Taking Out The Trash

Come on in, there's plenty of room

Update: perceptive analysis over at Paperhouse of Brown's spat with the Bristol Evening Post over the value of news in the crudest sense.

And welcome to Bristol 24-7 which editor Chris Brown describes as:

• First, as a local newspaper, to be the city’s most comprehensive source of news, sport and opinion. I intend to bring together the best news sources into this site to give readers the widest possible range of information – and produce as much original journalism as possible to provide a new, distinct perspective on life in this great city. “I’ll do what I do best… and link to the rest”

• Second, to be the best source of information on the city – in effect, to be the Google of Bristol. Over the coming months new sections will be added so that, whether you are a resident, or just planning to visit, then I hope to ensure that the facts and figures you need make your time in the city easier is available – quickly and easily – through this site. If it isn’t, then get in touch and I’ll make sure it will be in future.

• Finally, to provide businesses with a range of online marketing solutions to help them grow. What does this mean in plain English? It means, why spend big money on short-lived newspaper ads with no idea if the money has been well spent? Bristol24-7 can provide you with everything from new, interactive websites, to SEO, Google Ad management, social networking and email marketing – with honesty and integrity at heart, and at a price that puts the power of the internet into the hands of even the smallest company, organisation or group.

And the bit I appreciate, being a good NUJ member and all that, is this line:

At present though, I am not in a position to pay for contributions to this site – and I will not ask for anyone to offer their work to me for free. It is an unsustainable way to conduct a business and is clearly not fair for contributors.

I hope in time that the site succeeds and I can pay for contributions. Until then, all I can do is ask readers to email me if you have any suggestions to improve the site, or are willing to contribute to make this site a success. I promise I will read all messages and reply, if necessary, as soon as I possibly can.

Good luck with it. You can also follow Bristol 24-7's twitter feed and the email is: [email protected].

Going undercover

The BBC screened a programme tonight showing some celebs sleeping rough so they could expose the fact that, er, sleeping rough wasn't very nice.
It was a programme so weak in ideas that you wanted to gauge your own eyes out in frustration. It's not as if there is a lack of stories around. The money spent on the 'talent', which included Annabel Croft and the Marquis of Blandford (WTF!), could surely have gone to some journalists who might not have a name but do have a story to tell.
By coincidence Lovefilm sent me Shock Corridor to watch so I stuck that on afterwards.
Sam Fuller's 1963 film is about a reporter who goes undercover in a mental hospital to expose a murderer. The asylum acts as a metaphor for America at the time. The three witnesses the reporter meets are a GI brainwashed by the Communists in the Korean War, a black man convinced he's the founder of the Ku Klux Klan and a physicist who worked on the atom bomb programme and couldn't take the pressure.
It's Sam Fuller so don't expect things to end well.
What I found interesting was that the reporter, Johnny, is an egomaniac whose motive is not really to solve the murder but to win a Pulitzer Prize. This isn't about the hack as noble investigator but as obsessive, desperate to receive acclaim.
The film was originally banned in this country because the BBFC didn't like what it said about those suffering mental health problems. I'm not sure they got that Fuller felt it was society which was sick.
If you can get over actor Peter Breck's scenery-chewing performance in the lead, Shock Corridor is worth viewing. Check out the trailer below for a taste.

Toby Foster: you are a star

I've seen a few extracts of an interview Toby Foster from BBC Radio Sheffield did with Peter Davies, the new English Democrat mayor of Donacaster, but Luke Akehurst has the full transcript and it's a corker.
He absolutely skewers the mayor.
Let's hope people find out early about some of the brain deads that got in at the local and european elections via more decent journalism.

Update: James Barlow offers a useful perspective on this and goes one better with an audio clip.

Update 2: Andy Smith did the original transcript and has more on Mr Davies here. Meanwhile this is rapidly going viral as everyone is tweeting about it today.

Update 3: Looks the new mayor has performed his first u-turn.

South West media awards

Well done to Hugh Dixon over at the Bath Chronicle for winning columnist of the year at the South West media awards. Exeter Express and Echo taking most of the gongs - not much for the print media in Bristol, Bath or Wiltshier. Boo.

Tuesday is new media day

Been having fun today exploring the Help Me Investigate site (plenty of explanation on it here and also here) and also set up a Twitter account having stumbled across Paul Bradshaw's piece How Journalists Can Master Twitter only a year after it was first published. Tomorrow I'm looking at some innovation from William Caxton.
Of course what I should have been concentrating on today was marking, marking, marking and leafleting, leafleting, leafleting. It's going to be a long evening.
Meanwhile Computer Weekly has published my in-depth backgrounder on the Ian Kerr blacklisting case complete with photos - so it's not all been playtime all day.

C4 funded new investigative journalism outlet

This via Press Gazette: Channel 4 announces funding for Help Me Investigate - a collaborative effort aimed at sharing skills and expertise to pursue stories.

Paul Bradshaw, creator of the site and online journalism lecturer at Birmingham City University, said he sees Help Me Investigate as a toolkit for people.

He said: "People can contribute their expertise to answer specific questions, and journalists with no resources could use the site to call on the community for help."

Lot more detail posted by Paul Bradshaw here.

The PG article also says:

The site will launch this month in test mode, inviting users to ask questions about local issues such as hospital parking charges, the expenses of local councillors and how much councils spend on PR.

Good luck to it;we can only do with more such initiatives at the moment. Though that list of stories to be investigated doesn't seem particular original or indeed under-researched.

Here's one: Man with stable job and bright future dies in Bath police cell and six months on we still don't know why. I've no idea what happened but I would like to know how come our present system can't provide a reasonable answer in a reasonable time for the sake of the family and the police.

Three into one will have to go

The ideal for a freelancer is to be able to do one job and sell it to different markets. As long as everyone knows what is going on it's not a problem.
I don't often manage it that often, but tomorrow is the most eclectic mix of titles I've been commissioned by so far.
I'm covering a court case for the Guardian, Morning Star and Computer Weekly and will be keeping in touch with the newsdesk at Building magazine and Tribune.
Just hope they're not looking for follow ups in different parts of the country because the teleporter's on the blink.

Keeping a watchful eye

Over at the Paperhouse and Sarah Ditum keeps up the pressure on the Bath Chronicle and Western Daily Press to not treat the BNP with kid gloves.
The Chronicle editor had the cojones to respond to Sarah's original article and debate with readers while from the WDP, as yet nothing.
Spot the paper which understands how the relationship between journalist and reader and print press and new media has changed.

In the line of fire

Got an article in The Guardian today on people who staff customer complaint lines.
It sounds like the kind of job most of us would think twice about taking but many of the people I spoke to got real satisfaction from it.
If you work for Kellogg's, customers send you funny-shaped cereal while those working in local government saw the chance to improve services.
And if you're Richard Branson people send you six page letters with pictures about the in flight meal.
Newspapers have been notorious for their poor complaint handling. Mobile phone firms or utility companies at least a call centre somewhere even if the staff are poorly trained and motivated. Calling a newspaper with a complaint used to be about as rewarding as watching Wigan versus Blackburn inan end of season dead rubber.
With the advent of newspaper ombudsmen, even our industry has taken some steps towards listening to the customer. I just though wonder how many over-worked news editors on local newspapers have received training on how to handle those trying complaints that come in just before deadline.
Newspapers have always been good at listening to, and reflecting, readers complain about other things. However they have a tin ear for complaints about themselves. Perhaps that has led to more of the public being turned off from traditional media and the appeal of new media with its niftier ability to handle comment and correction.
With The Evening Standard's campaign saying it's sorry we look for the ulterior motive while M&S's 'we've boobed' campaign just strikes as a clever response to a marketing failure.

Should taxpayers save journalism?

Via journalism.co.uk comes this story on an American study which concludes that the crisis facing journalism requires the government step in.

Wired says:

The news media has a bad case of going-out-of-business blues, what with classified ads decamped to Craigslist, readers ditching print subscriptions for the web and falling (though often still healthy) profit margins leading to massive newsroom cuts.

In fact, the internet may have been so successful at out newsing newspapers that soon large U.S. cities may not have a daily paper, at least not one printed on dead trees.

Now, Free Press, an advocacy group created to fight media consolidation, thinks the internet and profit-focused media consolidation has dealt enough of a blow to journalism that the government needs a National Journalism Strategy

You can get a copy of the report from the Free Press website.

Personally, in the current climate, I can't see taxpayers swallowing this even if I do think that the media deserve a bail out more than the banks do. And we have a much stronger public service broadcasting ethos already (we already fund the BBC).

Not only that, but has every MP is in the middle of being given the kicking of their life by the media I would suggest now is not the time to go cap in hand.

Having said all that, there is an information deficit in many parts of the country as the traditional media retreat. New media is filling some of the gap but not all (don't see many bloggers at magistrates courts) and you still need the skills to access their product.

It's not overstating it to say that this information deficit will lead to a democratic deficit - and that's where we would expect government to play a part/stick its oar in (delete as per your political preference).