They sold us a lie

As the end of my third week of 'real' world work experience approaches an increasing sense of depression is beginning to prevail. My first two weeks were at FHM (owned by Bauer) where they used to share offices with Arena. Arena had closed a few weeks before hand. So I had the joyous task of clearing away the Arena side of the office which really pushed home the point that the industry was in a state. A few days later, we heard before most, that Maxim was closing (someone in the Q office had a friend there who informed them immediately after they got the news).

While on FHM the staff there made it very clear that the industry was in a state. This should be all to0 evident to anyone in the industry, but my 'work experience' made me really feel this. One colleage at FHM had ranted about how educators are selling a lie by 'training' people to enter the media industry, when there are no jobs to be had. He pointed out that there is an incredibly bloated industry for 'training' people to enter the media, while the media industry itself is shrinking rapidly.

After two weeks at FHM I moved onto Q (also owned by Bauer), where it immediately became clear that jobs had just been cut on the Q website. This brought my thoughts back to the colleague at FHM, one comment in particular, "These educators are selling a lie when they train people to enter the media, there are no jobs to be had."

Social media to be taught in primary schools

The Guardian revealed proposals today that social media such as Twitter and blogging should be taught in primary schools. The plans have been drawn up by Sir Jim Rose, a former Ofsted chief, and are quite an interesting idea.

I say this more because a lot of new media thinkers seem to be suggesting more and more that the journalists role in the future will be as a facilitator rather than a writer. If this is to be the case then the transfer of the journalist to the classroom could be a very interesting step in furthering this evolution. It also comes at a very interesting time as many journalists are losing jobs. Whether the idea of teaching 4-11 year-olds the in and outs of twitter, podcasts and blogging would be an attractive switch I remain unsure.

Facebook tells users to fuck off

I was browsing the membership of a group I had created, when next to my name, I noticed Facebook was being rather rude. This is completely genuine.

The journalist within me?

Well this one is a bit of a general musing. On Christmas day I was unfortunate enough to witness a man die. I won't go into details but essentially a drunk man thought it was a good idea to jump off the bridge in Llangollen, and was unable to make it out of the water. Not a nice thing to see, particularly on Christmas day.

I was initially tempted to write something up on the story, but then decided I had absolutely no interest in doing so. Some may consider this to be rather shocking as I claim to be an aspiring journalist. I just found that I had no intention of making my Christmas day worse than it was by finding out details and talking to other witnesses, people that know the man, etc. Essentially I didn't want to bring myself closer to the tragedy than I already was.

I wonder if I would want to had this happened on a day other than christmas, and frankly I suspect not. Direct reporting of death is not really the field I aspire for. That is the newspaper journalist's realm, and I aim to work in the magazine and online world.

Are Reith's values still maintained in the media?

Today's lecture was given by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's Technology Correspondent. Rory (hmmm not comfortable with using Rory, will go with RCJ instead, which is really comfortable) compared elements of the media (mainly broadcasting) industry in the 1980s compared with the industry of today. It goes without saying that there had been great change.

Something that interested me about RCJ's comments was that he suggested that in the 1980s editors tended to think they knew what was important to be in the news. I got the impression that RCJ was mainly referring to television editors. Anyway, his comment made me wonder if much has changed today. The concept of the editors knowing best is a value that dates back to John Reith's time as director General of the BBC. Reith was very much of the view that he knew what was best for the audience and that media should provide education for the audience. A brief summary of his views, but reasonably accurate I feel.

I wondered whether that has really changed a large amount today. For broadcasting public service requirements have dropped recently, especially for ITV. But I don't think general public service requirements are the same as Editors merely following the populous route. 

There is evidence which shows numbers of views/reads a piece of news gets is increasingly important. This can be witnessed in the most viewed/read stories which are normally flagged on websites. It can also be seen in the way The Telegraph's newsroom has this on one of their large projection screens.

However, I don't think this means that Editors are paying too much attention to most viewed statistics. Given the what stories would prove most popular, running orders would certainly be different on news bulletins if this was the case. I do think that it can be argued that Editors are increasingly feeling they do have to explain their choices a little more, as demonstrated on the BBC's Editors blog.  As it stands at the moment I think Editors are still choosing to give what they consider the most important stories, and for this 'elitist' I think that is probably a good thing. If Editors went with the stories that would be most popular there is a risk Paul Dacre would be Editor of all things media, a worrying thought. 

As an extra thought, RCJ did mention that he thought that editors at the BBC were still to a large degree given a remit to provide what the public cannot get elsewhere so in this sense the argument doesn't quite apply to the BBC in the same way.

I want it all, I want it now, I want it free!

I suspect I have heard my title somewhere before, but i can't put my finger on where or when. Essentially my title refers to what the consumer in our current age wants. The questions at this time of recession is as to whether it is really feasible for the consumer to get all their wants fulfilled.

What is happening to the media can be easily compared to what is taking place, or has already taken place in the music industry. The consumer has found through the internet they don't really have to pay for high quality content/music that they are getting, and now don't expect to pay for that content/music and this has left the media/record labels in some what of a bind as this content still costs a great deal to provide.  Our recent lecturer Rick Waghorn, of My Football Writer, paraphrased it that consumers "Want the news in the palm of their hand for free."

So where does this leave the media industry in the current economic climate, with advertising revenue falling massively. Since the consumer doesn't want to pay for their content, media companies must rely on advertising to make a profit, or even break even. As advertising revenue is also falling, this is seeing many media companies folding, and massive job cuts in others. The paying model has not previously worked but increasingly people are arguing this may be the only viable option for the media, or as Jemima Kiss argues the only option an investor may back for media start ups. I would disagree with Jemima and instead am inclined to agree with Shane Richmond who is inclined to think the pay for model is not a viable alternative.

I wonder if the model provided by the spot.us could be a potential solution to many problems. The ways this site works is quite simple in that an article idea is suggested to the community and people volunteer to pledge money for the story to be reported (this is explained slightly better on the about tab).  The community can also 'tip' what they think could be a good story to be reported. Spot.us would also tackle some earlier issues I have brought up for investigative journalism online. It certainly seems that innovative new methods such as this are more likely to succed than attempting to charge for content, as Shane Richmond pointed out this is certainly true in the UK where the BBC is always going to be a free competitor (even if it has a hidden subscription fee of sorts in the license fee).

Building around a community

I have been considering why it is that some blogs successfully build up large viewing figures while others are effectively dead space. Without going into obvious details such as Search Engine Optimization (although those interested in SEO for blogging would do well to read The Bloggers guide to SEO) and using links I think essentially the reason has had a lot to do with community. 

I have witnessed friends and colleagues attempting to attract more readers to their blogs through shameless self-promoting. There is nothing wrong with this, but it was interesting to note that their self-promotion was by advertising themselves where they had already built up a community: sending out tweets (I should admit Twitter is slightly different as you really can build up a much greater community there and, as Mark Drapeau suggests, twinfluence people), notes and status updates on Facebook, updating shared wikis and so on. 

Essentially this is an extension of trying to get friends, family, colleages and peers to look at your blog, which incidentally in my case my own mother still hasn't 'got round' to looking at this blog. It is because the people within these communities should have an interest in what you have written, and may even have some respect for it. My reasoning follows that you are advertising that you have written something because you are looking for some feedback, the simple joy of seeing 0 comments become 1 comment. For myself, I will be joyous about 1 comment for now, I don't wish to get carried away with myself.

Which brings me onto the subject upon which I was lucky enough to receive a lecture recently from Shane Richmond, Communications Editor at Telegraph.co.uk. Shane (I prefer using informal first names, surnames should only be used in blogging when referring to footballers or dictators) talked in some detail about My Telegraph, part of The Telegraph, which is essentially just a blogging platform. What is interesting is that when it was set up in May 2007 and advertised in The Telegraph, many readers did join, and it now has around 30,000 members. 

While that is not a huge number of members (considering Wordpress currently has 5.1 million blogs), it is certainly a very respectable number. Shane identified several reasons for why the membership grew to that number. A large number simply had not come across blogging before, and certainly weren't going to go in search of sites such as Blogger and Wordpress. The more important reason which he identified is that the numbers have been attracted because they enjoy the sense of community they have with the other bloggers on my telegraph, and value having people from that community read and comment on their writing.

Shane said that this sense of community could be particularly picked up on when changes were made to the website. The most comical example was when My Telegraph gave bloggers the power to delete comments which they did not want on their blog, there was somewhat of an outcry by users as they were heavily committed to freedom of speech. Another example was when a rankings table was introduced for the most read blogs, which again users requested to be taken down. 

It is argued that the web provides a space for a 'worldwide community', but I suggest this cannot really be the case if so many feel the need to flock to a banner for a community such as The Telegraph. This makes me wonder if the web will lead to more and more people feeling the need to have pre-defined communities to flock to, with neat little internet fences erected in hope that the undesirables will be kept out.