ‘stock’.
Pablo Boczkowski’s new book, News At Work, explores many of these issues too. In looking at how people consume news at work he identifies how users check the news online:
“The first visit [of the day] to an online news site is undertaken routinely in a double sense: each individual usually conducts this visit during the same part of the day and looks at news sites according to a navigation process that varies little from one day to the next …
“Subsequent visits differ from the initial visit in several dimensions. They take place at nonroutine times and intervals. They do not occur at fixed times of the day … but depend on the availability of downtime …
“These visits are often motivated by the need for a distraction or for more information after learning about an event … Subsequent visits … are not comprehensive, methodical, long, or marked by the strong presence of print[-originated] content. Instead they are limited, disorganised, brief and focused on breaking news or some other form of novel content.”
This is the focus on flow. However, it’s hard to tell whether that user behaviour might change if some of the context surrounding it changed. For example, Boczkowski’s focus is on consumption at work, where users are taking a quick break from what they should be doing. Elsewhere in the same chapter he identifies how many users avoid consuming news online outside of work because the computer reminds them of their work. Would this change with news consumption on more consumer-focused platforms such as mobile phones, tablets, web-enabled televisions and games consoles? Similarly, as the nature of work itself changes and more people work from home, will that change their behaviour? (Boczkowkski’s own findings suggest this is indeed the case for those people).
“[W]hen that naming happens, the case is over before it’s begun: no matter whether the accused is guilty or innocent, they are handed a life sentence. Until the day they die, whenever a potential employer or a new friend Googles their name – up will come the allegation. And, prison terms notwithstanding, that allegation carries the same punishment as guilt – a lifetime as an unemployable, unfriendable, outcast. There’s a reason why the Internet is a great way to ruin someone with false allegations – and it’s the same reason why falsely accused people are just as likely to harm themselves as guilty people.”
The post was written after TechCrunch decided to delete a story about an alleged sexual assault and is a useful read in provoking us as journalists in any medium to reflect on how we treat stories of this type.
There are no hard rules of course, and associated legal issues vary from country to country.
In the Judith Griggs case, for example, was I right to post on the story? My decision was based on a few factors: firstly, I was reporting on the actions of those on her magazine’s Facebook page, rather than the ‘crime’ itself (which was hardly the first time a publisher has lifted). Secondly, I waited to see if Griggs responded to the allegations before publishing. Thirdly, I evaluated the evidence myself to see the weight of the allegations. Still, I’d be interested in your thoughts.
It’s barely 24 hours since the Cooks Source/Judith Griggs saga blew up, but so much has happened in that time that I thought it worth reflecting on how other publishers might handle a similar situation.
Although it’s an extreme example, the story has particular relevance to those publications that rely on Facebook or another web presence to publish material online and communicate with readers, and might at some point face a backlash on that platform.
In the case of Cooks Source, their Facebook page went from 100 ‘likes’ to over 3,000, as people ‘liked’ the page in order to post a critical comment (given the huge numbers of comments it’s fair to say there were many more people who un-‘liked’ the page as soon as their comment was posted). The first question that many publishers looking at this might ask is defensive:
Should you have a Facebook page at all?
It would be easy to take the Cooks Source case as an indication that you shouldn’t have a Facebook page at all – on the basis that it might become hijacked by your critics or enemies. Or that if you do create a page you should do so in a way that does not allow postings to the wall.
The problem with this approach is that it misunderstands the fundamental shift in power between publisher and reader. Just as Monica Gaudio was able to tell the world about Judith’s cavalier attitude to copyright, not having a Facebook page (or blog, etc.) for your publication doesn’t prevent one existing at all.
In fact, if you don’t set up a space where your readers can communicate with you and each other, it’s likely that they’ll set one up themselves – and that introduces further problems.
If you don’t have a presence online, someone else will create a fake one to attack you with
After people heard about the Cooks Source story, it wasn’t long before some took the opportunity to set up fakeTwitter accounts and a Facebook user account in Judith’s name. (UPDATE: Someone has registered JudithGriggs.com and pointed it at the Wikipedia entry for ‘public domain’, while a further Cooks Source Facebook page has been set up claiming that the original was “hacked”)
These were used in various ways: to make information available (the Twitter account biography featured Judith’s phone number and email); to satirise Judith’s actions through mock-updates; and to tease easily-annoyed Facebook posters into angry responses.
Some people’s responses on Facebook to the ‘fake’ Judith suggested they did not realise that she was not the real thing, which leads to the next point.
A passive presence isn’t enough – be active
Judith obviously did have a Facebook account, but it was her slowness to respond to the critics that allowed others to impersonate her.
Indeed, it was several hours before Judith Griggs made any response on the Facebook page, and when she did (assuming it is genuine – see comments below) it was through the page’s welcoming message – in other words, it was a broadcast.
This might be understandable given the unmanageable volume of comments that had been posted by this time – but her message was also therefore easily missed in the depths of the conversation, and it meant that the ‘fake’ Judith was able to continue to impersonate her in responses to those messages.
One way to focus her actions in a meaningful way might have been to do a ‘Find’ on “Griggs” and respond there to clarify that this person was an imposter.
Instead, by being passive Judith created a vacuum. The activity that filled that vacuum led in all directions, including investigating the magazine more broadly and contacting advertisers and stockists.
Climb down quickly and unreservedly
While being passive can create a vacuum, being active can – if not done in a considered way – also simply add fuel to the fire.
The message that Judith eventually posted did just that. “I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently [sic] it wasnt enough for her,” she wrote, before saying “You did find a way to get your “pound of flesh…””.
This “blaming the victim”, as one wall poster described it, compounded the situation and merely confirmed Judith’s misunderstanding of the anger directed at her.
An apology clearly wasn’t what people wanted – or at least, not this sort of reserved apology.
A quicker, fuller response that demonstrated an understanding of her community would have made an enormous difference in channeling the energy that people poured into what became an increasingly aggressive campaign.
UPDATE (Nov 9): As of a few hours ago Cooks Source appear to have published an official statement which includes a more fullsome apology. The statement doesn’t help, however, partly because it doesn’t address the key issues raised by critics about where it gets content and images from, partly because its sense of priorities doesn’t match those of its audience (the apology comes quite late in the statement), and partly because it is internally inconsistent. Commenters on the Facebook page and blogs have already picked these apart.
Even if Judith had shut down the Facebook page (not a good idea – it would have merely added further fuel to the fire), the discussion – which had now become a campaign and investigation – was taking place elsewhere. Engaging in that in a positive way might have helped.
A magazine is not just content
One of the key principles demonstrated by the whole affair is that magazines are about much more than just the content inside, but about the community around it, and their values. This is what advertisers are buying into. When I asked one of Cooks Source’s advertisers why they decided to withdraw their support, this is what they said:
“I would estimate that between the emails, [Facebook] messages, calls, and people following us on Twitter, we’ve been contacted by more than 100 people since I first heard of this about 5 hours ago. That doesn’t include many many people who commented on fb to our posts stating that we had requested to pull our ads from the publication. We are just simply trying to run our small business, which by most standards is still in its infancy, and being associated with publications like this that don’t respect its readers (who are all our potential customers) is unacceptable to us in light of their practices. What angers me even more is the fact that it is being made light if by the Editor herself. It is disrupting our business and linking us to something we do not support.”
UPDATE 7: The official Cooks Source webpage now features a rather confusing statement on the saga, apologising to Monica Gaudio and saying they have made the donation asked for. The page claims that their Facebook page was “cancelled” and “since hacked”. It’s not clear what they mean by these terms as the original Facebook page is still up and, clearly, could not be hacked if it had been “cancelled”. They may be referring to the duplicate Facebook page which also claims (falsely) the original was “hacked”. In addition the statement says they have “cancelled” their website – but as the statement is published on their website it may be that by “cancelled” they mean all previous content has been removed. This discussion thread picks out further inconsistencies and omissions.
UPDATE 5: The magazine’s Facebook page has now been updated with a message from editor Judith saying she “did apologise” but “apparently it wasn’t enough for her”, shown below:
For much of today people have been tweeting and blogging about the magazine editor with 30 years’ experience demonstrating a by now familiar misunderstanding of copyright law and the ‘public domain’.
To the writer whose material they used without permission she apparently responded that “the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it!”
What makes this of particular interest is how the affair has blown up not just across Twitter and Reddit but on the magazine’s own Facebook page, demonstrating how this sort of mistake can impact very directly on your own readers – and stockists and advertisers:
Meanwhile, others were suggesting investigating the magazine further:
It all adds up to a perfect lesson for magazine editors – not just in copyright, but in PR and community management.
I’m trying to get a feel for what some of the most innovative government departments and local authorities are doing around releasing data. I spoke to Stuart Harrison of Lichfield Council, which is leading the way at a local level.
What has been your involvement with open data so far?
I’ve been interested in open data for a few years now. It all started when I was building a site for food safety inspections in Staffordshire (http://www.ratemyplace.org.uk/), and after seeing the open APIs offered by sites such as Fixmystreet, Theyworkforyou etc, was inspired to add an API (http://www.ratemyplace.org.uk/api). This then got me thinking about all the data we publish on our website, and whether we could publish this in an open format. A trickle quickly turned into a flood and we now have over 50 individual items of open data at http://www.lichfielddc.gov.uk/data.
I think the main thing I’ve learnt is that APIs are great, but they’re not always necessary. My early work was on APIs that link directly into databases, but, as I’ve moved forward, I’ve found that this isn’t always necessary. While an API is nice to have, it’s sometimes much better to just get the data out there in a raw format.
What have people done with the data so far?
As we’re quite a small council, we haven’t had a lot of people doing work (that I know of) with much of our data. The biggest user of our data is probably Chris Taggart at Openly Local – I actually built an API (and extended the functionality of our existing councillor and committees system) to make it easier to republish. To be honest, unless I know the person and they actually told me, I doubt I’d actually know what was going on!
What do you plan to do next – and why?
Because of the problems stated before, we’ve got together with ScraperWiki to organise a Hacks and Hackers day on the 11th November, which will hopefully encourage developers and journalists to do something with our data, and also put the wheels in motion for organising a data-based community, which means that once someone does something with our data, we’re more likely to know about it!
The previous posts of this series have left an impression that online journalism is left behind by the technological developments in new media. Linear text is preferred over hypertext and multimedia (hypermedia). Traditional norms of gatekeeping are preferred over participatory journalism and alternative flows of information, albeit interactivity seems to play a larger role when it comes to how major breaking news events, like crises events, are researched and covered.
Journalists and editors seem, at least to some extent, eager to embrace change brought forward by new technology, while users don’t seem to care. All in all; it seems that technology may not be the main driving force of developments in online journalism. The question is therefore: how can research on online journalism better grasp why online journalism develops as it does?
Some researchers suggest that ethnography and a closer look at the practices and routines of online news production is the answer. Pablo Boczkowski is a premier example of this trend, first with his 2004 “classic” Digitizing the News, and now with the newly released News at Work — a book in which he investigates online journalism from multiple perspectives (from inside the newsroom to audience perception).
The case studies presented in Domingo and Paterson (eds) Making Online News (2008) — a book which comes in a new edition with new studies next year — are also examples of this ethnography-trend. However, both Boczkowski’s work and the studies in Making Online Newsare quite dominated by the technological discourse.
These studies provide valuable insights into the complexity of online journalism production and put forward findings that shed light on why technology is not utilized to the degree that has been previously postulated.
Notwithstanding the significant contributions of these studies, there are still many shortcomings of the research on online journalism. I will conclude this series with six suggestions for further research.
First, studies of online journalism could benefit from a broader contextualization Mitchelstein and Boczkowski (2009) (restricted access) argue that the research on online journalism lacks historical dimensions. Relating online journalism to developments in journalism prior to the Internet boom could therefore be a suggestion. Viewing online journalism in reliance to media theory and how media and media products transform over time could be another. Mitchelstein and Boczkowski (2009) also identify a need for more cross-national studies, and for online journalism researchers to look beyond the newsroom and the news industry and take into account structural factors of for instance the labor market and comparable processes in other industries in order to better understand “who gets to produce online news, how that production takes place, and what stories result from these dynamics” (2009, 576). It should however be noted that Mark Deuze’s 2007 book Media Work (preview in Google books) and a special issue of the journal Journalism on Newsworkto some extent address these shortcomings.
Second, the research on online journalism is flooded by a range of theoretical concepts that are either interchangeable or are interpreted differently by different researchers. Concepts like interactivity, hypertext and multimedia are understood in different ways, and other concept, like genre and innovation are generally used without any theoretical discussion on what they represent and how they might inform the research on online journalism. A stronger emphasis on conceptualization is therefore needed
Third, most of the research on online journalism is limited to a focus on the presentation and to some degree the production and reception of hard/breaking news and the rhetoric of online news sites’ front-pages. The development of other genres therefore seems to have been downplayed in the research, even though some studies have been conducted on online feature journalism (Boczkowski 2009 (restricted access); and some of my own research (my PhD as pdf)). Furthermore, sections and stories that are reached by other means than via links from the front-page (e.g. traffic to stories and sections generated from search engines) seem to be under-represented in the research. A stronger emphasis on the diversification of online journalism is therefore needed.
Fourth, research on online journalism could benefit from a greater recognition of and reflection on the text as a research unit. Although most research on online journalism deals with text in one way or the other, there is a striking neglect of theoretical and methodological reflections on what texts are, how they facilitate communication, how they relate to media, and how they connect media with society. Genre theory and discourse analysis could for instance be valuable tools to establish research approaches that aim at investigating online journalism as communication. Lüders et al. (2010) (restricted access), for instance, show how the concept of genre provides vital insights into the emergence of new media like the personal weblog.
Fifth, although some of the research mentioned in this series makes longitudinal claims, the empirical material is seldom of longitudinal character. This seems to be a flaw considering the swift development of online journalism and the lack of common theoretical and methodological approaches, which makes comparisons between findings difficult.
And finally, sixth, research of online journalism suffers from a methodological deficiency. The research is dominated by content analysis, surveys and interviews. Qualitative approaches are rarely utilized, even though ethnographic news production studies seem to gain popularity. However, given the limited cases that are possible to investigate with such a methodology, more ethnographic research is need. Furthermore, content analysis should to a greater extent be combined with qualitative textual analysis of online journalism texts – all in order to uncover the complexity of online journalism.
The latest in the Hyperlocal Voices series looks at new hyperlocal blog The Lincolnite, launched by recent Lincoln University graduates, who also managed to secure funding for their venture.
Who were the people behind The Lincolnite, and what were their backgrounds?
The people behind The Lincolnite are Daniel Ionescu (Managing Editor), Elizabeth Fish (Associate Editor), and Chris Brandrick (Senior Editor). Daniel and Elizabeth are journalism graduates from the University of Lincoln, while Chris is a Web Technology graduate from the same institution.
Besides our journalism and web technology training, all of us are also freelance writers for several publications, and have run the award-winning student newspaper at the University of Lincoln for two years.
We also have several contributors and freelancers on board.
What made you decide to set up The Lincolnite?
The idea was something I had at the back of my mind for a couple of years. I believe hyperlocal can be one of the strengths of small independent media outlets, and Lincoln was missing such a publication.
The small city (approx. 100,000 people) is served by county-wide media (one newspaper and two radio stations), yet no dedicated local news source existed. So The Lincolnite came to fill a gap in the market in the city — a news website dedicated to covering only Lincoln. Continue reading →
I can’t compete with that, so I thought I’d start a list of Media Oops-es, i.e., cockups. This is all in the interest of media transparency, you understand. Shooting from the hip is just as big a problem for blogging journalists as it is for rednecks and Harriet Harman – though I suspect her invective was planned.
(Update: since this is about educating student journalists, I thought I would cross-post to the Online Journalism Blog in addition to the Wardman Wire).
The first one comes via Justin McKeating, who’s doing something slightly similar, though I suspect we’ll be tracking different bits of media silliness.
Rentoul came up with a slightly unflattering comparison:
A friend draws my attention to a resemblance I had not noticed.
Ed Miliband, he says, reminds him of Watto, the hovering, scuzzy garage owner on Tatooine who enslaves little boys in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, my favourite film of the six.
Miliband spoke in his speech to Labour conference of his being compared to “Wallace out of Wallace and Gromit” – although he department from the text issued, “I can see the resemblance”, to say: “I gather some people can see the resemblance.”
But I thought he looked more like Gromit – the dog who is cleverer than his master who expresses himself mainly by his eyebrows.
If he’d just left it there none of us would have made a fuss. But he thought better of it and deleted the piece. As Justin says:
It looks like the mighty John Rentoul thought better of comparing Ed Miliband to the Watto character from The Phantom Menace and pulled the post without comment. You now get a ‘page not found’ error when you click on the link. Particularly piquant was when Rentoul noted Watto is ‘scuzzy’ and ‘enslaves little boys’. And he deleted his tweet advertising his insightful blog post (we know it was there because somebody replied to it). What a shame, denying future students of journalism this exemplary example of the craft.
Who am I to deny an education to students of journalism? I love computer networks with memories; and also search engines with caches.
For the record, here’s the Milliman, who Rentoul (and everybody else) has previously compared to a panda:
The best bit is that the next Rentoul blog post was all about “tasteless metaphors“.
Pot. Kettle. White and black.
(Update: since this is about educating student journalists, I thought I would cross-post to the Online Journalism Blog).
Science journalist Angela Saini has written an interesting post on ‘devaluing journalism’ that I felt I had to respond to. “The profession [of journalism] is being devalued,” she argues.
“Firstly, by magazines and newspapers that are turning to bloggers for content instead of experienced journalists. And secondly, by people who are willing to work for free or for very little (interns, bloggers, cut-price freelancers). Now this is fine if you’re just running your own site in your spare time, but the media is always going to suffer if journalists don’t demand fair pay for doing real stories. Editors will get away with undercutting their writers. Plus, they’ll be much keener to employ legions of churnalists on the cheap. In the long-run, the quality of stories will fall.”
Firstly let me say that I broadly agree with most of what Angela is saying: that full time journalists offer something that other participants in journalism do not; and that publishers and editors see interns and bloggers as sources of cheap content. I also strongly support interns being paid.
But I think Angela mixes economic value with editorial value, and that undermines the general thrust of the argument.
What reduces the value of something economically? Angela’s argument seems to rest on the idea of increased supply. And indeed, entry-level journalism wages have been consistently depressed partly as a result of increasing numbers of people who want to be journalists and who will work for free, or for low wages – but also partly because of the demands of and pressures on the industry itself.
“Although entry-level journalists are badly paid, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the economics of Nicholas Kristof’s salary. Kristof’s pay goes up or down based on what the papers can afford, which is driven by subscriptions and advertising. In fact, the more liars and bad writers are out there with healthy audiences, the bigger is the pie for the best journalists to fight over. Effectively, that’s just a few million more hacks that Kristof is better than. The best columns in journalism are a classic positional good: their worth is determined by how much better they are than their competitors.”
Editorial value, not economic
Angela’s point, however, is not about the economic value of professional journalism but the editorial value – the quality, not the quantity.
There’s an obvious link between the two. Pay people very little, and they won’t stick around to become better reporters (witness how many journalists leave the profession for PR as soon as they have families to feed). Rely on interns and you not only have a more unskilled workforce but the skilled part of your workforce has to spend part of its time doing informal ‘training’ of those interns.
So where do bloggers come in? Angela mentions them in two senses: firstly as being chosen over experienced journalists, and second as part of a list of people willing to work for little or for free.
‘Blogger’ is meaningless
But, unlike the labels ‘intern’ and ‘freelance journalist’, ‘blogger’ is a definition by platform not by occupation, and takes in a vast range of people, some of whom are very experienced journalists themselves (with high rates), and some of whom have more specialist expertise than journalists. It also includes aspiring journalists and “cut price freelancers”.
Does their existence ‘devalue’ journalism? Economically, you might argue that it increases the supply of journalism and so drives down its price (I wouldn’t, but you might. That’s not my point).
But editorially? Well, here we have to take in a new factor: bloggers don’t have to write about what publishers tell them to. And most of them don’t. So while the increase in bloggers has expanded the potential market for contributors – it’s also expanded the content competing with your own. Competition – in strictly economic terms – is supposed to drive quality up. But I’m not going to argue that that’s happening, because this is not a market economy we’re looking at, but a mixed one.
I guess my point is that this isn’t a simple either/or calculation any more. The drive to reduce costs and increase profits has always led to the ‘devaluing of journalism’ as a profession. Blogging and the broader ability for anyone to publish does little to change that. What it does do, however, is introduce different dynamics into the picture. When you divorce ‘journalism’ from its commercial face, ‘publishing’, as the internet has done, then you also break down the relationship between economic devaluation and editorial devaluation when it comes to journalism in aggregate.
Online Journalism Blog 
