Wordblog

It is good to have your choice of place to live confirmed by a survey as having the second best quality of life in Great Britain. Even nicer that the East Anglian Daily Times chooses to illustrate the story with a picture of our village with our house in the foreground.

Despite my distrust of polls carried out by businesses to promote their wares (this one was from the Halifax which like most of the house lenders could probably spend its money better at present) the choice of Mid Suffolk as number two in the country is a useful “feel-good” story.

The East Anglian Daily Times reached edition 42,330 today. Last week I delved back in the county records for 50 years to look for the day our village newsagents started their business (November 17, 1958). They wanted to see it again.

In that half-a-century Grace and Bob Webster have sold well over six million copies of the regional morning. They wanted to see what it said on day they started their still thriving business where Grace, at the age of 80, continues to get up at 4.30 in the morning to sort large piles of papers for delivery. The provide their service to many of the villages around.

What struck me as the old microfilm image came up on the records office  screen was that the Aglian is now providing more local news than it was. First there was the size: eight pages broadsheet then and 48 tabloid now (Mondays).

That is a tripling of the area of newsprint to be filled. Granted pictures and much much bigger headlines fill much of that extra space. Yet the paper clearly provides a larger volume of local news now than it did in 1958.

Then it was very much an agency filled national and international plus local newspaper. The Cyprus problems, a car strike in the midlands, Russia, Ghana and free trade talks were all on the front page. Twenty three stories and a briefs column on the front page.

But even the weather story was hardly given a local spin and and the egg marketing scheme none at all.

* The Halifax survey which takes into account environment, education and health suggests that Elmbridge in Surrey has the best quality of life in Great Britain.

A pithy post, “Why most news doesn’t need journos” by Joanna Geary is re-igniting an old debate with a reworking of the old comment, attributed to Lord Northcliffe, that: “News is what somebody, somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.”

As Martin Stabe, who pointed me to this post, points out the comments should be read too.

Joanna writes:

Most of the news that comes out of media organisations on a daily basis is information that others either WANT people to know or HAVE to admit to. It is just re-written or re-presented in a format that fits that platform.

So, instead of journos, the world needs the generators of this information to communicate it better and to allow for redress to what they say.

This leads her to suggest that journalists should be finding the information that organisations don’t want people to know.

I can hardly disagree with her general thrust after my recent post about plans for a local news site where much of the content will come from people seeking publicity for reason or another”.

I suggested that support and training was needed to help the contributors write better, and redress is implicit in a web site that encourages comments.

The economics of local journalism seem to be forcing us in this direction. Yet I remain unconvinced by this narrow definition of news. There is good news too that everyone wants published and everyone wants to read. And is better written by journalists.

If journalists only sought the news someone wanted to suppress, they would be about as welcome on the doorstep as a policeman. It is through an involvement in a community (be it parliament or a town) and reflecting the good and the bad that a reporter gets stories.

The man or woman who writes the nice stories and simple information (a prelim on the fund raising event for a hospice, for example) is also the one who gets the tip-off on something someone would rather keep quiet. It is all a matter of building contacts.

I really don’t think a sort of news “Crimestoppers” call centre is going to do much to help provide journalism which provides a public service.

Anyway, Northcliffe’s definition of news is not quite so black and white as that quote suggests.  This is an extract from Tom Clarke’s “My Northcliffe Diary”:

As deputy to the News Editor at this time, I had occasionally to take charge of the news room. On one occasion when I was doing this duty the Chief rang up about 11 o’clock in the morning and said:

“Why are there so many people wearing silk hats in Hampstead this morning? Send a report to find out why.”

A few minutes later he rang me again.

“Have you found out about this silk hat display at Hampstead? Everybody is taking about it. I though you would have known the reason. I can tell you why it is, but I don’t think you know. It is the Jewish New Year, and none of the ilk is in the City. They are all wearing their best and going to the synagogue. Now that’s a good story for you, if it’s properly handled. It ought to be headed ‘Many Tall Hats at Hampstead.’ it’s no use heading it ‘Jewish New Year.’ People will be captured by the heading about the hats. The reporter should start his story by saying that many people wondered why so many tall hats were on view in Hampstead today… Be picturesque in treatment. These are the little, well-written, out-of-the-way stories of which we want more in the paper. Most of the other papers will miss it. They do no know it is the Jewish New Year. Don’t let the story be offensive. We have many Jewish readers, and should give them the new of all their festivals. Get a Jew to read the story through after it has been written to see that it does not contain any foolish mistakes.”

Next day he rang up to say that “the 1,500,000 Jews in London” found something to interest them in our paper.

The Stanford Super Series in Antigua is getting a lot of publicity (Guardian for example) not only for the cricket but for the antics of their sponsor, Allen Stanford, who has apparently been bouncing Wags on his knees and wandering in and out of dressing rooms.

Sir (an Antiguan title) Allen does his PR lavishly. The small stadium opposite the headquarters of his bank is modestly named the Stanford Cricket Ground. It is a luxurious place with a swish gym and club on one side and the Sticky Wicket restaurant where Stanford entertains guests on the other.

But what surprises me is that more attention has not been paid to the background of this Texan billionaire offshore banker who has struck a $100m deal with the English Cricket Board.

Nick Hoult of the Telegraph’s 20/20 reporter did write a story in July about Stanford’s bank being under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. But sometimes sports journalists need support from investigative colleagues.

There is not a lot of detail, other than that from the Stanford spin machine, around the web unless you search hard. The Wikipedia entry is laudatory and has strange gaps like the moving of his bank from the British island of Montserrat to Antigua.

Bloomberg ran an interesting piece in 2006 which included this:

U.S. court records show that his core business — the offshore bank — was formed in 1985 on the Caribbean island of Montserrat and moved to Antigua in 1990.

That’s where he ran into problems with U.S. investigators. In 1999, Stanford Financial tried to take over Antiguan International Business Corp., which regulated offshore companies on the island, said Jonathan Winer, who was then a deputy assistant secretary of State. State Department cables sent from the U.S. Embassy described a “power grab” and criticized the company’s hiring of U.S. consultants to revise Antigua’s offshore-banking rules.

A story in August this year on Antigua-Barbuda Net News (published from the Cayman Islands) is based largely on another Bloomberg report but also refers to report in the Offshore Alert newsletter. It would be interesting to read more.

The plan is that fairly quickly Suffolk Post (I have not mentioned the name of the local news and info site before) will employ journalists. The first will probably be freelance but before any can be recruited there will have to be income and that means advertising salespeople.

But the site (you don’t even need to do a spreadsheet to see this) will depend heavily on contributed material which is uploaded by the writers for final checking before publishing.

The scale of of this was underlined in a post last year when I quoted, Keith Harrison, deputy editor of the Express & Star, Wolverhampton, telling  journalism.co.uk:

If you promise ultra-local, you’ve got to be able to deliver it. The number of journalists we have [60] is huge compared with many other regional papers — but, even with that many, we can’t deliver ultra-local news all the time. To do it, we’re going to need another 500 reporters - we can’t take them on, they’re going to need to be citizen journalists.

I am using the term contributors because I think few of those who I hope will provide content would think of themselves as journalists. So the phrase “citizen journalists” is being avoided.

Most will be people who already send items about their club, association, parish council, business or anything else to newspapers, parish magazines, trade mags and a host of other outlets. They will have more in common with PR people than journalists.

I hope local bands will post video clips as well as stories and gigs listings. Earlier this year when I was still teaching I noticed the largest numbers of hits on a student news site were coming from a “band of the week” feature. Clearly, word-of-mouth was bringing an audience to the site.

The contributors will, I believe, not only provide content but also market the site telling friends and neighbours where to see their reports and get information.

A pub landlord who posts a story about a fund raising event will be acting out of an interest in telling the community as well as promoting the hostelry. If the pub has a music night it may be the the landlord or the band that posts details in the listings section.

Much of the content will come from people seeking publicity for one reason or another. More will come from people who feel strongly about something and some will come from those who want to be journalists and see Suffolk Post as a way of getting started.

Young people may see a chance to do something in the community which will be fun and look good on university and job applications.

I think we will need to do more for these contributors than provide them with a vehicle for publication. It is clear from advertisements that there are a lot of people around who want to improve their writing skills.

This is why an important part of Suffolk Post will be a writing guide for registered users. There will be sections on writing news, features, reviews, taking picture and shooting video. FAQs including the difference between “its” and “it’s” and few examples of dangling modifiers will be there to help. A forum will be used to discuss writing and establish a feeling of belonging.

Direct feedback to individual contributors with praise and suggestions will also be essential and the editor’s blog will include praise too. The contributors will need to feel they are receiving useful training.

This, of course, is in the interests of the site — intros like, “Members and guests gathered at…” are not going to work on the web. The site will have to establish a culture of good writing that quickly gets to the point.

I am sure that here is much more that can be done to support contributors and  create a community. Suggestions will be welcome.

The alluring smell of hot metal first got to me as a teenager when I visited the home of my best friend — the flat in an ancient timber-framed town centre building which also housed the office and works of the Banbury Guardian.

My friend’s father edited the paper and had only to go downstairs to check the smooth running of the old press. It was one of the nostalgic images that came to me as I thought about what to do after my enforced retirement.

Online news allowed the dream of returning to those days of independent small town newspapers based in the heart of their communities. We might now call it ultra-local or hyper-local but the spirit was the same.

The area of Suffolk where I live looked ideal, one small town and several large villages with no strong presence of weekly newspapers. In my nostalgic view of traditional newspapers it looked good enough to provide work for a couple of journalists with an army of of contributors and a couple of people to look after the office and advertising.

But once I looked at real factors it was very different. Patterns of work, life and leisure in the English countryside have changed. Fifty years ago most people lived close to their work: now mid Suffolk has one of the highest proportions in England of people commuting out of the area to work. They also travel further for cinema, music and to eat out.

That neat circulation area in which people lived, worked and played, no longer exists. To provide the information people living in the area want there has to be coverage of a much larger area — most of the county.

The hyperlocal news concept with street-level news still seems appropriate but it would not be enough without listings of events, pub and restaurant reviews and much more from the wider area.

And if that information has to be provided it makes sense to supply it to a wider audience. A series of hyperlocal mini news sites backed by common wider area section still looked good. In a modified way it still does.

The idea of starting a site with virtually no investment other than a little for software and marketing plus my time (as a “retired” man I have enough of that) continues to appeal as a viable basis for a business.

I believe it can work but the time has come to have a broad discussion; to bring other minds and experience to bear on the subject. Over the next week or so I will post more about my ideas on encouraging, involving and supporting contributors, developing income and the mechanics of the site.

This week I find Jeff Jarvis, in his Guardian column,  is articulating one of the issues that has been bouncing around in my mind for the past couple of months. It is about journalism’s basic form, the story, and how it is proving inadequate.

I have been developing plans for a local news site so have been looking at the issue from a different angle. Mine is how to provide the reader with an overall view of a topic from a fragmented collection of posts by contributors (citizen journalists, if you must), media release, comments from participants, comments from the informed and uninformed, external inks and more.

Jeff uses the financial crisis at his example of a story/topic that requires a “next generation” approach. I have been thinking about much more local topics like a big development proposal. Very different in scale, but the basic needs are similar.

He describes what he wants:

I want a page, a site, a something that is created, curated, edited and discussed. It will include articles. But it’s also a blog that treats a topic as an ongoing and cumulative process of learning, digging, correcting, asking, answering. It’s a wiki that keeps a snapshot of the latest knowledge and background. It’s an aggregator that provides curated and annotated links to experts, coverage from elsewhere, a mix of opinion and source material. Finally, it’s a discussion that doesn’t just blather but tries to add value. It’s collaborative and distributed and open but organised.

That sounds about right although providing that curating and editing is going to be more difficult on a largely volunteer site than it would be a well-funded mainstream media site.

That takes us back to the fundamental questions of generating sufficient funding for a local news and information site.

Jeff concludes:

It’s not an article, a story, a section, a bureau, a paper, a show, a search engine. It’s something new. What do we call it? The topic table? The beat bliki (ouch)? The news brain? I don’t know. We’ll know what to call it when we see it.

I hope we see it soon.

There are a lot of suggestions around that that the business models of traditional print media hinder their launch into online products. So with the internet business IAC behind it, Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast should look a lot more promising than many.

IAC has a string of internet sites including Exite, Smiley Central, Vimeo and dictionary.com, so they should know what they are doing.

But Peter Preston in the Observer yesterday had his doubts. The launch costs are a reported $18 million. He asks: “Can online possibly sustain an investment like that? Ah! hello again, lone blogger… at least you are cheap.”

The Daily Beast is going to have to keep on spending, as well as financing the launch costs, if it is to challenge the Huffington Post.

Perhaps IAC has deep pockets. Revenue in the second quarter of this year was nearly $1.6bn on which it made an operating loss of nearly $400m.

Perhaps Tina should not get too dependent on “some of the best cupcake bakeries in town” in IAC’s “really cool building”.

The makings of a successful media beast? Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Wordblog has been neglected as I adjusted to the idea of retirement. It is not as if I wanted to give up work. But the human resources department (I think they feel that name gives them more importance than the old personnel) had other ideas.

The policy of the University of Westminster is not to employ people beyond 65. But they did keep me on for an extra year to help with a difficult situation they found themselves in.

I would rather like to rant about an ageist society and a government which supports employers in their desire to get rid of people on no grounds other than their age.

But I will just point out that this year is the centenary of the introduction of old age pensions by the then chancellor, Lloyd George. At that time life expectancy at birth was around 50 while a century later it is 77 for men and 81 for women

Life expectancy for men at 65 is now nearly 17 years and for women close on 20 years. With working life these days starting later it is not surprising there is talk about a “pensions crisis”.

For me there is just one possibility — find something else to do. More of that later.

Given the state the regional press, the news that Trinity Mirror in the Midlands is making 300 staff redundant but telling them they can reapply for their jobs is hardly surprising.

The marvel is that the Birmingham Post, one of the titles involved, has survived at all. I left the paper in the early 1970s, made redundant in a cut-back of local news coverage. This came after it was realised that most of the sales were to business premises: they sat on tables in the reception areas of almost every foundry reception, solicitor’s office etc in the region.

At that time most of the papers in the Midlands were healthy. I had worked previously for the Sunday Mercury which sold particularly well in the Black Country and my wife worked for the successful Coventry Evening Telegraph.

But it was clear even then that there was a better business model. The Wolverhampton Express and Star was making inroads into places which the Birmingham Evening Mail thought it owned.

In the past 30 years there have been many changes in ownership and management of the papers which no make up the sorry group that is now Trinity Mirror in the Midlands.

In the 1970s the Mail was the big paper, ahead of the Express and Star in Wolverhampton. Now the Evening Mail’s circulation at below 70,000 is half that of the Express and Star, which has thrived, relatively, under its independent ownership.

In the East, where I now live, Archant-owned dailies are also doing better than regionals in other parts of the country owned by Trinity Mirror and the other giant groups.

Peter Wilby picks up on the ownership issue in his Guardian column today:

Despite the circulation declines, the local press, until very recently, enjoyed buoyant advertising revenues and profit margins sometimes above 30%. Surely, journalists say, publishers should lower margins and protect their own future. But this misunderstands how capitalism works. As investors see it, perhaps rightly, newspapers have few prospects for growth, even if they are well-managed. With no expectations of long-term gains, they demand high, short-term dividends.The recent plunge in share prices shows how quickly investors pull out when profits fall. Most national newspapers are, to some extent, protected from this crude capitalist logic because, even if they are not run by a Guardian-style trust, individuals such as Rupert Murdoch and Tony O’Reilly, seeking influence or kudos, hold controlling stakes.

There are other issues which Wilby picks up on in his fine analysis of the state of the regionals — papers  not conveying “any sense of covering local events”  and the loss of local government power at the hands of centralising governments.

In the village where I live the East Anglian Daily Times is holding its own judging by the size of the bundles in the news agent. But I hear complaints. Last week a member of a local drama group was bemoaning the lack of proper reviews in the EADT.

Wilby concludes his piece with this:

Somehow, an editor has to overcome what has been called “the pothole paradox”. To you, news of repairs on your own street, or on your route to the pub, is far more interesting than, say, a plane crash in Madrid, but similar news from a mile away is the most boring thing imaginable. Whoever finds a solution to that conundrum, and develops a business model to sustain it, will surely be hailed as the saviour of the local press.

While the “pothole paradox” is real it is hardly in the power of an editor to overcome it if he or she does not have enough reporters to find the potholes in the first place. While a good editor will go someway to solving the conundrum with limited resources, it is the business managers who have to replaced the failed business model.

If I was now a journalist working on Trinity Mirror papers in the Midlands I would be feeling very angry with the suits.  They are making it more difficult for their editors to solve the “pothole paradox”.

The intro on Jeff Jarvis’s Digital Media column in the Guardian today had a familiar ring. It was, given a bit of subbing to sharpen it up, the same as one on his blog on July 10.

Is this testing the argument or, in the web jargon, some form of “crowd-sourcing” or a kind of informal “wiki”? It certainly has the merit of not rushing into print with the first thought that comes into your head.

There were 77 responses on the original Buzzmachine post – Google as the new pressroom — although some were from Jarvis himself and at least one person left two as the debate progressed. It is fascinating debate and a very important one about whether online newspapers should give up trying to sell ads and managing the technology to concentrate on the journalism.

This sort of testing saves confusing Guardian’s readers through refinement of the argument and the clearing up of ambiguities. As Jarvis said of his original post: “I’m causing confusion aplenty.” I commented: “He sure is — thinking as the responses to his latest post come in. Not unusual for Jarvis.”

The tradition of journalism has been to think before you write. You know that any inaccuracies or weak arguments will be quickly exposed. The web now provides a means of testing before launching your thoughts on the larger audience.

This may be a good thing. Imagine Polly Toynbee at the Guardian itself, or Melanie Phillips at the Daily Mail submitting their ideas to an informed blog audience before writing the final version.

Besides the obvious problem of delaying publication on topical issues, it is an idea. Whether it is a good one or not, I don’t know. One thing I am fairly sure of is that readers of the print edition and the online paper should be told if an article has been subjected to a public “peer comment” process. Perhaps the paper’s readers editor Siobhain Butterworth should look into this.

PS: If Google (or possibly another internet giant) is so good at hosting (eg Blogger) and ad sales that it should provide a platform for newspers, I wonder why Buzzmachine is a self-hosted Wordpress blog and, in  addition to Google ads, uses (and actively sells) Blogads. Maybe the point about the supremacy of Google is made when I look at the Buzzmachine post adorned by a Blogads contribution selling pants (UK meaning not US).