Last in my (just invented) Day’o'screengrabs. Those of you using wordpress may have seen, via the dashboard, that Top Gear (the show and magazine) are using wordpress for their web presence. Cue a lot of comments from Toyota driving reps.
From the screengrab above you can see that they haven’t quite got the excerpts sorted yet but it looks good.
Just in case you think Clarkson has goen green and is recycling old posts, don’t panic. It’s just the excerpts.
Oooh. It’s been a real screen grab day today.
I deal with a range of different types of journalism day-by day. The geeks and the dead tree lot seem to be the most vocal in my life at the moment. Of course the luvvies from broadcast land are getting closer to seeing what is going on. But you very rarely hear the glossies of magazine world complain. Not that they aren’t elbow deep in this online/digital stuff like their print bretheren in newspapers. But maybe this will put the wind-up some.
Yes Magcloud is a print on demand magazine service. Like the growing number of print on demand book publishers this could be an interesting proving ground. Think of it less like the Daily me and more the Daily Me Me Me.
Whether it catches on or not I’m not sure. But perhaps the growing enagement with the download and keep culture that broadband builds is ripe for this kind of thing. If it is. Will the mag gorups follow or have they been bitten tooo badley by digital editions in the past.
I like Sky News. Everything is important. Even stuff that isnt. So I was keen to see the beta of their new news site and, thanks to Martin Stabe, here it is:
This is big bold stuff – shouting, thunderous music and serious suits stuff. I swear the screen of my laptop tipped back a little as this page loaded up.
Still design isn’t just graphics. So I’m going to have a pootle around and see what’s what.
A nice interactive graphic from USA today. And the Louise at the JPdigital digest has a pointer to Poynter and an article about USA Todays interactive team
Isn’t twitter great (when it’s working). Mark Comerford shared a link to a report on an EU report - no, no, keep reading, honest it’s good (and not about the Irish referendum.)
The report goes under the title of DRAFT REPORT on concentration and pluralism in the media in the European Union (PDF link) that’s (2007/2253(INI)) if you are interested.
It’s got some great stuff in there. Here are a few of the recommendations and my immediate thoughts on the thing.
Proposes the introduction of fees commensurate with the commercial value of the user generated content as well as ethical codes and terms of usage for user-generated content in commercial publications;
Suggests clarifying the status, legal or otherwise, of weblogs and encourages their voluntary labelling according to the professional and financial responsibilities and interests of their authors and publishers;
Think about the implications of that for community and professional alike. Fees for citizen journalism and full disclosure on ‘professional’ blogs.
The draft report was authored by “Estonian Socialist” Marianne Mikko. Mikko told the EU news service “the blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them”.
But here is the headliner.
Asked if she considered bloggers to be “a threat”, she said “we do not see bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace”. She added, “I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why. ”
So be careful next time you blog.
Later: Craig McGinty has a suggestion for Mikko:
if Marianne Mikko wants to see some fine examples of where people have made available information to others in an open and transparent manner drop in on some case studies of Creative Commons projects.
Ownership and diversity
The basis of the report though is not blogging and user generated content. The report identifies those as key parts of the growing richness and diversity of the media landscape. It’s that diversity (the pluralism of the title) that needs defending.
The draft notes:
whereas the primary concern of media businesses may be financial profit, media remains an ideological and political tool of considerable influence, which should not be treated solely on economic terms,
and it isn’t long before the issue of public service crops up.
The report recognises that the public service media needs a sizable and stable market share to fulfil its mission but urges it to avoid unfair competition and pursuit of the market share for its own sake. It point out that whereas in certain markets the public service media is a leading market participant, it mostly suffers from inadequate funding and political pressure.
Isn’t that just made for the current BBC Vs. regional press debate.
But whilst the report:
Recommends that the regulations governing state aid are implemented in a way allowing the public service media to fulfill its function in a dynamic environment, while avoiding unfair competition leading to impoverishment of the media landscape;
The UK newspaper industry continue to be bullish despiet the offer of an olive branch from the BBC. David Newell, director of the Newspaper Society told Journalism.co.uk
“The BBC’s 60 local websites already compete head-to-head with regional newspaper websites and its expansion plans, combined with its cross-promotional power, threaten to steal away audiences and undermine the ability of publishers to pursue their own digital development strategies, which are so important to the future of local media in the UK,”
Perhaps the EU may give the newspaper industry the leverage it needs.
Will regulation protect diversity?
Whatever the result it seems clear that the EU see regulation as the best protector of pluralism. The report…
Stresses the need to institute monitoring and implementation systems for media pluralism based on reliable and impartial indicators;
Part of me can’t help but feel uncomfortable with that. Whilst the report is pretty intellegent (if brief) it seems that the weight of regulation will be on freedom of expression where the only plurality that will be protected would be the plurality of commercial interests.
But what do you think.
Picture from Flickr user Huladancer
This has been sitting in my list of things to blog on, so with a bit of delay, here is an interesting bit of data from a recent report on digital journalism from a couple of PR companies.
[T]he study has uncovered a ‘40/40 Factor’ in action – 41% of respondents now produce more than 40% of their output online in the first instance. The ‘40/40 Factor’ is even more interesting when one considers it was only in October 2005 that the Daily Telegraph became the first UK newspaper to publish online, before the print edition.
Interesting stuff. A 40/40 distribution of web first. Could this be a candidate for 50/50?
Video
But more interesting for me was the what the report has to say on video
61 per cent of UK respondents said their publications offered video or TV content as part of their online presence compared with 41 per cent of respondents from other European countries
That from Laura Oliver’s article on the report over at Journalism.co.uk.
Sounds like good news. But wait there are some howevers (they’re the new but you know):
However, over three quarters of UK respondents said that producing additional multimedia content for the web was the biggest challenge to their jobs.
Oh, dear
However, only 10 per cent of the overall respondents – and 14 per cent of those in the UK – said they had received training for producing multimedia content.
Double oh, dear.
In fact the survey says that 65% of those surveyed said they had trained themselves in podcasting and video.
Here is the reports take away graphic:
That’s pretty shoddy isn’t it.
But video seems to happen regardless. Some form of training must be happening.
My experience is that there is a lot of under the wire training going on. That’s born out by something I read on Journalism.co.uk today.
In an interview with Alison Gow about the Liverpool Daily posts fantastic efforts online, we get an insight in to the way video works in Liverpool.
Video is a separate entity altogether – one video journalist is responsible for managing libraries, cutting pieces and training newsroom staff and reporters in video-journalism.
She has trained eight other staff so far, giving them a week’s hands-on training so that they can manage handicams and cut footage. They aim for a new web video each day.
That seems to be the way a lot of this is happening. A few people are training in house but the majority of journalists are doing it themselves.
I get (some) satisfaction
Does that make them unhappy?
It seems not.
Playtime
This may come as a shock to the more for less brigade and, though it may be it’s a leap of logic on my part, it would seem that journalists enjoy learning new skills – wherever they are doing that.
For me that just underlines again the real importance of my hobby horse of playtime (set aside time for journalists to try new things). Give your journalists time to learn the new skills and maybe that ‘enjoy it more’ figure will grow.
