Journalists, brands and celebrities.

Rick Waghorn told my journalism class that the survival of newspapers could well be in leaning towards brands rather than just faceless writers or reporters.

Covering football news and issues in Norwich for the Evening News since the early 90s, and now launching his own (so far very successful) footie coverage creation MyFootballWriter.com, I guess he understands the lucrative significance of having a loyal following, living up to expectations, having pundit status, his name recognised independent of his writing – basically being a brand.

And it seems that Waghorn’s observations are spot on, not just in regards to newspapers, but magazines as well. Marie Claire has ‘The Janice Street Porter interview’, More! has started a similar ‘The Alan Carr interview’ regular feature.

I agree that it’s a great idea to pull the readers in, but perhaps there is a fine line between a person who has become a brand based on their knowledge and work in their field (e.g. hard questioner Janice Street Porter, and credit crunch expert Robert Peston), and a mere celebrity taking on an ‘expert’ role.

The Times has Jeremy Clarkson doing its driving section while The Mirror has gotten hold of Richard Hammond, which is fair enough – they both qualify as ‘petrol heads’ and their Top Gear brand goes hand in hand with car and motoring issues.

The Mirror also has Ian Botham on cricket and Stan Collymore on Football; professionals in their chosen sport becoming pundits is nothing new. But Tess Daly, TV presenter most recently on Strictly Come Dancing, writing on “style news and views”? Simply looking good and being a household name is qualification enough for that ‘pundit status’ it seems.

Natmags have recently (August 08) re-branded their celeb magazine Reveal as the “celebrity magazine written by celebrities” where each of the eleven newly employed celebs have been given their own section of ‘expertise.’

There are logical appointments at Reveal such as Martin Lewis (moneysavingexpert.com) writing about money, Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen (remember him off Changing Rooms?) doing homes, and Saturday Kitchen chef and cook book author, James Martin, covering food. All fairly reasonable appointments. But then there’s the slightly more abstract…

Actress and singer, Martine McCutcheon, on beauty – she’s beautiful yes, but a make up artist? A beauty therapist? No. And again, looking good on TV is all the status bubbly, Xtra Factor presenter Holly Willoughby needed to secure her position as “red carpet style” expert. But the strangest appointment of all is yet to come, as the new Reveal Agony Aunt is…Vanessa Feltz.

This is the lady who had a rather monumental meltdown on Celebrity Big Brother, refusing to hand-over a stick of chalk after scrawling intensely contemplative words onto a table while sobbing into a silk leopard print dressing gown (many were questioning her sanity I believe). She annoyed the nation (along with magical gramps Paul Daniels) on ch4’s Celebrity Wife Swap, and recovering alcoholic, Jack Dee, described her as “emotionally unstable.” Despite this however, Reveal have put her in charge of our emotional, life, and relationship problems. Hmm, okay…..?!

I’ve never had a newspaper: fragmentation

I’ve never had a newspaper that I felt attached or affiliated to; not in terms of political ideas, style of writing, news agenda or otherwise.While some read either the Guardian because they have left wing views or the Telegraph because they agree with the conservative ideas and agenda, me? I’m a floater.

I like the Sun because of the shocking headlines, I like the Guardian on a Monday for the media section, I like the Mirror’s website for unusual articles, and I like TelegraphTV for as-it-happens news on demand.

The same goes for magazines, I know countless girls who like the features in Marie Claire, the ‘gossip’ in Heat and the pictures in OK, the feist of Cosmopolitan but the shopping pages of Grazia.

Rather than read just one title a week or month they, and I include myself, read around the titles on the shelf to get all the pages they want, from the publications that do it – the way they want it.

I guess that means we’re already part of the fragmenting audience.

Shane Richmond, Communities Editor at telegraph.co.uk, notes how where communities once used to build around titles, and loyalty with it, the nature of online publications and aggregation tools allow users to now just take the bits they want from media content.

Communities are now building around particular sections of a publication, such as the sport section of telegraph.co.uk, the fashion pages of Grazia, getting the media news delivered to their desktop by RSS from the Guardian, or taking articles from various places and bringing them back to their own forum for debate and conversation.

But I’m not sure it’s ever really been that different, people have always read along the shelf, but so long as the whole publication was still bought I guess no-one really noticed that many of us were only reading a small section, rather than the whole package.

 

Should we look more at porn?

In the 1970’s it was a major driving force behind the home-movie; it was a key (role?) player in the 1980’s battle between Betamax and VHS video; then once again, in 2006, industry insiders were left panting while the porn industry mused over who was going to win the Blue Ray Disc versus HD DVD frisson.

“As goes the porn industry, so goes entertainment generally and technology-based entertainment in particular,” says Bob Jacobson, and he’s very right. It’s been long accepted that a giant deciding factor in whether a new technology will be popular for entertainment-media use, is how well the porn industry ride it.

Ryan Caldwell also puts the quickie development of the internet and broadband down to the demand of porn, and there are many who might agree…

 

 

So, could porn providers again indicate the direction in which media, online entertainment and journalism will shimmy? Possibly.

There have been worries that, just like print media sales, even the rampant cash flow of the porn industry has taken a spanking of late by web 2.0.

Edward Helmore’s article for The Observer has industry sales down by as much as 50%, as online porn perusers find for free what they once paid for.

“Pirated pornography is flooding the internet while thousands of ‘amateurs’ post their activities on websites such as youporn.com and porntube” says Helmore.

“Despite social and professional stigmas a lot of people are putting themselves on the internet. It fits into this era of people expressing themselves,” Regina Lynn, sex drive columnist for Wired, adds in the same article.

Like the current state of journalism, the once untouchable porn industry is at threat from web 2.0, user generated content and online publishing tools, that have shifted the power of publishing from the media giants, into the hands of the consumers.

What are the players in porn going to do next? Go mobile, it seems.

With the release of Apple’s new iPhone 2.0 people can do it (or rather watch others do so) anywhere…on the train, a plane, al fresco…use your own imagination here.

Jeremy Caplan, writing for Time notes that while mobile phone porn has previously been racy texts and “moan tones,” but the iPhone’s video dexterity has seen content swing more towards pictures and short video clips. The internet speed of the iPhone 2.0 looks set to bond the two industries further.

Pornographers have taken the idea of being able to access, say, the news online from any workstation with a browser, to being able to access content from literally anywhere you happen to be with your internet-enabled mobile phone.

Porn purveyor Pink Vision have created a downloadable one-click icon for Apple iPhone home screens, so users can access porn immediately and easily from their phone. While similar company Vivid claim half of their traffic now comes from iPhones.

Mobile phone specific applications then, seem to be where journalism brands need to aim and shoot.

What will happen to the read-only?

The worries I have about online journalism are not whether journalists will still have a role to play, and a job in the long term. Of course they will. People are always going to want to read something, and while User Generated Content (UGC) contributions are important, it can’t be relied on (yet) that every single day, of every single month, every year, people are going to want to upload good, useable content.

No, the worries I have are what will happen to the people who don’t engage with online journalism? I worry about what will happen to those who like to sit down with the newspaper and a cuppa; those who pop into the shop on their way to work for the paper and read nothing else all day; and the people who don’t have unlimited internet access at all times. What will they do if everything goes online?

  

 A few weeks ago, in the best lecture I’ve ever attended (and there have been many), Dr Andy Williams , of Cardiff University , suggested that it was just 1% of the news consuming population who like to contribute UGC and regularly participate in interactive news. Be it posting comments, chatting in forums or uploading content, only 1% of people do it as standard. Another 9% will participate from time-to-time, but not regularly, leaving 90% of people as read-only consumers.

 

Now, if people in the industry continue to focus on ideas  like the model suggested by the absent Alison Gow , in a presentation last week, whereby journalists could post first drafts of news stories on blogs (ready and waiting for user contributions and changes), news updates can be sent by Twitter messages, the latest updates can be live-streamed onto websites…etc. If (remarkable and innovative – no argument) ideas like these are focused on with the ardour and determination characteristic of new media developments, what will happen to already dwindling newspaper industry ? And the internet-less readers left behind by the technological news revolution? 

 

Will the news become biased towards the tech-savvy who regularly contribute? Will a knowledge divide emerge between the economic advantaged who have more internet access than the less privileged? Will news production become more focused on allowing user interactivity than getting the hard, accurate story? Or will it revolutionise the access journalist have to information, and make news more instant, reliable and representative of all areas?

 

I guess the problem is that nobody knows, and as such, perhaps more should be done now to save print, and offline news resources for the 90% who prefer to just read.

 

 

UGC: Do journalists need to act as gatekeepers?

 

It’s an intricate issue, gate keeping, even in professional terms, with weighted arguments both for and against. But what are the justifications of organisations like the BBC for insisting on moderation of UGC, and why do some, like CNN, appear to allow ‘unedited, unfiltered’ UGC?

 

To bottom line things, what we should really be asking firstly is, ‘Is UGC good enough to take over the role of professional journalism?’ If that answer is yes, then it could be supposed that UGC needs no further help from professionals, editing or otherwise. But there are a few things to consider before coming to an answer.

 

The BBC’s UGC is filtered and checked before it is allowed to go live on their online platforms. They have a 30-strong team, to edit material and filter out defamatory, inaccurate and unsuitable content, before the higher quality material is uploaded. While some may think this an unnecessary infringement on the right to freedom of expression, it has been successful in avoiding hoax material being used on the BBC (such as CNN iReport’s Elk in Dorset photograph), and allows the BBC to protect their trustworthy brand name.

 

Peter Bale, in a study carried out by Alfred Hermida and Neil Thurman in 2006, said “not to moderate content would be an inappropriate brand risk.” And he is correct in the sense that branded news production teams, like the BBC, The Guardian and so on, have worked for years to build a reputation as good quality, trustworthy, reliable sources of news. To disregard the procedures in place that ensure this happens, so that citizen journalists feel as though they too get a ‘fair’ say in what’s news, would be to sacrifice the seal of quality that comes with a reputable news brand.

 

As The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart noted, in a spoof of CNN’s iReport site, (quote: “my balls are on Wolf Blitzer’s head”), not all UGC is going to be hard hitting, newsworthy material. In which case, to receive quality, moderation is needed to assess the most newsworthy content from the otherwise irrelevant. It’s the way professionals have always worked, and if professional journalism needs checking and editing – why would amateur journalism ever be thought not to?

 

UGC has its positives, no doubt. The first images of the Asian Tsunami and disasters in China were sent in by people capturing things on their mobile phones, which a video crew would have missed, or not been able to get access to. The assassination of JFK and beating of Rodney King were also captured by the citizen journalist rather than the professional. There is quality UGC out there, but, just as in professional practice, it needs to be tweaked or edited.

 

 

Freedom of expression is all very well, but when producing content that is going to be published to the world, legal and ethical obligations need to be taken into account. Professional journalists are reminded of these constraints everyday. Content gets reworked, pulled, and edited to avoid breaching any legal issues such as defamation, and to ensure nothing unethical or morally ‘wrong’ is published.

 

Amateur journalists and UGC should also need to adhere to these constraints if they wish to publish content in the same sphere as professional material. However, since there is no training or regulation to ensure they do so, moderation of uploaded UGC will have to continue.

 

The role of the news media is meant to be to provide an objective, informative view of current issues in society. To do so, content needs to be assessed for relevance, quality, accuracy, reliability and its ethical and legal appropriateness. This should stand whatever the level of the journalist – be they professional, amateur, citizen or blogger.

Online Fears?

In Ancient Rome the news was carved onto stone or metal and posted in public places. Between 713 and 734, the Tang Dynasty in China handwrote government news onto silk. News wasn’t disseminated in the way which we take for granted until early 18^th century with the first regular English daily paper. So, given that journalism and news reporting has always undergone change, restructuring, and adaptation to new technology, why should the latest technological developments create such fear? And why should immediate messaging tools such as Twitter create feelings of uselessness?

 

“The media in all it’s forms sometimes becomes too cynical, too ready to assume the worst, and to construct the general out of the particular” said  Prince Charles in a speech to celebrate 300 years of newspapers in Britain, 11 March 2002. It was if he had already heard Ian Reeves playing the prophet doom with “I have seen the future, and we’re not in it.”

 

Invention of printers brought us forward from handwritten pamphlets and scrolls. Telegraph technology connected people across countries, and then the telephone did that even better. Wireless radio and television brought the news one step closer to real-time and gave audiences moving pictures and recorded voice clips. All these developments were positive, useful and welcome. Online media, simply merges all these elements into one space and brings it to us faster than ever before. That’s not going to spell the end of journalism; it’s just going to speed things up and change the way things are done. Tools like Twitter , although they can be used by everyone who morphs into a ‘citizen journalist’ from time to time, are things that can be taken full advantage of, to improve and revolutionise journalism.

 

In April 2008, James Karl Buck , managed to free himself from an Egyptian prison with the one-word Twitter message “arrested.” While an amazing demonstration of how powerful and useful the immediacy of online communication can be, I feel that something important has been slightly overlooked. While detained, Buck was able to send updates of his situation through Twitter messages on his mobile phone every few hours, constantly reporting to everyone who had internet access a blow-by-blow account of what was happening. Up until his “free” Tweet, investigative journalism went real-time, and typed journalism went ‘live’ in the same way only broadcast media had previously been able to do.

 

In the same way, MG Siegler , writing for VentureBeat.com , recalls the power of using Twitter in conjunction with social conversation and aggregation site FriendFeed during (not after) an earthquake that hit South California, near LA in July of this year. “Minutes after the quake I had various accounts of it and a map of it’s epicentre…the first Tweet came mere seconds after the earthquake hit, the AP pushed out its first wire item on the news nine-minutes after people were already Tweeting.” Before news reports were even broadcasted, MG Siegler had managed to gather enough information to compile eye-witness comments, maps of affected areas and an up-to-date account of what had happened. Enough information for a researched and accurate report of an event, in written form, before any ‘live’ media could disseminate their own coverage.

 

Marshall Kirkpatrick, writing for ReadWriteWeb.com, describes how he uses Twitter to gather information in a similar way, “Twitter itself is very useful for performing public interviews. By putting out single or multiple questions into our Twitter networks in a call-and-response fashion, we’ve gathered piles of rich research in far less time than it would have taken to try and call people on the phone.”

 

There have always been technological developments that affect the media, and none have so far served to supplant journalism. Immediacy tools are there to be taken advantage of, and utilised by professional journalists that can realise their power, and combine that with the skill, ethics and professional standards.