Facebook tip-off leads to front-page story

A regional daily newspaper is celebrating after a tip-off on their Facebook page led to a front-page splash this week, reports holdthefrontpage.co.uk

The tip-off was posted on the North West Evening Mail’s page, set up by reporter Amy Fenton, by one of the group’s 2000 ‘friends’, saying a body had been found on a Barrow Street.

This meant that the CN Group-owned paper was first on the scene, giving them the front page story, along with pictures and video footage.

Whilst some newspaper groups ban their journalists from looking at the social networking site, Fenton has been encouraging as many of her colleagues as possible to use it, saying that the Facebook page has generated countless stories.

She has also visited sister newspapers in the CN group to give a presentation on the site and how it can be used as a journalistic tool.

Speaking to Holdthefrontpage she said: "Using Facebook is a great way to source stories, get contacts and receive tip-offs."

Deputy editor Phil Pearson added: "Through her own initiative Amy has shown everyone in our newsroom, and across the group, what a multimedia operation can achieve.

"She has embraced Facebook as a source of news and used it as a great way of communicating and interacting with our readers. Her work has benefited both our website and the paper. She has made our operation more immediate and relevant."

News wire criticised for inaccuracies

As debate focuses on how to make online content pay, it is important not to forget about reporting standards.

Journalism.co.uk highlights how this was raised at a recent debate hosted by Thompson Reuters, titled 'What Price the News?', which saw the wire service coming under fire from former employees for apparently favouring speed over accuracy in an increasingly competitive market.

They cited two examples where the company reported inaccurate stories from other media without checking primary sources first.

The first example was from this month, when Reuters initially published a report, first broadcast by Sky News, that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, had died, until his lawyer corrected them.

The second example was CNN's report on a US Coast Guard training exercise on the anniversary of September 11 this year, which was wrongly claimed to be a gun battle.

Audience member Paul Iredale, a former Reuters journalist of 30 years, said he was 'deeply concerned and sad' about what he heard during the debate.

"In Reuters it seems to have gone to speed rather than accuracy," he said. "What we used to say about Reuters was we got it last, but we got it right. I don't think that is the case now."

Reuters' political and general news editor Sean Maguire defended the news wire, saying that it was completely transparent when the stories were found to be untrue.

He said: "When we saw it was wrong, we said we were wrong."

"Because Sky had been a good source on the [al-Megrahi death report] story we reported it. We very quickly said what they said was nonsense."

A business model for Twitter?

Champions of Twitter and its influence in public debate have had a lot to celebrate recently; the overturning of the Trafigura super-injunction and Jan Moir’s reputation being torn to shreds following her column on the death of Stephen Gately, for example.

But, as described in a blog article by Mark Potts, Twitter has another area of excellence – its ability to break news. Twitter, argues Potts, through its broadcast, real-time, 140-character headline nature makes it a perfect vehicle for the latest news, whether it's being generated by on-the-spot observers or news organisations.

Whilst many media organisations have attracted a large core of followers (such as the New York Times, with 1,995,199 followers), one feed that is keeping up with the “big guns” is a Twitter-only headline service Breaking News Online, that boasts over 1.3million followers.

Run by 19-year old Dutch entrepreneur Michael van Poppel, the Breaking News team scan the major news sites and use them alongside their own reporting to produce the feed.

What is particularly interesting about Breaking News notes Potts – besides its ability to hold its own alongside major news organisations – is that Poppel may have found a way to monetize Twitter. They have developed an iPhone app that sells for $1.99—plus a 99-cent-per-month subscription fee - to send followers the latest headlines.

It will be interesting to observe whether the company which prompted PaidContent to write: "Hey Media Company. Buy BNO News. Now. Really” will be able to make this particular business model work. The organisations that Potts succinctly describes as: “taking a backseat to a clever 19-year-old kid” will almost certainly be watching.

Outstanding Online Journalism Reaps Awards

A collection of linking tools enabling journalists to complement their original reporting, a hyperlocal site covering a Seattle neighborhood and a small site that covers a big city were the winners of the three newest categories at the 2009 Online Journalism Awards Banquet last week.

A complete list of winners is available here.

Publish2, a two-year old startup of collaborative journalism tools, won $5,000 and the first Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism at the 10th annual awards ceremony.

My Ballard, a hyperlocal site covering Seattle's Ballard neighborhood, won the first Community Collaboration award, while the Gotham Gazette was recognized for General Excellence, Micro Site, a new subcategory.

The awards acknowledge the important role of emerging technology, the influence of the independent digital journalist and the growth of community reporting efforts.

My Ballard, for example, is "exactly what newspapers are trying to do with hyperlocal content." the judges wrote. "It's extremely useful for the neighborhood and because it lists cool places to go, it works for others."

"These honorees demonstrate the vitality and innovation of online journalists in a time of tumult and transformation in our industry," said Anthony Moor, deputy manging editor/interactive of the Dallas Morning News and co-chair of the Journalism Awards Committee. "We continue to be impressed by the way journalists are pushing the envelope and serving the public interest at the same time."

ProPublica, LasVegasSun.com and The New York Times also won General Excellence Awards, which include a $3,000 cash prize, also courtesy of the Gannett Foundation.

The Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration of more than two dozen reporters, photographers and editors who investigated the death of the Oakland Post editor, won the Knight Award for Public Service and a $5,000 cash prize from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Just a few of the other winners -- and there are lots more, all well worth checking out -- at the 2009 awards ceremony were:

* Breaking News, small, medium and large sites: Pressconnect.com /(Binghamton, New York) Press & Sun-Bulletin for Massacre on Front Street; Knoxnews.com (Knoxville News Sentinel)for coverage of a church shooting; and BBC News for its coverage of the Mumbai attacks.

* Multimedia Feature Presentation, small, medium and large sites: National Film Board of Canada for Waterlife, described by the judges as "crazy good," with a "user experience unlike anything we've seen"; LasVegasSun.com for Quenching Las Vegas' Thirst, with an "awesome coordination" between graphics and video; and Washington Post Digital for Sacred Ground: The Building of the Pentagon Memorial, which makes "excellent use of the technologies and the tools."

Awards To Honour Breaking News

The finalists for the Online Journalism Awards have been announced and a total of ten sites have been nominated for breaking news coverage.

Award nominees compete in categories with websites of a similar size and this year sees three titles up for the breaking news prize for a small site.

They are: The Daily Astorian for coverage of the Gearhart Plane Crash; The Desert Sun for the Desert Hot Springs Gang Sweep; Pressconnects.com/Press & Sun-Bulletin for the Massacre on Front Street.



In the medium site category, the shortlist of four includes LasVegasSun.com for coverage of a snowstorm and the Dallas Morning News for its breaking news reports on the collapse of an American football training stadium.



Finally, the nominees in the large site category for breaking news are: The BBC for the Mumbai terrorist attacks; the New York Times for the plane crash on the Hudson river; chron.com for Hurricane Ike.



Run by the Online News Association, the awards also honour investigative journalism, multimedia, blogging, video journalism and general excellence – the full shortlist is available to view in the press release.

“We were regularly awed, inspired and delighted by the quality and innovation evident online today,” said Anthony Moor, co-chair of the awards committee.

The winners will be announced in October at the 2009 ONA Conference.

MEN – Raids Reported In Real-Time

The Manchester Evening News has used social media to keep its website readers up to date with the progress of a series of police raids.

HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports that the MEN had a reporter stationed in the control room, where he used Twitter to post updates about the massive police operation.

The tweets were collected under a gmpraids hashtag on Twitter and appeared in a live blog on the web pages of the MEN.



And the newspaper had one of its journalists following police officers as they carried out arrests across Greater Manchester so reports ‘from the field’ were also fed back to the CoverItLive blog.



“CoverItLive was useful for this because it allows our readers who are not on Twitter to follow the reports and also add their own comments,” said Paul Gallagher, head of online content at the MEN.

He added: “I think this has been a good example of our journalists using new online reporting tools to bring a fresh approach to the MEN’s coverage of a live news story.”

See HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk for the full story and visit the MEN website to view the coverage and to replay the live blog.

Hull Paper Offers Live Match Reports

A Northcliffe newspaper is on the ball with its football coverage offering live and interactive match reports.

Fans can follow every minute of Hull City’s Premier League season thanks to a new match day service on sporthull.co.uk, reports HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk.

Using software from CoveritLive, the Big Match Live coverage is available in real-time during games and can be replayed in full after the final whistle.

The live blog also encourages comments from City fans, which then appear alongside posts from journalists at the Hull Daily Mail.



This season has seen sporthull.co.uk introduce a number of other new features, including an aggregation service providing links to Hull City coverage elsewhere on the Web.

“All of these new features enhance the service we give to web users and further differentiate our digital offering from our in-depth and analytical sports coverage in the paper,” said John Meehan, editor at the Hull Daily Mail.

He added: “We will also use the sports sites to promote our print-only sports content.”

Northcliffe has also introduced a new look and new features at three of its other sports sites - sportgrimsby.co.uk, sportscunny.co.uk and sportsecho.co.uk.

Top Of The News Tweets

A blogger has compiled a list of the most popular Twitter feeds provided by national newspapers in the UK.

Malcolm Coles found that just three newspapers account for the ten most followed feeds – the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Times.

The Guardian’s Tech Twitter account is the number one in the chart, with 831,935 followers at the time of compilation (risen to 911,143 when this post was written).

It’s then a big drop to second with the Guardian News feed, with over 25,000 followers on Twitter.

Also making up the top ten are FT finance news, Guardian Music, Times Travel and Times Money.

The full table showing the 131 official feeds and their followers is available here.

Twittering Reporter Earns Exclusive

A journalist has stumbled upon an exclusive story thanks to a bunch of tweets exchanged with a contact.

Journalism.co.uk reports that the Edinburgh Evening News reporter had initially approached a fellow Twitterer to find out more about their involvement in the forthcoming festival.

However, causal mention of a body discovered in their block of flats led Victoria Raimes to follow up the lead and write a front-page exclusive on the incident.

Raimes revealed that the microblogging service has become a valuable story-finding tool since she joined the newspaper.

“Each week I pick up a page lead from Twitter ... I would encourage every regional journalist to use it,” she said.

Raimes, who has made contacts via her own account and the Twitter feed of the Evening News, also noted that the website enables journalists to get feedback on their work.

Mirror Launching Footie Site

A website dedicated to the beautiful game is set to be launched this year by Trinity Mirror.


The standalone multimedia site will feature text, video and photographic content from matches, reports the Guardian.

It will have a breaking news feed, blogs, and plenty of special features, such as a weekly video report from the ever popular Robbie Savage and a daily soccer show.

Fans will also be able to access a treasure trove of Mirror Group photographs capturing the highs and lows of English football over the decades.

MirrorFootball.co.uk is scheduled to go live this summer, in time for the start of the new season.

[Photo by Atomic Shed on Flickr.]

Guardian Crowdsources Plinth Project

Readers are being asked to help the Guardian capture every moment of the Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square.

Designed by Antony Gormley, the public artwork will see human statues take to the plinth every hour for the next 100 days.

Photographic coverage of such an event represents a “massive undertaking”, said the Guardian, and therefore crowdsourcing is the newspaper’s chosen method for tackling it.

A Flickr group - Plinth Watch 2009 - has been created so users can post their pictures alongside those taken by Guardian photographers.



The editor’s picks of these readers’ pics will later be published on Guardian.co.uk and some could possibly be printed in the newspaper too.

Reporters have also set up a Twitter feed dedicated to updates about events on the plinth throughout the day.



In an article appealing for content, culture editor Alex Needham pointed out that the crowdsourcing approach reflects the spirit of the work itself.

Needham said: “One and Other is a work of art which will be created by the general public.

“It would be brilliantly apt if our coverage of it could be made in a similar spirit of mass participation.”

Showbiz Blog Sells For Over $10M

Entertainment news blog Deadline Hollywood Daily has been purchased in a deal estimated to be in excess of $10 million (£6.2m).

The 24-7 breaking news blog is written by established showbiz journalist Nikki Finke and is now owned by Mail.com Media Corporation.

According to the Guardian, newspapers have received tip-offs that the purchase price stands somewhere between $10m and $15m.



Breaking the news of the landmark deal on DHD, Finke assured loyal readers that the blog would retain its editorial independence.

“Know this: I did not sell out. I really meant it when I said that DeadlineHollywood Daily.com will continue to be an independent editorial voice – and I would retain complete control over everything reported on the website - so that DHD’s credibility with its readers could remain intact.”

She added that new infrastructure and resources means the site will now expand to cover east-coast entertainment news, with a New York-based reporter set to join the ranks soon.

Finke, who has worked for Newsweek and the LA Times among others, first wrote DHD as a column for LA Weekly before starting the website.

ITV Ends Web News Contract

ITN’s web division will stop supplying news to ITV.com next month following the cancellation of the contract.

The Guardian cites sources suggesting the agreement was worth an estimated £500,000 to ITN On, which has provided text and video reports to the website.

Video bulletins covering global and national stories will be supplied in the future by the television news division of ITN.

Text articles published on ITV.com will come from ITV’s regional journalists.

A memo from ITN On managing director Nicholas Wheeler published on the Guardian website reveals that job losses are now inevitable.

He concludes: “The loss of this contract represents significant revenue hit for ITN On, and means that we have to review the online operation to see how we can best deliver text stories to our remaining online clients.”

Next Step Journalism

The death of Neda Soltani, the young Iranian woman who has become the tragic human face of the nation's post-election turmoil, demonstrates the process involved in what Bill Mitchell of the Poynter Institute calls "next step journalism."

A distraught bystander captured video of the killing on his phone and e-mailed it to a friend in the Netherlands. Within five minutes, the video was on YouTube and Facebook -- and became international news.

Mitchell says our news increasingly will be shaped by a similar process, one that begins with an event and is characterized by the collective sharing and enhancing of information. The process "provides lots of opportunities for journalists and non-journalists alike to assess what a story needs next, figure out what he or she is best equipped to contribute, and move the story along."

In Soltani's story, he identifies seven elements of this kind of storytelling, some more in need of professional journalism skills and values than others. Their common thread is the importance of collaboration.

* Documentation: Two cell phone videos captured the crucial moments after Soltani was shot Saturday evening, including the frantic efforts to save her. The low resolution of the videos and chaotic movement of the cell phone cameras did not get in the way of telling this critical part of the story, Mitchell points out.

* Context: The videos left many questions unanswered. But Soltani's fiance provided some context in an interview broadcast by Aljazeera, describing her views on recent events in Iran and explaining why she happened to be on that street corner.

* Transmission and Distribution: It was initially unclear how the videos made their way from the street corner to Facebook and YouTube. The Guardian filled in the details above. Other information came from The New York Times and the CBS Evening News, among others.

* Verification: Some of the initial postings about the shooting included a message from someone identifying himself as a physician who said he witnessed the shooting and tried to save her. A series of tweets and re-tweets from around the world confirmed this information and identified the doctor.

* Correction: Some of the details distributed on the day of the shooting, such as the identity of a man standing near Soltani, turned out to be wrong. Within two days, a Los Angeles Times correspondent had tracked down the man and identified him as her music teacher.

* Analysis: Mitchell says the best analysis he has seen of the significance of Soltani's death has come from journalists, particularly highlighting an essay on Time.com by Robin Wright.

* Sense-making: "It's still too early in the Neda story for anyone to be able to provide the perspective and wisdom required by this stage the process," Mitchell writes. "Who will do it best? Journalists? That physician who tried to save Neda? Historians?"

More important than the who is the what, he concludes. This tragic story "has taught us plenty about what this kind of storytelling will require -- and what it can produce."

Colbert Versus The NAA

Following on from Jon Stewart’s anti-Twitter tirade, I thought I’d give way to the Easter break with another irreverent take on the state of the news media from across the pond.

Asking the all-important questions about the future of news is satirist and Daily Show alumnus Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report.

The man tasked with answering them is the president of the Newspaper Association of America, John Sturm.

Sturm told E&P that he took the decision to go on the Comedy Central show in the hope that it would “make newspapers visible to the younger audience”.

See how he fared below.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a Lobby - Newspaper Lobby
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

[HT - Editor & Publisher]

Telling The G20 Story With Social Media

News reporting via Twitter and AudioBoo became the norm last week as journalists used social media tools to tell the story of the G20 Summit in London.

The majority of the mainstream media got in on the action as social media software provided an ideal way for field-based reporters to provide real-time updates on events at the summit and on the streets of the City.

According to BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones: “It does seem as though just about everyone involved in G20 - from the politicians to the journalists, from bloggers to demonstrators - has been snapping, filming recording everything in site and uploading it to the web to share with the world.”

Several online newspapers provided coverage using CoverItLive blogs, including Times Online and Sky News.

On the Sky live blog, correspondents sent text updates and links to photos uploaded to TwitPic.

Meanwhile, the Times Online’s live blog featured embedded photos and eye-witness posts from members of the public.



On Guardian.co.uk, award-winning blogger Dave Hill posted regular updates to his London blog about the action on the ground at the Bank of England.

And the BBC offered multimedia coverage through its Live Map, which linked to geotagged video, text and photographic content.



The BBC also pulled together links to all its G20 related content on a Live Text Page which featured links to news articles and blog posts from journalists as they were published.

An abundance of content from citizen journalists appeared throughout the day on content-sharing sites such as Flickr, and a group of students from London’s City University used their mobiles and social media tools to provide extensive coverage of the street protests (HT – cybersoc.com).

For more on this, journalism.co.uk and the BBC’s dot.life blog have round-ups of how social media was used by the mainstream and alternative media during last week’s events.

Regional Business Site Launched

A website dedicated to business news for the south-west of England has been launched by Northcliffe.

SouthWestBusiness provides breaking business news by sector or by area, which is pulled in to the site from the regional publisher’s newspaper titles in the region.

The new website also offers business directories for Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire and Somerset.



According to HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk, the main feature is the site’s comment section which aims to help create an online community of users.

A Question Of Quality Online

Is the quality of online content compromised by sub-editor job cuts and the direct publishing nature of the Web?

That’s the question posed by Carl Sessions Stepp in his latest American Journalism Review article, entitled The Quality-Control Quandary.

Stepp interviews a range of journalists, editors and managers at several newspapers to gauge feelings on this issue in newsrooms across the US.

What he finds is a range of opinions, from those who see it as a manageable risk with relatively minor repercussions at present to copy editors who fear a major court case is just around the corner.

Read the full story on AJR.org.

Site To Cover Parliament Debates

A new website providing comprehensive coverage of the goings on within the House of Commons is to be launched next month.

The brainchild of Tony Grew, I Spy Strangers describes itself as the product of “a non-partisan, not-for-profit group” which will provide an accessible record of parliamentary debates.

Speaking to Press Gazette, the former editor of Pink News said the website will provide the kind of coverage not offered by the mainstream media.

“At the moment, only the BBC provides that sort of coverage - and we don’t think that’s acceptable in a democratic society,” said Grew.

He added: “There’s a gap in the market for people interested in democracy, but who haven’t the time to go through Hansard.

“We want to go back to accurate, engaging reports of what was said. We think there is a lot of good stuff that’s missed.”



Set for launch on April 20, I Spy Strangers is currently staffed by volunteer journalists, photographers and web designers.

Grew aims to employ salaried workers in the future and is working to secure funding from organisations committed to widening public access to democracy.

Sylvester Gets Tweety In Court

A journalist has been granted permission to provide coverage of a federal court case via Twitter updates.

Ron Sylvester has previously Twittered a murder trial from a state courthouse, but this is the first time that he has been allowed to post Tweets from a federal courtroom, reports Editor & Publisher.

The Witchita Eagle journalist is reporting on the racketeering trial via his Twitter feed, and he has revealed that among his followers is the father of one of the defendants.

According to E&P, Sylvester’s tweets “have recounted testimony and offered some courtroom color”.

The Eagle’s executive editor has asserted that Sylvester’s use of Twitter as a court reporting tool has proved effective.

“He certainly has not sacrificed accuracy, quality and standards,” said Sherry Chisenhall.

She added: “There is an immediacy that has been great for our audience.”