Category Archives: Uncategorized

The day of the long blog comments

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That’s how today is going to be marked in this little corner of the blogosphere.

I have been lucky to get some fantastic comments today on two of my posts.

David wrote a very insightful comment about the difference between audiences taking a reactive and a proactive stance towards privacy issues on my post about Facebook. He also gave the best justification for the “death knock” (when a journalist calls on a recently bereaved family) that I’ve seen yet.

Jon Walker and Markmedia also left fantastic comments on the post discussing the lack of business knowledge amongst many journalists. 

Jon argues that journalists have very little impact on business decisions and is concerned the production of good content might not be enough to save the industry. Mark argues collective union action to focus on business strategy would empower journalists.

Both have also turned their comments into blog posts (Jon | Mark), which are also worth a look.

Sly Bailey on the future of digital – full speech

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When Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey spoke at the Association of Online Publishers earlier this month, people seemed to focus on her predictions that 2009 would be a repeat of 1999 with the digital bubble bursting.

I hadn’t heard the whole speech until today, but journalism.co.uk has a natty recording of the whole thing. I think it’s worth listening to, not least in terms of how TM strategy is communicated.

[display_podcast]


Journalists don’t know their own business

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“The most surprising thing about journalists is how little they know about the businesses or industry in which they work,” said an NUJ staff member who happened to be sitting opposite me at lunch.

It made me want to scream.

I prompted the comment by admitting I wasn’t au fait with all of Trinity Mirror’s digital acquisitions in the last three years.

I am all too painfully aware of my ignorance in this area and it is something I’m working hard to change.

A lack of business knowledge is, I think, one of the greatest threats to local and regional journalists, especially in this tough economic climate.

After all, if we don’t understand how our market is created, nor how we best make money out of it, then I would argue we know little about serving it properly

Despite having been told in the past that my arts and journalistic background may offer me a “creative” or “unusual” take on the fortunes of the industry, I don’t really buy it. You don’t understand anything unless you understand how the money works.

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How exactly are blogs adding to speculation in newspapers?

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Whilst pondering the email from the Telegraph employee that was published this week by Roy Greenslade (give me another day and I might have a respond to it!), a few questions came up.

I haven’t built on them, but I thought I’d list them here to get them temporarily out of the way whilst the other blog post is percolating in my head.

At any newspaper I’ve ever had experience at, one of the daily chores is to read through all the other newspapers published that day to check for good stories to follow up on. If you are a regional paper this means looking out for stories in your region and if you are on a national it’s looking for good follow-ups broken by the regionals.

If someone finds a good story they’ll put in a few calls and see if they can confirm or develop it for their publication the next day.

Isn’t this the aggregation we talk about – putting the best of what’s out there onto our own site? How does this differ from scouring blogs for stories? Is it because they are not consider “official” publications and, therefore, more likely to contain false leads or misinformation? If so how are the skewed stories that turn up in the national red-tops better than the skewed stories on a blog?

Also if we fear the media is going to turn into simple speculation and opinion, how do we justify the speculation and opinion that already exists in newspapers? Is it at a satisfactory level now, whereas the inclusion of a few extra blogs on a website might tumble it over the edge? How do we justify the stories that come out of the football transfer season, or the swathes of business and stock market speculation that seem to be produced at the weekend when the markets are closed?

Also, if newspapers are using blogs to try and host some of the conversation about their stories on their site, why is that affecting the original content? Is it the time factor it takes to write a blog? Does it really detract that much time from the act of story-writing?

Sorry, lots of questions, not many answers. That seems to be how things are at the moment.

Oooh, hello there!

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It looks like you’ve found my new blog.

I’m working on this as a little project to get to grips with hosting my own site. In the next few days things will probably change, bits will break and fall off.

Please feel free to add your comments/criticisms and yes… I know, it is VERY pink!

j.

links for 2008-09-11

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links for 2008-09-10

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links for 2008-09-08

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