@JTownend

Last week’s round up:

The Guardian is attempting to overturn the Attorney General’s veto of the publication of Prince Charles’ correspondence with seven Government departments. An application for judicial review was heard over two days last week by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, with Lord Justice Davis and Mr Justice Globe.

Full Law and Media Round Up – 13 May 2013 at Inforrm’s Blog.

A new survey for journalists and bloggers, which can be found at this link, aims to collect information about their experiences of and views on libel and privacy law

A system of arbitration is at the heart of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations, and different versions are included in the the government’s draft Royal Charter and the industry’s own proposals [PDF].

The suggestion is that an arbitration service could deal with libel and privacy complaints that would otherwise go to court.

Last minute amendments to the Crime and Courts bill (now Act) would allow for bloggers to opt into the regulatory arbitration system and receive costs benefits.

Additionally and separately, recommendations have also been made for Mediation and Early Resolution in defamation disputes.

However, there is very little solid data about the nature and quantity of legal claims made against the media, including small bloggers. Because the majority of libel claims, for example, are believed to be resolved out of court, there is no complete record of disputes.

In short, little is known about bloggers’ and journalists’ actual legal experiences and opinions.

In an effort to build a better picture and to help inform the development of new alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, I am launching a survey as the final part of my doctoral project at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism (CLJJ), City University London.

This questionnaire is open to all types of journalists and online writers who expect their readership to be predominantly based in England and/or Wales.

Please take part and share your experiences and encourage your colleagues and friends to participate as well.

All data will be collected anonymously with no identification of organisations or individuals.

The questionnaire can be found here:

• https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/medialawsurvey

Many thanks for your help! If you have any questions you can email me (judith.townend.1@city.ac.uk) or tweet me (@jtownend).

About the project

This survey is part of Judith Townend’s doctoral project at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism (CLJJ), City University London. The research project, which has been given ethical approval by the CLJJ, explores how journalists and online writers are affected by libel and privacy law, as well as other social and legal factors. It will draw attention to the issues faced by online writers and journalists, and help inform the development of resources in this area.

About this questionnaire

• The questionnaire is open to all types of journalists and online writers who expect their readership to be predominantly based in England and/or Wales.
• It should take between 10 and 30 minutes to complete, depending on your experiences and views. Some questions require an answer so you can be taken to the next relevant question.
• All data will be collected anonymously with no identification of organisations or individuals.
• The information you have submitted will included in a final report to be published in 2013/14, which may be used for future online and print publications.
• Please contact Judith Townend with any questions, or to obtain the final results.

Contact details:

Judith Townend, c/o Peter Aggar, Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism, City University London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, Tel: +44 (0)20 7040 8167

E-mail: judith.townend.1@city.ac.uk

On 3 May 2013, journalists, lawyers, academics and campaigners marked World Press Freedom Day. Article 19 launched ‘The Right to Blog’ – a new policy paper “that calls for lawmakers to better promote and protect the rights of bloggers domestically and internationally”.

via Law and Media Round Up – 6 May 2013 | Inforrm’s Blog.

The biggest news of the week is that the Defamation Bill received Royal Assent and is now the Defamation Act 2013, three years after the publication of Lord Lester’s original Defamation Bill. Inforrm reported the news and context here; a commentary by Jo Glanville, director of English PEN, can be found here. Robert Sharp, also of English PEN, has dissected some of the detail here and here. A report in the Belfast Telegraph reports that Index on Censorship is questioning Stormont’s decision to block the Act from becoming law in Northern Ireland.

Full law and Media Round Up ( 29 April 2013) on Inforrm’s Blog…

This post originally appeared in Three-D Issue 20 – the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (Meccsa) newsletter. 

The public was supposed to be at the heart of the Leveson Inquiry. When it was announced, David Cameron described how the ‘whole country has been shocked by the revelations of the phone hacking scandal’.^[1] Of course, establishing exactly how the public feels is a notoriously difficult exercise, but what was clear in July 2011 – two years after Nick Davies’ explosive phone hacking revelations in the Guardian – was that national newspapers finally deemed the phone hacking scandal the subject of public outrage, and the politicians reacted.

How much role did the public actually play in proceedings, then? At Bournemouth University’s ‘Media Reform Post-Leveson’ conference in February, I argued that while media and political elites provided the dominant voices in courtroom 73, the Leveson Inquiry broke new ground for court and political reporting. For the first time a public inquiry held under the Inquiries Act 2005 was played out live on the internet.^[2]

Online media provided a chance for ordinary members of the public, non-profit groups, academic researchers and small media organisations to expand and question mainstream media narratives, as they watched, blogged and tweeted proceedings. Digital communication liberated debate, enabling members of the public to report ‘in the public press all that he has seen and heard’, as Lord Denning put it^[3], in accordance with a longstanding legal tradition of open justice.

Additionally, it improved UK citizens’ right to freedom of expression, which includes the right to receive – as well as impart – information and ideas. The public’s increased access to inquiry resources and reporting tools does not necessarily indicate a greater role on the ‘news stage’, but it opens up the possibility for greater public influence on news discourse, and beyond that, political debate.

One of the aims of the Bournemouth conference was ‘to develop fresh initiatives to encourage media plurality’ and the Media Reform Coalition has asked how we can ensure ‘a genuine plurality of voices and views in the news’. Opening up courts information and data is one such way. Giving the public greater digital access to legal material at source – such as Inquiry transcripts and witness evidence – permits the public to obtain a direct account, which does not depend on news selection criteria by a small number of dominant media outlets.

The majority of the public may not wish to access the raw material, but it at least allows for the possibility of more ‘voices and views in the news’. Those who do seek out information at source will be better equipped to participate in public debate through online media, including social media, blogs and media organisations’ sites and challenge or contribute to journalists’ versions of events. There are important legal and ethical considerations to make when disseminating courts data online^[4], but Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry showed us that some steps towards digital open justice, of benefit to journalists as well as the wider public, are straightforward and can be taken with little fuss.

We are comfortable that there is a clear articulation of “blog” and “news”. Blogs are to do with the expression of the point of view of an individual or group of individuals. That is pretty straightforward, although, as with everything else, it will be subject to the courts’ deliberations at the appropriate time. Maria Miller, HoC debate, 22 April 2013.

The definitions of ‘blog’ and ‘news’ look set to be increasingly significant, in a very practical sense.

The government has updated amendments in the Crime and Courts Bill to “make clear that small blogs will not be classed as ‘relevant publishers’” who should sign up to the new regulator. Additionally, those who are not ‘relevant publishers’ but opt-in voluntarily, will receive the costs incentives of participating, including access to the regulator’s arbitration service.

DCMS has produced a flow-chart [see update at end], to help publications decide if they are expected to join the regulator or not – with the caveat that it’s not legal advice!

There are two definitions, which might prove problematic in the future (although the Secretary of State for culture, media and sport, Maria Miller, is confident they are ‘straightforward’): ‘news-related’ and ‘blog’.

It appears that if you don’t wish to fall into the ‘relevant publisher’ category and your publication isn’t defined as a ‘blog’, publishing ‘news’ should not be the main focus of your business.

The Crime and Courts Bill will return to the House of Lords in the next stage of ‘Ping Pong’ later today (Main Chamber, 2.30pm).

Also see:

• Patrick Smith’s commentary on some of the detail at the MediaBriefing
• UK Supreme Court Blog for the other provisions of the Crime and Courts Bill
• Media Reform Coalition: Blogs are be exempted now – but does the new wording work?

If any experts on micro-businesses and media organisational structures are reading, your thoughts on exemptions for individual titles and companies would be welcome.

Update: DCMS has updated its flowchart on Flickr to clarify the ‘publisher’ bit of ‘relevant publisher’:

Update 23/04/13, 10.41am
We have clarified the wording in the introduction following user feedback. Formerly read: ‘Relevant publishers are the newspapers and newspaper-like publications…’
Now reads: ‘Relevant publishers produce the newspapers and newspaper-like publications…’

There’s already quite a bit of new stuff to add to this, but here’s the media law round up for last week: at Inforrm’s Blog.

A crucial part of the draft Royal Charter is Clause 22, Schedule 3, on Arbitration services. Carl Gardner has previously written about the reasons that a lone blogger might want to be able to access these.

Draft Royal Charter, Clauses 22-23, Schedule 3 (my emphasis):

22. The Board should provide an arbitral process for civil legal claims against subscribers which:

a) complies with the Arbitration Act 1996 (“the Act”);
b) provides suitable powers for the arbitrator to ensure the process operates fairly and quickly, and on an inquisitorial basis (so far as possible);
c) contains transparent arrangements for claims to be struck out, for legitimate reasons (including on frivolous or vexatious grounds);
d) directs appropriate pre-publication matters to the courts;
e)    operates under the principle that arbitration should be free for complainants to use;
f) ensures that the parties should each bear their own costs, subject to a successful complainant’s costs being recoverable (having regard to section 601 of the Act and any applicable caps on recoverable costs);
and g) overall, is inexpensive for all parties.

23. The membership of a regulatory body should be open to all publishers on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, including making membership potentially available on different terms for different types of publisher.

Additionally, the Crime and Courts Bill discusses the effect on costs as a result of participation – or non-participation – in an arbitration scheme.

The discussion among small publishers has mainly been around the compulsory membership aspect of the new legislation proposals, and the penalties for not participating.

But there are also important questions around opting-in and joining the regulator, in order to access the free arbitration services: who should be able to and what type of media output would be included? At what stage of a complaint could a publisher join a regulator*?

And if a publisher can’t access these services, what are the other ADR options, and what would incentivise Claimants, as well as Defendants, to participate?

Further reading on ADR and arbitration:

• Index on Censorship / English PEN Alternative Libel Project
• Early Resolution arbitration
• Lawyers for Media Standards: ‘Serious concerns about Royal Charter arbitration scheme’
• Leveson: Inquisitorial Arbitration – Ned Beale and Cara Gillingham
• Carl Gardner: ‘Why press regulation should cover blogs’
• Carl Gardner: ‘Costs protection for regulated publishers in the Crime and Courts Bill: a small analgesic’

*Also see this post on the LSE Media Policy Project blog, where commenter (and mediator) Simon Carne suggested: “there is no reason why it [membership] couldn’t be applied (or, if necessary, extended) to permit some classes of members to join when the need for arbitration arises“.

The Defamation Bill is now coming to the end of its passage through Parliament. On 16 April 2013 it will be back before the Commons on “ping pong”, the stage at which the Commons considers new amendments made by the House of Lords. As Inforrm noted here, in a post examining the detail of the Amendments, there were 16 Lords Amendments. Conservative MP and former Solicitor-General, Sir Edward Garnier, has sought to remove Amendment 2.

The Libel Reform campaign has condemned the proposal to remove the clause which would require corporations to show financial damage before they can sue for libel. The Media Reform Coalition argues that the clauses are crucial: “Without a requirement to show damage, there is a danger that companies can use libel courts as an arm of their PR operations, simply suppressing what they don’t want in the public sphere”.

Full round up at Inforrm’s Blog…

The Leveson Inquiry’s focus was on the “press”, but a new system of media regulation implemented through a Royal Charter and the Crime and Courts Bill could have a much wider remit, depending on how a “small-scale” publisher is defined.

Many online writers are concerned by the potential negative consequences if they don’t join the new regulator. Others may wish to be part of a new regulator, in order to access its arbitration services (see Carl Gardner here, for example) but are unsure how it will work in practice. There are numerous practical issues to be dealt with, beyond the question of expected membership (see another post by Gardner here).

The Media Reform Coalition has launched an online survey: answers can be submitted anonymously but it asks you to identify the type of publication on whose behalf you’re responding. There is also a briefing document entitled “Small publishers, online journalism and the new system of press regulation” [PDF].

via Consultation for bloggers on the new Crime and Courts Bill | Media Reform Coalition.

Related reading:

• LSE Media Policy Project: Leveson vs the Bloggers: How to Make Regulation Work for Everyone [March 2013]
• Damian Radcliffe: Hey! Regulator! Leave those Hyperlocals alone! [August 2012]
  
• An elephant in courtroom 73? Social media, regulation and the law [August 2012]

This announcement comes via the excellent Scraperwiki (a start-up I worked with on a series of events in 2010/11). They have teamed up with WAN-IFRA to put on a hack day at Bloomberg on 13 April 2013.

Slides and quick summary of a talk I gave at the University of Northampton’s ‘Imagine Journalism in Ten Years’ Time‘ mini-conference. Other speakers included: Professor Jay Rosen, New York University; Matt Andrews, developer, The Guardian; Andy Dickinson, lecturer, UCLAN and Teodora Beleaga, data analyst, KBM Group EU. The event was chaired by Kevin Marsh,  director, OffspinMedia, and produced by John Mair, subject leader for Journalism, University of Northampton.

Also see:

• Matt Andrews, with his 10 predictions, at Three Chords
• Teodora Beleaga, on how Big Data will shape newsrooms in 2023
• Andy Dickinson on Diagnosing the noble disease – how we treat journalism in the 21st century
• Martin Belam on ‘Three Views of Journalism in 2023′

Journalism in Ten Years’ Time…

I anticipate an unravelling of definitions and a repositioning of brands.

If the last ten years are an indicator in terms of pace, strange cultural legacies may live on, despite the potential for dramatic change through technological development. Nonetheless, things will shift, and one of the areas for the biggest potential change is the ‘news cycle’ and in particular, the ’24 hour news cycle’. One of the underlying confusions in the Leveson Inquiry is that the ‘press’ still plays a dominant role in setting the national news agenda, despite diminishing print readerships, and an ever-growing array of online news sources. The way they filter and select news is still highly influential.

Consumption, production and distribution are changing

However, the social sharing of news – the social distribution of news – disrupts some of the features of a typical news cycle. Key disrupters include: Google’s automated suggested search terms, aggregation sites like Reddit and boards like 4Chan, media organisations’ Facebook apps which give new life to old content and Twitter trends. Additionally, suggested search terms and the Google News’ algorithm have an increasingly influential role in setting the agenda.

The news spirograph

In ten years’ time the news cycle might have been replaced by a news ‘spirograph’, where stories loop back and re-emerge at different points in time, perhaps in a new form.

To check whether anyone else had visualised it like this first, I googled “news spirograph” and came up with one result: a Media Bistro story from 2010. The author of the piece described his sprirograph like this:

The new picture of a news story’s life cycle looks less like a tight loop that closes after 24 hours. Instead, it enters a period of dormancy only to return weeks later. The resulting chart of a story’s attention trajectory looks more like a Spirograph — a large circular pattern constructed out of smaller loops.

Mike Taylor, Fishbowl NY, Media Bistro (2010)

This is different from the idea that the news cycle reduces to minutes because of social media – as was suggested at another ‘future of journalism’ conference I was at this week:

Or from how the BBC’s head of digital communications, Sophie Brendel, described it in 2012:

Social media have changed what we talk about, who we talk about and how quickly we talk. The 24-hour news cycle is dead, now it’s 24 seconds.

Like Taylor, I see the news spirograph as lengthening rather than shortening cycles. However, perhaps I see it in a more positive light: the news spirograph could help rather than hinder originality.  A spirograph’s shape can be incredibly varied (see this Flickr group, for example). A spirograph model allows for more points of entry from a variety of sources.

The full spirograph is not yet very developed:  there are occasional loop backs – such as this revival of an old Guardian article from 2009 – but these type of incidents remain anomalies.

The role of the public

It seems likely that the public will have a bigger role through their consumption choices, as well as active production of content, which will help strengthen their right to receive and impart information, as set out in Article 10 of the Human Rights Act.

The technological disruption of the news cycle should allow the public an enhanced right to receive and impart information and ideas, which will be a good thing – for democracy, and for education.

But there will be challenges as well: legal, ethical and economic (for example: how will it be regulated; how will it pay; what about the undesirable parts of public influence?).

Evolving news patterns

So, to re-formulate Taylor’s original definition:

The pattern of journalism in ten years’ time may include a news cycle that looks very different from a neat 24 hour loop, with a small number of influential media sources. Instead, changes in digital consumption, production and distribution may transform it into a ‘news spirograph’, with a greater number of sources, and stories that loop back at different points in time. In fact, we are likely to see transformation in the very notion of news and the ‘news story’… It’s already evolving.

In 2013, we think about how the public consumption – and occasionally public production – of media changes how the professionals do ‘news’ and set the agenda.

By 2023, advances in technology could shift the question slightly: how does the public control the news cycle, set the news agenda, and create the dominant debates?

In turn, this will throw up age-old debates about desirable characteristics of content and appropriate levels of prominence, and the defining features of journalism and news.

Two years ago, Martin Belam set out – perhaps a little flippantly – a simplified dead tree news cycle:

1. Write newspaper

2. Print newspaper

3. Wrap fish ‘n’ chips in newspaper

Which he expanded in the bullet points below, emphasising “and publish it all to the web”.

But over the next ten years it may come to look like this:

1. Produce content, drawing from more sources and across more topics

2. Publish on digital platforms, selectively and carefully with effective curation, labelling and contextulisation

3. See content gain new lease of life and inform future content

Further reading:

•Belam, M. (2011) ‘How digital transformed the news cycle’, currybet.net

•Belam, M. (2012) ‘The Guardian’s Facebook app’, currybet.net

•Magee, K. (2012) ‘Beyond the 24 hr news cycle’, PR Week

•Taylor, M. (2010) ‘The 24-Hour News Spirograph’, Fishbowl NY, MediaBistro.com

•Tinworth, A. (2009) Our Real Problem: ‘The Death of the News Package‘, Onemanandhisblog.com.

•Wynne-Jones, R. (2012) ‘Enquirer: watching the hacks get hacked’, Guardian.co.uk.

Cross-posted from the Online Journalism Blog.

Around this time last year I wrote on this blog about ‘Generation Audioboo’ and the opportunities for anyone entering the field of digital journalism.  A year on, there are more free tools, and more editorial choice. Google Hangouts are now ‘On Air’ for all, for example.

Cross-posted on the Online Journalism blog.

The journalism class of 2012 has a pretty enviable opportunity to get their stuff out there; the development of online platforms like Twitter, Google+, Storify, Tumblr, Posterous, AudioBoo, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, CoverItLive and Vimeo allows piecemeal dissemination of content to relevant and engaged audiences, without necessarily needing to set up a specific site.

Free technology allows them to find and do journalism outside journalism, in productive and creative ways. To adapt David Carr’s description of Brian Stelter, his browser tab-flicking colleague at the New York Times, we’re seeing the rise of the ‘robots in the basement‘.

While it’s sensible for students to craft and co-ordinate their individual – or group – blog projects, bits and pieces of journalism can be let loose into the world with technological ease – and without waiting for an email from an elusive commissioning editor. You can respond in comments, offer guest posts to relevant online publications, join live webchats – it’s all part of “interactive journalism”. (Although, like the journalists who say all journalism should be investigative, I can’t see how anyone can do journalism without being “interactive”). These tools and platforms aren’t the journalism itself but they enable journalistic research, conversation and content.

Catching the eye of a potential employer is an obvious incentive to engage online (there are the digital stars who shine their way into jobs straight from journalism school – Josh Halliday (Sunderland), Conrad Quilty-Harper (City) and Dave Lee (Lincoln) are among the best-known examples) but experimentation online also helps improve your journalism, as you get live feedback and use the tools to source new information (that doesn’t have to stop once you’ve got the certificate).

City University London launched its Interactive Journalism MA last year and the first intake can be found on Twitter here and are publishing online, across the course curriculum – on their own sites as well as professional platforms. Their newspaper and broadcast colleagues can also be found online (see, for example, this list). I have been working once a week with the Interactive group, better known as the “Interhacktives” – agreeing on the hashtag and site name was one of their first tasks. It caught the attention of OU lecturer Tony Hirst, who depicted their network here.

They have been devising community-oriented journalism, coming up and analysing existing projects, developing content and building up a portfolio of interactive work. As Rosie Niven has noted on her blog, there are potential pitfalls students need to look out for when attempting to interact in the local community and existing online forums. “As well as learning, students and their tutors need to consider legacy,” she points out.

This term, the Interactive students have divided into teams to manage the output of four projects: the Interhacktives site, which tracks social media and community management for journalists; the Data Journalism Blog, a site taken over from a previous student; Islington Now and Hackney Post. The two latter projects will be brought to life during three intensive production weeks, in collaboration with their colleagues on the newspaper course.

The Interhacktives site was particularly lively as they liveblogged, Audioboo’d, and filmed activities at Social Media Week London (#smwldn). Next a couple of them will be blogging and tweeting from the Media Briefing’s conference on paywalls. Obviously, their projects are works in progress (or in beta) – that’s the point – and I’m sure they’d like to hear feedback and suggestions. Likewise, thoughts welcomed on this.

Judith Townend is a journalist, researcher and visiting lecturer at City (@jtownend on Twitter).

“I still can’t get over the feeling that Brian was a robot assembled in the basement of the New York Times to come and destroy me”

New York Times’ David Carr (@carr2n), affectionately describing his browser-flicking colleague Brian Stelter (@brianstelter), ‘Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times’.

The film (2011) neatly captures many of the dilemmas in the newspaper industry: laid-off journalists clearing their desks; editorial meetings about Wikileaks; the limitations of aggregated content sites (at an industry debate David Carr holds up a screenshot of Newser, with holes showing where all the content mainstream media content sat, much to founder Michael Wolff’s chagrin).

The new robots are slowly rising rank in the newsroom, slinging their notebooks and pens aside as they tweet and live blog as a matter of course.

But the new breed are not emotionless automatons: social interactions and the human touch are still at the heart of successful interactive journalism.

That’s what I tried to get across in my talk at Coventry University this week, which borrowed Carr’s description for the title and looked at the possibilities of digital interaction for the dissemination of information in the public interest (which might include what I’ve previously called journalism outside journalism).

New technology enables journalists, researchers and bloggers to challenge mainstream and tired ways of doing news, to make the process and product of journalism more diverse, and to hold powerful organisations accountable. And no, I don’t know how it will be funded.

Afterwards, Coventry lecturer John Mair asked me which five people I’d recommend them to follow. Of course, it completely depends on the students’ specialisms and interests, but five Twitterers I’d recommend for their innovative and exciting approach to journalism include:

• Andy Carvin (@acarvin), Senior strategist at NPR (US)
• Neal Mann (@fieldproducer) Digital News Editor at Sky News (UK)
• Joanna Geary (@guardianjoanna), Guardian’s Digital Development Editor (UK)
• Patrick Smith (@psmith), editor, the MediaBriefing (UK)
• Sarah Hartley (@foodiesarah) MD at Talk About Local; Community strategist at Guardian Media Group (UK)

Here are some of the links and projects I mentioned (in order of appearance):

• Recent research on regional journalists’ pay and redundancies by Francois Nel, University of Central Lancashire

• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, funded by the Potter Foundation

• Jeff Jarvis on journalism’s myth of perfection and the strength of the blogging process

• Churnalism.com, a Media Standards Trust project

• mySociety’s admirable portfolio of civic projects

• Help Me Investigate network

• ScraperWiki

• ProPublica and Spot.us

• Finalists’ list for the ONA awards 2011

• openDemocracy’s Anthony Barnett on the changing process of journalism

Pic: Arthur40A on Flickr

[I don't maintain this blog very regularly; check out my other site, Meeja Law, for links, posts and resources on media, law and ethics]

Yesterday saw the announcement of Jill Abramson as the New York Times’ first female editor. You might say so what?

But more to the point, why not till now? Former Guardian.co.uk editor Emily Bell could list previous UK national newspaper editors in a tweet, also noting that there used to be a lot of female online editors in the early days.

Actually, there are two in the editor’s chair right now: Tina Weaver at the Sunday Mirror and Dawn Neesom at the Daily Star. And men head the 19 other national daily and Sunday newspaper titles.

I was always amazed when attending media conferences how many male-dominated panels there were – in the top digital, as well as print, jobs.

But let us not forget the first lady of Fleet Street (HT: Adrian Monck), Rachel Beer, who edited the Observer and the Sunday Times in the 1890s.

Anyway, if like me, you’re curious about just how many there have been, see above for a list of UK national newspaper female editors – feel free to edit and add more if I’ve missed any.

My source for the table was Wikipedia and this rather good – and later updated – article in the Guardian by Hadley Freeman.

PS. I don’t blog very regularly on this site anymore – check out Meeja Law for media law and ethics related news and commentary.

Predictably, the panel at last week’s Future of Journalism discussion at the Frontline Club didn’t reach any firm conclusion as to the industry’s path ahead. Mary Hamilton has a good commentary here and BBC College of Journalism has a write-up here. Raymond Snoddy discusses Twitter’s role in the profession here.

My own view is that there are many exciting futures ahead, with the development and increased recognition of digital tools. The economic question is more troubling of course, and while the big media companies may still have pots of money it isn’t always used to support quality journalism. Regional newspaper journalists are feeling that particularly keenly.

When addressing the question of building better quality content, it’s more interesting, I think, to categorise news and commentary by publishers’ aim and style, rather than their chosen media form. Good journalism may be found in things not called journalism. That is to say, a more positive vision for journalism may be seen through mySociety’s range of sites and a multiplicity of open data projects (eg openlyLocal), rather than (some) inward looking newspapers, frequently limited by traditional news formats (eg. finding the case study for the story, rather than the other way around). At a conference I attended later in the week, participants talked about ‘small media’ which helped avoid slipping into that boring and pointless blogger v journalist debate.

In my own field, media law research, I’ve heard people raises concerns with the state of newspaper court reporting and the demise of the legal correspondent. But at the same time, lawyers and legal commentators are reporting and discussing more information online than ever. Sure, legal blogs are funded differently from traditional media organisations, but they’re also part of the future of journalism. (I think all of this links to something a recent POLIS research report calls Networked Journalism).

Anyway, there’s a book out on the whole topic and I’ve written a chapter about Twitter. The book is called ‘Face the Future; Tools for the Modern Media Age’ edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble (Abramis £17.95). This is an opening extract from my bit.

Battle of (t)wits? Using Twitter as a journalistic tool

Judith Townend

Newspapers love to talk about Twitter. A search for the word Twitter in national newspapers returns over 3,000 articles for the past year, too many for the Nexis® UK database to count – 1,696 in one month alone. Twitter has appeared in 900 national newspaper headlines in the last year, while 24 articles in the same period refer to “Twitter twits” (see, for example, the Sun 2010). “Twit” may be a milder term than the one David Cameron chose to describe users of the service (Siddique and Agencies 2009), but it is an unfair label. Generalising about Twitter users is as pointless an exercise as uniformly describing all people who pick up the telephone, or appear on television. Twitter is a communication tool; it is the way it is used that defines whether it is a productive or daft activity. This chapter attempts to show the different ways Twitter is being used by journalists, both effectively and ineffectively, and argues that while Twitter does host a lot of trivial activity by “twits”, it also gives opportunity to create good journalism and enables better communication with the world outside the newsroom.

Part of the process

As Jeff Jarvis has outlined, journalism’s product is not perfect, despite the popular myth, and blogging facilitates “beta journalism” in which writers admit what they don’t know, as well as what they do, and invite collaborations that will help improve their work (Jarvis 2009a). “Online, the story, the reporting, the knowledge are never done and never perfect,” he writes. In his view, that does not mean that bloggers “revel in imperfection” or have no standards:

It just means that we do journalism differently, because we can. We have our standards, too, and they include collaboration, transparency, letting readers into the process, and trying to say what we don’t know when we publish – as caveats – rather than afterward – as corrections (ibid).

Twitter is an ideal tool to use in this “beta journalism” process: it can be used to let readers and followers know what you are looking for, to receive tip-offs and ideas and to publicise your work once it is finished. Some journalists have also experimented with conducting interviews by Twitter (Townend 2009a) although this method has its limitations. Not only is it difficult to express an idea in 140 characters, it can be difficult to co-ordinate the timing of answers and questions and involve onlooker contributions. Newspaper columnists have frequently mocked the limits and triviality of Twitter updates – sometimes before reversing their opinion of the service (cf. Knight 2008 and Johncock 2010). However, the word limit is longer than many news headlines and subheadlines and photo captions. Furthermore, the information contained within one tweet can be far more extensive because hyperlinks to additional content can be included in the message.

An extract from Face the Future; Tools for the Modern Media Age’ edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble (Abramis £17.95).

I’m at SOAS, London at the Small Media Symposium 2011. You can find the programme and more information here. Academics and media practitioners are presenting papers about “small media”, also known as – as the event’s site says – “alternative media”, “participatory media”, and “social movement media”. This Cover It Live should pick up some of the tweets…

Live blog at this link…

Since I covered this issue on my blog at the weekend and I’ve noticed debate springing up elsewhere (Press Gazette / FSB: 1 & 2) I thought I’d post the work placement guidelines that have  just arrived in my inbox from the NUJ. Here’s one part that jumped out:

Placements can be unpaid provided the individual is not a ‘worker,’ as defined by the National Minimum Wage legislation as outlined below. However, work experience placements should be time limited and should not exceed 160 hours, carried out either full-time over a four week period or part-time over a three month period. If the terms of the placement are such that the individual is performing as a ‘worker’, and the placement is not being carried out as part of a further or higher education course, then the National Minimum Wage should be adopted throughout the duration of the placement. In both cases, reasonable and pre-agreed expenses should be reimbursed.

I’ve half followed the debate about unpaid internships and Girish Gupta’s fight against the Indy.

Initially, I couldn’t see how such cases would be successful, given that there’s no contract for payment, and the internships are advertised or offered as such. But the NUJ is bullish. Claim back your cash, it advises me in the latest issue of the mag:

Have you worked as an unpaid intern within the past six years? You could be entitled to claim back the National Minimum Wage, regardless of the terms of your internship agreement.

The National Union of Journalists wants to hear from any former journalism intern who would like legal support from the union to claim unpaid wages.  It could be possible to recover up to £232 per 40-hour week of the internship.

Wow. A quick sum. Before getting paid part and full time jobs in journalism, I did about six or seven weeks on regional newspapers; four weeks at a national; six weeks at a newspaper overseas (air fare and accommodation were paid); and two or three weeks at a broadcaster. 18-20 weeks in all*.

I wouldn’t mind getting £4,176 back now! I probably would have felt more exploited if I’d done longer stretches in one place. While I filed lots of copy in those places, I also benefited from many journalists’ time and help while I was learning/training.

Obviously, I was lucky to be able to do those stints (numerous kind friends/family putting me up in various cities) but I don’t regret the experiences and have been very grateful for the support of some of the journalists/friends I met along the way.

While I can see it’s tempting for ex-interns to go for the Murdochs of this world, these payouts could be devastating for small media companies. So I’m sitting on the fence on this one. The unpaid culture needs to change, but I’m not convinced this is the best way to do it.

It did cheer me slightly (at the same time as boiling my blood) that Tories had paid thousands of pounds for their children to do unpaid internships, as a party fundraiser… Or how about £8,000 to work for free at City AM for a fortnight?**

No thanks!

*{update} looks like any work experience conducted as part of a journalism course would be excluded. Not sure how much of mine falls into that category. Some of the time on the newspapers was obligatory as part of the course, although we arranged it ourselves, and we were also expected to have completed a certain amount of experience before starting the course.

**That last one was for charity Help for Heroes.