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SXSW Notes: “The Gatekeepers” – Jeffrey Rosen interviews Nicole Wong from Google about free speech

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Nicole Wong – deputy general counsel at Google
Jeffrey Rosen – American academic and commentator on legal affairs.
Talk part of the Platinum Track event

Nicole decides whether links stay up on Google and makes content decision on Youtube.

The issue of Internet censorship is so complex it’s never about a single person, company, website. It involves government backroom providers, services like google and users. There are many ways that govs seek to control this a different levels.
At a company level we may get court orders, police show up at the door, I have had some of my employees detained.
In some of the countries we see Governments actively intimidating people in their country.
When we talk about what type data ends up on the Internet it’s much more difficult to talk about that as a single company, it’s a more difficult decision.,

Tell us about Turkey – a judge was blocking Youtube because f a video insulting Kemal Ataturk.

Youtube is a globally available service for video sharing. We’re not trying to target specifically Turkish users. But in 2007 started to see it periodically block because it is illegal in Turkey to insult Ataturk.

We had been dealing with various prosecutors and the Turkish telecom authority becuase they would wholesale block Youtube. But we could IP block from Turkey the videos that would violate law, but couldn’t censor the entire Internet for Turkish law.
Worked for a while but at 2am in the morning 67 different videos came through form the judges – went through all of them deciding which ones violated the law. Some were Kurdish Nationalism videos which are also illegal in Turkey. We agreed to block ones that advocated violence and we took them down because they violated our terms of service.
May last year on of the prosecutors decided IP blocking was insufficient. Felt insulting Turks all over the world and demanded we blocked the videos worldwide.

Youtube is blocked for a year in Turkey now. We are playing all of our legal and policy cards. This is no longer in my hands. It’s some sort of argeement we have to get to to deal with content on the Internet. Only so many tools in the toolbox.
We have lots of people reacting to complaints and flags we get from users and to review those.
Certain complaints will get escalated, e.g. requests for blocks from government – a whole company blocking us. We involve the legal department, the public policy department and the head of office and a lawyer in that country to understand if the video is violating that law.

My job is to cull all of that and decide how to deal with this.

Hard judgement calls for me. When you have assets or people on the ground that may be at risk all the principles we talk about to do are important but hard to aim.

Orchid platform popular in India and Brazil. There were a couple of groups on Orchid in India critical of the dominant party in Mumbai. It has a very violent arm. Criticised the party and the party’s deity. They were calling to look for an alternative party. There were profane and inappropriate things said about the religion. We were asked to remove all of those communities not just because it was insulting but because violence was about to erupt and people were rioting infront of the Google office in Mumbai. As much as you want to defend free speech when things get violent you have to make a decision and I err towards protecting people on the ground.
I made the decision to remove the comments against the deity, but I did not remove the criticism of the political part because it was advocating peace and it made no sense for me to remove statements on peace to quell rioting.
These were really hard decisions to make.

A lot of young people working as moderators shouldn’t be discounted. Pretty smart and they have been trained. But of course mistakes still happen. Youtube there are 15 hours of video uploaded every minute, millions of views every day so the likely hood of a mistake is going to be there. We’re lucky that are users are usually quick to let us know.

We follow the digital millennium copyright act. We do not accept liability for copyright infringement, but when we get a notification that someones copyright has been infiringed we take it down and notify the user so that they can counter argue.
There can be a great deal of abuse of what copyright holders demand to be taken down.

There was a good study down by Chilling effects .org. It’s makes transparent all demands for removal. Gives a sense of transparent – YouTube sends these removal request for that.
Assessing that there was high amount of people cliaming copyright to take down something they don’t like.

Australia
I think I’m increasingly seeing censorship at the ISP level. Google in the US, you have to serve us in the US. But the ISP is usually within country and some countries a joint partnership with Government so a good deal of Gov control so filtering at that level is easy for governments.

Its an issue we see in a number of countries. Australia was first country by law to institute filtering at the ISP level. They are a Western Democracy with a democratic mandate to filter.
There are now 6 ISPs in Australia doing a trial run on how to filter content that could be harmful to minors. We have to pay attention to these types of laws.
At one level degrading quality of bandwidth if it is uses filtering. How do we make decision which countries is it ok to filter in? Australia? China? Pakistan?
What we need to do is engage in the conversation trying to get to the purpose that the government is trying to achieve and if there is a better way to so.

Don’t want to single out Australia – trying to protect minors. It’s something Germany is doing too but with a blacklist.

We need to stop thinking that just filtering is wrong. We need to think about what are the processes that Gov can validly censor and what are situations where it is not acceptable.

I think it is better for governments to have the decision rather than to have these issues bubble up through me or someone on Youtube or Facebook

But I do think there needs to be a push to make Governments transparent about what they are doing.

My problem is scale – I don’t want to be at 2am looking at Kurdish National Videos and if you go by country by country it starts to feel very arbitrary. the next big company might be coming out of China, or Argentina. I would like to see us reach some form of International standards. We need to have a bunch of descriptions where agree to freedom of expression, access to information. If we accepted these for the internet.

Global Network Initiative. 2 years ago started conversation with companies that within Yahoo Microsoft Human Rights Watch and other NGOs and socially responsible investors and academics. to ask can we get a global set of principles. We did get to a set of principles which yahoo google and Microsoft signed up to. Processes to think about managing gov demands for censorship and user information and all audited by a 3rd party.
Huge self regulation
That gives us a group that can tell a government to say something is inconsistent with freedom of expression.
Announced 4 months ago and its still experimental
When you’re a company that has run out of all your cards in Turkey you need some other tools to deal with it.

We need to step up and do the action. When you’re operating in a certain country you’ll get a take down demand. “Others guys down the st. are doing it, you should to”
With a single organisation we can better hold the line, they can’t pick us off one by one.
We will be able to demand legal processes rather than having some companies being intimidated by a call.

You have to have something more institutional than a single person. I think we should be worried that companies may not stay good. That’s why we need them to sign up to a set of principles. Figure out as a global community still working that out.
Go back to my days as a first amendment lawyer.

First printing press then radio, then TV, then cable in the interim spaces you had time for social norms to develop and for laws to develop around these.
Ever since the internet comes out we’ve been running because every month there is another Twitter or Facebook coming out that we need to negotiate.
What we’re trying to doing with the Global Network Initiative is set some norms that will endure.

Right now in the US I think there’s a line of cases that AOL had in the 1990s a huge Zeron(sp?) v. AOL based on provision of the communications decency act section 230 – interactive computer services are immune from liability from the speech of 3rd parties.
In 1998 congress was saying the Internet needs room to grow and develop norms. If you hold the platforms responsible you will kill that ability form those platforms to exist. Immunise the platform. That has been the most important driver for growth of the Internet in the US.

Zeron shortly after Oklahoma city bombings postings started going up on AOL that were t-shirts and stickers going up that were offensive. So poor guy starts receiving death threats. Sued them anyway even though Section 230.

No other country gives that sort of immunity. That will inhibit the growth of the Internet in those countries.

I don’t think there’s a global body at this point that could enforce such immunity worldwide. Our Government should be making free expression as part of their trade talks. That might be one way to move the ball forward.

GNI has put up website to see the principles but companies are committed to ensuring not putting products or services on the ground that could harm users. Valid legal process is required before demanding information.

Never underestimate the power the Internet has just by its mere presence. Google and its various properties have been blocked in 24 different countries in the last 7 years and it’s something we have to engage on. 2004 9 mill blogs now 210million blogs. The growth of content is happening in really important ways. I think it’s persuading Governments that they can’t put a halt on everything, they have to put up with some things.

China might be a case study of that. Blogging critical of the gov is happening in China and not getting censored. Perhaps China still deciding what to do about it, but what has happened is an incredible.

QUESTIONS

Does the India case not prove you can get Google to change things if you threaten violence?

It’s a fair point are will people just never stop? At the end of the day having consulted with the police and lawyers we felt where we struck the balance. Candidly would we do it again? I don’t know. Take it on each case.

Any propaganda use on Youtube?

One of the really good things about the Youtube is that when you have propaganda is put up someone can call bullshit on it.

Can be a safe harbour we all agree on?

I don’t see that in the near future. How will we solve this problem? Will there be country IP-blocked safe zone. Virtually create the geographic physical jurisdiction. I dislike that. I think we’re benefiting hugely form cross-cultural communication. But we will continue to run into conflicts. Things will be said in India about Pakistanis that they don’t like and vice versa. We’re going to disagree and we are on a long road.

I think speech will be freer than it is now. That is the nature of this medium and the culture of all these sessions. I think that is going to move the trend towards more speech even in countries that don’t think they are ready for it.

SXSW Notes: Why Is Professional Blogging Bloodsport For Women?

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Why Is Professional Blogging Bloodsport For Women?

Discussion led by Rachel Sklar and Rebecca Fox

More links can be found on the Bloodsport For Women blog.

Sklar: Blogging is great for women, not suggesting that it isn’t, but want to ask why the slope to attacking is steeper and more slippery for the things that women do online as opposed to men.

Commenter: I thought that when blogging and Internet started to become popular that gender would not be an issue. But there are many examples of misogyny on the Internet. I had no idea some of this ugliness existed. Autoadmit(?) message board where a bunch of rowdy law school guys posted about how they wanted to rape and harass female law school students. Involved following the women around. When theyu were Googled would also appear. Result was those that allowed it to happened had tarnished reputations and were outed.

Sometimes on the web people feel free to expose ugliness and to be oppressive to others in a way that they don’t in “meat space”.

Sklar: Free speech balance is difficult in law and problem for a much wider web.

Low barriers to entry and giant megaphone = internet. Allows space for extreme and offensive point of views.

Commenter: Free speech applies in a public environment – in “my blog” it is my space and my rules. Happy to engage in conversation and debate, but offensive attacks will be deleted. People get confused about the context of free speech.

If someone posts anonymously and they say something nice i still delete because my rules are to not display anonymous posts.

Sklar pointed out the sexism inherent in blog comments and mainstream media in around the Hilary Clinton campaign. It seemed gender-based Hilary bashing was ok.
“she only got where she was because her husband was screwing around”

Sklar – “I was told I was alarmist”.

Commenter: Annoyed that owmen are so willing to attack other women online.

Caroline McCarthy CNET news – Is there not a problem of self-proclaimed feminists taking the issue too far? There seems to be an unwritten rule that you are succumbing to catfights if you criticise another woman.

Some people take it too seriously and feel they can’t disagree with other women.

Sklar: Everything is a continuum – some is bitchiness and some is legitimate criticism.. Problem is you see legitimate criticism as being dismissed as catfighting. Experienced that myself and been written off as a catfighter – doesn’t happen when you are engaging with a man, or man engaging with a man.

Caroline McCarthy – male tech bloggers chest thumping over breaking embargoes is seen as acceptable. Not the case for in-fighting between women.

Fox: What are the consequences for professional female bloggers?

Heather (Fray lady)- it probably won’t go away its par of the course. The Internet without snark would be strange. It seems to me is what women want more, more influence, income, visibility and engagement in topics that mean something to me.

Don’t wait for men to tell you it matter – not Michael Arrington or someone else.

Sklar – online space is a really safe space for intelligent discussions. But the language that can be used is sometimes the problem.

Commenter: When our bodies and sexuality is up for questions we need a spacer outside of the tit for tat and back and forth where you can talk about these topics so you can.

Lauren – wrote about being in college and family and friends read my blog. You have to own it. It’s naive to think you can write about your personal choices online where people can’t see how they hurt you and no one will comment badly? That’s not going to happen. You can’t backpeddle, you have to own what you say. That was a big step of self-actualisation. TO have my mum ring me and ask e why I would publish things. I get annoyed – you’re not shouting into a well and people are going to give you feedback.

Commnenter – Put up a blog and mentioned I was a feminist and received comments involving death threats. Was writing about gardening.

Fox – is there a tension between getting in there and engaging and empowering and the decision to make your blog personal.

Commenter -A lot of what happens online, is the same time-honoured techniques of shutting women up.

People want to engage me in the same arguments all the time and I am fed up with having my time wasted and as a women I think you have to pick and choose. If you don’t get down in the mud with these people and show not as important to engage with then you can move on. Don’t waste your energy.

There is a need to support other women when they are experiencing that sort of name-calling.
Male and female bloggers could all be very supportive of each other.

Sklar I have had professional repercussions for talking about Hilary Clinton but it does exist.

Sasha – Jezebel and Salon wrote articles about women writing intimate things would seriously increase page views. Women are the more courageous when writing about the “juicy” stuff. When you write a personal essay you have to reveal complexity and flaws and people online just don’t get that – if you admit you’re not perfect that will be a point of attack.

Commenter – Gawker – everyone on that network gets a lot of hate mail, Michael Arrington gets death threats. As many horrible threats come to men. Any women doing the same blogging job was getting more threats an depersonalised . But the way to deal is to be cooler than the people that try to wind you up. Someone who got sent a picture of a penis, sent back a picture of a cleaver.

Lisa- attorney and blogger. Personally I am a veteran of online community and I feel that it’s all valuable it’s up to us to be leaders and set up positive examples – if you want to respond to the negativity it can be a healthy outlet of debate, but there are legitimate unhealthy behaviours and times when you won’t want to feed that and reinforce the positivity.

Patricia – I feel the power in this room. There are a lot of entrepreneurs figuring how to make money out of women online. 53% US population is female. Appeal to this room – there are issues and there are issues. We should be worrying that there is only one female supreme court justice., instead of worrying about who called you a c***.

Every generation of girls have an underlying understanding that women will be better than their mother, women then realised the game is stacked. Continuum of shutting up a women because she is fat and not having these.

Commenter: How do people feel about people like ijustine?

It’s ok they do it, even though don’t like it – point of feminism.

Sklar – Summary
Pick your battles
It’s not ok and everyone knows it’s not ok – we need more people to highlight this.
Being more than a woman – more than just that category.
Massing voices is a way.

SXSW Notes: Designing the Future of the New York Times

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More notes from yesterday’s SXSW panels, this time Designing the Future of the New York Times:

Tom Bodkin, Assistant Managing Editor, Design Director, NYT and Khoi Vinh, Design Director of NYT.com

Tom Bodkin art director background, traditional print.
Joined NYT in 1980.
Works with Razorfish on the redesign of the website. Removed the underscores from hyperlinks.
The Times Reader, worked on the project.

What does the future looks like – no one knows for sure. Publishing in period of rapid change. Imperative to make newspapers webby is counterproductive. Print experience appealing in world that offer ubiquitous Internet access. Shouldn’t try and recreate the web in print. Have to focus on benefits. Disposable, easy to share, narrative flow, you know where you are, fully consumed and finished, durable, don’t run out of batteries, serendipity and manageable quality of content invites perusal ids more so than the internet I DON’T THINK SO!
Persistence a newspaper you can put aside and it won’t have changed. Regular schedule. Natural physical object is not ephemeral and has a place in time and history.
Attribute distinguish it from the web and make it a pleasurable experience. (ISN’T THE WEB PLEASURABLE?!)
Better to retain print qualities in print than mimic the web on print.

Khoi: Runs subtraction.com – basic design blog. Formed design company then left in 2006 to join NYT.

Had a career in print and had originally translated that into the web.

Paradox to digital design is that it’s easy to publish and communicate ideas worldwide but once publish it the obligation to continue to publish is greater than that in print.

Editorial layout of content and stories that we see on NYT.com is very expensive and in terms of economics the reverse ordering of content is the most natural way to publish online.

Evolution thinking I could do things in print than online to moving towards text-based reverse chronological posts,.

Need for high quality journalism is there. Citizen journalism is not a high quality replacement. You will have thousands of micropublishers out there and a handful of global news platforms. In order to become on of the global news platforms have to reconsider the traditional approaches to journalism. Everyone at the Times is trying to figure this out. We are trying to look at us creating a platform to help us make the most of our content. At the same time we believe our content should be platform agnostic. We have a mobile site, iphone app,

Work with Amazon on the Kindle product. Tech group have enabled widgets and APIs to allow content to be pulled onto other pages. 10 APIs released in the past year.

There are a lot of groups at the times engaged in design activities and our group are not focused on designing the news and we’re trying to think about what’s the whole platform experience. So the interactive maps and immersive community experiences tied to news stories, we’re not working on thes on a daily basis we’re creating a tololbox so the infographics team working on a tight turnaorund trying to publish within minutes they have a toolbox for them to draw upon.

When there are events with a long enough lead time we try to get involved in it.

Pogueomatic = collaborative example.
Year in Ideas is another.

Enterprise reporting is extensive and investigative journalism we will help plan microsites, eg. environmental situation in China. Provide cohesive experience including audio, video, interactive graphics and Chinese translation.
Creating more interactive experiences, e.g. Best Picture Oscar ballot. March Madness “The Men’s Bracket” allowing you to create own groups and compete against friends.
Evergreen features of functionality is main focus.
Keepers of the style guide.
Focused on the navigation, on the shell of the site.
Blogs is a huge part of the design group a few dozen blogs on NYT. Work with journalists to brainstorm their blog and develop a brand Cityroom – one of the best performing blogs.
Worked on TimesMachine a visual archive of every page between 1851 and 1925 – every single page – rollover and abstract and then go see article itself.

Bodkin: Web is limited in the way that you can design with it. Very little conceptual thinking. 19th century newspaper thinking in some pages were as much material is put on that page as possible.

What I see on the web is an engineering model,. a business school model where I am used to a more creative process. Is the reliance on metrics and testing versus on dependence on personal vision which you see in the nature of print driving the nature of digital.

Vinh: web is very conversational in nature and requires engineering to provide an environment that is natural to them and are not in sync in the way an editor or art director would want to use the content.

Bodkin: behaviour on the web is different but I wonder whether it’s a function of where the web is now in its evolution and will the availability of handheld

Bodkin: Serendipity hasn’t been a priority, but could be achieved.
Vinh would like to increase the serendipity of NYT.
People get more serendipity today than you would ever get on a newspaper. Spending time on the blogs. Grander schemes of things probably narrower than it is in the newspapers.

SXSW: Is Privacy Dead? Are these notes useful?

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I have been derided more than once these past two days because I am not blogging about the panels that I am seeing at SXSW.

Being keen to record as much as what interested me as possible, I have been wildly typing notes into Google Docs. However, it occurs that, although not a coherent blog post, these notes might have a valule to others. So, I’ve stuck up the notes from my first panel yesterday to see if that is the case.

I also have the notes from Designing the Future of the New York Times, which I am happy to put up as well if folk think this is a useful exercise.

Cheers!

Is Privacy Dead?
Privacy is not a static concept.
Connect to a broader sense of private and public.
Spaces are one or another but also inbetween.
How can you negotiate privacy when you can’t control the spread of your information?

Siva Vaidhyanathan – The Googlelisation of Everything, Uni of Virginia
Privacy is not merely the opposite of publicity. Just because someone puts 100 things up on public accessible sites, doesn’t mean not concerned about the 101st.
Privacy is not a substance that can be measured, bargained with or traded away. “People are willing to trade a bit of privacy in order to have a better user experience” sounds like it’s a substance. It’s not.
Privacy is a bad word for what we mean – 19th century word we’re stuck with because we haven’t come up with anything better.

Alice Marwick – PhD Student – the effect of social media on social status.
Belief that people over-share don’t care about privacy.
CEOs exist that wouldn’t hire someone without a FB profile.
Social value by becoming part of the conversation – becoming part of a group
Profound support from people online – emotional.

Twitter isn’t a series of what ate for breakfast.
More info you put out there about yourself, more info there is for data miners, advertisers, etc. Can be aggregated
Can create very valuable profiles of people
If yo9u put info out there does that mean you consent for it to be used in other ways? I argue no.

Judith Donath – MIT Media Lab
Visualisations/portraits of you online. “Online history is the equivalent of the body, you build it up over time.” Previously online ID was ephemeral. By adding content you build it and add control.

Previously had different personas for different circumstances. Yet online it is easy for them to collapse – in Facebook and Googlew Searches. Is this a problem? What number of facets will humans end up with.

Danah Boyd, Microsoft Research

Trying to negotiate real-world privacy rules in online space.
In 1970s there was a blip 1973-76 where Americans concerned about citizen and consumer rights. Hot and vocal public movement to protect info from abuse by the state. Strong support in Congress too. Result was laws about the credit rating system, allowing systems of appeal.
Strongest of these was undermined by Cheney. Ever since moment taken privacy for granted – interface between us and data collecting firms is now causing concern.

We need the self awareness of what your data self looks like so that you can shape it. You might want to see what trail of credit card payments you are leaving behind you.
It’s hard to have a historical perspective of what’s normal.
Coming from a period of excessive amounts of privacy. In small villages people had virtually no privacy.

For kids home was not a private space because their parents are in control. Internet felt more private because they felt in control.

Every social context has a specific flow of information. Eg. Medical records at doctors is fine, but doctor talking to a friend is a violation.
Happy telling my best friend about romantic problem, but wouldn’t expect that to be put on FB.

This is on a continuum. Context flow into each other online without choices being made.
People say don’t believe in the separation of public and private, yet they also say there is stuff that they don’t put online. It is about constructing a sense of self. One woman puts so much on line people assume that she will always be open, but she keeps personal stuff to herself.

Should the burden of privacy control be placed on the individual? Should have an “opt in” rather than and “opt out”.

Personal info is a form of currency, particularly in the aggregate. If that’s true and I’m creating currency by my online movements, shouldn’t I be aware to which extent my info is being used.

MOst tech-savvy would be adept at managing much of their online reputations, but we are the elite. We have to worry about those who are unaware or incapable of employing self-help.

As elites we are too comforted by the fact that we could employ proxy servers or PGP to hide our online activity. The important thing is not that elites can use it, the important thing is that Mum or kid can’t use it. We need to design something that will give control with the lowest form of understanding.

Things that put online today can be taken out of context. Not just now but 20 years time. Can seem very scary, but can also say we’re creating a more open society that must be tolerant. Many possibilities of the direction in which this can go in.

Public spaces are where there are a great deal of control. But online public space exists where these norms are very broad.

Some surveillance – looking out for other people’s kids for example is actually quite welcome.
We engage in these transactions with each other. We give information because we negotiate power differences and because there is reciprocity.
But when I trade with Amazon the only reciprocity is I can choose another vendor. When I deal with the State there is no reciprocity unless I know as much about the state as it knows about me.
Reciprocity needs to be built into all these relationships.

Reciprocity is the key

THe social face you have in LinkedIN is professional and alot people who are friends on FB firend me on LinkedIN but the two spheres are very different.
When using multiple services with different contexts.

Celebrity – we can obsess over a celebrity’s life without them knowing anything about them.
We can follow people online and think we know them even though they don’t follow us back.
Micro-celebrities have a different relationship because they have exchanges with their audiences. IN practice that isn’t really true you will see a micro-celebrity in a social situation and there is a sense of a power inequality. Your audience is always your audience, there is always a one to many unequal relationship
How people manage it is different. Some are comfortable with fans, some not. Trickled down to all levels. Need to self brand and become product to be consumed. This s becoming more and more the case.

How do you have a large society figure out what the norms are? The function of celebrity is that you have soc of millions of people or trying to come up with what their norms are, so millions have one relationship with one set and can have conversations around those people’s behaviour and learn through that.

We should assume that people that choose to engage with the public
Michael Phelps should not take an economic hit when he engages in something that all guys his age do (smoke pot)

QUESTIONS:

Privacy in the home
Young people negotiate it differently with different audience. Care about power play of parents and peers, but not so much about corporations.
Will try and trick the systems to play with their friends. May give wrong age, but will give birthdate because they want friends to know their birthday.

Do we not assume giving up info for use of a free application?
We should actively assume it. It’s not a fair contract as we can’t negotiate it. Even if you do read ToS, most of us don’t understand it.
Googloe ToS were originally horribly opaque – never says explicitly what it will use your data for. Generalises to allow Google space to experiment.
Google and FB have don the most to make ToS clear, but many people and corporations do.
Need a clear sense of what we give up and what we get.
What does it look like if you aggregate all the information that you leave behind? That’s the important thing to see as most of the information on its own is not that valuable.
Ability to see that would help negotiate that.

All quiet of the SXSWestern front?

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I’ve just landed in Austin for the SXSW Interactive Conference.*

I was here last year and the event was such a buzz I was determined by hook and by crook to come back this year.

But, if the taxi driver on the way to the hotel is right, there may not be so much buzz this time around.

It seems the conference is being hit by the credit crunch, with many potential delegates deciding to save the pennies and stay away.

Whereas this time last year the airport was awash with SXSWers, this year – the taxi driver said – they are arriving in “dribs and drabs”.

I wonder how true that is and whether it will effect the atmosphere of the event.

I guess I’ll find out tomorrow. 🙂

*For those of you uninterested in the event, let this be a warning that my Twitter and blog will (time permitting) be full of the subject for the next five to six days.

An interview with an anonymous blog commenter

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One of the problems with the online space is the perception of distance and anonymity that it creates. It means that people often say things in ways that are harsher than they would in real life.

But do they even realise they are coming across that way? I’ve always wondered what the people behind the spikey comments on our blogs are like.

Richard regularly comments on The Birmingham Post blogs under the pseudonym “Clifford” and, it is fair to say, has developed quite a bit of a reputation as a curmudgeon. But, despite his criticisms of The Post, he has stuck with us even when we didn’t quite get things right.

For that reason I wanted to meet him and, I have to admit with some considerable trepidation, I invited him for a tour of our offices.

The man I met in reception could not have been further from what I expected – polite, erudite, passionate and engaged in local news. For his part, he was oblivious to the image he had been portraying to others online.

Of course the wider point is that those who engage on the internet need to remember there are humans behind the handles (or bylines) and try and think about how their comments might be taken.

However, I don’t see internet arcadia arriving any time soon, so I think it’s worth journalists seeing that not all aggressive commenters are always aware how they are coming across. It is not always personal.

Whilst with us at The Post, Richard kindly agreed to go on video and talk frankly about why he commented on the blogs and how he’d want to see the newspaper develop in the future.

Richard has also told me he is considering retiring Clifford and in future wants to comment online as himself.

In total the two videos come in at around 15 minutes long. I haven’t edited them much, as so much of what Richard said interested me and I wanted to keep it for future reference!

However, if you want to jump to a particular point, here is a guide:

Video 1 (above):
00:36: On how his comments were percieved by journalists.
01:53: On pseudonyms and putting personal details online.
04:48: On political coverage in The Birmingham Post.
05:49: On the development of Birminghampost.net.
07:00: On the need for web-first publishing (and why it won’t affect newspaper sales).

Video 2 (below):
00:19: Why scale is important in making a blog feel like a community.
01:36: What makes someone comment on a blog.
02:40: What blogs would work best on a newspaper website.
03:20: Why journalists should try and engage on blogs and not worry about bad comments.
05:42: On revitalising the Birminghampost.net blogs

Twitter name change: @bhampostjoanna => @timesjoanna

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People have been asking what I plan to do with @bhampostjoanna after I leave the Post at the end this week.

The answer seems to cause some consternation: I am keeping the account and changing the name to reflect the new publication I work for.

“But these are contacts you’ve built up during your time at The Post! You can’t just take them with you,” has been one of the responses. (NB. It is worth noting that The Post has been very happy for me to retain my account – the comments have mostly come from people outside of journalism).

I guess it raises the question: who owns a journalist’s account on a social network, if they use it purely for work?

The answer seems simple to me: what journalist doesn’t take their contact book with them when they leave (or at very least a copy of it)? The nature of the job is that you build relationships with people and, although some will leave you when you switch titles, others will be contacts throughout your working life.

The benefit of a Twitter account is, of course, that all my contacts are publicly available for anyone to see. So, unlike a contact book, I can’t run off and hide it when I leave!

This blog post is the start of letting people know that on March 9 I hope to change @bhampostjoanna to @timesjoanna.

Alternate Birmingham Post Twitterers include:

@marcreeves, editor
@mikehughes, executive editor
@steve_nicholls, multimedia editor
@paulmdale, public affairs editor
@jonwalker121, political editor
@tomscotney, business reporter, legal and financial
@anna_blackaby, business reporter, creative industries
@mandybrain, marketing development manager

Google devalues everything it touches

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…says Robert Thomson, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Mr Thomson, along with Walter Isaacson of Time and Mort Zuckerman of The New York Daily News discuss the future of newspapers:


[via The Big Picture]

The debate covers micropayments, Google, Kindle, debt, over-reliance on advertisers and the self-referential nature of journalism.

Fascinating to hear the take of people immersed in the quest to preserve the newspaper business.