Tag Archives: Dave Lee

Serene Branson: The Sun changes its story – but not the URL

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Serene Branson Grammys Stroke story 3am

It appears last week’s guidance from the PCC on correcting URLs as well as the contents of stories has not reached The Sun. Serene Branson’s on-air slurring was initially mocked by the tabloid with the headline “Grammy’s reporter goes gaga”. When it emerged that the presenter may have* suffered from a stroke the article was rewritten – but not the URL:

sun_SereneBranson_URL

The Daily Record, meanwhile, have changed their URL as well as the headline (or their content management system has done it for them). 3am haven’t changed anything (see image at top).

A further issue occurs here too: comments posted on the original Sun story remain, but now – under a now more sober report – these appear insensitive.

More recent commenters can be seen criticising these older comments, and without any notice on the article that it has been updated, those commenting under their real names could argue that their reputations are being damaged as a result.

Certainly there’s an ethical issue here: if you change a story so substantially that original comments now no longer apply, should you remove them?

Via Dave Lee, whose post ‘Serene Branson: The disturbing viral that shames us all‘ should also be read.

*UPDATE: The station website says she was examined by paramedics but not hospitalized. “Her vital signs were normal” and “she says that she is feeling fine this morning”.

Hyperlocal voices interviewed elsewhere

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While I’ve been blogging my series of interviews with hyperlocal bloggers I’ve come across a few more elsewhere that may be of interest – and thought it worth linking to them here.

Talk About Local is running a ‘Ten Questions’ series of interviews along the same lines.

Nick Booth of Podnosh (which I work for) is writing a blog about hyperlocal bloggers on the BBC website. He has also  interviewed Steph Jennings and James Clark of WV11 – audio embedded below:

[audio:http://audioboo.fm/boos/194465-steph-jennings-and-james-clark-of-wv11.mp3%5D

I recently had Ventnor Blog founder Simon Perry talk to students on the MA in Online Journalism that I teach at Birmingham City University. Samuel Negredo filmed part of his visit, which can be seen on his blog post about the visit and is also embedded below:

Also interviewed elsewhere – by Philip John – is Brownhills Bob.

Lara O’Reilly interviews Dave Lee about Olympic Borough.

And in the US, Bob Yoder of the Redmond Neighborhood Blog is interviewed by Outside.in, which also gets some tips from Elllie Ashford in Annandale.

The New Online Journalists #7: Dave Lee

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As part of an ongoing series on recent graduates who have gone into online journalism, Dave Lee talks about how he won a BBC job straight from university, what it involves, and what skills he feels online journalists need today.

I got my job as a result – delightfully! – of having a well-known blog. Well, that is, well-known in the sense it was read by the right people. My path to the BBC began with a work placement at Press Gazette – an opportunity I wouldn’t have got had it not been for the blog. In fact, I recall Patrick Smith literally putting it in those terms – saying that they’d never normally take an undergrad without NUJ qualifications – but they’d seen my blog and liked what I was doing. Continue reading →

Teaching journalism students to Twitter – the Twentoring project

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Soon after I posted my frustration at journalism students being slow to adopt Twitter, I came up with an idea: you only really start using Twitter when there is a social reason – so why not help by creating those social connections? I posted a call-out to Twitter: 

Anyone willing to ‘adopt’ a journalism student on Twitter and answer their questions about it?

The response (especially on a Sunday afternoon) was heartwarming – within less than an hour I had more than one ‘Twentor’ (thanks to Scott Keegan for that word) per student – responses below. Two days later and the effect has been noticeable – the majority of students had started chatting to their mentors and you could see the lights switching on. Continue reading →

10 Twitter users that every journalism student should follow?

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UPDATE: From the comments: similar lists now available for Norway and Sweden.

I will soon begin teaching my annual module in Online Journalism and one of the first things I get the students to do is set up a Twitter account. It’s often a struggle to demonstrate the usefulness of Twitter, so this time around, in addition to following each other, I’m going to give them 10 people to start following from the off. This is the list I’ve come up with – would welcome your suggestions for others:

  1. @davelee – former journalism student and excellent blogger who landed a plum job at the BBC after graduating. Get the point?
  2. @channel4news – example of how a news organisation can use Twitter in a personal, conversational way, rather than simply republishing its RSS feed (see also: @r4news, @mashable) Continue reading →

Robert Fisk: “To hell with the web, it’s got no responsibility”

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Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk

Legendary reporter Robert Fisk recently gave a public lecture in Wellington, New Zealand, writes Dave Lee, and offered some very strong personal thoughts on web journalism. Newswire reports:

“Mr Fisk said the internet had led to the erosion of quality writing. Continue reading →

Newsquest relaunch local newspaper websites… is that it?

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Newsquest has begun the roll out of a relaunch of its websites with the Lancashire Telegraph, Bradford Telegraph & Argus and York’s The Press.

Hold The Front Page describe it as a “modernised and revamped look”. Really? As Keri Davies put it: “ugh, what a mess”. Alex Lockwood: “looks like shoveldesign – can barely see the ‘Lancashire’ on the logo; national news more imp. than local comment?” John Thompson: “Too much noise and everything in three columns. Lead stories should run across two colums Text too small in places.” Continue reading →

If you’re from the BBC, look away now… (UK earthquake wit from Dave Lee)

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If you’re not one of the 3,000-plus people to have viewed Dave Lee’s video of the BBC’s “shambolic” coverage (or lack of) the UK earthquake this week, I’ve embedded it below. This deserves to be watched by everyone at the BBC (although interestingly, only Sky, who come out of this quite well, appear to be linking to it). For everyone else, the reaction from those who had just experienced the quake and are waiting for some acknowledgement from Auntie Beeb is just very very funny indeed.

You can read Dave Lee’s commentary on this here.

In an equally amusing post, while the BBC were running ads and Sky were running around, Dave Lee rounded up people’s responses to the earthquake with the following intro:

“EARTHQUAKEEEEEE!!!! OH MY WORD! WHAT DO WE DO!? I know… we change our Facebook status….”