Jun 28 2010
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Journalism

Social democracy

It’s now more than six weeks after a landmark election in modern British Politics. It resulted in the first coalition government for almost 70 years – something scarcely imagined a few months ago.

It was also tipped to be the first social media election. As the dust settled following the election and its aftermath, I attended the Value of Journalism Event organised by the BBC College of Journalism, where I heard a panel of journalists, politicians, pollsters and political activists debate the digital election.

Here are some observations from the event and my reflections on political parties and journalists’ use of social media during the election: Continue reading →

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Mar 18 2010
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Journalism

Northern Pride

The Scottish Saltire with the Northumbrian flag at Carter Bar

Originally uploaded by neonwilderness.

Yesterday, revellers without even the most tenuous Irish connection packed into pubs across Britain to toast Ireland’s patron saint.

The popularity of St Patrick’s day celebrations (which from what I hear only really took off in Dublin after Irish visitors to America saw how the diaspora partied on March 17th) has inspired English patriots to mark St George’s day with real ale festivals and street parties. But despite fierce regional pride in some parts of England, efforts to celebrate regional Saints remain half hearted or under publicised.

Just three days after St Paddy’s day is St Cuthbert’s day. It marks the anniversary of the death of the former Bishop of Lindisfarne in AD 688, the patron saint of Northumbria and the first recorded English Patron Saint.

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Feb 24 2010
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Journalism

Future or Bust!

Uploaded by Vermin Inc.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future. Although to be fair, I haven’t done much of the thinking myself – there are many people better placed than me to do that. For me, it’s been more of an exercise of observing and listening.

The two areas that have been the focus of this recent bout of crystal ball gazing are news and regeneration. In December and January I attended the Future of News group, a monthly discussion about where the news industry in this country is heading.

Continue reading →

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Feb 16 2010
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Journalism

The Quay Ingredient

Uploaded by Peter-snottycat.

This week, the BBC started the recruitment process for the departments moving up to Salford.

This is something that many northern media folk are excited about. For so long people working in this industry (including yours truly) have had to move to London to fulfil their ambitions.

The BBC’s Media City development will hopefully encourage other media employers to cluster around the quays area and create something similar to London’s silicon roundabout. But it’s not just about jobs. Continue reading →

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Feb 09 2010
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Journalism

An experiment with ScribbleLive

Today was the announcement of the location of Talk About Local’s next unconference (which as you’ll see is going to be in Leeds). I used the opportunity to test out the LiveBlogging App ScribbleLive. Here are the results:

Continue reading →

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Feb 02 2010
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Journalism

Social insecurity

Last month I defended BBC radio stations’ use of Twitter and Audioboo against criticism. Well, it seems that some listeners’ misgivings  about Twitter has not abated and bosses at Five Live’s are using social media week to gauge people’s views on social media.

Yesterday, Richard Bacon spoke about why he uses Twitter to communicate with listeners, which has established him as one of Britain’s most followed tweeters. The article prompted some angry comments from listeners and despite my previous articles, I do feel they raise some valid points.

The first comment, from Carrie, questions how effectively social media is being used as a listening device and whether it is distracting from efforts to blog and engage with listeners on messageboards.

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Jan 24 2010
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Journalism

Stop, collaborate and listen…

Alex Wood of the Berlin Project

Originally uploaded by berlinproject.

Last week I blogged about the launch of a journalism cooperative by the team behind The Berlin Project. There’s been a lot of talk about new business models for journalism, but the idea of cooperatives has barely been mentioned. So it’s refreshing to see someone breaking new ground in that respect.

Another model deserving more attention is social enterprise. At News:Rewired earlier this month, Philip John, one of the brains behind hyperlocal site The Lichfield Blog, outlined his plans to turn it into a social enterprise. In an excellent post on the JournalLocal site, John suggests that to save journalism, local media could go down the social enterprise route and fund its work through grants and subsidies.

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Jan 22 2010
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Journalism

New Toys

Originally uploaded by Immagina.

I love getting something shiny and new to play with. I’d been looking to replace my dictaphone (wasn’t bad for recording, but playing back on a PC was a little fiddly), but I wanted to get something for doing more professional sounding recordings.

I’ve recently started a blog about my local area and would like to record some podcasts. So after toying with the idea of getting a Zoom recorder or a Kodak Flip Killer Zi8 (actually a video camera) I went for this bad boy.

The Tascam DR-07 is an entry level digital stereo recorder. It has more settings than I am used to so it takes a bit of fiddling around to get the right sound. My first attempt to record was spoiled by picking too high a recording level (and also by a coughing fit in the middle) but I put a useable bit on Audioboo to check out the results. Continue reading →

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Jan 18 2010
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Journalism

Twitter is here to stay

My post on Friday concerned a discussion on the BBC’s use of Twitter and Audioboo at the news:rewired event on Thursday where a delegate branded it a waste of the licence fee. Well, today events took a new turn with a Daily Express article criticising the time and money that Auntie was putting into social media.

Malcolm Cole, led the offensive against this article, pointing out that the journalists who were making claims about the lack of interest in BBC presenters’ Twitter feeds had confused followers and following. And after highlighting this example of sloppy journalism, he added for good measure that there were two journalists working on this story.

You can still click through to the embarrassing “story”, but you will find that it has been removed.

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Jan 15 2010
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Journalism

And boo to you too

News:Rewired at City University January 2010

Drawnalism's take on news:rewired

It’s always a tough call to decide which break out session to go to at conferences and yesterday’s News:Rewired was no exception. The event, organised by the website Journalism.co.uk, offered a glimpse of how the media is changing and which news models could prosper in the future.

The morning session included break-outs on Multimedia, Social Media and Search Engine Optimisation. I opted for the first one. The speakers included Steve Phillips, a traffic and travel correspondent at BBC London, who outlined how social media applications have aided his in this work.

BBC London Travel uses Twitter for both information gathering and sharing. They invite people to tweet them from their phones with stories of travel chaos whilst they are out and about. They use that infomation on radio, television and online. And of course, they also have their own Twitter feed to update the Twitterati. Continue reading →

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