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Tweets
- Will Murdoch sell his British newspapers? http://t.co/j4KprEGj Probably sensible but he's proud to own Sun and Times.
- Why are men so angry on Twitter? http://t.co/DOMdObsn feat. you know who.
- Brilliant picture of Cameron, Obama and Merkel at the conclusion of the Champions League final. http://t.co/b4sjKmYV via @blakeyblogs
- Ever the contrarian I find myself picking holes in critically acclaimed films. I can't with Drive, it's brilliant.
- Gideon in the dignitaries box. Bad PR move.
- I'd feel sorry for Spurs fans but... League Cup 2009...
- Ping!
- This game really needs Miroslav Klose.
- For all their quality Bayern don't have an adequate replacement for the killer instinct of Klose.
- Nosepicking woman trending in 3...2...1....
- Champions League final teamsheets. Can't see anything other than a Bayern win… http://t.co/eIUT3g4t
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Info
- SummaryFormer roadie turned digital journalist.Specialties: content management, journalism, newspaper, radio, video, web site production,Experience
- Sept 2011 - PresentR&D Director / Plinth MediaLed a team creating educational worksheets and created an iBook teaching video skills to primary/elementary school students.
- May 2010 - May 2011Online News Editor / Pluto UCLan
- Jul 2010 - Dec 2010Web Consultancy / Granby Marketing Services Limited
- Feb 2010 - May 2010Video Journalist / Morecambe Football ClubFilming and conducting player and manager interviews for the ShrimpsPlayer section of the website.
- 2010 - 2010Work Experience / Trinity Mirror Group PLC
- 2007 - 2009Guitar technician / Howling Bells
Education-
2009 - 2012University of Central LancashireBA in Journalism
Activities: student newspaper -
2004 - 2005University of LeedsPolitical Studies (CertHE) in Globalisation, British Politics, European Politics
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1997 - 2004St. Theodore's RC High SchoolA Levels in English Literature and Language, Government and Politics, Economics,
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Interests:technology, google, social media, journalism, burnley football club, cleveland browns, cleveland cavaliers
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Posts
- Episode 10 Episode X! - #Journodicks, @LyraMcKee, @tom_watson and @Ocqur
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!
- Episode 9 - Daily, digital, shite and Zite
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!
- Episode 8 - Wikileaks, n0tice, Sun on Sunday reaction
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.
- Episode 7 - Anthony DeRosa, FOI and shhhh! (the sun on sunday)
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.
- Episode 6 - Joey Barton, Path and Banjo
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!
- Episode 5 - Twitter censorship, UNILAD & Pinterest
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.
- Episode 4 - At Last Tumblr hits 15 billion page views
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
- Episode 3 - Martin Belam on Guardian User Experience
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 - Episode 2 - Independent re-design, Grig Davidovitz, Charlie Hebdo
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
French satirical newspaper firebombed after prophet Mohammed announcement
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?
- Episode 1 - Regulation, Facebook's Open Graph and Bambuser
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
- Episode 0.1 - Barcamp, Hari and SoundCloud
Media Mouthwash Episode 0.1 by Media Mouthwash
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
- 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
- Podcasting from Barcamp MediaCity
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
- First production meeting
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
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Posts
- Dec 09, 11##This is a post for the Carnival of Journalism #jcarn hosted by The Guardian Developer Blog.##
Dear Journalism Santa and his Hacker Elves,
This year I'd like an open source content management system that doesn't suck.
WordPress is great and all, and I know it can be pretty powerful depending on the themes, plugins and widgets used, but for journalism it still sucks. It's slow to navigate around, it has a poor default workflow (yes I know Edit Flow fixes this) and its WYSIWYG text editor is awful. Most of my gripes can be fixed by non-standard plugins but in my experience these slow down the rendering of the finished page. I want the following as native features for a news CMS:- A wiki-esque history of the article - Except in cases where the removed material was inaccurate to the point of being damaging I want to see a full history of the article. I want the user to be able to see what was added/removed and when. This is massive for transparency and also lets the reader into the process of journalism. As with wikipedia, news articles have been subject to edits for ethically dubious reasons. Journalists should stand by the article from the first click of 'Publish' til the last edit.
- Winerlinks as default - Winerlinks are paragraph level urls. They allow the sharing and highlighting of an article to a particular paragraph. These are particularly brilliant for Twitter. Followers might not have time to read a full article, so why not point them to that juicy bit in paragraph 14? Winerlinks would also be my basis for...
- A corrections system! - It shocks me how many news organisations do not allow for readers to submit corrections/errors other than by going to Contact Us and filling off an email. In my non-sucky news CMS corrections would be built in, just as comments are. This would tie in elegantly with the history system and show the user submitted corrections and how the journalist implemented or responded to the correction. Newsrooms don't have large teams of fact checkers anymore - the public are great at it. Winerlinks would make it easier for the user submitted corrections to be pointed at the right place in the article.
- Google docs-esque features - Have you ever tried writing directly into WordPress to compose an article? It's bleeding awful and I don't know how much stuff I have lost doing it that way. I've quickly learned to use TextEdit, which is good practice anyway. But there's a reason I moved my personal blog over to Blogger and that's its composing view, it's just like Google Docs. Look, here's how I wrote this post. It saves my text automatically after every sentence and is generally a very nice, distraction free environment to write in. Hacker Elves, please just shamelessly rip this off.
Lastly, an idea from Grig Davidovitz of RGB Media, give me, the editor, the freedom to lay my frontpage as I do my print edition. Make article units flexible in both size and content. Don't tie me down to a fixed template. If I have a big story with a stunning image allow me to make that completely dominant on my front page. If I have a quirky story with a funny video, let me put that up there instead. Just give me control.It's not an exhaustive list, but I'll wait for my birthday in February to ask for the rest :)Thanks Santa,Daniel - Nov 03, 11
Digital First and the Future of News from CUNY Grad School of Journalism on Vimeo.
From Jeff Jarvis on buzzmachine.com:At CUNY’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, we invited John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media, Journal Register, and Media News, and Justin Smith, CEO of Atlantic Media, to answer questions about how they are executing their digital first strategies. I interviewed them, digging down into revenue, costs, transition for staff, audience, and advertisers, and more.
- Oct 31, 11
The Independent have re-designed their website. That's "design" in the loosest sense of the word. It's ugly, fractured, dense and unintuitive. It's anti-design to the point of being offensive, and it tells us a lot about what the Independent thinks of its content and its readers.
Firstly, take a look at the screenshot above. That's the page as viewed on my laptop's browser. Can you see the story? Nope. I can see the headline, the subheading, the byline, myriad links to other articles and the top of a picture. You have to scroll down several pixels to get to the story, a story which is crammed into the middle third of a three column design.
This is what the page looks like expanded. The red boxes are adverts (a necessary evil) and the blue boxes are where links to other Independent content are located. The red line shows the "fold".
Is this an important story? Well, it's the top story on the site. But nothing about how the article is displayed tells me that it's important. In fact, I'm offered 44 choices to leave the page before I get to the article.Why not let the story breathe? It's crammed into such a small space that its akin to reading it on a mobile browser. What is the most important element of the story? In this case it's the words of the article. The three picture slideshow which precedes the opening paragraph adds zip-zilch-zero to the story.There is just no rhyme or reason to this design and it has provoked quite the negative reaction.What should they have done? Sorry if you're not a Jeff Jarvis fan, but they should have asked: "What Would Google Do?". When Google makes a change to the design of their interface, or algorithms they roll out the changes to 1% of their users. They analyse how different the reaction and satisfaction of the users is. If that's successful, they roll it out to everyone.Online, we're used to a beta culture. We're happy to try new and wacky things in the name of progress. What we're not happy with is half-baked, badly thought through products being pushed onto us.
- Oct 27, 11
I often sign up to betas of new online services. And more often than not, by the time I've received the invitation in my inbox, I've forgotten exactly what it is I've signed up for. Luckily, despite a short wait, I'd remembered exactly what n0tice was. In fact I've been itching to try it for quite a while as I see tweets from Manchester hyperlocal blogger Nigel Barlow and n0tice's Sarah Hartley talking about the platform and how they're using it.
My initial impressions are positive ones. I'm delighted that this sort of digital innovation is coming from Guardian Media Group, undoubtedly in my mind the most forward thinking of the UK's newspaper publishers. I'm glad they see the value in communities, in being a hub around which communities can elegantly organise and share what is important to them. Right now, in beta form, it's the philosophy of the project rather than the practical implication that pleases me the most. But the practical workings of the site are already pretty impressive.
After signing up and giving n0tice permission to track my physical location I'm treated to a stream of what people are reporting in my area (mostly from the aforementioned Nigel Barlow). I can see what people are offering for sale, I can see what events are coming up and it's staggeringly easy for me to add my own own to these. No fees, no approval, just quick and snappy reports which are crucially tied to my physical location.
There's neat touches too like QR codes for individual reports. I can imagine all sorts of creative uses for these to tie the physical world to the digital.
Community organisers, citizen journalists, hyperlocal bloggers, even local newspapers can create their own n0ticeboard, with a unique url. I created one for my area of Manchester at http://northernquarter.n0tice.com and I've modestly started by adding a council meeting for city centre residents and a book reading to the events. Dead simple, dead easy, beautifully presented.
I'm sure the team are working hard on new features and polish to the site but if I had a wishlist for the site, this would be it:- The ability to add "pin" notices from my location but outside my n0ticeboard to it. For instance, some of what Nigel is reporting in Manchester might be useful to people who visit my Northern Quarter board.
- A formalised membership structure and the ability to notify my members of new events, and send out a community summary email.
- Fuller capabilities when editing a post. I'm sure this is just because it's a beta but it's very hard to edit something posts when they've gone up. I've had to delete some and start again.
As with any community, digital or real, it can only exist on the activity of its membership and I eagerly await the public release of n0tice so that more and more people are able to contribute.I have a handful of invitations if people are interested in signing up, just drop me an email or contact me via twitter. - Oct 26, 11
Jeff Bezos - Image by James Duncan Davidson http://www.flickr.com/photos/oreilly/6629223/ Amazon has announced its third-quarter profits have fallen by 73% on last year, missing Wall Street estimates and sending its stock price down as much as 19% in after hours trading. Not a rosy picture, but the high cost of taking on Apple.
There is a sea change occurring at Amazon, a change that has a cost, but one that will secure the long-term future of the company. Founded in 1994 it is one of only a few survivors of the dot-com bubble. Its peers Yahoo!, AOL and eBay are suffering mixed to woeful fortunes as they grapple with changes in how people are using the web. But in Jeff Bezos, Amazon have a CEO who isn't flapping, who has a clear vision needed to handle the upheaval needed to turn the retailer of physical goods into a major digital player.
It is very much a case of the hunter becoming the hunted. In every territory they operate there are stories of how Amazon has caused book and entertainment retailers to go out of business. Big or small, no one was at the mercy of Amazon's model of lean warehouse distribution. But we've moved on, or at least, we're in the process of moving on from buying physical entertainment products, and this is the threat Amazon is facing.
Apple had an advantage with iTunes in that it had no legacy in entertainment retail. It had no warehouses full of CDs and DVDs, no large scale shipping operations. Amazon has all of these, which it will eventually have to phase out, or diminish, in order to compete digitally. Their shipping charges in the third quarter 2011 generated $360 million, but cost them $918 million. Now is a really good time to get out of physical distribution game.
The Kindle was Amazon's first big play in digital and was built on their core business, selling books. People think of Kindle as an e-reader, but it's not, it's an ecosystem. Buy a book from the Kindle store and it can be read on the Kindle device, on a mobile phone, on a desktop PC, on an iPad or Android based tablet. This says something very important about Amazon's philosophy - they're not in the business of making hardware, they want to sell you content. And they want to sell you much more than just e-books as the launch of the Kindle Fire shows.
Amazon won't make any money selling their new $199 device (no UK price confirmed). Analysts have speculated that Amazon is either selling it at cost or loses $10 per device. What they're banking on is the purchase of content through their ecosystem. Though the device is built on Google's open source Android operating system, Amazon has locked down the device so all content purchases are via them. The perfect analogy is razor blades. They're giving you the handle for next to nothing, they make the money on the disposable blades.
This where Amazon and Apple are philosophically opposed. Apple sell content as a reason to buy their hardware, Amazon sell hardware so you'll buy their content. The two sides have taken their stance and they are asking a question of consumers, is it the device you own that's important, or the stuff on it? - Oct 17, 11
from Metro TV metrotv@ukmetro.co.uk to "daniel.bentley@gmail.com" <daniel.bentley@gmail.com> date 17 October 2011 15:21 subject Metro TV VIP Reviewer mailed-by ukmetro.co.uk hide details 15:21 (5 hours ago)Hi Daniel
Thanks for taking the time to get back to us and it's great that you're interested in becoming a VIP TV reviewer. Metro are launching a new TV section on their website, metro.co.uk. It will be a platform for users to comment and leave reviews on their favourite TV shows as well as rate those posted by others.
We have been following your twitter and would like to invite you to be a VIP TV Reviewer for metro.co.uk, helping to develop the site.
As a member of this exclusive group, you’ll be offered rewards for remaining active. There’ll be regular competitions, the chance to be invited to special event's showcasing exclusive TV footage and even the opportunity to have your writing published onmetro.co.uk or in Metro.
If you are interested in becoming a VIP TV Reviewer for metro.couk, or would like to learn more about becoming part of this exclusive group, please get in touch.
Many Thanks,
Tom Kirkby
VIP TV Team, metro.co.uk
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Associated Newspapers Ltd. Registered Office: Northcliffe House, 2 Derry St, Kensington, London, W8 5TT. Registered No 84121 England. - Oct 10, 11
Yesterday the Guardian announced that it was opening its newslist in a trial it's calling #OpenNews. The newslist is the newspaper's news agenda of what stories it is going to run. This is the first time a national British newspaper has opened up its inner workings to such an extent. It isn't opening its entire newlist, unfortunately the really juicy exclusives and embargoed stories won't be visible, but it's a huge blow to the wall that had been built between journalists and the reader.Alan Rusbridger: open newspaper, open news.
Unsurprisingly, the announcement was met with a great deal of skepticism from some journalists.David Wyllie, a young journalist who should know better said: "It's just another way to generate leads and copy".But it's more than that, I believe that it's a statement from the Guardian:You're our readers, you're important to us, let us know what's important to you.
It might not work, it might be difficult to implement effectively, but as an example of the Guardian's ideology it's perfect. It doesn't matter if it fails, these are the things media needs to try to improve their relationship with the audience. It's a great step beyond the comments box in reader engagement.
Physical newspaper sales are falling off not because people don't care about the news, it's because they can't talk back to the newspaper. Opening the channels of communication is going to be key to media brands surviving the next decade. - Oct 08, 11
- Oct 04, 11
How are changes in technology and audience behaviour affecting news values, shapes and structures?
This is a question I have been asked to answer. Well, not answer, but at least research the issues enough to stimulate some debate. So over the course of a few blog posts I intend to share some of what I uncovered and solicit some feedback. Am I on the right track? You decide.
I think the best place to start is where technology in journalism is, and where it could or should be. I really liked this extract from Jeff Jarvis' new book Public Parts and I think it gets to heart of the problem with what most media companies are trying.Today, publishers as a breed have so far tried little more than reproducing their old content and business models in new forms, from CD-ROMs to the web to iPads. It was the same in the Renaissance. The earliest publishers made books to mimic the work of scribes, even designing their typefaces to look like scribes’ handwriting. Printing was promoted as automated writing. “They appear not to have perceived the printed book as a fundamentally different form, but rather as a manuscript book that could be produced with greater speed and convenience,” Leah Marcus says in “Cyberspace Renaissance.” They didn’t yet see the possibilities.
Matthew Ingram at GigaOM remarks on the pride media companies are taking in creating new Facebook applications.But there’s another aspect of these launches that’s troubling, and that’s the pride so many publishers seem to take in having produced a Facebook app, as though it’s the pinnacle of media innovation.
andBut if all you are doing is creating widgets for people who live inside a specific walled garden, then I think you are missing the boat.
This is part of a larger worrying trend. Media companies are relying on technology companies for solutions to their problems. There were no doubt "Hallelujahs!" from media proprietors as Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad and Jeff Bezos the Kindle. But where is the innovation from within?
Amazon did not sit around and wait for the decline of its book selling business. It took the initiative and created its own hardware and content ecosystem, ensuring its own longterm future. Where are the media companies doing this?
By relying on technology companies, media companies are setting themselves up for a great fall. This was perfectly illustrated when Apple decided it wanted to take 30% of the subscription revenue for publications on the iPad. Companies had to pay up or remove subscriptions and in-app purchases from their apps.
This video from 1994 was produced by American newspaper giants Knight-Ridder (now McClatchy Company). They had their own design lab working on technologies that are remarkably similar to the tablet devices of today. What happened to this innovation and foresight?
- Oct 04, 11
(Some of) The Problems
Before Mary Hamilton showed me the error of my ways I blindly swallowed Zuckerberg's maxim that a better web is created if we all operate under our real name. I do still believe, that where possible, it is better to use your real name. But this should be encouraged, rather than obligatory. A more nuanced approach is needed.
Krishnan Guru Murthy - Duncan Bannatyne is right to be angry - but we can't let the cowards get to us
There are plenty of anonymous cowards on the internet who abuse others, spread hatred and distribute obscene criminal material. And there are anonymous heroes on the internet too, who fight repression, spread inspiration, ideas, wit and truth. It is entirely understandable that Facebook, Google and others would want to stamp on the bad by ending anonymity, but they have not yet done enough to show how they would preserve the good.
As Randi Zuckerberg recently argued, if people were forced to reveal their identities online most would be less aggressive and more thoughtful. But without anonymity we would be starved of tweets from Egypt, Syria, Iran and repressive regimes around the world where internet anonymity is unleashing new freedoms and ideas. We might lose the mobile phone videos that tell us what is really going on in Hama, the whistleblowers who reveal corruption and the brave insiders who leak the things the powerful try to keep from us. And yes, we'd miss some of the gossip. It is not clear how anonymity online could ever be stamped out altogether. But the likes of Facebook and Google need to show how they would support the free flow of important information if widespread anonymity was lost.
Discussing Google's rather stringent real name policy on Google+, I rather arrogantly assumed that...
But I'm not so convinced now that we can ignore these edge cases. I'm a white, straight, adult male living in Britain. I'm not the type of person who needs protecting online. But there's plenty who do, including unfortunately, a lot of women and sexualities. Problems described in this blogpost by Denise Paolucci. Indeed in a talk I gave to the Preston Social, one woman spoke up from the audience that she'd been targeted by an internet stalker and now has to take extraordinary measures online so that she can interact normally with her friends, as his her right.
So many of the problems on the internet are about user culture. Different websites and services breed their own types of culture. Reddit has a fantastic community which helps each other, laughs with/at each other and roots out spammers, evil doers and trolls. Interestingly, Reddit users mostly go by pseudonyms. Different newspapers have different cultures in their comment sections. The Guardian's has a totally different tone and attitude to that of the Daily Mail, indicative of their respective readerships.
A proposed solution
What I propose is a rewards system for being good citizens of the web, a system recognising respect and standing. This is prime for someone like Google or Facebook to take on, but they must revisit their policies on pseudonyms. You can be a pseudonym and a great web citizen.
Just as you can Like or +1 a status or content shared on Facebook/G+, we could instead +1/Like users who have been helpful in comment threads, or have created helpful blogposts. This could create a web-wide system of trust. By looking at a ranking you could see how trusted/respected/liked/friendly someone is.
This is just a suggestion and a tad simplistic. The major social players no doubt have teams of people dedicated to solving problems such as these. When the problems are resolved, we'll hopefully have a better web.
- Oct 04, 11
Trinity Mirror journalist, David Higgerson, blogged yesterday discussing whether online comments were worth the bother.
Trolls, nastiness, timewasters, spam are all potential problems when news stories and opinion pieces are open to user comments. But despite these problems, turning comments off is the last thing news orgs should be doing.
Sarah Hartley in the comments made this great point:With news, if the only invite is to comment on what’s been delivered from on high it could be quite frustrating for a reader who knows something about the topic. If the readers felt more empowered, more listened to and more part of the process they would be less fighty. Bloggers are generally more willing to involve the reader in the process – something that news sites could learn from perhaps?
There are countless reasons for trollish behaviour and this won't solve all of them. But so much could be solved by making users feel involved and part of the story.
The article is not the end of the story, it's the beginning of a conversation. A great story should spark some debate. The best, most informed story ever written could still be improved by another expert's opinion.
There are times when comments make you want to tear your hair out. But ignoring them isn't the answer. - Oct 04, 11
I'm going to take a punt and guess that at some point this week you've watched a rolling news channel.
Whether it the committee hearings with the News International Cerberus, the horrific attacks in Oslo and Utoya or the death of Amy Winehouse. When news breaks we - or at least I - turn to BBC News (and Twitter).What the three events last week showed is everything that is great and terrible about rolling coverage. The coverage of the News International hearings was great because it was a live event, happening, with questions back and forth. There was content. When Johnnie Marbles "pied" Murdoch Snr - though I don't know any recipes for shaving foam pie - the coverage was effectively pied too. The content was gone. What we were left with was news anchors narrating over longlens footage of a man covered in shaving foam, and continuous slowmotion replays of Wendi Deng defending her husband - which was funny the first five times.The attacks in Oslo and Utoya had plenty of content. There were cameras on the scene and a wealth of cameraphone videos filmed to show the damage of the blast. What was awful was the speculation about the perpetrator or perpetrators of the attacks. Almost immediately terrorism "experts" were brought in who commented that a Norwegian newspaper printed the Danish Muhammed cartoon and that Norway was involved in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, I'm not going to deny that myself and plenty others immediately thought of the possibility that the attacks could have been carried out by Islamic extremists but when your job is to inform the public, speculation about such things is dangerous.The death of Amy Winehouse, like the death of Michael Jackson before her, showed that rolling news is absolutely terrible when someone dies. When someone dies in a continuing or developing event, fine. But when someone dies, they're dead, and it is bloody terrible. Sky News had the story first so I stuck with it for a while. Immediately it was pointed out on Twitter that the image Sky were using of Amy was of her waxwork at Madame Tussauds. Strike one. Then a pre-recorded obituary package was shown almost immediately, with gossip magazine editors, the very people who profited from her demise, talking about her genius in past tense. Strike two. Unable to stomach any more Sky News I turned over to BBC News where an endless list of music commentators were called up for phone interviews. Paul Gambaccinni, I remember you from when Michael Jackson died. The tipping point was when tweets from great commentators like Myleene Klass were read out on air. Yes, this tweet, was read out on air. Oh Em Gee.OMG. Amy Winehouse. Exceptional talent and a really nice lady. RIP
Strike three.Of course, the news channels are obliged to cover stories like Amy Winehouse's death, and I'm not sure there's a clear answer as to how to do it better. But as news media viewers, we aren't obliged to watch. - Oct 04, 11On my recent trip to Ohio, me and my wife actually came across a tea party rally in the square of a town called Medina. My wife implored me to interview the people there. I didn't, but I can imagine the responses are similar.
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Daniel Bentley
- Oct 04, 11I've been inspired by a number of people in my first steps into journalism: teachers, colleagues and more teachers.I've been encourage and disheartened in equal measure by my BA Journalism course at the University of Central Lancashire. I'm nearly at the end of my second year having taking the "print" route after first year. I was disheartened facing another year of "print", where the main tasks were writing more stories, producing a newspaper (which isn't published), and learning shorthand. I've been taught good writing, style and production software already. It seemed more of the same. But now I'm encouraged once more...Yesterday, as a bolt from the blue, my course leader informed the current crop of second year students that there's a new way, enterprise. In a bold move, the journalism school has teamed up with the media technology school to give third year students the opportunity to run their own media companies. This module was already open to media tech students (graphic and web designers, software engineers) but this is the first time it's been available to journalism students. J-students will team up with these media tech students to form new media companies, teach them entrepreneurship, and incubate these new businesses. What a massive head-start this would have been for Ed Walker and BlogPreston if this was available to him a couple of years ago.What the Hacks and Hackers events run by ScraperWiki have shown me is that great things can happen when journalism geeks and computer geeks team up. Skills journalists take for granted such as news values, communication and style are often lost on the hackers. Skills hackers take for granted like coding in Python can go way over the head of the journalist. But together some really great projects can be created.I applaud my department for taking such a bold step and I'm going to grasp at the opportunity with both hands. I'm aware my year will very much be the test case/guinea pigs for this but when else will I have the opportunity to run my own media company with no risk if it fails?Only with universities (and hopefully more media companies) funding experiments like this, will the new journalism find a way.
- Oct 04, 11
Pitch: A site that lets you create your own travel blog or food blog based on geolocation check-ins.
The site connects to your Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Places check-ins and allows you to select one to write a blog post about.Travel bloggers can write about the places they've visited, food bloggers can write about restaurants. There's probably other uses.The site using Foursquare's API could then post a link to the blogpost in the "Tips" for the location, allowing other users to access the post from the app or site.Would this work as a platform itself, or would it just make a good WP plug-in?Just an idea.*attached mockup - Oct 04, 11As part of the great series of Harris Lectures put on by UCLan's journalism department, we were honoured yesterday with the words and thoughts of Roy Greenslade.Roy made every journalism student in the theatre jealous and disheartened with his tales of 1960s Fleet Street through to Wapping and where we are now.Roy rightly asserted that there's no one reason why newspapers are seeing sales plummet. It was refreshing to see a hack from the heyday of Fleet Street recognise that the internet isn't the sole destroyer of the newspaper industry, though many of his peers do.Having read his critique of the re-design of the Lancashire Telegraph's front page I asked Roy whether newspapers need to accept more of the blame as to why their sales are declining, especially in respect to locals like the LT who are going increasingly downmarket.Roy agreed they did. He cited the main problem was that local news has lost itself and lost any idea of what its readers want."Local newspapers will go out and do surveys and find justification for whatever it is the editor wants to do. The problem is readers don't know what they want."But what they don't want is crime stories dominating the front pages of their local newspapers in large sans fonts. I spend six months of the year in Donegal, a place where six regional newspapersare in competition, and every day their issues fly from news stands. The news they report is much more gentler."I think he's right. A local newspaper should be the voice of the community it serves. One doesn't foster a community by scaring it on a daily basis with hyped-up shock crime stories. This is a key difference between the national and local press which has been lost on corporatised regional publishers. People do like reading bad news, as long as it's not happening on their own street.Preston was in the news this week for having the most crime-ridden street in the country, based on a map produced by police.uk. Never mind the story was bollocks, some glitch with the system put all crimes committed in Preston city centre on one street. What did local Preston paper, the Lancashire Evening Post run with as its main story? Yeah you guessed it.Did they contact local police officers to confirm the statistics like the BBC did? No they didn't, they rehashed press release quotes from Theresa May. Fire all the defences at me "regional news producers are making cuts" "regional journalists are overworked and underpaid", a five minute phone call would have changed this story.If regional publishers want to turn their fortunes around, there's a lot of systematic rot to combat. Blaming external factors doesn't help anyone.
- Oct 04, 11After reading this statement by tech evangelist and blogger Robert Scoble, I made the decision to make all my photos on Flickr and the words and images on this blog public domain. That means I waived the right to assert any copyright on my words or images. But why?The words on this blog and the images on my Flickr aren't making me any money, and they are not supposed to. The web was made possible because people put content out there, without charging anyone to see it. Wikipedia, now in its 10th year, was made possible by people donating their time, donating their knowledge and donating their CreativeCommons or public domain images.I'm doing it to be a good citizen of the web. I don't claim to be a great photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but if I happen to have a photo useful to anyone, they can use it with or without attribution. I made the decision to go CC0 (public domain) and not a typical non-commercial Creative Commons licence because I really don't care if I'm attributed or not. People who are good citizens of the web will attribute anyway as they would any CC image or content. But some people never will, and that's fine, I'm just happy to have been of use.The web is made better the more we open ourselves, share, and have access to ideas and content. This is me, doing my bit.
- Oct 04, 11
Net neutrality is an issue we should all be paying attention to. Net neutrality is the proposal that all information on the internet should be free and open, and not subject to control by ISPs, government and content providers. If the net were not neutral, networks could slow down access to some video sites, while speeding the performance of commercial partners. Essentially, people in different countries, on different ISPs, get a different internet.
In his draft Bill of Rights in Cyberspace, Jeff Jarvis states:
All bits are created equal
This matters to all citizens of the internet. But non-net neutrality could have implications for journalists and news media orgs. If ISPs were allowed to operate in a non-neutral manner, then it's no stretch to imagine Sky Broadband promoting Sky and News Corp sites over the BBC and commercial rivals.
The chair of the US Federal Communications Commision, effectively their Ofcom, Julis Genachowski, has expressed in far more eloquent words than my own why net neutrality is important, and why the web is under thread.
Net neutrality statement by Julius Genachowski, the FCC chair, on Dec. 21, 2010 http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=45749183&access_key=key-5xzwd89js9ucplra9jd&page=1&viewMode=list
- Oct 04, 11Download now or preview on posterouslcj-guidance-live-text-based-communications-20122010.pdf (27 KB)
The lord chief justice today opened the way for the reporting of some court proceedings by journalists using Twitter, texting and email, but made clear it was unlikely to happen where such use of social mediacould influence witnesses.
Media organisations and journalists can apply for permission to use social media on a case-by-case basis, but Lord Judge said it may be necessary to bar its use by non-journalists to ensure the "proper adminstration of justice", prevent distractions in court and limit the potential for interference with courts' own recording equipment.
Is this the death knoll for shorthand?
Full text below.
- Oct 04, 11TheMediaBriefing have an excellent collection of quotes on the media compiled by freelance journalist Jon Slattery. Every Friday on his blog he picks out the best of the week, and these are his best of the year.My particular favourites are:
Guardian's Nick Davies at the City University debate on the News of the World and phone-hacking: "I should start off by apologising to the News of the World, in a way I feel sorry for them. It's sheer fluke and bad luck that particular newspaper is the subject of all this attention. It's just because one journalist [Royal correspondent] Clive Goodman got caught... All of us know very well that illegal activity was going on in most Fleet Street newsrooms."
followed by
Ex-News of the World journalist Paul McMullan also at the City University debate on phone-hacking: "I remember seeing an episode of Friends where somebody did it to Monica's phone."
- Oct 04, 11The government's communications minister Ed Vaizey is to introduce plans to block all internet porn unless adults opt out. (Can't link to the Sunday Times unfortunately)The move, which is being backed by the NSPCC and a number of psychologists, would force internet service providers to block all pornographic material, unless specifically requested they don't by the bill-paying adult.The ISPs will understandably object to these plans; worldwide the internet serves up 420 million pages of porn a day, blocking the UK percentage of that will be a mammoth task.Never mind the marital relations impact. Without going into the wrongs and rights of porn, if a wife discovers the home's internet connection can access porn, questions will be asked of her husband.The motive behind the proposals is the mental health of children. The Sunday Times magazine has an eight page report into the affects of porn on teenagers and the results are disturbing.One teen "Tom", who watched hardcore porn for 6 years before his first sexual experience recounts an unpleasant first experience with a girl."We were both a bit drunk. I was very excited and not very sensitive to the situation. If I'm honest, I was a bit brusque, a bit rough... maybe even more than a bit. It didn't happen in the end, because we were walked in on, but i was incredibly close to taking her virginity in a really rough manner... like almost forcing her."The article details some similarly disturbing stories. The studies show that teen boys engage in "blunting" in that they can view hardcore porn with a sense of detachment, knowing it's wrong and feeling ashamed afterwards.It's a disturbing situation and one that need to be dealt with, but not by blocking porn, which any web savvy teen could get around. Deal with it with parenting, with sex education, with open attitudes to what loving, consensual sex is.If you want to have porn blocked, you should have the right to OPT IN. But opting out is crude ineffectual censorship.
- Oct 04, 11The winner is Charles Arthur of The Guardian. There's too much negativity in today's news with the weather. We could all do with a day without football, without travel, just to relax before a hectic Christmas. Commiserations to those stuck/wanting to get abroad.
- Oct 04, 11So Yahoo! may or may not be scrapping social bookmarking site Delicious. But it's clearly not part of their plans anymore and will most likely sold on or released as open source. When it was leaked that Yahoo! were "sunsetting" Delicious, twitter went bezerk. The type of people I saw most disappointed site was shutting down, were exactly the types of people I would have expected to use it.Over the last 12 months Delicious has become a core of my workflow. Whether it blogging, researching articles or researching for my degree, it has a plentitude of uses.I tag any page I think would be useful for the university newspaper "pluto" and I can easily access and share my tags with a link to http://delicious.com/djbentley/pluto . Similarly when researching the media of South Africa, a tag of "samedia", made finding the sites later incredibly easy.Unfortunately, it's a site that isn't easily monetised, especially with a community of free users. The rival startup http://pinboard.in charges for signups and touts itself as the "anti-social bookmarking site". It has a very clean interface (Delicious has become increasingly cluttered) but unfortunately it does not have the community of linksharers Delicious has.Paul Bradshaw at the OnlineJournalismBlog.com has produced a great roundup of alternative sites. Paul has creatively used crowdsourcing, in the form of a Google spreadsheet to get his twitter/blog followers to help root out which may be the best alternative.But hopefully, if Yahoo sees sense, we may not need an alternative.
- Oct 04, 11
The announcement of Chrome OS and the release of the development hardware the Cr48 has been met with much derision. "Why would I use this? I can't do this on it..." etc.
But there's one person Chrome OS is perfect for, my mum. My Mum is 48 years old and only this year did I teach her how to email and browse the web. She runs a holiday cottage and needed to learn the skills for taking and tracking bookings. I taught her GMail as her email client and Google Calendar to keep track of bookings. This cloud approach meant I could see bookings and emails when my mum was away and handle them for her. This is all my Mum does. Browse the web, check her emails, use Google calendar. The rest of the operating system on her Mac mini is a hindrance and a confusion. She doesn't need to or want to learn how to compose on Garageband, edit video in iMovie. She just wants the web. I'm a heavy user of my Macbook Pro but today I tested myself. How do I use my computer? I gave myself a Chrome OS challenge. I modified Chrome so it went fullscreen, hid my dock and the Apple menu bar and I have lived inside the browser. Not once, all day, have I exited this view. TweetDeck for Chrome more than adequately handles my communication needs. I have a pin for GMail, for Calendar and for Reader. I'm not a big listener of my music on my computer anyway, but I'm able to play the occasional song on YouTube. If there was a Spotify web interface, it'd kill iTunes for me. I do use video and photo editing software on a semi-regular basis, and that's when I'd need a full featured OS. Ideally I'd dual boot, mostly into the instant on Chrome OS, and fire up OS X for more heavy duty tasks. People will continue to sneer, but I'm extremely excited by Chrome OS - Oct 04, 11
The new stripped down version of The Independent called "i" launched yesterday making it the first quality daily to launch in Britain since The Independent itself in 1986.
I can't write about i for the rest of this post by its actual title (I think i...) so from now on it's called The i. Too confusing already.
But title aside this is an impressive paper. It unashamedly targets itself at public transport commuters, those who would normally pick up a Metro or have it shoved into their hands. But The i isn't free, it's 20p, still cheap by any newspaper's standards, but it is competing with a freesheet.
So the question is, is it 20p better than the Metro?
Well not only is it 20p better than the Metro it's 80p cheaper than papers that are too bulky for the average working person to read on a daily basis.
News, opinion, business and sports stories are broken down into matrices for the time constrained. International stories take up a two page matrix called Panorama. The stories are short, a paragraph or two, but it is just enough to inform the reader.
Many stories are then written in full, with fact boxes provided to give basic background information in a non-patronising manner.
One can comfortably read the entire newspaper in under an hour. This is exactly what a daily newspaper should be. It doesn't play dumb, it doesn't over simplify but it's not overly complex. It's baby bear's porridge, it's just right.
The only issue for me is the future sustainability. The newspaper can't be produced for 20p. It relies on people still paying £1 for The Independent. But this newspaper will cannibalise plenty of The Indy's readers, myself included. It will hope to make this up in selling newspapers to people who don't usually buy them. I hope it can, this is a great newspaper.
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Posts
- May 11, 12
Start-ups are fighting a war for talent in Silicon Valley, and the companies that actively welcome men and women are going to win it. Smart companies don't recruit "brogrammers."
- May 11, 12
I figured that blogging communities would form and out of that would come new products and businesses, and products that more closely match the way people really are, not the way the companies imagine we are. I've been inside enough companies to know how badly companies abstract the needs and wants of users.
- May 11, 12
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed a device which can be used as a "sonic weapon" will be deployed in London during the Olympics.
- May 11, 12
Is it possible to survive on the Internet using Bing and only Bing?
- May 11, 12
Former News International chief tells Leveson inquiry that reports prime minister sent her dozens of texts a day are preposterous
- May 11, 12
Sarah Tressler, the Houston Chronicle society reporter who was fired in March shortly after the Houston Press exposed she also moonlighted as a stripper at Houston’s high-end gentlemen clubs—and blogged about it under the alias ‘Angry Stripper’—is now suing the Chronicle for gender discrimination.
- May 09, 12
This is what happens when you take people from outside of tech, in this case Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities (based in LA), and collide them with topics that they don’t understand, in this case, Mark Zuckerberg’s wardrobe.
- May 08, 12
Online multimedia production has for a few years now come with the guidance to ‘chunk’ content: instead of producing linear content, as you would for a space in a linear broadcast schedule, you split your content into specific chunks of material that each tackles a different aspect of the issue or story being covered.
- May 08, 12
Facebook 's flotation is a landmark moment in internet and media history, but the relationship between the era-defining social networking service and the established media ecosystem is complex and fraught.
- May 08, 12
I am absolutely fascinated by the mechanics of storytelling. I admitted as much at news:rewired last year when I was invited to talk about new forms of storytelling in journalism. But in exploring some of these brilliant new platforms – Twitter, Storyful, Storify, even online video – we forget that storytelling itself is not a new thing. It is, of course, ancient.
