Amongst the marking and other stuff a few things have been pushing the ponder button. One of the the things was the recent updates to Google Translate.

Even if you haven’t used the tool itself you will have probably spotted the odd option to translate search results. If you use the Google Toolbar you may have even been surprised to be offered a version of the page you are reading in its original language.  It’s like a lot of things on the web these days, a background thing.

But I have been pondering it lately for two reasons. The first comes from the increased amount of contact I have working journalists who are getting to grips with using search tools and other online stuff in a more structured and journalistic way. Sitting in a room full of journos and seeing the mixture of awe and surprise at just what you can do with an IP address these days, for example,  just underlines how much of this stuff can pass you by if you don’t have a bit of headspace to explore.

The second is thinking about how, when training, I can make this as relevant to all the flavours of journalists I come across. It’s often the case that after a session of looking at searching council websites and the like, sports journos feel like there isn’t much in it for them. Most team websites have no RSS and the online presence for many official bodies is pretty slim. I get much the same from the Sports journalism students I teach.

Searching in another language

Of course, when you get on to community stuff, forums and blogs etc. some of the sports journos are pretty adept at finding and working with those communities. But I’m always on the look out for stuff for that search part of what I do that will peak their interest in the basic stuff which, I think, is really valuable. Google translate does just that.

Here’s an example picked at random.

The rumour mill throws up that Italian football coach and radio pundit Nevio Scala is pitching for the Scotland Manager’s job.

Interesting stuff. What’s this guy about then? We could push a few searches through Google:

Starting with  “Nevio Scala” or building on the search with information about his other clubs. e.g “Nevio Scala” +Parma or “Nevio Scala” +Spartak will turf up a lot. But it’s in English and this guy is Italian. So what do the Italians say about him?

We can push Google to search Italian sites by selecting Italian in the Language option of the advanced search. Which gives us some lovely results with the Translate This page option. Click there and we get translated results.

The language option in Googles advanced search

We can take that step further with Google’s Translated search option.

All you do is tell it what you are looking for, what language to search in and what language you speak. Then tell it which language you want to search in. The results are slightly easier to digest as you can see the options side by side. We can use the search to dig a little deeper.

A translated search from Google

Back to the Scala example. I want to delve in to the fan chat during his short spell at Spartak. Setting the results language to Russian means we can plug in a search like  “Nevio Scala” Spartak OR Spartacus +forum and throw-up forum discussions around Scala on Russian football sites.

Of course doing this is not just limited to Sport. It’s not uncommon to find someone from your patch appears in the foreign press.  Take “meredith kercher” OR “Amanda Knox” as a  translated search in Italian as an example. But given the international impact of sports, especially as the world cup comes in to view and I think sports journos have plenty to play with here.

Translating from the Toolbar

For me though the real flexibility comes when you use the translate options in conjunction with the Google Toolbar.  By installing the toolbar you can translate pages on the fly.  That makes searching in another language a lot easier.

I tried the same search for “meredith kercher” OR “Amanda Knox” in Google news but with the location set to Italy.  All the results come up in Italian but a quick click of the translate button and I have a better idea of what I am looking at. Then I can continue browsing in (Googles best approximation of) english.

Using the pages

Using the toolbar translation also means you can take advantage of the basic functions on the page.

Using the Nevio Scala” Spartak OR Spartacus +forum search I found a Spartak forum which I wanted to search for any mentions of Scala.  I could find the search box but sticking Scala in won’t work as it’s English not Russian cyrillic. So I used the Google translate tool to convert Nevio Scala in to Russian (Невио Скала) and went directly to the original Russian version of the football forum. The toolbar translate option converted the page in to english so finding the search box was easy. Then I plugged the Russian version in to the search box.  Bingo.

Ok, so the translation is pretty hokey sometimes and we need to be mindful of the different standards of journalism (legal and ethical) that we might encounter. But it’s a great opportunity to get a different perspective. I think this is especially important in sport. There is always the other team and if they happen to be from another country then it would seem a shame to miss their perspective.

The next step

The next step is to integrate some of this stuff in to your “passive aggressive newsgathering” by finding the best in foreign language sites and then using a site like Mloovi to translate the RSS feed. Then you really are doing international journalism.

It might be an iceberg but it's a minor in a court case so we ignore it.(picture from Ludovic Hirlimann on Flickr )

I’ve spent the day in the pleasent company of Journalists at the Middlesborough Gazette (some where from Newscastle) and I’m wondering what happened whilst I was training.

Did Hold the Front Page turn in the wayback machine.

Checking my email some of my work colleagues had been kicking around the HTFP story about an increase in applications to journalism degrees, despite the problems in the industry.

The story was one of my interesting links yesterday and I commented

I’m surprised by this or maybe students have got their head around what the industry can’t (and one or two of the comments on this piece make reinforce that idea) that newspapers/TV/Radio and journalism are not the same thing

The idea being that journalism was an intresting and valid thing to study. And, given the right course, would give you skills to do journalism rather than work for a newspaper or TV station.

So imagine my surprise when I read the following quote on another HTFP story today

Eastern Daily Press editor Paul Durrant told students that he “wasn’t bothered” about them having a degree.

Speaking at the second annual student council meeting, he added: “I’m bothered about NCTJ qualifications – I’m bothered about vocational training. I’m looking for maturity, passion and confidence.

“In terms of currency in the industry, I need to know someone’s got 100wpm shorthand, that they know what a Section 39 is.”

This was said at a meeting organised by the NCTJ where students could ‘meet the council’

I am genuinely amazed at the singular blindness a statement like this suggests to the broader problems in the industry.

Durrant may be bothered by these things. That’s his right as an editor. You could also argue they are important – I’m genuinely agnostic about this kind of thing now. But what else can he offer to anyone who takes him at his word?

As a senior journalist in the newspaper industry what security can he offer in return to a future journalist who is ‘bothered’ about staying in the industry?

Sometimes I wonder if the NCTJ has been running a secret training course – Pre-Entry newspaper editor, becoming captain of the titanic in 20 weeks.

Update: Over at Journalism.co.uk Dave Lee is asking for opinion on this whole debate as part of their Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalist section.

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I’m back in work after a stint of what’s known around here as freshers flu. (all the new students bring more than just eager minds to class)

I know I have a lot of things that I need to post to make good on stuff I started before a bit of a work induced blogging hiatus. But I had to pass comment about this.

According to Hold The Front page the NCTJ (UK based newspaper training body) have created a video guide for all journalists struggling with video.

The eight-minute film has been produced by Lloyd Bracey, chief examiner for online and video journalism at the National Council for the Training of Journalists.

It’s essentially a 101 on how to shoot a neat interview and a sequence with some other stuff thrown in. Go and have a watch, it’s pretty good.

Good as it is though, I have a problem.

The overriding claim is that this is aimed at reporters making the shift to video – newspaper people and in that respect I don’t think it succeeds for a couple of reasons

• It’s over 8 minutes long – Why isn’t it broken in to easy bite sized chunks? One for each section
• It has no supporting material – Where is the ‘multimedia’ why not text and images and video on the same page.

From what I’ve seen, right across the board of all newspapers, people have moved well beyond this. By looking at what other newspaper journos are doing you get a better feel for what is required.

The skills and advice the video offers are sound and very well presented. It would make a great basic tutorial for starters. But it isn’t the only one out there. To stand out and really offer that advice to newspaper reporters it needs more application.

The truth is it’s a way behind where the industry is at and I would have expected the NCTJ to be reflecting a better application of the medium in their practice based on what their industry is already doing.

Stress and time are reduced if training has a long tail

Life seems very busy at the moment, busy good, but busy none the less so slow posting I’m afraid (no cheering at the back).

One of the busy things I did last week was spend a day(ish) with a group of editors from UK newspaper group Trinity Mirror. TM are really ramping up their online presence at the moment. Their hyperlocal sites in particular are picking up a lot of notice in the UK.

Anyway, as part of that digital thing the editors where doing a course called  ‘Creating Effective content’ and I had them for a session that fell under the broad heading of ‘multimedia’.

I spent a good part of the morning showing them Windows Movie Maker. Not because it’s what they use -  they have a mix of things – or what I think they should use,  but because it’s such a quick and user friendly way to illustrate the process. Within half-an-hour they where happily plugging away at creating a picture slideshow.

This is one of the most instantly popular things I do. The genuine excitement that comes back at just how easy it all is is very nice to see. Suddenly this multimedia stuff is not so hard and if video is part of the plan, perhaps it doesn’t look so out of reach. Baby steps

But I’m not telling you this to relive the warm fluffy feeling.

That evening the eds went out and used N95′s to shoot some interviews with the public about the way they consume sports news. They came back the next day with a brief to put together a kind of multimedia ‘report’.

What I noticed as I flitted round the room was that the flush of excitement they had with the technology had lost a little of its shine. As they battled with the limits of movie maker, for some, the frustrations and fears came back.

The training rollercoaster

I see the same thing with my students and the practical training I deliver. A basic overview of a bit of software or kit can give people enough of a taste to get them fired up. But give them a project to go out and try it and the fear factor is ramped up again. Of course the value is in using the experience of that first project and incorporate that in to follow up training. The stress can be very quickly reduced and people move much faster. We all know that’s how we learn – guided experience.

But it’s surprising how much training in the new digital skills forgets that last bit. A lot of the time it deals with it in a FOFO way – You’ve had your training now F*** off and find out yourself.

So if you are thinking about the training for your journos ( and no, there is no other way to get it right other than training) here are a few things to think about:

• Define and test your workflow
  Training isn’t an opportunity to define a working process. Get someone who knows what they are doing to make sure your workflow is fit for purpose. It doesn’t need to be tested to breaking point. Most importantly make sure that it is as consistent as it can be across all centers in your org.  Training isn’t fault finding.

I’ll mea culpa here. When showed WMM to the TM eds a I completely missed a problem with the MP4 video that the N95’s produced – not directly compatible. So I needed to source a bit of software to sort it out*. An easy solution but introducing the new software shifted things back in to feeling ‘technical’

• Get kit in place
  Many orgs still buy in training before all of the centers have kit in place. Ideally they should be taking their kit to the training. Yes, skills will be transferable – you can busk your way round most cameras having used one – but there is a level of confidence gained in knowing you are working with the same kit you will use day in, day out.
• Split your training in to two parts:
  The first part should be quick, directed and aimed at confidence building – simple, directed examples. Avoid letting the training simply be about serving the workflow. Remember this isn’t the chance to define things. It should end with a definite project to work on. The second part should be based on a review of the project. More specific skills can be introduced. This stops that first ‘hump’ of stress from being too steep a mountain to climb.
• Build in mutual support
  Support the training with an online component – a blog or forum. Keep the forum private for delegates only. The forum should be moderated by the trainer or by a qualified member of staff who can answer questions quickly but more importantly push information and ideas out. Better still, if you are all under one roof, assign mentors or buddies (I hate that word but you know what I mean). If you’re the boss, maybe even spring for coffee for them so that they can meet once in a while.
• Permission to fail.
  A long with the idea of playtime (think of it like googles 20% time), permission to fail is a really important concept in training terms for me. I hear a lot of talk of editors demanding content from people the day after a course – no pressure – and of course it hardly ever works out. The school of hard knocks is a romantic throwback. It is not a good model for encouraging staff in what may already be a sensitive working environment.

Feedback always welcome.

*A neat little bit of windows shareware called WM Converter