Markmedia

Rant on

As someone who loves to rant, vent spleen, disgorge well crafted (hahahah) complaints and just generally be a foul mouthed type, I love the idea of Dial-a-Rant.
The system is simple. You ring (0044) (0121) 288 9321 or skype dial.a.rant. You vent. You verify your rant. It gets published.

Great service, great idea. Give it a go.

Glasgow tagged [Make a local PiciWiki]

The Glaswegians Photo Archive is a byproduct of the Cranhill Arts Project, the largest documentary photography project in Scotland; 30,000 photographs taken between 1989 and 1992.

This on-line archive provides a selection of these photographs that are "a record of Glasgow through photographs of its people - their lives, habits, quirks and cultures." 
The images are organized into topical albums, such as "Things You Don't See Anymore" where aspects of Glasgow that have disappeared or been altered in the sixteen years since the photographs were taken are displayed. 
These lost Glaswegian sights include orange and black buses, smoking in pubs, and getting pissed.
Or Nice Glaswegian Ladies, which is exactly what it says on the tin.
Another album, Protest and survive, shows just how hated the Poll Tax was with Glaswegians and goes on to group celebrations like May Day and the release of Nelson Mandela with other political campaigns. Visitors can sign up for an account in order to tag photos, and with or without an account, it's possible to search or browse by existing tags.

In this flickrista age, why is there not an archive of every town in the UK, with taggable pictures and the ability to build the stories told by the pictures? Make a local PiciWiki and grow the knowledge.

Update: Joanna at the Birmingham Post let me know about a similar site for the the West Midlands - the big picture

Drug Information Portal

This database, launched in February 2008, provides information about over 12,000 drugs, including prescription and non-prescription drugs, dietary supplements, drugs of abuse, and investigational drugs. Searchable by generic or brand name, or browse resources by drug class or by audiences such as the public or librarians. Also includes news, featured drugs, and related resources.
 

American Customer Satisfaction Index

The ACSI produces indexes for 10 economic sectors, 43 industries (including e-commerce and e-business)[PDF], and more than 200 companies and federal or local government agencies. The measured companies, industries, and sectors are broadly representative of the U.S. economy serving American households. Smaller companies are grouped together in an “All Others” category for each industry.

voice of the voiceless

How often have you heard newspapers say that they are the voice of the voiceless?
A lot I bet.
What a pile of shite.

When the voiceless get vocal, when the audience gets uppity, the newspapers get frightened, offended and defensive.

A couple of examples. The Max Gogarty saga is one.
Short version: Max gets signed up by the Guardian to write a travel blog. He starts with;

Hello. I'm Max Gogarty. I'm 19 and live on top of a hill in north London.

At the minute, I'm working in a restaurant with a bunch of lovely, funny people; writing a play; writing bits for Skins; spending any sort of money I earn on food and skinny jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted two-month trip to India and Thailand. Clichéd I know, but clichés are there for a reason.

Trite shite. Comments ensue. Lots of comments. Not positive. It then transpires that Max is the son of some-time Guardian travel writer Paul. Nepotism comments ensue. Many. Some vitriolic. Some even more vitriolic. [read about it on Joanna's or Pete's blog or search]. Blog gets taken down.

What we see here is audience participation. The voiceless speaking, ney shouting, and what they say is: do not like this.
The reaction from the champions of the voiceless?

Caroline Davies of The Observer writes of "Hate mail hell of a gap-year bloggerr". Emily Bell the Guardian's director of digital content says: "As publisher, we have a duty of care to him" and "It gives one a new perspective and empathy with workers in the health, education and retail sectors who have to mop up a fair amount of face-to-face abuse on a daily basis."

One of my favorites is by Rafael Behr

But as the case of Max Gogarty shows, there is no presumption of civility or community spirit online. His fate should be instructive to politicians. He was flamed because he was perceived to be bogus. Self-selecting judges ruled that he had no business writing for the Guardian. The message was transmitted swiftly, sometimes eloquently, sometimes wittily. His travel diary was extinguished. As an expression of mob will, it was very efficient

So. User comment, the vigorous expression of popular dissatisfaction, is now mob rule. Ahhh, it has to be you see because it is aimed at our newspaper! How dare those ungrateful cheeky bastards turn their ire on us when we gave them a voice.

My other example is from Sweden. A journalist at a Swedish newspaper got the job of moderating the  comments section of the site.
Two things happen.
Firstly the journalist Jaikus for help on how to change the rules of moderation. The rules are very restrictive.  The Jaiku community helps with suggestions and support.
The attitude the rules formalize is arrogance. No commenting on evenings or weekends. When she took up a discussion with the powers that be and as an example suggested that they contact a poster who had a post refused, there was absolutely no understanding of why:  "Thats not the way we do things - it is clearly stated that we have the right not to publish". And even worse: "Thats not the way we do things at a NEWSPAPER".

A thread on the comments board about the rules for posting was killed in the following way:

Debate over:
Time to end this debate. Please read the rules for posting and note that we only publish a selection of the posts. 

And there is the problem in a nutshell.

They still don't get it!

We are in the middle of a power shift. It is not that the rules of the game are changing and the media is slow to adapt.
It is a whole different game. Megaphone media are dead. That does not mean they wont be around for a (long) while, nor that they wont be (decreasingly) profitable. But they have no growth future.
They still don't get it!

Media conglomerates have been able to (miss)treat their public pretty much as they wanted  for a long time. And they still do not see the public as equal partners. As co-creators. As collaborators.

This is why I do not believe the talk of community building. Every time I hear it mentioned it is always in a discussion on how to monetize the users. How to "harvest" user generated content. How to get the user to fill the gaps created by under-staffed, under-trained (and mostly under-paid) journalists at the coal-face of 30% profit margining media companies.

Get a clue. The audience is grabbing back its voice. We in the media are going to get pilloried by the voices we say we mirror, represent, reproduce. And about time too.

The voiceless are less so now. Voices that are being used. Raised. Heard.
If we are to survive we need to listen. Talk with not at. Cooperate with our communities. Understand that we are A voice (and an important one) but never again THE voice.

Update: More foolishness

quote of the day

Quote of the day: "Well of course you are interested in blogs, you've been taking management happy pills."

Thanks you know who. Sad that we haven't come further than this.

Some problems and what I think we can do about them (part 1)

I recently spent a week with a group of (being groomed to be) editors from the British regional press. It was an interesting, inspirational and educational week (for me at least).

I know a lot of what I say below has been said before, but this allows me to start to explore for myself some of the issues involved and, hopefully, to get some reactions as to where I might be wrong or right or somewhere in between.

I learned the following:
On the one hand it seems that everybody understands that there are huge changes happening and that they want in (well perhaps not everybody).

On the other hand there is a huge amount of fear.

• Fear that the (physical) paper will suffer at the hands of the digisphere (everything from the web to mobile).
• Fear that the quality of the stories we tell will be damaged even more by the 24/7 publishing model.
• Fear that it just means more work for the same or even less pay.
• Fear that the kit is not up to standard to do what we ask of it.
• Fear that we are not up to the standard the complicated kit demands of us.
• Fear that the carpet of experience that both managers and journalists have traditionally been able to stand on has been pulled from under them. (this is the one I think is most damaging)

These (quite justified) fears are leading to a crisis of confidence in our news organizations that is both paralyzing and debilitating.

I think I see three levels of intertwined but separate difficulty:

Skills upgrading [this includes both "craft" skills -how to- and "imagination" skills -why to] for journalists.

Structural problems on a managerial level.

Organizational problems on a newsroom level.

Let me start with the skills for journalists: 

As is so often the case there is a huge spread of knowledge about using digital resources, both on the research side (collecting and managing the information) and on the distribution side (publishing in differing digital forms). There are a small number of very advanced users, a larger group of users who have amassed a good degree of competence in specific areas - sites which have addresses and telephone information in individual countries, crime statistics, sports etc. - and a majority with a surprisingly low level of digital literacy.

This is slightly worrying. Journalists have been using the Internet now for almost a decade. The branch perception seems to be that as we have had access to the Internet for so long, then we must be able to use it. Also, the younger generations have grown up with the Internet and therefore know how to use it. Both perceptions are deeply flawed. Just because you grow up in a society where motor cars are prevalent does not make you a driver.

Journalists in general have a shockingly low level of mid-career further education. In times when media organizations are being squeezed on the one hand from owners looking for a higher level of profit and on the other by ever decreasing advertising revenues (due to increased competition from Internet based classified advertising, local start-ups and even local councils amongst others), upgrading the skills level of journalists seems to be one of the last things budgeted for.
This is a very short sighted policy. Unless your workforce is up to speed with the latest advances in your field then you are going to fall behind new players. The skills training that is given is almost always purely operational. And at the moment it is almost entirely how to use the video kit.

This is not good enough. And it answers questions like the one Paul Bradshaw posed recently: "Why didn't a newspaper come up with this idea?" He posted the question on Twitter. The fact that the vast majority of journalists have never heard of Twitter, and a large number of the few who have do not see the journalistic use for it, is answer enough. There needs to be a skills training program that addresses the question "WTF use is [insert subject here] as a journalistic tool?"  This is a much more important question (and gives a much more important set of answers) than "how does xxx technically work?"

We need to have a discussion in our newsrooms amongst our journalists around the changes that are occurring within our industry. Way too many of the changes either taking place or about to take place have occurred over the heads of the journalists. And, perhaps even more importantly, the changes have been couched in technical terms - not journalistic ones. It needs repeating: The changes digitalization is bringing are not technical ones they are journalistic ones. It will demand a new way of thinking or at the very least a renewed and vigorous challenging of current practice.

The latest buzz word is conversation. I am totally convinced that this is correct. We need to engage our readers in a collaborative effort to build stories. The new consumer wants to be a participant in a dialog or a conversation, not the recipient of a monologue.
This is a hugely difficult lesson to learn and an even more difficult lesson to put into practice.The irony is that management don't seem to think it necessary to converse with the journalists who will participate in this conversation.

If the implications of such a discussion are to be taken seriously then the staff - editors, production journalists and journalists - need to be involved in the discussions and to be trained to use the new tools of the trade. From search engines [it is amazing how few people know how to use Google despite the fact that it is their primary source of information -which is a problem in its self] to pod-casting, from databases to collaborative encyclopedias. And to know not only how these tools work but why they are an important piece in the evolving arena they now compete in.

I will have a look at management in the next post.

Newspaper webdesign: the good, the bad, the ugly. Which makes money?

Over on The Journalism Iconoclast Pat Thornton has gone through a number of the postings on  Angryjournalist.com.  He has a look at post 241 which says

I’m angry because my company, just like the rest of the industry, wants me to do more with less. They’ve said, “To hell with quality. Let’s just fill the website with as much shit as possible.”

Pat then comments:

If you put too much content on your news site — specifically your homepage — you will overwhelm users and they will leave your site. Usability is paramount for any good Web site, and most newspaper Web sites are completely unusable because they are overflowing with content, ads and advertorial junk.

Fair enough, this is the prevailing school of thought.

Have a look at your sites. They probably follow the pretty standard UK model.
Most of your content will be in the top 480 pixels of a screen using a wide screen size and small text sizes.
No (or very little) scrolling. Clean. White spaces. Little boxes. What might be called Scandinavian design.

But hold on a minute.

 

At a recent meeting of the Digital Editors' Network I
had some things to say on the subject of web design (Press Gazette article). On the good (according to

what criteria?). the bad (again - criteria?) and the ugly (ugly ducklings may not grow up to be swans, but they sure can lay a shit-load more eggs).

Have a look at this:

This is the Swedish news webs flagship. It earns a ton of
money.
It has lots of gaudy adverts. Rotating, jumping, flashing ads.
It is long. You have to scroll a lot. As you scroll a Flash ad follows you like some predatory stalker.

And every page is a front page. The entire content of the "front door" page is present at the end of every story. No matter where you enter the story/site you get the full monty. This design is important because it builds on a deep understanding of traffic flows and acknowledges that readers no longer come through the front door. In increasing numbers they are arriving at your sites from links from search engines  (though not every one likes this) or RSS feeds directly to an individual story page, or Tweets, or whatever, rather than navigating from the home page.

And they are making money. Lots of money.

Aftonbladet is a Schibsted title. Schipsted has successfully transitioned from a paper-based media company to  digital-based media house. It has over 3.5 million unique users making it the second largest site in Sweden and the largest on-line newspaper by far.

So, every single design rule that you have ever been taught has been broken here, but they are making the sort of money you just dream of.

Am I saying they are right and you are wrong?
Not necessarily. 

What I am saying is that they might be right and you might be wrong.
What I am saying is that, as in newsrooms, the "this is the way we have always done it and it worked so far" attitude just does not cut it any more.

What I am saying is that most UK news sites have very strong page formation. But not making money – the Schibsted titles are. Why are they making money on sites that look like a dog puked them up and you’re not on sites that look like a Scandinavian designer designed them?

To quote the Press Gazette quoting me (I love to go all Meta on your asses):

Received wisdom has to be reconsidered, Comerford said. “Who received this wisdom, and is it wise? If there are other sites that violate everything that you would consider the rules of good design, and yet they work, then what can you learn from that?”

 

 

Dreamweaver and the big red button

There is an interesting debate going on just now about whether or not to teach Dreamweaver as part of journalism courses. Differing views of course: Andy Dickinson is (more or less) for, Amy Gahran is (more or less) against, Martin Stabe (more or less) in the middle. Paul Bradshaw broadens the perspective somewhat by arguing for broad journalism degrees.

I would like to give a slightly different take on the discussion and argue that the the problem is not Dreamweaver per se but the way we tend to concentrate on particular pieces of software instead of the underlying structures the software addresses.   
I have been teaching "new media" for over a decade now and have come to the conclusion that we (journalism educators in the new media field) teach too many programs and not enough structural understanding.
We teach Red Button classes. Take a monkey and teach him that pushing a big red button gets him a banana and you soon have a happy monkey.
After a while take him to a banana warehouse. Poor monkey goes hungry. No red button to push. Unhappy monkey.

What we all to often do is teach our students how to use a particular piece of software - which red button to press.
They then go out into the real world to discover that the company they have come to has a blue button. Unhappy student.

We need to teach the underlying concepts, the logical structures, the why more than the how. What a Content Management System is and why it is. Once they understand that then it will be (relatively) easy for them to find the right button to  push, or to explain to the button pusher what they need.

Its the banana thats important, not the red button.

How to do bad PR (Part 1 - UK)

You are a major telco, you are passionate about partnering, you are if your PR is to be believed -and why shouldn't it PR only tells it like it is- the creme of the crop. You are in fact Vodafone (and no, I will not be linking to them. Linkage is currency on the web and these fuckers do not deserve a digital dinar).

Here are the PR steps to be followed (if my recent experience is anything to go by):

Step 1: Find a major newspaper organization to help. Make sure that these people can seriously damage your reputation.

Step 2: Promise them things they need to facilitate a week long training course for their senior staff

Step 3: Keep them waiting till the last minute before delivering, and only then because one of your "passionate partners" has had to tear strips off some poor shit whose fault it probably wasn't (this has the added bonus of creating two streams of bad-will, one internal, one external).

Step 4: Deliver the kit so late that there is no possibility of them being able to check it before the course starts.

Step 5 Positively no support.

Step 6: Give them less kit than  promised and make sure there will not be enough to go round. This covers you bad-will wise in case any of the kit actually works (see next step).

Step 7: Be absolutely sure the kit does not work. (Bonus points here if each item has a different fault - keeps the freeloading bastards on their toes).

Step 8: Repeat step 5

Step 9: On the off chance that they get lucky and manage to get a support person, make sure they have no idea what the project is about, who authorized it or who the contact person within the company is. Be rude if possible.

Step 10: Wait for that hard earned good publicity to roll in and be offended if and when it does not.

---

Why do they bother? Why not just say no - not interested.
Their global branding manager should look into seppuku, but they would probably  just supply her/him with a blunt sword.