Ten ways journalism has changed in the last ten years (Blogger’s Cut)

A few weeks ago I wrote an 800-word piece for UK Press Gazette on how journalism has changed in the past decade. My original draft was almost 1200 words – here then is the original ‘Blogger’s Cut’ for your delectation…

The past decade has seen more change in the craft of journalism than perhaps any other. Some of the changes have erupted into the mainstream; others have nibbled at the edges. Paul Bradshaw counts the ways…

From a lecture to a conversation

Perhaps the biggest and most widely publicised change in journalism has been the increasing involvement of – and expectation of involvement by – the readers/audience. Yes, readers had always written letters, and occasionally phoned in tips, but the last ten years have seen the relationship between publisher and reader turn into something else entirely.

You could say it started with the accessibility of email, coupled with the less passive nature of the internet in general, as readers, listeners and watchers became “users”. But the change really gained momentum with…

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

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….”

More geotagging: sneak preview of prototype “BBC Local”

Following this week’s post about Archant’s experiences with geotagging, Andrew Williams looks at how the BBC is using the technology in its prototype hyperlocal web service. 

The latest incarnation of the BBC’s troubled local television scheme could be up and running by the end of the year, it was revealed last week. Academics and journalists at the Broadcast News and the Active Citizen Conference at Leeds University were given a sneak preview of a prototype BBC hyper-local web service which makes extensive use of mapping and geotagging in order to allow the audience to access a range of multimedia content linked to a local area of their own choosing.

BBC Yorkshire’s Catherine Hearne, who gave the talk, said, “The idea is that, subject to approval, we will be offering 60 local sites across the UK, and it will transform the way that people can actively engage with their local broadcaster.”

Event: Notes from the digital news frontline (Preston, UK)

One for the diary: The latest Journalism Leaders Forum from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston is on the theme ‘Local Turf Wars – Notes from the digital news frontline’

Wiki journalism: are wikis the new blogs?

On Thursday I’ll be presenting my paper on wiki journalism at the Future of Newspapers conference in Cardiff. As previously reported, the full paper is available as a wiki online for anyone to add to or edit. You can also download a PDF of the ‘official’ version.

Based on a review of a number of case studies, and some literature on wikis, the paper proposes a taxonomy of wiki journalism, and outlines the opportunities and weaknesses of the form. The following is the edited highlights:

The UK floods: why did no one create a flood wiki?

Thinking about the weeks of coverage we’ve had in the UK of the worst floods to hit the country in decades, it seems to me there’s been a missed opportunity by news organisations to create a resource that would have been hugely useful to the hundreds of thousands of residents affected: a wiki.

• Wikipedia has a page on the floods, but this is more about facts and figures than helpful information, such as ‘which areas are affected now? Where can I get water?’.
• ProjectDisaster has a ‘swicki’ about the floods - “a cross between search engines and Wikipedia – the community can add, delete and improve the results” which looks an interesting idea but isn’t working very well (it mixes UK and US; there are commercial entries)
• And BBC Berkshire produced an interactive flood map using Google Maps, which allowed people to see what was happening where their friends and family might be, but not necessarily any practical information.
• The rest of the interactive coverage mostly centred on people sending in their experiences, or on scattered text announcements and advice, with no organisation.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, a wiki quickly sprang up where people could exchange information on survivors, places of safety, and other useful information. Of course, it may be that something was created for the UK floods, and I’m not aware of it. If so, let me know.

Reminder: my wiki on wiki journalism is still welcoming contributions. If you know of examples, literature on the subject of participatory journalism/wikis, or have analysis of your own, please visit http://wikijournalism.pbwiki.com/ - the password to contribute is ‘wikiwiki’. All (non-anonymous) contributions will be acknowledged.

Floods: BBC shows the way to organise massive coverage

Press Gazette reports on the BBC using Google Maps to organise flood reports:

“After a few hours of work on his laptop, [broadcast journalist Oliver] Williams had created an interactive map plotting audio files of BBC Radio Berkshire reports — along with pictures and YouTube videos being sent in by the public — to the locations around the county that they referred to. Over the following days, BBC Berkshire journalists were able to add additional reports to the map as the story continued, including new flood warnings as they came in to the newsroom.”

NUJ establish Convergence Commission

Delegates at the NUJ ADM on Sunday voted for the following members to make up a commission to look at convergence in the industry. The panel will consist of:

• Jemima Kiss, Guardian
• Helene Mulholland, Guardian
• Paula Dear, BBC Online
• Gary Herman, NUJ Training/freelance

More details when I have them, but a good indication of some of the panel’s ideas can be gained from my earlier post on the Digital Convergence fringe meeting, which involved three of the four.

NUJ ADM: Digital Convergence: How should we respond?

Probably the most interesting part of the weekend’s NUJ annual conference was a fringe meeting on digital convergence. Speakers included Cardiff University’s Dr Andy Williams on his research into Trinity Mirror’s online strategy, The Guardian’s Len Mulholland, BBC News Online journalist Paula Dear, NUJ NEC member Adam Christie, and NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear.

Below are video clips from the event, but here are the bullet points:

• Trinity Mirror makes more money, spends less, employs fewer, circulation drops
• The Guardian invests in its website and training, but the web staff are often marginalised when decisions are made – for instance, when the political print team went ‘web-first’ for a conference the web journalists (who had already been web-first) were not consulted as to how they might adapt as a result.
• There is also concern about short-term contracts for those on more ‘experimental’ projects such as vodcasts.
• The main issue for journalists on the BBC’s website is 24/7 working patterns and the rota that goes with that.
• News management admit they don’t have a clue what they’re doing. The NUJ is seeking to set up a commission on convergence to help establish best practice and lead the process of convergence (more on this in later posts).

Introduction (chair: Jemima Kiss)

Dr Andy Williams

Len Mulholland, Guardian

Paula Dear, BBC

Finally, go to this page to download audio of Jeremy Dear.

BBC, UGC and online video

Some insights into the workings of the BBC, UGC and online video from Shane Richmond’s latest post:

“At a time when most newspapers, including this one, are trying to encourage user participation and comments on their sites, the BBC is questioning the need to host those conversations.

“Instead they’re linking their content out to the likes of YouTube, Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Encourage the conversation but let it happen elsewhere.

“The burden of moderation is simply too great. Like us, the BBC moderates comments received from readers, mostly for legal reasons, but as Tom pointed out: “What we call moderation, readers call censorship.”

“The more successful you are at attracting reader responses, he explained, the bigger the problem gets.”

Also:

“One week in November last year, the BBC news site published around 500 pieces of video.

“Analysing the traffic for those clips later, they found that just 30 of them accounted for about half the traffic. They have learned some lessons about what type of video clips work online but mostly they learned to focus on doing less better.”