Kristine Lowe

Journalist ought to love social media

Blogging could be the best thing that's ever happened to journalists, if we can only get our heads around it.

I apologise. If you're new to this blog and didn't check the first link of my last post, I might have misled you: I'm all for journalists blogging and can't start to count all its blessings.

However, I think it's useful to reflect on why so many media folks see social media, like blogs, as a threat and not an opportunity; and equally useful to reflect on how social media might change journalism.

See, a flair for writing, as was mentioned in the comments on my last post, is not enough to reap max benefits from blogging. You need a flair for conversation. Not for blagging, or opining or for great oration, but for dialogue.

You can be the world's most erudite writer, and of course you are free to use your blog as an outlet for blagging, opining, speechifying, it's just that if you're only in it for the opportunity to broadcast your views to the world, you miss out on half the gimmick, half the fun: you miss out on all those wonderfully distributed conversations (surely, this is why we classify blogs as social media?).

But you would think journalists would make great conversationalists, wouldn't you? That, is unless they approach blogging as op-ed writing (which too many do), or apply all their worst prejudices about blogging to their own blogging efforts and try to mimic the noisy, drunken, nonsensical pub banter they think blogging should sound like (unfortunately even more common).

Which brings me to why I think blogging is so useful for journalism: I think all journalists these day work at the intersection of mainstream and social media - because the latter is bound to change, and is changing, how we communicate and what we expect from the world – and the best way to understand social media, and how it is changing things, is by using it.

As Robin Hamman wrote recently: "The only way to "do social media" is to embrace it, not just as something that's tacked onto the back of a website, but as a method of actually doing whatever it is your business is."

You could say I'm biased of course; for my own part, I certainly did not understand social media until I started using it. I started reading about social media around 2000, but as I touch on in this interview with Siren FM (clip not working at the moment, but I'm hoping it will be back), I didn't really get it until I started blogging myself in 2005.

For years, I was too busy chasing deadlines, too busy to notice how much these very interesting things I had read about were changing the world around me. That is, until a friend of mine got fed up with all my excuses, just set up a blog for me and told me to get blogging. It was like a great white canvas: I had no idea how I wanted to use it, but about half a year into it I found myself blogging more and more about the changing media landscape, which perhaps can serve as a warning - I had no idea there was a media junkie lurking inside of me until I got blogging.

As it turned out, blogging has made me more optimistic about the future of media than ever, and taught me many invaluable skills. I touch upon how blogging supplements my journalism in my post on distributed conversations, and the web as a treasure throve for journalists here. No, I don't think that the web makes journalists redundant, quite the contrary, in fact I think it vastly improves a journalist's ability to tap into all kinds of wonderful conversations (be they semi- or near private or public)....

Journalists take to blogging like ducks to tarmac

Should journalists blog? I'm sure I've covered this before (well, actually I have) but a recent interview about teaching blogging to journalists spurred an interesting response from an editor who hated the idea but happened to be a pretty decent blogger himself, so here we go again.

First the backdrop: from time to time I try to write a piece or two for journalisten.no about all the media innovation happening around the world, such as this piece on Spokesman Review's "transparent newsroom", or this recent two-part interview with Adam Tinworth on how Reed Business Information (RBI) England uses blogs to supplement its journalism, and the challenges of teaching journalists how to blog (all links in this paragraph in Norwegian).

Some journalists make lousy bloggers
If you are familiar with Adam's blog, you will know that not all journalists take to blogging like ducks to water, or, to use the words of Andrew Grant-Adamson "some very good journalists make lousy bloggers," but if you're not, and Norwegian is all Greek to you, here's a few highlights:

"Most journalists have spent decades having personality beaten out of them, now they have to find their personality again.

"The biggest single mental hurdle for journalists is that they leap into the blogosphere and expect huge traffic at once due to brand name. Inevitably, they get severely disappointed as it takes time to build a blog audience. But over time they learn to love the hundreds of readers they have on their blogs much more than the hundred thousands of readers they have in print.

Journalists equate blogs with opinion pieces
"If reporters leave blog comments very long for moderation, we know they don't follow comments well. They need to be taught blogging is not only about writing. The shocking thing is that you see a lot of journalists don't care about their readers, but I don' think these journalists will survive. Readers will come to expect interaction."

Or, to use a recent line from Kevin Anderson, The Guardian's blog editor. (via Adam): "one of the things that many journalists don't do enough of when they blog: Listen". Now, as I mentioned at the start of the post, this interview provoked a phone call from a Norwegian editor, namely the managing editor of RBI Norway, who was very keen to stress that his titles were not getting into the blogging business anytime soon.

And I'm very glad this editor got in touch with us and told me what he thought about all this, because I know a lot of journalists share his views and fears. In fact, as the news site of the trade publication for Norwegian journalists this is exactly the kind of debate we want to put on the agenda (and our comment section is wide open):

Blogging is second-hand journalism
"I find it strange that journalists blog next to their reporting. Why can't you keep the readers informed through a good news service with sources? A reporter's stories should be published in proper articles, not rushed out as blog posts," this editor said.

However, he also told me that he wrote a blog in his spare time that had "nothing to do with work". And I promised I wouldn't link to his blog in my article as he felt it wouldn't interest anybody, but I will mention it here because it's more than interesting enough for me to start subscribing to it. See, it turns out this guy is Norway's only internationally accredited cross-country court builder and blogs about cross-country competitions because, it gives him "an opportunity to highlight results that rarely get mentioned in the daily press" .

A potentially star-quality blogger
Now at this point I should mention that I used to be really into equestrian sports. Perhaps I'm a bit of a ninny, but, whereas I'd trust my skills as a rider to re-school problem horses or break in young ones (or used to, now those skills are very rusty), I never found much joy in cross-country jumps myself as there are too many factors beyond my control (permanent/solid fences lead to nasty accidents).

So I couldn't agree more with Anton in his most recent post which deals with how there's been too many fatal accidents during competitions as of late, but I used to know a lot of people in the equestrian scene, so still find it very interesting. In fact, if I was editing an equestrian magazine, this is exactly the kind of blog I'd like to link up or get on board (though I'd like to know even more about the challenges of building cross-country courts).

Blurring the lines
His posts (infrequent as the sport is seasonal) are great reporting mixed with informed opinion, the opinion of a professional who knows the sport inside out, which brings me to the last argument Anton had against mixing blogging and journalism: "Blogs are more of a genre for commentary. If journalists start blogging too much, I fear the lines between news and commentary will become blurred."

I'm sure many editors and journalist share those fears, and having written this, I'm starting to wonder if I haven't come to see journalism more like a conversation, or perhaps that should be: if I haven't started blurring the lines between blogging, which I see as conversation, and journalism. If so, is that the first sign of corruption?

Blogging can be too big a hurdle for some journalists
(picture from Wikipedia)

Thoughts on Twitter-Journalism

Was this the first time Norwegian mainstream media used Twitter to cover a conference? I think it might have been, but happy to be corrected if it's not. In either case, Anders Brenna has some interesting thoughts on the experience.

Among other things, he says: "Twitter is both the perfect journalist tool for being first with breaking news, and the best relief from the tyranny of breaking news," do check out his full post on the issue.

Work experience, freelance rates and The Law of Negotiated Misery

There is one law all journalism students, freelancers, well, all people who've turned their passion or hobby into an occupation, should know about.

It's The Law of Negotiated Misery.

Its inventor humbly told me, that if it's one thing he thought people would remember him for, it's for formulating this law, which in essence states that the "self-managed" classes have a tendency to negotiate themselves into lives of permanent misery (I have a hunch this law arouse from all the observations Brian made during his career consulting work, do correct me if I'm wrong). It works like this (full text here):

There are four kinds of work you think about maybe doing.
1. There's work you love and are good at.
2. There's work you hate and are good at.
3. There's work you love and are bad at.
4. There's work you hate and are bad at.

The world pretty soon decides that you must stop doing (3) and (4) and of course, you are delighted to stop doing (4). If you insist on doing (3) you are going to have to do it as a hobby. Which leaves (1) and (2), the stuff you are good at, and either (1) love or (2) hate.

How much do you get paid to do (1), work you love and are good at? If you are a good negotiator, then plenty, because you are good at it, and demand lots of money. But what if you are a bad negotiator? You jump at the job and accept bad money.

How much do you get paid to do (2)? Chances are you get paid good money. Why? Because you will only consent to do work you hate if you are paid good money. So, with no great effort, you hold out for good money (even if all you thought you were doing was Just Saying No), and, because you are good at the work, you get paid good money. Eventually, someone makes you an offer you can't refuse, and you take it.

So, if you are a bad negotiator, unable to repress your natural desire to do what you love and to avoid what you hate, you get paid bad money to do work you love, and good money to do work you hate.

Bad negotiators can have semi-good lives if they can afford to oscillate between work they love and work they hate. For a while, they do that. But, by the end of that period the only way they know to make good money is to do work they hate.

Then factor in the following circumstance. They switch to a life in which they then have to make continuously good money. Wife, kids, mortgage. Maybe an addiction to an expensive type-(3) hobby. Or maybe the life they lead just happens to get much more expensive. Clang. The gates of the prison slam shut. From then on they must do work they hate, continuously...

I was reminded of this law when I read Roy Greenslade's piece on young journalists working for nothing. As many things in life, the issue of work-experience is not black and white (at its best I think it can be more valuable than journalism school, but I know there's also lots of exploitation going on) which is perhaps why I put it aside and forgot to blog about it, but I was reminded again when I read this piece on freelance rates in Press Gazette.

Work-experience: well, I'll return to that in a separate posts.

As for freelance rates: I've never had a problem getting standard freelance rates or more (varies from country to country and beat to beat: for instance, the rates tend to be higher in Norway than the UK, but so does the taxes; travel writing tend to be badly paid, business journalism pays a lot better, and niche expertise can attract premium rates if you're in the right niche (if you're competing with thousands of other 'niche experts', as is often the case with travel writing, you're not).

A much bigger problem is that the workflow of a freelancer can be erratic, and media organisations are often late and unpredictable payers. Hence supplementing your income with other streams of revenue, e.g. from translation or copy-writing is useful. But should you find yourself spending most of your time pursuing 'short-term' income to be able to afford a few hours of doing what you love, it's perhaps time to remind yourself of Micklethwait's Law of Negotiated Misery...

Managing change in the newsroom - and in the marketing department

To my mind, News is a conversation, for the most part written by Steve Smith, the editor of Spokesman Review, is one of the most interesting newspaper blogs around because it gives you a marvellous insight into how a regional newspaper is grappling with change: trying to involve its readers more, be of better service to them and working to become more transparent.

I started following this blog after I met Steve at a seminar he gave in Oslo last autumn (I covered his talk for Journalisten, in Norwegian). Among the things he mentioned back then was how he'd sent his local editor, Carla Savalli, who at that stage was one of his most change-resistant staff members, on a five week trip across the US to investigate the future of journalism.

"She is now the most radical agent for change in the newsroom," said Smith, so it was very interesting to read Carla's account of a conference she had attended on "Managing Change" recently.

Here's an excerpt, check out the full post for the bit about the marketing department (the main point being that newspapers were concerned their commercial arms hadn't figured out how to promote "the new journalism"):

1. How can you change workflow and content unless you go back to the readers? Too many newsrooms still insist they know what readers want, which is why they are endlessly experimenting and not 'landing on' a formula.

2. Strategy has to drive structure, not the other way around.

3. Journalists are appallingly dysfunctional.

4. Citizen journalism is less gimmick than it is changing the frame of reference. It's asking a different set of questions, assuming a different set of assumptions. It's not going to save us. It WILL make us more relevant. The sooner newsrooms get over themselves and bring these readers into our tents, the better off we'll be.

The only other item that sticks with me came from a business consultant (figures). He goes into workplaces of all kinds to teach adaptive change. You can institute top-down change, he says. And he supposes sometimes that is necessary when times are urgent and there's no room for democracy. But collaborative change has the potential for the greatest lasting impact. The first time an organizations goes through it is the hardest. Lay the foundation and each successive change is easier and eventually expected.

But this is what struck me: For rank and file, how you institute change is ultimately all about "justice." Who you talk to, who you include in task forces, who gets the opportunities, who gets an assignment change, is about power for the powerless. Managers have to be aware of that, and if it matters to them, try to talk to a cross-section of people - both horizontally and vertically - before imploding a structure.

Other than that, we're doomed. Hierarchies die hard in newsrooms. The best we can hope for is that the business side will catch the same entrepreneurial spirit of newsrooms and that we innovate something before the next Craigslist puts us out of business.

Journalism explained

I was contemplating this post on newsroom change when I happened on this intriguing introduction to journalism, which I guess you could say is an interesting starting point for looking at how journalism has changed (via DigiDave):

For my own part, well... where do I start? Could someone please tell my editor that beat reporters are meant to spend as little time as possible in the office:-) ? I'd love to spend more time on the road, and these days we don't exactly have to phone in those stories...

Other than that, I'm very glad that certain things have changed: I'd never gotten into journalism if I'd had to work up an interest for gossip or gardening (as it so happens, I started my media career as an editorial columnist back when I was 18, which is actually quite funny in view of this video).

Are job cuts death knell for journalism?

Interesting response to an article by Mediawatch on whether job cuts are signalling the end of American newspapers:

Greg Delzer links it up, Steve Smith says the article is interesting but doesn't deal with the real issue (Smith, the editor of Spokesman Review, which claims to be the most transparent newspaper in the US, visited Oslo a few months back. My article on the talk he gave about the newspaper's policy on transparency is here, in Norwegian). Steve says:

And why should we be surprised? Newspapers are, fundamentally, 18th and 19th century technological answers to the need for news and information for the mass audiences developed during and after the industrial revolution.

Why should any of us expect that newspapers, as they existed in the 20th Century, can survive well into the 21st as the rest of the information universe expands at Einsteinian rates?

The journalist who devotes himself to saving newspapers, as a medium, may well be doomed to a career of disappointment and failure.

Our challenge isn't to save newspapers, it is to save newspaper journalism and the values that are at its foundation.

Despite the semi-hysterical ravings of those who see the blogosphere as the second (third and fourth coming), the fact is newspaper journalism (when it works) provides what no other news source can provide -- factual information, context, depth, skepticism, the vital information that oils the gears of democracy, the fourth estate watchdog function that keeps government honest. Consumers actually value those qualities, probably more than they value newspapers.

In my view, we ought to be striving to make sure the values of our craft are embodied in the new media. If that happens, it will matter less, and certainly bother us less, if newspapers become yesterday's news.

In the comment section, Ken Paulman answers Steve's response to Greg thus (invoking a sentimet that surely runs parallell to Nick Davies' argument in "Flat Earth News) :

If the basic 'shoe leather' investigative reporters are consigned to the scrap heap - who'll get the by-line?

Most likely government and corporate PR flacks.

There have already been cases of TV stations (none here that I'm aware of) running prepackaged Video News Releases put together by businesses. They look, sound a feel like a news report, but are designed to push a product.

But I don't think it's going to come to that, because there is still a significant segment of the population that won't let it happen. That is, as long as we're able to do a better job explaining what it is that we do here and how it differs from the information machines financed by corporations and political think tanks.....

Today's question: Maybe it's journalism itself that is the problem?

Now, here's a big, heavy question to grapple with early a Saturday morning (at least it's early to me, Saturdays are just about the only day of the week I don't get up at the break of dawn or earlier):

As we examine what journalism should look like in the 21st Century, we should also look hard at just how professional supposed professional journalism is. Today I heard a CEO of a large insurance firm talk about the day his company eliminated 200 jobs — 200 out of 40,000. He talked about how he prepared his employees for the media onslaught he knew was coming, with anchors bellowing and headlines screaming about the downturn of the company’s fortunes. These weren’t even layoffs, but merely the elimination of unfilled positions.

There is something wrong with a journalism that can’t honestly put the context of events in an accurate light, but must play up the most sensational angle. We all know the CEO’s story is not an isolated incident, and it isn’t merely a TV-journalism condition, but something endemic to present-day journalism, print and broadcast.

If our readers so easily recognize that what we do isn’t trustworthy for its accuracy both in fact and spirit, then how can we expect to retain them as readers?

Read Howard Owens' full post here (via Adrian Monck). Owens' question reminded me of this excellent quote from Cluetrain, and I'm sure Steve Borris would have one or two things to say about the adverse effects of this 'professionalism'.

Is Peter Hain's resignation UK's first blogging scalp?

Remember the Swedish blogger who brought down a trade minister? Well it seems the story is repeating itself in the UK. Iain Dale suggests it was blogger Guido Fawkes who through is relentless campaign forced Hain's resignation as Work and Pensions secretary, and Guido certainly thinks so himself (he details his 18-month stalking of Hain here).

According to Greenslade: Mick Fealty (aka Slugger O'Toole), also thinks Guido did well. In a Daily Telegraph blog posting, he says there is more to Guido's gossip than meets the eye.
"His supreme value as a blogger is that he knows how to follow a story", writes Fealty. "Undoubtedly he kept a lot of psychological pressure on the former secretary for works and pensions directly and vicariously through his readers/fans/detractors in the lobby."

This story reminded me of Arianna Huffington's brilliant line (via Sambrook) on the difference between bloggers and journalists: "Bloggers suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, journalists suffer from Attention deficit disorder." In other words, journalists report and move on and don't always follow up. Bloggers are obsessive, get hold of an issue and won't let go....

That must make a blogging journalist such as myself bipolar (or schizophrenic).

Norwegian media reprimanded for failing to give people the right to reply

Failing to offer people the right to reply when serious allegations are levelled against them, is something Norwegian media is faulted for again and again. In four of the six last years, this was the type of complaint where Norway's Press Complaints Commission (PFU) most frequently held in favour of the claimant – 2007 was no exception.

During the year now behind us, PFU considered 294 (of 314) complaints and made a statement in 164 of the cases. In 75 of the cases, PFU ruled that the code of ethics (which all Norwegian journalists and editors are required to be familiar with) had been violated – in 20 of these, the defendant was reprimanded for having failed to offer the claimant 'the right to simultaneous reply as regards factual information'. Per Edgar Kokkvold, PFU's general secretary, suggested that the fear of not being the first news outlet to carry the news, that the media organisation didn't dare to wait, was the main reason for this trespass.

Since I currently spend most of my professional life in the online world, I'm a big fan of breaking the story if people don't respond within a reasonable time frame, and then rather writing a separate story and interlinking the two if the person in question does get back to you later. But feel free to comment if you have other suggestions, here's what the code of ethics says:

4.14. Those who have been subjected to strong accusations shall, if possible, have the opportunity to simultaneous reply as regards factual information. Debates, criticism and dissemination of news must not be hampered by parties being unwilling to make comments or take part in the debate.

R.I.P. Claude-Jean Bertrand

I had no idea. It was only when a copy of Ethical Space, an academic journal I write for, arrived in my mailbox this week, I learned that Claude-Jean Bertrand, whom I had the pleasure of meeting through Institute for Communication Ethics (ICE), had passed away late September. Obviously, I have not been keeping up with the blogs I should have.

Bertrand was a life-long advocate of ethical journalism, and spoke passionately about voluntary media accountability systems (M.A.S) on the occasions I met him (which must have been around 2003).

Blogger Guido Fawkes talks to The Independent about his life in the media

Remember, remember, the fifth of November... until today I have not seen The Independent's "My Life in Media" interview a blogger before, and how timely that they should choose to interview none other than Guido Fawkes, one of Britain's most influential bloggers, on Bonfire night. Last time I checked, Guido had about 250,000 unique users per month.

In the words of The Independent: "The parliamentary blogger Guido Fawkes has been setting Westminster alight with his tales of plots, rumours and conspiracy for the past three years. He describes himself as 'the only man to enter parliament with honest intention', and his blog, a sort of political Popbitch, runs stories that the printed and broadcast media are prevented from touching through lack of evidence or libel laws."

A bit more about Guido here, if you're unfamiliar with his work, and a bit about how journalists use him here.

Now, one part of the interview really impressed me. The Independent asks Guido what the best thing about his job is, and he answers: "The fact that now, when I call up a minister's office, they don't go, 'Who?'. You can hear them go, 'Oh shit, it's Guido'. That might be egotistical, but nobody looks forward to a telephone call from me."

If you live in my part of the world, where you often can call up, at least the most publicity hungry government ministers, and pretty much get them on the phone straight away, especially if you're calling for an English newspaper, you may think "what's the big deal?".

But in England, where you often have to partly bully and partly charm your way past layer upon layer of secretaries and their likes, only to have the minister or his/her PR call you back and have a shot at bullying you about the paper you are calling from if you're deemed important enough (oh, coming from The Observer, Express etc you would ask that, wouldn't you? You lot are always asking this and that, are so bent on this particular issue etc, insinuating with the nicest possible words that you are stupid, obsessive, a crook or worse), it's quite a feat.