How to microblog in high heels

Are news consumers getting too demanding?

With pick ‘n’ mix news available online and new web tools to distribute news content, are readers demanding too much from journalists trying to meet their expectations? If you read a story online, are you disappointed to find no linked video or audio content? It is arguable that the widespread availability of online content has meant that reporters are having to add new skills to their CVs and make sure their new reporting makes use of them many new platforms to publish online. But rather than an extra burden for journalists, this is a liberation.

Stories are no longer confined purely to print. Convergence means a merging of broadcast and newspaper journalism in cyberspace. It is often those getting to grips with providing stories on a variety of platforms that bemoan this move the their job requirements. Take Jeremy Paxman’s first few attempts to create video to back up Newnight:

Why should I listen to a podcast when I can read a report, albeit on the web? 

Some argue that not all stories need to have a variety of ways of consuming them on offer. This is to a certain extent true. But it is difficult to think of a recent news story which you would also like to see some video footage with. Do smaller scale stories need video? Take this week’s story of the super-complex built for two Great Danes. I would probably click on a video tour of their luxury kennel, if it was on offer, because I found it interesting.

What about for audio content, surely not all stories need an audio version too? We again, it is arguable that all stories could have some sort of audio to back up the story. Audio and video content can be used to flesh out the story, or give insight into a particular area which would not have room to be covered in print. When researching for my Christmas feature on toys – found this article from Manchester Evening News. The written article is good – but the video has on foot interviews with punters on Manchester’s streets talking about which toys they remember fondly when they were young. This brings depth, life and a personal aspect to the news. 

What this shows is that combining other ways of consuming news, as well as the printed article, provides the reader with a more varied choice. Though they may not click on the audio or video content, they have the option too. In a world where we can choose Mocha’s over straight black coffees, this choice is important.

Rick Waghorn, editor of My Football Writer believes readers want to have the option of hearing the voice of the person being talked about in the written article. He gives the example of a pub conversation he recorded between Mick Mills, John Wark and Roger Osborne, who got together at the Crown Hotel in Framlingham. He put the content on the web as a podcast, and found in incredibly popular. Listeners felt like they were listening into a friendly conversation between people they have no personal contact with, but read about and had a keen interest in what they had to say. It allowed them to hear the sound of their voices, the intonantion and give more of an insight to their character.

When transcribing an interview, journalists often look out for the behavioural content around the interviewees speech and they filter this information into their copy – a nervous finger movement, a hesitation, a smirk. These things are difficult to get from the flatness of written word, and are brought to life by video and audio.

Waghorn gives the example of the school headmaster who is talking about changes to the school which will involve your children. Given the choice, would you listen to his speech or read it? I think most people would opt for listening to it, or at least like to have the opportunity to.

Waghorn said readers are empowered by the web and can make demands for instant content. But we can also demand video and audio, and demand our own voice to be heard.

Who can fail to remember the scram to get their hands on the hotly anticipated Buzz Lightyear doll?

Researching for my Christmas supplement feature on Toys, I managed to suspend my adult perceptions and re-enter the kingdom of kids through the visionary toys now on offer. 

As closet technophile, I was dazzled by the number of spangly pink laptops, robotic soft toys, and digiital personal assistants. 

These things were all around in certain forms when I was young, who can forget the interactive response of Furbies, the beautifully designed purple organiser called ‘My diary’, and of course the short-lived excitment caused by tamagotchis. But these were only a peripheral glimpse of what was in store for the future – and children today are arguably still in the beginnings of what can now be called ‘the technological age’ – but toys today are still mind-blowing in many ways. 

But while kids are relishing this tecnhological heaven, parents seem to be pushing for educational and traditional equivalents to make the pennies stretch. 

One mum in Toys ‘R’ Us told me of her shock at a parent who would not be buying toys at all this year, but also spoke of her own desire to buy Christmas gifts for her children which would be more valuable to their development.

Although toys may seem more complicated than they were in our grandparents’ generation (baby dolls have been around since 1885, but now they look at you when you speak, eat, and pee into a flashing potty), many of the newest toys on the shelves are modern day takes on a time old classic, or traditional type of toy.

Take the Star Wars Voice Changer Helmet for example. Place the helmet over you head, press a button and your voice sounds like that of one of Luke Skywalker’s enemies. But essentially it is just a electronically jazzed up fancy dress costume. Imaginary play is central to any child’s growing up and play. This video shows how even adults will not get tired of pretending. 

For more of the top ten Christmas toys this year see www.flickr.com/hrwaldram

As a final point – I think this picture demonstrates some of the monstrosities of plastic toys which hopefully the digital future will have no room for.  

Today an article flew into my Google Reader inbox from the Telegraph – a woman juror has been dismissed from a trial because she was using Facebook.

The woman had set up an opinion poll asking friends in her social network what she should do to the defendent which, because her privacy setting were public, was viewable to anyone using Facebook. Some people even prompted her to give guilty verdicts.

This brings to light Shane Richmond’s lecture to students at Cardiff School of Journalism on the future of journalism. As community editor for the Telegraph, he noted how users became angry when he had to delete material they had written on their blogs on My Telegraph due to legal obligations. I had recently been invited to join a Facebook group called ‘Name and Shame’ the mother and step-father of Baby P. There are currently 109 similar groups on Facebook created to influence officials to lift the reporting restrictions. But what my friends on Facebook do not realise are the true legal obligations preventing this from happening. They believe it is to do with protection. But the judge has placed a postponement order on all media organisations which imposes restrictions on their reporting under Section 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981:

where it appears to be necessary for avoiding a substantial risk of prejudice to the administration of justic in those preoceedings, or in any other proceedings pending or imminent, order that the publication of any report of the proceedings, or any part of the proceedings, be postponed for such period as the court thinks necessary for that purpose.

Media companies will have been sent the precise terms of the order. And will have to comply with them to avoid being in breach of the postponement order. 

The reason for the Contempt of Court act is quite clear and easy to understand:

a publication which creates a substantial risk that the course of justice in the proceedings in question will be seriously impeded or prejudiced. 

To put it crudely, jurors should not see something in the paper about the accused which may potentially prejudice their decision in a current or future trial – their decision should be based solely on what they hear in court.

What is interesting about the Contempt of Court act concerning online publication of material is a postponement order, such as in the case of Baby P, only restricts media organisations, and not individual bloggers.

But as more and more content goes online, this is harder to control. What’s more, as laws vary from country to country what applies here may not apply to a blogger in America who could publish material which a British juror may then read. 

Richmond signalled this move could perhaps threaten the Contempt of Court law altogether, and said it will have to change soon to cover material published on the web. But with more and more people using online forums to talk about cases there seem to be two options available for the future of the act.

Contempt of Court legalisation may have to be scrapped altogether, and rely on the integrity of the jurors. Alternatively legal sanctions could be imposed on bloggers. But how exactly would this be done? They could put a warning similar to that given to media organisations on restrictions on what is published. But again this does not stop jurors googling the accused and finding out information about them from bloggers in America, who could not be enforced to comply with the same restrictions.

A glimpse of what imposing restrictions on the internet would look like can be seen by the example set by the state of Victoria, Australia. It recently became illegal in Victoria for jurors to use the internet to search to for any information to do with the case. The penalty for a juror or panel member to conduct internet searches on sites like Google is a fine of up to £5,140. 

Victoria Deputy Premier and Attorney-General Rob Hulls said

the ban on inquiries by jurors was necessary to ensure that verdicts at trials were reached on the basis of the evidence seen and heard in court.

But how, exactly, would they be able to find out if a member of the jury has used the internet to search for information to do with their case? Unless the juror says explicitly that he or she has done so, it seems this law would be difficult to impose in its entirity. Although it does demonstrate how the Contempt of Court act might be moulded for a future which is inextricably linked to the internet.

Culture Secretary Andy Burham recently spoke about laws regulating the internet causing a tirade of abuse from the blogosphere. In an article in the Daily Telegraph he mentioned ‘cinema-style age ratings’ for websites and hinted at the government changing libel laws to give people access to low-cost legal recourse if they are defamed online. Mr Burham has since been twittered, blogged and raved at online. Commentators see it as an attack on the free speech forum the web provides and believe parents, not the state should govern the internet. But the real question is just how the net could be monitered in such a way. As Rory Cellan-Jones said in his blog on the subject:

Who would decide what was permissible? How would trillions of constantly changing websites be policed?

See The Digital Dancer for more about Ctrl.Alt.Shit.

The cool stylish undergrad with a neat Berliner-style Guardian tucked under his arm, the stuffy old white-haired Toff who lavishes in spreading out his ginormous Telegraph and taking up almost two square metres of air-space, the laddish lager lout who pours over page three of the Sun… are all examples of some of the stereotypes which are branded on the readers which a newspaper might represent.

“You don’t read the Daily Mail do you?” I remember hearing a friend quiz her poor adjacent guest at a dinner party. When he nervously replied, “Yes”, I saw how her eyes began to narrow as she mentally squashed him into the pre-formed cardboard box shaped by her idea of a Daily Mail reader –  a prejudiced Little Englander suspicious of foreigners and against government meddling.

Stereotypes of newspaper readers have perhaps changed over time, but are arguably still prominent and ask any newspaper consumer and they might be able to paint a picture of the kind of person who reads their paper based on its political views, types of regular features, and general stigma. Here are some dated, but exemplary, prejudices.

The stereotype of a Guardian reader is a person with leftist or liberal politics rooted in the 1960s, working in the public sector, regularly eating lentils and muesli, living in north London wearing sandals and believing in alternative medicine and natural medicine as evidenced by Labour MP Kevin Hughes.

A rhetorical question voiced in the House of Commons on 19 November 2001, taken from Wikipedia.

I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who runt he country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Jim Hacker in Episode four, Series two of Yes, Prime Minister.

Both of these examples of reader stereotypes are today rather different, and more importantly rather untrue.

The fact is when RSS landed on our doorstep there was no longer a need to subscribe to any one paper –  we could pick and mix which elements from each paper we want to have rolled up neatly in our googlemail in-boxes in the morning, creating a colourful assortment of sweeties from political news from The Times, features from G2,to Telegraph Sport, and so on.

The problem newspapers face as a consequence is the loyalty of readers and subscribers is difficult to retain. Newspapers used to have a core readership, hence the stereotypes. The move to digital meant that regular readers could choose which sections, and even which articles, to read from a variety of newspapers. Whilst the advantage is clearly that newspapers can begin to draw in readership from rival news companies, gaining their attention even at article level, it also puts forth the problem of how to keep readers loyal.

What is a Telegraph reader in this fragmented world?

Asks Shane Richmond, Communities Editor for The Daily Telegraph. He explained how when the Telegraph first went online in 1994, it gained a lot of Guardian readers because guardian.co.uk did not appear until 1999. One way in which the paper has captured a community of loyal online readers and bloggers is through My Telegraph: an area for readers to blog on issues, events and stories they find interesting. The Telegraph were quick thinking in capturing their paper’s readers by advertising in the main newspaper for the online blog page. Readers then convened in a online community to discuss issues which, unsurprisingly, they had in common being of a similar demographic. Richmond said bloggers enjoy having the Telegraph masterhead, and sharing in a company they trust and a brand they ‘buy into’, while also not having to worry about how to use platforms they may not understand like Blogger and WordPress. They go to My Telegraph to join in a conversation, probably one they would already have over a coffee, but can now have with more people who share a similar stance on stories which cover a common ground.

The Guardian has its globally popular Comment is Free and BBC has its own moderated page for users, Have Your Say, which are also ways of gaining a regular online readership, but the future newspaper reader will ultimately not be boxed into the confines of the stereotype associated with their chosen brand. As I debated before, news consumers are attracted more by ‘buying into’ the particular personal brand of a blogger or certain journalist, rather than the newspaper as a whole. Richmond even suggested that one single article may be aggregated from parts of news articles from a variety of news sources; for example, an intro from the Times, quotes from a reporter at the Independent etc. Mention this to a journalist today and they might gaffaw in hysterical horror –  but if we’d told them fifty years ago their papers would be in decline due to a weird phenomenon called the Internet, they might have also responded in such a way. The stereotypes of newspaper readers may continue for some time yet, but in the future, with pick ‘n’ mix news becoming more and more the norm, perhaps we will see the Tory Toff clicking away online, and say “Oh, he used to be a Telegraph reader, now he is just a news consumer.”

In George Orwell’s 1984, the inhabitants of Oceania have grown increasingly accustomed to ‘Newspeak’. This shortening of words and grammar is encouraged by the Ministry of Truth to eliminate any words which commit a ‘thoughtcrime.’ Orwell’s invention of newspeak was his outcry at the inclusion of  ’meaningless and illogical’ to the English vocabulary which he was witnessing at the time. 

In July 2006 “google” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary:

google/’gu:gl/ verb to type words into a SEARCH ENGINE on the Internet, especially the Google search engine, in order to find information about sb/sth: [VN] You can google someone you’ve recently met to see what information is available  about them on the Internet. [V] I tried googling but I couldn’t find anything relevant. 

Interesting that the person who wrote the dictionary entry (arguably one of the best jobs int he world), chose one of the more psychopathic ways of using google as their example. Googling someone you need to know things about is acceptable, googling someone you’ve just met is just plain creepy. 

I’m not insinuating that we are degenerating into a totalitarian regime where plain English is being omitted in replacement of some kind of ‘netspeak’ (when ‘to twitter’ arrives as an registered verb, I may change my mind). But the addition of ‘google’ to the dictionary just shows how huge the Internet giant has become, and proves Orwell’s point that language mirrors the society we live in.

Here’s just one stat to show how Google dominates the search engine market:

Someone going by the name of Urgo has created a web countdown for when Google will take over the world – we currently have left 6 years, 35 days, 8 hours and 17 minutes left before Google replaces all. The site links to a video Urgo has made about Google’s world domination. I’m not sure about the apocalyptic tones of the voiceover but it tracks the development of the web since the birth of the internet, and how Google has grown. Urgo predicts the merging of Google and Amazon to form ‘Googlezon’ – watch out for the ID card with Orwell’s protagonist on the front – Winston Smith. It is also rather scary when the death of newspapers is predicted, and The New York Times goes offline in protest, becoming a print leaflet for the elite and the elderly. 

It’s hard to find people outside of Google’s own staff who are supportive of their increasing growth. Many are scathingly pessimistic of Google’s domination of the web (see distasteful use of Hitler clips on YouTube), and news companies fear the search engine will put them out of business. But, Alun Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said at the Society of Editors Conference 2008:

Some people think they have got where they are without Google. Google aree getting the lion’s share of the advertising, but, I think at the moment Google, by and large, are helping us all.

Rusbridger may be saying this because, as his colleague Carolyn McCall conceeded, the Guardian Media Group do make money from Google, but I think his feelings gratitude towards Google runs deeper. 

Google Maps, Google Earth (which I originally thought let you actually spy on people – see news on virtual Rome), Google Analytics, Google Mail, Google Groups, Google Images, Google Shopping, Google Books, Google Finance, Google Blogs, and now, Google Trends – including the gradual merge between the real world and the web with the ability of Google flu trends to predict where the next flu epidemic is about to hit – are all new innovative programs which have shaped and will continue to change how we are using the web, and the tools available. Jeff Jarvis has recently blogged his speech in defense of Google, and has a great list of ways Google is not evil and should be appreciated in his argument. 

Anthony Mayfield, from icrossing, said:

Search is the front page of a website. 

Google will always be at the front as long as it remains on top, continues to put the user first and increasingly becomes a reliable international brand. But who knows whether it will continue to monopolise the internet. As Mayfield pointed out, we are still in the early learning stages, and it could all change in a nano-second. Or perhaps we will end up like Winston in 1984 (for those who haven’t read it avert eyes now), brainwashed to forget how the world was before we were googled.

Adam Smith was shocked to find out his drunken escapades in Miami had been blasted across the web at full speed and plopped straight into the lap of his boss. In this video, he seems to be surprised that his now famous resignation from the Birmingham Mail has made him a YouTube-star.

But is Smith really so surprised about his dynamic rise to one-minute stardom? I think not. Inebriated with watery American beer, Smith said to the Dutch interviewer “I’m a hard new journalist.” The statement reeks of the self-important arrogance arguably inherent in all journalists.

Aside from striking a chord with the numerous current debates about what’s going on in regional journalism, there is one little talked about point to take from Smith’s video which ties in with what Adam Tinworth, Head of Blogging at RBI, told a bunch of newly breed bloggers at Cardiff School of Journalism last week.

Blogs are not opinions. If you go anywhere near libel, that’s not a blog post!

Tinworth said.

First of all, this destroys the common myth among newbie bloggers that a blog is an online diary -  a space for a splurging mindless brain vomit straight onto the net for all to see. Any initial scepticism about blogging is usually from those who think the blogosphere is just a collection of random isolated online journals – naval gazing minute-by-minute minutiae and half philosophical musings which are often better off in the closed confines of your head.

But whilst blogs which are strands of long opinions are mindnumblingly boring, Tinworth fails to point out that the desire to blog taps into one key thing which most journalists find it hard to admit -  wanting to get your voice heard. Not all, but a lot of journalists want to be ‘writers’, and while this is clearly not what journalism is about, some of the initial feelings of wanting to become a journalist are tied in with wanting to share your opinion, and blogging nourishes this inner desire.

Bloggers often try and hide the fact that their ego secretly expands a little as their blog becomes increasingly popular. But the written word has been called “the window to the mind”, so a blog clearly does mirror some of your inner thoughts, and if people enjoy reading them then that is going to make you feel like what you have to say counts.

Blogging exposes the arrogant side of journalism. At Cardiff School of Journalism we are told that the born journalist is a curious, social being, interested in what everyone else has to say. But there is clearly a visible element among the bunch of new journos here that they think what they have to say is important too.

National journalists with the best blogs do not just share photos, videos and facts, they often add a comment or personal slant to the story.  Blogging allows them to speak on a slightly more personal level. Noticed that over the last five years newspapers started adding cropped photos next to journalist’s columns and articles? It’s just another point in practice of how the journalist, with his blog and twitter feed, Flickr account et al, is becoming more and more of a celebrity.

Many digital cheerleaders speak of how the blog takes away the barrier between the reader and the writer. But perhaps the blogger is more concealed behind their created image than it seems. The personal brand (the online persona the writer develops through their use of various online programs) may be just a cover-up concealer of the true persona underneath – a way of enhancing the journalist’s celebrity status as a writer, who would otherwise be lost in the duller world of opinionless news.