Spalpeen

Part one of the discussion.

Part two of the discussion (note: I missed the last 15ish minutes as my laptop battery couldn’t quite hack it).

Full blog post coming tomorrow at Catch21.

Present at the event:
Guido Fawkes: http://order-order.com/
Jonathan Isaby of Conservative Home: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/
Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy: http://liberalconspiracy.org/
Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole: http://www.sluggerotoole.com/
Nick Cohen: http://nickcohen.net/

Video of Nick Cohen talking about the trappings of technology as saviour.

Video of Nick Cohen “responding” to an audience comment.

And Paul Staines revealing information and advice about his commenters.

Photo credit: The Pub by mild_swearwords on Flickr

James Brown has an interesting anecdotal post up over at Organ Grinder about the best time to get articles commissioned in magazines. He says this week is the best time due to a combination of “end of year list exhaustion”, plenty of trips to the pub and lowered expectations as to what stories are out there.

I think the situation is a little different on newspapers.

Most of the national newspapers have had their Christmas parties already*, and this week most reporters are working their arses off trying to get all the work in so they can be with their families on Christmas Day. Just think of the Sunday papers. Their busiest days of the week happens to coincide with Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

One of the tips from Brown’s post is to get chummy with editors who are sloshed up in the pub after work. I’m not sure if starting a commissioning relationship with someone who’s drunk is a great idea: if they don’t know who you are at the pub, they’re unlikely to remember you in the morning!

The best way to get commissioned is still, and has always been, pitching the best stories you can find, but I’m sure there’s something to be said for pitching them when expectations are low. I think Brown’s post bears that out: the scoops he mentions includes an unprofiled Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and a Jack Dee before his first TV appearance. That’s how you get commissioned.

*News International’s party had to win the prize this year. Apparently they hired out a massive warehouse, and had Jedward, Peter Andre and others performing next to giant stalls themed to each paper.

I’m currently sat in an online journalism tutorial at City University. They’re currently teaching the class “how to write for websites”. All these points are pretty much verbatim from our tutor, with my comments in [brackets]. This is what we’ve been told so far:

Don’t put an external link in the first three paragraphs of an article, because you don’t want to send people away from your content. [This is a highly cynical tactic. Your users will hate you if you don't link clearly and often to sources.]

Make sure you alter the link type to “open in new window” because then people won’t leave your content. [This is a dreadful policy. Don't tell web users how to browse your content.]

A perfectly written online article will result in people closing the tab at the end, not visiting another (presumably competing) website or link. [Nonsense. You want people to click another link at the end of your article. Preferably to another article by you. But not exclusively.]

Education is not as good now as it was in the past, and people have shorter attention spans, so you should always write short sentences in the active voice: ideally one sentence per paragraph. [I agree with the sentiment that you should write concisely, but I don't agree that readers are dumb. I believe in challenging readers. They respond well to that.]

People read in an “F” pattern (thanks Jakob!). [So maybe you should put ads at the top left?]

Write in an “inverse pyramid”, or a “zooming out” style with the facts in the “news epicentre”. [Sure, why not? Put the information first]

We’re now covering Jakob Nielsen’s “Reading on the Web” about usability and writing style. Keep it simple, stupid.

You can’t compete with Reuters, or the BBC, so why try? What is the angle that you have that does the job ot telling people what is happening in the world today? Write slightly more analytical work that hangs on what is happening now. [I think the point is you need to write for a niche.]

to be continued

An Advertising Standards Authority “complaints manager” sent me this email the other day: “Since my last email I have spoken to Zoe Griffin’s agent. He has given his assurance that any future reference to Voltz on the website will make clear it is an advertisement.”

Also in the comments on my last post about Zoe Griffin, is a note that Voltz had Zoe marked on its website as a “celebrity ambassador”. So that confirms her deal with Voltz.

I had no idea that the ASA would take up this case: I was expecting an email along the lines of “we don’t cover private websites”. It’s great news that they’re willing to get involved and make a few phone calls, even when the publisher isn’t a major newspaper or magazine.

Unfortunately, if you go to Zoe’s site right now, you’ll notice that no less than the last nine posts refer directly or indirectly to the Voltz brand, with no disclosure of her financial relationship with the company. I’ll be mentioning this to the ASA representative. Despite this result, if you see anyone else (in the UK) slipping towards undisclosed advertorial content on their blog, do shoot the ASA a quick email and follow up with them.

In other news, if you’re a subscriber to Press Gazette, make sure to read my interview with some top magazine and newspaper editors about advertorial ethics and standards, set against the ASA’s rulings on the Express newspaper advertorials.

You may recall the former Sunday Mirror columnist Zoe Griffin, who resigned in March this year after working for The Sunday Mirror under the brand of “youngest, hottest columnist out there”, despite being older than the News of the World’s Dan Wootton, her main rival at the time. According to Journalisted she also contributed to MailOnline, The Mirror and The Sunday Mirror.

It appears as if the very same Zoe Griffin has been surrupticiously touting energy drinks products on her blog, without any form of disclosure.

In a post discussing the topic of a chance encounter with The Wire star Aidan Gillen, Griffin somehow manages to connect his svelte figure with a low calorie energy drink. Or how about this more recent post on a chance encounter with two of the former All Saints singers at a launch of a new hair care products line, which manages to link to the same energy drink again, because “they are made in the same factory”.

I’m speculating here, but it has all the hallmarks of a PayPerPost deal. That latter example might also suggest that Griffin has a personal connection with the Salon that hosted the party.

In a month which has seen the ASA rapping the Express for misrepresenting adverts as editorial, it’s not a great sign that former gossip columnists of national papers potentially think it’s ok to shill products on their blogs.

Props go to @Badjournalism for spotting these posts.

A response to Mediaite’s little piece on David Carr’s New York Times piece on AOL.

I count one link to an AOL blog property on AOL.com right now. One. That goes to ParentDish.com. Besides that there’s a permanent link to Autoblog on the top left sidebar. Every other link goes to an AOL.com news/fashion/celeb property (which I don’t count as a blog property).

AOL.com does drive a lot of traffic to its own properties. But it isn’t the reason sites under the Weblogs, Inc. umbrella (and their sister sites that run on Blogsmith) have been a success. Nor are galleries, which are used by 99% of AOL’s competitor sites. The real point the Mediaite piece hits on here is “what happens when/if AOL turns off dial-up, and it loses half its traffic to AOL.com?” Well, that hasn’t happened yet, and even if it did, it probably wouldn’t change a lot for most of AOL’s smaller spin-off properties.

I don’t know why I’ve written all this about AOL (disclosure: I used to work indirectly for the company at Weblogs, Inc.), other than to say that writing for them on a spin-off site is an amazing experience. Why? Because as a freelance writer at AOL you can work for them for 3+ years and never have to actually meet or talk to or even email someone directly employed by AOL (if you do happen to meet them, they’re usually very nice!).

Blogging for AOL in my mind equals complete editorial independence. In fact, you’re so cut off from “AOL proper” that getting a link to your blog post on AOL.com really isn’t worth the frustration and bureacracy. You get such a small and temporary gain in traffic and readership (and those @aol.com users still haven’t figured out what Caps Lock is for), that you’ll probably end up not bothering. That was certainly the case when I was there between 2005-2007, and judging by the number of AOL blog links on AOL.com, it’s probably still the case.

In light of the release of this month’s ABCes, two updates on The Guardian’s website.

1) The Guardian’s poor linking practices (which I’ve blogged about previously) continue to hamper the www.guardian.co.uk’s usefulness. At time of writing, the story featured above on the NHS Swine Flu advice website did not feature a link to that website.

This is bad bad bad. People come to the news to be informed, and this is basic information that The Guardian is needlessly omitting. I’d say that it arguably undermines their whole product: it’s great that most of The Guardian’s excellent team of bloggers links out, but this effort is somewhat defeated if the number one story on the whole site doesn’t!

In this specific case it also opens them up to criticism, since that same story featured two links to internal Guardian links. Those are fine, but you can’t omit the core link to the story while linking to yourself!

I hope to God that this is just crappy CMS syndrome. Really, there is absolutely no point talking about the future of newspapers (nor the prospect of The Guardian turning off its presses) if linking remains a secondary thought.

(NB: I recognise the irony of this being a story about a website going down — where a link from The Guardian might not necessarily help things. However, it’s really not The Guardian’s job to help keep Government websites up.)

2) Good news: The Guardian has slightly improved its Brightcove video solution. Videos are now viewable in full screen, although they’re not embeddable yet. They should really be cross posting all of their copyright-owned content to YouTube, but I’ll take this small victory for now!

All in all, frustratingly small steps from my favourite and most trusted news source.

In response to an email from the NUJ New Media email list (the general gist being that a) why should NightJack want to remain anonymous, since running a blog is about getting readers, right? and b), that NightJack should have expected to have his anonymity busted at some point) I wrote some thoughts at 8AM on the train to London. Here’s what I wrote:

I’d question whether every blogger’s primary intention is for people to read what they are writing. Especially when you’re talking about someone working within a high profile organisation who may have gripes about his work. How many of us have been in a job that is frustrating for organisational or bureacratic issues? All of us. However, that doesn’t mean it’s justifiable for every individual to start an anonymous blog about their employer.

Say you’re a call centre employee working in London on minimum wage. You’re working for a private company, so no public money is subsidising your work, and you’ve probably signed some form of non-disclosure agreement about information you procure at work. There’s very little justifiable reason for you to start an anonymous blog decrying the organisation that you work for.

Now, say that same organisation starts paying you less than minimum wage, stops paying for overtime, and begins employing people under 16. You have a huge incentive then to reveal this information. Its not hard to see why someone in this situation who has no easy way out might start an anonymous blog. They certainly would not be doing it for wide readership (at first). Most likely they would want to experience a sense of catharsis, and connect with other people in similarly hopeless situations (both of which are true in the case of NightJack).

I’d also suggest that there are some very obvious reasons why someone in this hypothetical situation would not go to a journalist or alert authorities to the situation. One, they may not have or known an easy way to get in touch with a journalist. Two, they may not trust a journalist, even if they do know a way to get in touch with one. The same reasons apply regarding the proper authorities.

If we expect privacy from the prying eyes of the Government, then surely individuals who do a public service and reveal information in the public interest should be able to expect some privacy from the News organisations that claim to act in their interest! We may not be able to expect the courts to agree with this principle, but I’d have thought a newspaper like The Times would understand and accept it!

On the point about the distinction in privacy between publishing on your private blog and on someone else’s server (or via a journalist), I think this is a clear case of how the law has failed to keep up with technology and society. We didn’t have such a widespread network of “self-publishers” ten years ago: now we do. So the rights to privacy that anonymous sources enjoy should unquestionably be extended to individual anonymous bloggers.

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I’m considering distributing these as leaflets outside 1 Virginia Street tomorrow during my lunch break. Anyone want to join me? Let me know if you think I should change the leaflet at all.

This story on how The Times needlessly “outed” the anonymous blogger NightJack, makes me absolutely mad with rage. Read this excellent Guardian article on why this is a ridiculous ruling, and why The Times is absolutely wrong to be chasing up anonymous bloggers like this.

What takes the cake for me is that the actual article that does the “outing”, features an entirely ridiculous pre-justification for it. I quote the first few paragraphs:

“”If the Police arrive to lock you up, say nothing. You are a decent person and you may think that reasoning with the Police will help. Wrong.” It is not quite the advice you would expect to receive from a serving police officer.

But Detective Constable Richard Horton, of Lancashire Constabulary, gave readers of his NightJack blog the full benefit of the knowledge that he had gained from 17 years in the force as to how to extract oneself from the grasp of the long arm of the law.”

This stuffy, fake outrage is utterly ridiculous. One of the first things a lawyer tells their client after they are arrested is do not tell the Police anything. For the varied and numerous reasons why no individual should ever reveal anything to a Police officer, watch this absolutely excellent video, where you will see both a Law lecturer and a real, live, United States Police Officer tell a crowded room of students why you shouldn’t speak to Police Officers, even if it’s for something as minor as a traffic stop.

This little tidbit of knowledge should be shouted from the rooftops! For NightJack to reveal it is a) justifiable in the sense that anyone in the know already knows it and b), does a civic service to anyone who’s ever been arrested.

Does anyone have an archive of the blog?