Daniel Bentley

We’re back! Sorry it has been so long but we’re here to rinse the fur off journalism’s teeth and ask the question - are you a dick?

Lyra McKee of media news aggregation site MediaGazer wrote this blogpost condemning some journalists, especially those in tech of being dicks, abusing their position and acting bigger than the story. This prompted plenty of conversation. We discuss if it’s true and what it means for journalists starting out.

You may not be a dick but Tom Watson MP sort of is. Following the release of his book “Dial M for Murdoch” he was accused by former News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck of quoting off the record conversations between them. As of now (Tuesday 24 April 2012 9:04 BST) he hasn’t responded…

And app of the week is a little different this week as Jo talks about his own project, liveblogging software Ocqur.

Stay fresh!

Greetings once more from the Media Mouthwash studio! We have a perfectly distilled 17 minutes of pure journalism Listerine to get the bad taste of declining newspaper revenues out of your mouth.

Actually that’s a bit of a fib because we’re going to be talking newspaper revenues and the struggles to monetise digital. Brian Stelter wrote in the New York Times that for every $1 in digital revenue, newspapers are losing $7 in print advertising. But it aint all bad news. 

The Daily is a year old. Murdoch launched his iPad publication last March and we see how it’s faring. The results are a little surprising.

Gaffe of the week isn’t its usual light hearted self. This week’s gaffe comes from a newspaper that has ruined someones life. And another. And another. 

And finally, Joseph’s app of the week is Zite. It’s not new, it’s not the first of its kind but we discuss why it’s the best personal news app out there. 

Stay fresh and thanks for listening!

On this week’s Media Mouthwash we give our early reaction to the new Wikileaks release. Hacker collective Anonymous handed over to Assange & co. millions of emails from the private intelligence agency Stratfor. Is this a big deal or is it as the Atlantic suggests, a damp squib? 

The Sun on Sunday came out on Sunday and sold 3.2 million copies instantly becoming the top Sunday paper. Was it a return to the barnstorming journalism of the News of the World? Well, no, not exactly.

Daniel tootled off to the Digital Editors’ Network meeting held at Salford Quays and caught up with Sarah Hartley of Guardian Media project n0tice. Keen observers may already know about the hyperlocal noteiceboard website but we find out n0tice’s plans for expansion and what we can expect from the service going forward.

And finally, unofficial Tsar of Storify, Joseph Stashko runs us through their new app for iPad in App of the Week.

Stay fresh. 

The Sun on Sunday was announced this week and we try our best not to talk about it. But we fail and talk about it a lot. Daniel attempts an impression of Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff but Joseph doesn’t allow it, so here’s the man himself gaffing it up.

Anthony DeRosa was working away in the financial products team at Reuters until he was bitten by a Tumblr shaped radioactive spider and became Social-Media-Editor-Man. We find out how. (thanks TWiT)

The Freedom of Information Act, it may sound dull, we may make it sound even duller but it’s important and under threat.  

And finally as Joseph hands over App of the Week to Daniel he chooses Software Data Cable. Crap name, great app. 

Footnote: Here’s that riveting read on Freedom of Information Act and local government.

We could probably do a This Week in Joey Barton podcast if we tried hard enough. The controversial footballer reinvented as a sixth former’s Morrissey (who himself is a sixth former’s Oscar Wilde) isn’t known for keeping his trap shut. But this week a series of tweets regarding John Terry’s race trial caught media and legal eyes.

Path, the ‘personal network’ app for iPhone and Android has been in a spot of bother this week after it emerged that the app uploaded users’ address books to their servers. Is this a big privacy breach or is everyone doing it? We take a look.

Sky News are gaffe of the week for their social media memo. Did #savefieldproducer save @fieldproducer? If only we’d recorded this after Sky News made Daniel delete his tweets…

Banjo is Jo’s app of the week. The app allows people to discover all public tweets/facebook messages sent from a specified location. We look at how journalists can use it.

PS: Thanks for all your comments on Episode 5. If you’ve got any suggestions for Episode 7 and beyond tweet us!

Pinterest is hot shit at the moment. Sites are falling over themselves to report their impressive traffic and referral numbers and the impact of curation. Is it a niche social network or something with a use for all of us?

UNILAD are a bunch of dicks, we discuss why. 

Also, we look at Twitter’s censorship policy and why it’s not all bad and discuss the joint project from Columbia University and Stanford. 

Media Mouthwash Episode 4 by Media Mouthwash

On this week’s slightly shorter Media Mouthwash we discuss Tumblr, reblogging and death! Every so often a false death rumour appears via social media, why is this? And should credible news outlets do better to fact check? This with our regular features gaffe and app of the week.

Felix Salmon - Tumblr surpasses 15 billion page views

False rumours of Joe Paterno’s death circulate via Twitter

Daily Mail’s At Last headline

VRecorder

Media Mouthwash Episode 3 by Media Mouthwash

Media Mouthwash is back after a Christmas hiatus!

The Guardian’s iPad app was met with a mixed reaction when it launched in October 2011. Many loved the beautiful design, others were confused by the ‘static’ edition model they used to package it.

Our guest this week is Martin Belam of the Guardian’s UX (user experience) team. He talks us through the rationale behind the design of the app and the different ways people consume news. 

All this and our regular features!

Martin Belam (twitter) - Currybet.net

App of the week - Panorama 360

 
AP opens North Korea bureau
 
Facebook gives Politico access to election status messages 

The data behind MediaCityUK job applications

That Guardian front page

Media MouthWash Episode 2 by Media Mouthwash

This week we’re back with a slightly shorter, leaner podcast that still manages to cram in plenty of media discussion and analysis. We’re talking news design - taking apart the Independent’s new makeover, speaking to Grig Davidovitz, CEO of RGB Media, as well as the usual items Gaffe and App of the fortnight

Corrections: Grig Davidovitz was editor of Haaretz websites. He is an expert in journalism and new media, not design.

InkThink - What the Independent re-design tells us

Grig Davidovitz of RGBMedia

French satirical newspaper firebombed after prophet Mohammed announcement

Onavo

Here’s a handy companion to the discussion on the Independent’s redesign. Look at how different websites have treated the same story differently. Who handles it best?

Media Mouthwash Episode 1 by Media Mouthwash

After the beta adventure that was Show 0.1, we get stuck into our first proper, (slightly) more polished episode. On the agenda this time is press regulation as well as discussing the implication of new Facebook apps and sharing settings. All that along with our regular items Gaffe and App of the fortnight.

Shownotes

Janine Gibson - How should press regulation work?

Daniel Bentley - Big media is at the mercy of the tech giants and their own fault

Joseph Stashko - We don’t pay for news and never have

Mathew Ingram - Memo to media: A Facebook app is not innovation 

Introducing the Guardian’s new Facebook app 

Malcolm Coles - Hugely embarassing: Daily Mail jumps gun on Amanda Knox guilty story

Wired.co.uk - Europe’s hottest startup capitals: Stockholm

App of the fortnight - Bambuser

Media Mouthwash Episode 0.1 by Media Mouthwash

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In our first show we discuss what happened at Barcamp Media City, mull over what the role of universities should be in the development of journalism and introduce the first editions of our regular items, Gaffe and App of the fortnight.

Shownotes

BarcampMediaCityUK

• Nigel Barlow - InsidetheM60
• Manoj Ranaweera - Techcelerate
• Jimmy Tidey - The internet is not a medium

Andy Dickinson - Daily Mail student media awards?

Andy Dickinson - The role of universities: the carnival of journalism lives!

Johann Hari - A personal apology

Disgraced columnist writes for New York Times Book Review

Adam Tinworth - Good writers are common…

Soundcloud.com

The past weekend I’ve been at Barcamp MediaCity, an event for techies and other assorted creative types held in the typical barcamp/unconference style in the BBC’s new Salford home. 

I attended a wide range of stimulating sessions, and also gathered some audio for the first Media Mouthwash podcast. There wasn’t too much that was directly dealing with journalism (just the one session), but plenty of ideas and concepts that can be applied to journalism.

It also made a change (for me at least) to attend an event that wasn’t centred around the future/funding/new technology (delete as appropriate) of journalism - instead one that had a much broader and liberal agenda around technology.

Suffice it to say you’ll hear plenty about who I met at Barcamp when we launch a week tomorrow, so stay tuned. 

- Jo

The Media Mouthwash team, well, the two of us, held our first production meeting today. Despite the disappointing “cappuccino” (pictured) we set down a lot of ideas about what we want the podcast to be and what we need to do to in practical terms.

We want the podcast to be about 25 minutes long and aim to publish it fortnightly starting from September 26th. 

Me and Jo shoot the breeze about journalism constantly and the podcast will be a more constructed form of this. We’ll be discussing topical media issues with some forward thinking thrown in. It will be as much a learning exercise for ourselves producing it as for those who are listening.

We aim to have at least one guest per episode, so those of you we know with a bit of expertise, expect a tweet or an email asking you for your time.

Before all this we need to get the technical stuff nailed so we’ll be producing a few demos in the next week.

Many thanks for the team at Soundcloud for offering to host the podcast, and many thanks to those who have already expressed an interest. We’re not expecting perfection with the first episode but hopefully we’ll be able to produce something interesting and thought provoking.

For now you can follow us on Twitter (@MediaMouthwash), and we’ll also have an RSS that you can subscribe to via iTunes and podcast apps. 

-Daniel