Carnival of journalism: How do you financially support journalism online?

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Gather round, gather round for this month’s Carnival of Journalism, which addresses the timely question of ‘How do you financially support journalism online?’. I’ll be updating this post as the carnival performers put on their outsized business heads and add their peacock-like contributions.

An iTunes model for news? More difficult than you think.

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The following is a comment I posted on Standupkid’s Localtvnews blog, a response to the David Carr NYT column ‘Let’s invent an iTunes for News’. The comment ended up being so lengthy I thought I’d better reproduce it here:

The whole iTunes idea is flawed on so many levels: mainly as people are willing to pay for music because they play it over and over again. News is disposable. Also, an individual piece of music tends to be unique – but when an earthquake happens, it’s not like the only way you can find out what happens is by paying a dollar to download the article about it. Put another way, how much effort does it take to compose, rehearse and record a track? Now how much time does it take a journalist to write a standard article? Very little journalism has value approaching that of music and yes, perhaps we’d pay for it, but how would we find it? And how could we produce it often enough to be viable? (Note that most musicians do not make a living from their music – would an iTunes for news mean the same for journalists?). Continue reading →

The future of investigative journalism: databases and algorithms

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There’s a great article over at Miller-McCune on investigative journalism and what you might variously call computer assisted reporting and database journalism. Worth reading in full, the really interesting stuff comes further in, which I’ve quoted below in full:

“Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation and a veteran investigative reporter and editor, summarizes the nonprofit’s aim as “one-click” government transparency, to be achieved by funding online technology that does some of what investigative reporters always have done: gather records and cross-check them against one another, in hopes of finding signs or patterns of problems

“… Before he came to the Sunlight Foundation, Allison says, the notion that computer algorithms could do a significant part of what investigative reporters have always done seemed “far-fetched.” But there’s nothing far-fetched about the use of data-mining techniques in the pursuit of patterns. Law firms already use data “chewers” to parse the thousands of pages of information they get in the discovery phase of legal actions, Allison notes, looking for key phrases and terms and sorting the probative wheat from the chaff and, in the process, “learning” to be smarter in their further searches.

“Now, in the post-Google Age, Allison sees the possibility that computer algorithms can sort through the huge amounts of databased information available on the Internet, providing public interest reporters with sets of potential story leads they otherwise might never have found. The programs could only enhance, not replace, the reporter, who would still have to cultivate the human sources and provide the context and verification needed for quality journalism. But the data-mining programs could make the reporters more efficient — and, perhaps, a less appealing target for media company bean counters looking for someone to lay off. “I think that this is much more a tool to inform reporters,” Allison says, “so they can do their jobs better.”

“… After he fills the endowed chair for the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy Studies, [James] Hamilton hopes the new professor can help him grow an academic field that provides generations of new tools for the investigative journalist and public interest-minded citizen. The investigative algorithms could be based in part on a sort of reverse engineering, taking advantage of experience with previous investigative stories and corruption cases and looking for combinations of data that have, in the past, been connected to politicians or institutions that were incompetent or venal. “The whole idea is that we would be doing research and development in a scalable, open-source way,” he says. “We would try to promote tools that journalists and others could use.”

Hat tip to Nick Booth 

Lessons in community from community editors #9: Lindsay Bruce (Middlesbrough Evening Gazette)

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The latest in this series comes from Lindsay Bruce, Community Editor at the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette

1) The online community has become an internet counter culture:

Without a great deal of prior knowledge of blogging and life online I had assumed wrongly that users of online communities were very much a sub-culture, using language and concepts I would not understand.

My friend talks ‘at me’ about outdated Java script – I feared it would be a similar scenario.

But this has proven not to be the case. The online communities I represent are filled and fuelled by people from all walks of life, with varying degrees of IT knowledge and experience.

No two bloggers can be categorised in the same way and no two contributors post information on exactly the same subjects.

The users, therefore, have forged themselves into a new counter culture, using what technology is available to them to promote themselves, provide information and diary their lives.

They are defined by their passion for their geographical communities not their abilities with online media.

They fly in the face of any computer / internet stereotypes – where else would you find a WWII Veteran alongside a mum cataloguing the challenges of life with a special needs chid?

The online community permeates all demographics of society – the faceless blogger could be anyone from anywhere – united with other community users by his membership of the online community for his postcode area.

2) The online community should be valued:

The nuggets of information gleamed from the community sites to some may seem insignificant.

Who would want to read that there are roadworks in Middlesbrough when you live in Stockton?

The answer is simple, and pivotal to the success of the online communities; someone cares, so we do too.

But more than that, as a journalist myself, I would have cut off my arm in my early days in search of a splash, to have access to a ‘virtual patch’.

Each contributor acts as a key, opening the door to the community they represent. What they know, and share online, is valuable, worthwhile and should be treated as such by people like me who interact with bloggers.

What takes a seasoned writer 10 minutes to knock out can take a new blogger an evening, or even a whole day. I personally make it a point to thank the bloggers and email them regularly to encourage them and assert the worth of their contributions.

3) The online community provides a way for an unreached generation to interact with print media:

As a blogger myself, for my church, I can personally vouch for the unimaginable amount of publicity at my disposal when I upload information, post videos and podcast on our community websites.

People who favour the web over the traditional evening newspaper can view and comment on all aspects of church life. We reach people with our ‘message’ in a way we could not through the paper.

But likewise, the online community provides a new way for the print product to remain relevant and also reach a new generation.

Currently we are pioneering our work with youth bloggers.

These 16-19s, known to have little or no interaction with their local newspaper, are signing up every day to offer their opinions, review gigs, diary events and most importantly, inform us and discuss local news issues.

The Gazette to them is something they now have ownership of.

We have given them a platform and now have a growing number of young adults with an affiliation to the Gazette and a belief in its worth.

Business models for news online – presentation

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The following is a presentation I made to journalists in Kiev about new media business models for news. Most of the detail you can find in part 5 of the Model for a 21st Century Newsroom. You can also find links to the statistics about advertising here and here; and more links about business models here.

BCU’s ‘Trinity Mirror Student Online Journalist of the Year 2008’ – Azeem Ahmad

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Before the year ends please allow me to publicly congratulate Azeem Ahmad on winning the Birmingham City University ‘Student Online Journalist of the Year’ award, sponsored by Trinity Mirror.

Azeem graduated this year from the journalism degree. For his final year project he worked as the Web Editor for ENO (Environmental News Online), along with Editor Rachael Wilson.

Azeem built the site from scratch using open source content management system Joomla, a raft of plugins, and even survived a hacker attack. But more importantly, he has probably grasped the workings of a networked environment better than any other student, using Twitter particularly effectively, building RSS mashups, learning about search engine optimisation, and exploring the vagaries of online communities. With Rachael he managed a team of second year journalism students as they learned online journalism on the job – the first time I’d tried such a model, which seemed to work very well.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Azeem’s blog entries and seeing the problems he faced in building and maintaining the site both technically and editorially. But, unsurprisingly in the current environment, Azeem has not yet landed a permanent journalism job and so is not blogging as often these days. I’m hoping that changes in ’09. Good luck, Azeem.

What won’t happen in 2009 – and what might

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This month’s Carnival of Journalism looks forward to new media developments in the coming year. Here are my no doubt misguided and naive predictions:

2009 will not be the year of the mobile web

Every year we make end of year predictions that the coming year will finally see the mobile web hit the mainstream. In many ways, it already has. But any expectations of there being some significant spread in 2009 will be scuppered by the credit crunch: users will be increasingly reluctant to spend money on a smart phone as the purse strings tighten. We’re not all going to be carrying around iPhones.

On the plus side, as a result of that slowdown we can expect mobile service providers to become more competitive in their data rates and packages, so that those who do have smart phones will have more reason to take out a mobile web package. Continue reading →

What news employers want and what they get – research on the journalism skills gap

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I recorded this at the Society of Editors conference in November, so forgive my tardiness. This is Donald Martin, a representative of UK training organisation NCTJ talking about the results of a survey they and partners PTC, BJTC and Skillset conducted into employer and university perceptions of skills needed by journalists:

Gap between what news recruiters get and what they want from Paul Bradshaw on Vimeo.

More about the panel this was part of on the Society of Editors website.

Twitter/mobile bookmarking with Tagthis (Something for the Weekend #13)

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It’s been a while since I did a Something for the Weekend tool review, but Twitter bookmarking service TagThis is such a great tool it needed covering.

TagThis allows you to bookmark any URL you see on Twitter to your own account on Delicious or Magnolia. This is particularly useful if, like me, you use Twitter on a mobile phone or iPod, and often see useful links on Twitter that you’d like to come back to later or ‘file’ for reference. Continue reading →

“Who trusts blogs?” It’s the wrong question

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Yet another survey came out this month providing comfort to those who still refuse to believe that new media forms like blogs represent a genuine threat to their businesses.

Only 18% of people questioned trusted “personal blogs”, while 39% trusted radio or magazines and 46% print newspapers.

I get this sort of stat thrown at me every time I speak to rooms full of journalists. It’s a meaningless stat, reflecting nothing. You trust what you’ve learned to trust, whether that’s one paper over another, one broadcaster over another, or one blog over another. I don’t trust “newspapers” – I trust one or two. I don’t trust “blogs”, I trust the ones I’ve communicated with.

And that’s where individual blogs have an advantage: they can have a personal conversation with the reader. The author can enter into discussion, add corrections and links. Their trust is built on a relationship, not on a brand.

More interesting in this research are the 3 sources which come out as more trusted than mainstream media: Emails from people we know (how many of us feel we ‘know’ a particular blogger?); consumer reviews (a staple of blogs); and, curiously, portals/search engines (links). And why do people trust these more than ‘radio’ or ‘newspapers’?