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Straw libel reform

2010-03-24T23:26:00.000Z

Campaigners for libel reform were jubilant on Tuesday when Jack Straw announced changes to the law which may come into effect after the election.

But there were some important omissions from the announcement:

NO commitment to change the burden of proof to match other areas of law. Defendants will still have to prove the truth of their stories rather than claimants proving falsity.

NO expansion of the fair comment defence.

NO cap on damages or fees

NO low cost libel tribunal (my favourite Libel Reform Campaign proposal).

NO Exempting large companies from using the libel law

Although a commitment from the government to change the libel law is welcome, it is possible to interpret the announcement as being distinctly half-hearted.

YES there is a commitment to move away from the multiple publication rule so that publishers can only be used once. However, this is not new and one of the options being considered in the Justice Ministry's consultation paper is extending the one year period in which people can sue, possibly giving them as long as 10 years.

YES there is a commitment to a statutory public interest defence to protect investigative reports and similar. But what will it look like. This could be an excellent thing. It could mean no more than codifying the public interest (Reynolds) defence which already exists in common law.

NO there is actually no commitment to change the law to prevent libel tourism, although Jack Straw has said he will ask the Civil Procedure Rule Committee to consider tightening the rules where the court’s permission is required to serve defamation cases outside England and Wales. As far as I can see, this will only have a peripheral effect. It would not, for example have prevented Roman Polanski from suing Vanity Fair. Would it have stopped Cameron Diaz from suing the National Enquirer?

Opposition to libel reform is gearing up and it will be significant. Already the proposal to change the fees lawyers can charge in no-win no-fee cases has come under fire. The problem with Jack Straw's announcement is that it leaves him a lot of room for manoeuvre.

Jack Straw's rhetoric was impressive. His commitments less so. If we are going to reform libel, let's start with something more ambitious than this.

Links on libel reform:

Ministry of Justice announcement.
Report of the libel working group (PDF)
Press Gazette: Libel Reform Bill to achieve 'fair balance' in libel
Guardian: Libel reform bill to tackle 'libel tourism'
Guardian:Government to 'end abuse' of UK libel laws
Guardian:Lawyers threaten to seek judicial review over cuts in libel fees
Libel Reform Campaign's report
Libel Reform Campaign's response to Jack Straw's announcement
The Lawyer: Allen Green asks "Is libel reform now really possible?"
NoodleMaz's account of the Libel Reform Lobby on 23 March

Web writing for the skimmer

2010-03-12T10:01:00.003Z

Get right to the point and make your web writing more effective.

Almost nobody reads from left to right, top to bottom any more. Most of us skim. We are trying to get as much information as we can for as little effort as we can get away with.

Here is an article I didn't read: The Social Media Revolution: Exploring the Impact on Journalism and News Media Organizations Apologies to its author, but I didn't have time and I couldn't work out what it was really saying. This is why:

When people skim they give more weight to the information in certain places:
o The first couple of words of the headline
o The first five words of an obvious picture caption
o The first few words of any page furniture (stand-firsts, pull-quotes, cross heads, box heads)
o The first five or six words of the intro
o The first few words of each paragraph

So when I saw the article above what my brain actually took in was

Social . Media . Journalism . News

... and I thought it might be interesting , so I skim read on. But there was no picture caption or other page furniture. What do the cross heads tell me?

Introduction . Literature Review

... not much.

Now I read the first five words of each paragraph. What do I learn?

Twitter. Facebook. Digg. MySpace. LinkedIn. (Good - interested again)
Many traditional and non-traditional media... (going off the idea)
The main purpose of this... (starting to get bored)
The report will respond to...(eyelids beginning to droop)
Media industry publications and critics... (zzzzzzzz)
Understanding where traditional news organizations...

Before being able to define...
Others have evaluated the news...

It is about Twitter and it is a report. I know nothing else about this piece because I didn't read any more. It is unfair on the poor author but I really am that ruthless... and so is everyone else.

Jakob Nielsen's research shows that we skim a web page in a few seconds and we use the words we find in the tops and lefts of the text to decide whether to read on.

For a writer, the answer is to get straight to the point. The words at the beginning should carry the greatest meaning. Don't use headings like Introduction. Say instead, for example, Audiences Expect to Contribute. Now the skim reader (everyone) gets more value from your writing.

Look at the start of each paragraph. Do we learn anything about what is in the paragraph. If not, you are not getting to the point quickly enough.

PS: for an example of someone doing it better see A Better Mattress in the Economist although I would have a caption on the picture.

Could US libel work in the UK?

2010-03-03T17:40:00.003Z

US libel laws seem to work fine alongside robust free speech protection. Why can't we have their laws in the UK?

Free speech is valued more highly in the US than it is in the UK. There is no getting away from it. In the UK, people's right to privacy, their right to a fair trial and their ability to protect their reputation frequently outrank others' right to free speech. In the US, free speech trumps all.

The increasing use of the English libel laws to stifle free speech has triggered a robust campaign for their reform. If you don't live in England, don't worry: our judges can still get you. If what you write is downloaded in England from a website anywhere in the world, the High Court in London will hear a case against you (I focus on England because judges in Edinburgh are no so keen on libel tourism).

Recently, I was asked to explain to some US journalists how the English libel laws might apply to them. Mostly, they were unprepared for the shock. It got me thinking.

In 49 out of 50 States they use the English common law system and, at heart, US libel laws are the same as those in England. The differences are in interpretation. But thanks to the US Constitution's first amendment guarantee of free speech, those differences are stark.

US journalists were mostly unprepared for
the shock of the English libel law

Here is what I thought. The US has a modern, free-thinking libel regime, but it works within English common law. Can't we just adopt their libel laws in the UK? They seem to work fine in the US.

[Note: I am not so keen on how the first amendment interacts with people's right to a fair trail, nor am I keen on US citizens' second amendment right to bear arms. In the UK, one is far more likely to be sued for libel; in the US, one is more likely to be shot.]

Here are some of the ways in which US and UK libel law differ:

Strict liability

Most law in the US and UK operates under the strict liability rule. Ignorance is no defence. If you run a red light, it does not help your case to argue that you did not see the light, nor that you did not know a red light meant stop.

In the US, strict liability is lifted for libel in the interests of free speech. This means you can argue, for example, that you did not know, or could not foresee that what you wrote might cause problems for someone. Good intentions matter.

In the UK, strict liability still operates. This means your intentions don't matter. You are judged on how other people interpret your writing. It means you can be sued over a typo, or an inferred meaning that did not occur to you when wrote the piece.

o In the UK, you are judged on the worst-case interpretation of your writing that someone else can reasonably make.
o In the US, you are judged on what you intended to say.

Burden of proof

In both jurisdictions, truth is an absolute defence. The difference is in who has the burden of proof. In the UK, the writer is assumed to have got things wrong. If they want to use the defence, they will have to prove the truth of what they wrote.

In the US, the plaintiff (the person suing you) has to prove that what you wrote was false. In fact, US courts make a distinction between those who seek publicity (celebrities and big companies, for instance) and those who don't. If you are sued by someone in the first group, not only do they have to prove that you got it wrong, they have to prove that you knew it was wrong when you wrote it, or that you behaved with a reckless disregard for the truth.

o In the UK, you have to prove truth.
o In the US, they have to prove falsity and may have to prove you knew it was false.

Harm

o In the UK, there is no requirement for the person suing you to show they have suffered as a result of what you wrote.
o In the US, there is.

Pay walls: it's about the ads

2010-01-23T18:56:00.002Z

Pay walls on magazine and newspaper websites are not about replacing advertising revenue. They are about winning it back.

True or false?:

Journalism is in crisis	True . False
The publishing industry needs a new business model	True . False
Pay walls are a stupid idea	True . False

There has been a lot of talk on these three subjects and on the last there has been a pretty broad consensus: pay walls are a really stupid idea. Except, that is, for the people who actually own newspapers. Some of those guys think pay walls are worth a go (the latest, this week, being the New York Times). So what do they know that we don't?

The New York Times announced this week
that it would charge for some web content

The argument against pay walls goes something like this: the web is full of free information. If you charge, people will simply go elsewhere. The slump in audience numbers that results makes it hard to generate revenue from (among other things) advertising.

But I am beginning to think the argument is flawed, particularly when you consider the advertising.

The crisis in journalism is really a crisis of money. Advertising has somehow disappeared making it difficult to fund good quality journalism. Where has the advertising gone?

Well, we are in the worst recession for a gazillion* years and advertising always dips during recession. But the recession will end.
There are lots of new media for advertisers to try, so they are trying it all out. They'll be back when they realise how much of it was just fooling around.
A lot of advertising never worked in the first place. The advertisers only noticed this when the new forms of media allowed them to measure better. Those guys are gone for now, but when they work out how to do it better, they'll be back.

So taking these factors into account, my new business model for the publishing industry is...

selling ads

I know. It sounds stupid. But I think that is what the pay wall publishers are counting on.

Imagine you are an advertiser in ten years time. All this new stuff that kept popping up when the web was new has died down. The media is stable, if different. So where do you spend your ad budget? Do you spread it evenly over the (by that time) gazillion* web pages? Of course not. You pick the places you think will most effectively reach the audience you want to reach.

And when some Uber-blogger comes to you telling you about numbers of unique users and bounce rates, you will know that they cannot tell you the difference between a committed reader and a cat snoozing on a keyboard. In that scenario, I think the following sales pitch will go down quite well:

Our stuff is so much better than anyone else's that our readers actually pay to receive it.

So pay walls are not really about making more money out of readers. They are about winning back the hearts of advertisers. There will be a short term loss of revenue, but long term it may turn out to be sound business strategy.

* That's a British gazillion as defined by the Royal Institute of Making Stuff Up.

Blogazine follow up

2009-12-28T16:09:00.001Z

In the previous post, I talked about using embedded CSS to create more visually interesting blog posts. I have since discovered a further disadvantage. The CSS code ends up in your RSS feed and may cause unpredictable results for anyone using the feed.

My flavors.me page uses an RSS feed from this blog. The previous post is displayed with the CSS as a nasty chunk of text at the top of the post.

Magazine design comes to the web

2009-12-06T18:01:00.018Z

B logazines are the latest craze in online publishing. They are blogs that take design cues from the funkier print magazines.

The best examples come from user interface (UI) designers who are demonstrating that the web doesn't have to come in neat boxes and screeds of text. Some of these are stunning -- they really get one thinking about the possibilities of the web.

But here's why you don't want anything to do with blogazines:

Consistency

There are all sorts of other reasons to avoid them, including the huge amount of time in css coding each post will take, but consistency is the biggy.

The designer of a print magazine has more latitude to bend the rules. No matter how bizarre the layout of an individual article, the reader always knows roughly where they are in the universe: somewhere between the covers of the magazine they just picked up.

On the web, all it takes is a single click to find yourself in Horse and Hound or the National Geographic Readers are less confident about where they are in the virtual world. The fact that one of your web pages looks a lot like another is actually very reassuring. It tells the reader they are still somewhere within your site.

I have been impressed with the work of Dustin Curtis But the reaction of everyone I have shown his site to (so far) has been:

What?

Great when I explain what it is about; not so good as a functional website.

But Dustin and other UI designers show us that blogs don't have to be boring. The limiting factor is not imagination. Most blog designs are boring because they are easy. The UI guys are creating a custom style sheet for each blog post (or generating reams of inline styles) and that is hard work.

What print magazine designers do is create a grid that is flexible. Most don't, in practice, create an entirely new design for each article (for the same reasons: consistency and time). But the underlying structure of the page layout makes it easier for them to create stunning visuals while maintaining a familiarity from one spread to the next.

The web offers similar possibilities. Design is based on cascading style sheets (css). You can have a single css file for your whole site or you can create one for each page. But there is another option with potential.

You browser doesn't care if you put your design into one css file or split it between several. Cleverly created, you could have a site-wide design that kept key elements fixed and consistent but allowed flexibility in other elements. You could then have simpler css files for each page to generate the variety you need to keep your site interesting.

It is going to taking some working out, but this blogazine idea has really got me

thinking

Note:
Time to write post: 12 minutes.
Time to code css: 4 hours 20 (I may be exaggerating)

Journalism and commerce

2009-11-21T19:31:00.005Z

The crisis in journalism is really a crisis in advertising. The depth of recession has had a calamitous effect on publishers' revenues and that puts pressure on the creative side of the business.

There has always been a symbiotic relationship between journalism and advertising. Good journalism creates a good place to advertise. Commercially successful publications tend to breed good journalism.

But companies shouldn't just consider advertising as a way of preserving a marketing environment. Advertising during a recession works.

This from Direct Marketing magazine 1991:

[The American Business Press (ABP) analysed] the severe 1974 to 1975 recession. Relying on questionnaires submitted by advertisers, the study tracked the sales and profits growth of 173 industrial companies between 1972 and 1977. The companies were divided into two groups: those that reduced advertising during the recession; and those that did not reduce advertising.

The study found that the companies that reduced advertising achieved minimal sales growth in 1974, suffered a sales decline in 1975 and increased sales by 70 percent during the five-year period. For companies that maintained their ad budgets, sales suffered no slowdown during the recession and grew 150 percent for the entire period. Profits showed a similar pattern. Most notably, the momentum gained by the steady advertisers during the recession helped them to grow at a faster rate in 1976 and 1977.

The original article can be found at Allbusiness.com.

How should a journalist look?

2009-11-19T18:51:00.003Z

Picture bylines are a trick to make journalism more human. If you know what the writer looks like, the theory goes, you are more likely to relate the the writing. I prefer the reader to be thinking about the subject rather than the writer's dress sense, but that's me: I am old-fashioned.

The question arises, what should journalists look like. Should they be themselves (or does that risk alienating the audience)? Should they reflect the public's prejudice about what a journalist should look like (press card in the trilby)? Or should they look like they know their subject?

The Telegraph seems to have a jacket and tie policy, but Political Editor Andrew Porter goes one step further and actually looks like a politician

Richard Edwards is the Telegraph's Crime Correspondent and looks a little like a policeman. Well done, Richard. Spot on.

The Guardian seems to have a more casual photo dress policy which allows Music Editor Tim Jonze to look like the musos he's writing about.

Steve Busfield is Head of Hedia and Technology for the Guardian and . . . erm . . . Sorry Steve, that shirt is not really saying Head of Media and Technology

Pressure to reform libel

2009-11-10T19:35:00.003Z

Reforming libel is urgent in the interests of free speech according to campaign groups English Pen and Index on Censorship. They have produced a report which recommends changes to the UK libel laws to make it easier to defend a libel action, and to reduce the costs.

These are their recommendations (with my commentary):

Unreverse the burden of proof. It would be up to a claimant to prove a story is false. Currently truth is the main defence to libel but the defendant is required to prove the story is true.
Cap damages at £10,000. Currently there is a £200,000 cap.
Change the multiple publication rule: currently each repetition is a fresh cause for action. This includes each time a piece is downloaded by a web visitor. The report recommends a single publication rule.
Only allow English courts to consider a libel action where at least 10% of a publication's circulation is in England. Currently only a few copies need to be sold in England for the courts to claim jurisdiction.
Establish a libel tribunal as a cheaper alternative to a full trial.
Strengthen the public interest defence. Currently stories where truth cannot be proved rely on the Reynolds defence. This is only available for stories of the most serious public concern.
Entitling people to their opinion in a broader range of circumstances. The current fair comment defence comes with a raft of conditions.
Cap base costs in libel cases. Currently the loser usually pays most of the costs of both sides and the sum is unlimited. The McLibel case is estimated to have cost £10m.
Create special exemptions for some parts of the internet such as chat.
Currently limited companies and PLCs have the same rights as individuals to protect their reputation. The report recommends removing libel protection for medium and large companies.

Libel in the news

Libel stains Britain's good name says the Index on Censorship
The Times reports that US publishers have threatened to stop publishing in the UK because of the risk of libel action
Simon Singh, writing in the Guardian, says that UK libel law is out of kilter with the rest of the democratic world, encouraging 'libel tourism' and the erosion of free speech in other countries
The Index on Censorship and English PEN hope their report will stiffen the resolve of the current parliamentary select committee on press standards, privacy and libel, said Ken Macdonald QC, former director of public prosecutions, quoted in journalism.co.uk
The BBC quotes the Ministry of Justice saying it will "carefully consider" the suggestions

Journalism: truth vs the big story

2009-11-08T13:32:00.010Z

Journalists miss the truth, too often, because they seduce themselves into writing the story that readers want to read.

Journalism is about truth, right? The whole point of it is to report what's going on in the world, and if we make stuff up, it rather defeats the object.

In the internet age, truth has gained a new importance. So much of what we read is suspect, that journalists are looking afresh at sourcing, independence, transparency. To stand above the static of more than a trillion pages of information, journalists must (simply must) be credible.

So journalism is about truth. And yet, if I tell you I am badly in need of a haircut, it's true, but it's not really journalism, is it? The number of things that are true is enormous. The number of things that anyone would care to read about is smaller.

The truth is in here somewhere

Selecting and prioritising information is also a vital part of the journalist's job. Never more so. Using the web is like being invited into a giant warehouse full of identical boxes and being told that what we need is in there somewhere. (Thankfully, Google does a pretty good job of checking out the contents of all the boxes). Some journalists seem (to stretch the analogy beyond its limits) to work flat out filling boxes with random stuff, just to make it more difficult to find anything useful.

It is simplistic to say that we prioritise the most important information. In fact, good journalists are looking for the biggest story. Herein lies the danger because stories don't have to be true.

What makes a big story

New and factual (it's news)
Human element (how much will our audience care?)
Scale and impact (how many died (for example) +
what effect does that have on our audience?)
Triggers a strong emotional response
Dramatic
Visual (good pictures but also stories that, in the telling, are easy to visualise)
Quirky, surprising, downright weird

In practice, there is another, subtler element at play. We all deal with the randomness of life by trying to force things into categories or shapes. Sometimes information falls into a pattern and we think: "yes, I get that". It makes the world easier to deal with (particularly if the news is bad).

This week's tragedy at Ft Hood, Texas, is a good example of the phenomenon. Right from the start, the authorities were anxious to dampen speculation surrounding the fact that the shooter was a Muslim. Why did they do that? Because there is an instinctive, almost primeval, urge to fit the facts to a story. A big story. If he was a warrior for the forces of terrorism living secretly among us, that is a huge story that fits the big facts. And it is a story that is easy to retell.

The story fits the scale of the
events too well to resist

But if he was a confused man, frightened of going back to war, that is a more muddled, smaller story. It does not seem to fit with the outrage of what he did. It is more difficult to see how the facts might lead to the consequences.

At the time of writing, it is impossible to know the truth. It could be either of these scenarios or something else entirely. However, it is already possible to see the first story forming in the pages of newspapers and on the web. There will be people who believe it, even if it turns out not to be true. The story fits the scale of the events too well to resist.

Brave journalists will, of course, go after the truth despite the enormous pressure to tell the story their readers want to read. Others will succumb and the truth will dissolve into a collective false memory.

The conflicting draws of truth and the story are understandable in reporting big, complex events. But too often, journalists are distracted from the truth in day-to-day reporting. That damages credibility.

For example, your readers may very well think that the diet of children today is so bad, it is surprising they don't get scurvy.

Does the story get precedence over the truth?

Everyone knows about scurvy because there is a story connected with it. It is caused by lack of vitamin C and is associated with the exploits of great explorers like Captain Cook. Any modern story including the word scurvy brings with it associations of dramatic deeds, romance, the smell of salt air. At a push, a writer could use one of those special words guaranteed to get a response from any audience: pirates.

So when the Daily Mail discovered that cases of childhood scurvy were on the increase, they may well have felt they had the dream story. Sick children, pirates, adventure. And above all, it fits with their readers' preconceptions.

But is it true?

There has been an increase in the number of children admitted to hospital with scurvy but:

The increase is from 61 to 94 over three years. The numbers are so small (relative to the total number of sick children) that it is dangerous to draw conclusions.
The Mail says straight out that it is due to poor diet, but there is no evidence for that. If you read past the bit about the pirates, the Mail quotes Ursula Arens of the British Dietetic Association -- the only person they talked to who is qualified to comment. She said: it was not possible to say how the children were getting scurvy: whether it was from a poor diet, or as a by-product of other diseases such as cancer.
I am indebted to EvidenceMatters who points out that the figures could be explained by the increased survival rate of children with cancer or short gut syndrome. Scurvy can be a side effect of these diseases, and if fewer children die from them, then more will exhibit symptoms of scurvy.

So what would you do? Run a complex story about inconclusive stats or a more definite one about pirates and child poverty?

There is a third option. Resist the urge of the great story altogether. Because the truth is there wasn't much of a story in the first place.

Pro journalism must stand out

2009-11-01T12:01:00.004Z

If pro journalists want to have a job in the age of information overload, they need to play to their strengths.

This week a journalist told me he didn't have time to write better, and the BBC published a press release as news without any analysis or context.

It was also a week the Times gave us a completely one-sided story to suit its own purposes and the Guardian printed a profile whose angle was how difficult it is to write celebrity profiles.

Let's be clear: journalism is in crisis. The reasons are various but the scary thing is how many journalists seem determined to make things worse.

Some journalists seem driven to try and fill the web

Rushed, badly written copy and regurgitated press releases seem to be symptoms of the internet age. We should have moved beyond sisyphean journalism where writers are driven to try and fill the web. But sadly, it is alive and well inside some publishing companies. Journalists are still given targets for quantity but not for quality.

I can just about understand it when you have ad reps who like to talk to clients about volumes and page impressions. But there seems to be no excuse for the BBC to be caught in this trap.

Biased reporting, lacking in authority, and me-me profile writing are old-school crap. But they seem to thrive online.

The days are gone when, if you worked on Pencil Sharpener Today magazine, your main competition was Pencil Sharpener World. Thanks to Google, you now compete with anyone who puts the words pencil sharpener prominently on their website. Among these will be some pretty talented amateur bloggers.

And the nature of the competition has changed too. Readers no longer decide between two print magazines and stick with their choice. If they care about a subject, they might look at 15 websites and the pro-journalist's will only be one of them. Having a brand is no longer enough to stand out from the crowd.

Bloggers have advantages over pro journos. Sometimes:

They react more quickly.
They are more passionate about their subjects.
They are more expert about their subjects.
They tend to communicate in a more direct and personal way.

But few pros (at least few of those I talk to) seem to think about playing to the advantages they have over the amateurs:

Better contacts.
Access to authoritative sources.
Better writing skills (if we concentrate).
Cross-fertilisation within teams and across publications.
Budgets for photography, freelances, illustrators (sometimes).
Access to technology specialists (in theory we can create technically better websites; in practice many of us are having to use outdated CMSs and practice a form of warfare with the IT department).

When journalists create the crisis

A highly researched story from the BBC and by coincidence, a similar press release from Morse. Surely there has been some mistake.
A Telegraph story on car insurance whose only source was an insurance comparison website. Their source (PDF see editor's notes) is quoted as data analysis.
Sunday Times libel tourism piece makes valid points but lacks authority or balance (and so weakens its case).
I could write about John Cusack or I could make it all about me and how difficult I find it to write about John Cusack. This Guardian profile is fine but doesn't stand out from the noise because it focuses on the writer and his difficulties.
I could sit and watch Twitter and then come up with an unexpected way of looking at things (because no-one else could do that). Another okay Guardian piece that doesn't stretch the reader.

Notes:

This story was entirely sourced using the internet -- feel free to shoot me down in flames.
Apologies to journalists whose pieces I mention. Your were not the worst and they were by no means the only examples I could have chosen.

New model journalism

2009-10-27T20:59:00.004Z

One freelance journalist has met the credit crunch head on by adopting a new business model for his journalism. Roy H Rubenstein guest blogs about the launch of gazettabyte.

I was recently promoted from freelance to publisher. There is no company car nor have long lunches replaced copy deadlines. Instead I’ve decided to publish my own online magazine -- gazettabyte, a website covering optical developments in the datacom and telecom industries.

In July 2009, the UK’s Institute of Physics closed FibreSystems Europe, a magazine I had been writing for since 2003. But when I approached other titles looking for replacement freelance work, I was either ignored, or told there was no freelance budget.

Moving from freelance to online publisher

So I decided to launch my own publication. But to make it work I needed to be paid.

I came up with the concept for gazettabyte, put together an editorial calendar and approached several firms within the optical industry to see if they would back the venture. It certainly helped that I have covered the optical industry as an analyst and journalist for the last decade — these were companies I knew and had worked with.

The response has been hugely encouraging. I now have nine sponsors whose backing gives me a year to establish the site.

I plan to write eight in-depth (3000-word) articles on industry trends, some company-specific features and a range of shorter pieces - gazettabits (yes, I really do have such a tag category on the site).

No more surprise phone calls telling me to stop writing as the magazine is about to fold

One concern I have is that with eight features spread over a year, will the regular copy make readers return? Another issue is how much time the site will require. I want to remain a freelancer and cover other topics too. However much time I estimate, I expect the site will require more. Even the writing bothers me – I no longer have talented editors to improve my copy.

But I do feel privileged. I now have my own title. No more surprise phone calls telling me to stop writing as the magazine is about to fold.

Roy H Rubenstein

http://www.gazettabyte.com
http://twitter.com/gazettabyte

Tweaking sports news

2009-10-05T20:18:00.007+01:00

Good writing is both visual and human. Small tweaks can make all the difference, particularly in the intro sentence.

Ferrari has confirmed that Fernando Alonso will drive for the team from 2010, replacing 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen, in a move that follows months of speculation.

I like the main verb to be visual. It makes the story more dramatic if the reader can picture what's going on. The word "confirmed" is not one that instantly conjures up an image. Could we re write so that "drive" is the main verb? It seems like the obvious word to use.

The writer of the original intro, wasn't sure about the change. There have been rumours this was going to happen for weeks. The reader probably already knows that Alonso will drive for Ferrari. It feels like the confirmation bit of it is the news.

If the reader cares about the actors in your story, they are more likely to read on. In general, people care about other people more than organisations. Could it be about Alonso first and then Ferrari?

It could be written more simply as

Fernando Alonso will drive for Ferrari from 2010,

but the writer worried that this misses the main part of the news out - the confirmation.

The important thing is to grab the reader's attention in the first few words. When you have them, you can tell a more complex story. What comes first should be as attractive as you can make it. Other information can always come later.

Focusing on the human interest and visual, obvious words gives us:

Fernando Alonso will drive for Ferrari from 2010, the team has confirmed, ending months of speculation.

What do you think? It is more or less the same sentence, but by moving some of the words around we have given it more punch. It is more likely people will read on.

Libel: six options for reform

2009-09-21T21:03:00.000+01:00

When Richard Dawkins talked libel to the LibDem conference on Sunday, he was preaching to the converted. The party has already proposed radical change to the law in light of Simon Singh's infamous legal battle with the British Chiropractic Association (BCA).

The LibDem solution is to change the burden of proof -- claimants would have to show a story was false to sue. Currently, the publisher must prove their story is true if they want to use the defence of justification (truth).

Prof Dawkins says British libel laws are stifling scientific debate. When Dr Singh criticised the BCA he might have expected -- welcomed, even -- a robust defence. What he didn't expect was the difficulty and expense of a libel suit, launched before the BCA issued any repost to his criticisms. Libel certainly doesn't encourage debate, and that is unhealthy for science and for society.

So how could the libel law be changed to allow scientists and others more freedom to discuss ideas in public? Here are six options:

1) Un-reverse the burden of proof

Pros: the LibDem solution brings libel into line with other law where one is innocent until proven guilty
Cons: may be politically difficult to put into practice. The same law protects celebs and innocent little old ladies from tabloid smears.

2) Give scientists special privilege

Pros: privilege already exists for MPs and lawyers to allow them to do their jobs. Why not scientists?
Cons: special conditions could make defending yourself against libel even more complicated.

3) Make fair comment unconditional

Pros: fair comment allows critics to give their honest opinions about films, restaurants, politics. The courts already distinguish between opinion pieces and news stories, but there is a condition that you do not pass off as comment allegations of criminal or immoral behaviour. Removing that condition would give everyone free speech as long as the context is opinion.
Cons: could result in blogs becoming unbridled slanging matches.

4) Different rules for different claimants

Pros: already works in the US where companies and people in the public eye must show that a libel was intentional or negligent. Ordinary people get better protection.
Cons: potentially makes libel more complex.

5) Mandatory repost

Pros: by making claimants show they took all reasonable measures to put their side of the case, you would make flaky claims more difficult. Also: the law is supposed to be equitable. Publishers no longer have a special position. In the internet age, anyone can put their case to the public.
Cons: the courts would have to establish what reasonable means in this context.

6) All the above?

Pros: we get free speech.
Cons: bit radical, maybe?

Good journalism from the master

2009-09-15T10:55:00.000+01:00

Keith Waterhouse, probably the best writer in journalism of his generation, died earlier this month at 80.

Among his accomplishments was Waterhouse on Newspaper Style, a manual for good writing. Most of what he says there is as valid in the digital age as it was when he wrote it. Here are a few snippets:

Journalists with flair write in the language of their readers
If a news story is dramatic, drama should come out in the telling. It is not enough simply to assure readers that the drama was there
Deadline fever encourages taut, crisp writing. The truly awfully written story demands time
To use outsiders' jargon is to take their own evaluation of themselves on trust
An interesting story does not have to open with a war-whoop
Despite the invention of the tape recorder, many newspapers have a tin ear for dialogue
Few journalists realise that the ground-rules for the human-interest story were laid down in Cassel's Book of Indoor Amusements, 1881
It is the tendency of cliches to generalise, approximate or distort

End free news the Murdoch way

2009-08-20T20:10:00.009+01:00

News International will close thelondonpaper in September, the Guardian and others reported today. It will end a phase of UK newspaper publishing that people have called the "free-sheet wars".

James Murdoch (CEO of News International Europe and Asia) talked about "streamlining operations" and "focusing on core titles" which some commentators have taken to mean it was losing too much money (£12.9m in the year to the end of June).

But the closure is part of a bigger shift in the news business. When it launched in 2006, thelondonpaper was one element of a complicated strategy to take on competitors: the Evening Standard and Metro. Both made money in a market which News International had no presence. Phase 1 of the strategy was successful: profits at Metro have slipped and ES has been sold.

But phase 2, making money out of this sector, has been abandoned. The problem with free news is you rely on ad revenue and (for those of you with your heads down a hole in the last year) ad revenue has all but dried up.

Readers must pay but there is an oversupply of information

It is no coincidence that the free paper's closure comes only weeks (NYT reports) after James's dad Rupert Murdoch announced he was going to make readers pay for web news. At one level, it makes no sense to argue that readers should pay for news online while you are giving it away in print.

But I suspect a more complex strategy. The new business model is that readers rather than (or more accurately -- as well as) advertisers must pay, but there is an oversupply of information. The preface to Murdoch's scheme must be the elimination of as many sources of free news as possible.

The easy part is removing the free news that News International controls: shut down thelondonpaper, put the Sunday Times behind a pay wall. Next we can expect:

Deals with other publishers (many of whom also hope to make readers pay)
Tactical moves to weaken or eliminate free competitors
Lobbying the government to put limits on what the BBC website provides for free

If it works, it won't be the first time that ruthlessness and determination saw an unlikely Murdoch strategy winning through. One way or another, I think we can expect changes in the news landscape.

Tops and lefts for SEO

2009-08-11T00:12:00.004+01:00

Search engines give particular weight to words that appear in the top and left of a web page. You can use fact in two ways:

Force the most significant words into those positions: the first two words that appear in the title bar and in your main heading are most important.
You can see which words you have naturally placed in those key positions and work out how much value they give to any visitor.

In this example, the words that appear in the key positions don't really help.

Pushing key words into the key positions will improve SEO

More on Twitter editing

2009-07-30T17:56:00.004+01:00

Using all 140 characters on Twitter does not kill the re-Tweet.

Fewer than 120 characters should be your target for a Tweet, a couple of commenters said on my post about editing for Twitter. Maybe 110 if you want to include hashtags.

This allows people who want to re-Tweet a few characters to credit you as the source and if a sufficient number of people do that, then you go viral and your life improves in unfathomable ways.

Of course, someone might re-Tweet the re-Tweet, so let's say 100 chars, and if one of the re-Tweeters has a long name then maybe 90 is all we should allow.

I'm stubbornly sticking to 140 characters against all advice, and here's why. I find the Tweets containing the most information are also the most likely to be re-Tweeted (interested to know if other people have the same experience). I note that most information is not necessarily the same as the greatest number of characters.

And, the good news is that writing 140 character Tweets does not seem to stop me going viral (in a modest way, at least). Here is an example:

Huffington Post wrote:
Enter the news literacy movement. Situated in the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University and the DC-based News Literacy Project, these entities, according to Stony Brook Dean Howard Schneider, seek to nurture "a generation of news consumers who would learn how to distinguish for themselves between news and propaganda, verification and mere assertion, evidence and inference, bias and fairness, and between media bias and audience bias--consumers, who could differentiate between raw, unmediated information coursing through the Internet and independent, verified journalism."

On Twitter I wrote exactly 140 characters:
News literacy movement seeks to nurture news consumers who can distinguish between verification and mere assertion. HuffPo http://tr.im/uFgs

It was picked up by @EvidenceMatters who wrote (138 chars):
rt @AdeMacLeod: News literacy movement nurtures news consumers who differentiate verification and mere assertion. HuffPo http://tr.im/uFgs

This was picked up by @murzee who wrote (137 chars):
RT @EvidenceMatters: rt @AdeMacLeod: News literacy : consumers to differentiate verification and mere assertion. HuffPo http://tr.im/uFgs

One could argue about the different meanings of the three Tweets (@EvidenceMatters gets my vote) but that's not the point. The point is that 140 characters did not kill the re-Tweet.

Why typos matter

2009-07-27T20:20:00.006+01:00

Standards in writing have never been more important because users are judging your credibility

Every web user knows that fake and malicious sites exist and many have strategies (conscious or not) for deciding how much they should trust what they read. Even reputable sites get it wrong -- users know this too.

Reputation, brand, design, physical interface are all important. But on the web, anyone can publish a professional-looking web site for free. Logos can be copied, sophisticated templates downloaded for free. A site may look reputable but it could be something else.

Guardian illustrates credibility problem with one letter extra

Imagine a malicious 12-year-old on his computer. How long would it take him to fake the Guardian's website? A few hours, probably, until he had something that looked and behaved as the Guardian site. But how long until it read like the Guardian? Maybe never. It is much harder to fake a professional writing style.

The thing that is hardest to fake is the content: both the quantity and the quality. Users know this and often it is the quality of writing they use to judge the credibility of a publication. If they spot a typo or poor grammar, then they trust the rest of site that little bit less.

Web values human news

2009-07-14T22:12:00.004+01:00

The most popular news stories are rarely those considered most important by journalists. The instant feedback possible in web news shows us that apparently trivial stories are often most popular.

Cats 'exploit' humans by purring is currently top of the most shared on the BBC
Twitter is not for teens is top of the Guardian's most viewed
Monster fish killed after terrorising swimmers and
Photographer captures the moment a bubble bursts are two and three on the Telegraph's most viewed

Traditional news values would value other stories higher than these:

Traditional news values used in judging the most significant stories include:

Newness
Relevance to reader
Scale
Impact

But web audiences seem to rank other factors more highly (although there other factors at play, including the fact that they are more likely to have already seen the big stories in other media):

The visual (a picture of a bubble bursting)
The (overly) dramatic (monster fish)
The I've-always-kind-of-suspected-that story (cats exploit humans)
That's someone like me (Twitter not for teens)
The quirky, weird, surprising and downright bizarre (all the above)

Now that reader response can be measured, serious news providers are having to include stories judged by the second set of news values. They will never outweigh the big news stories but we shouldn't be snooty about them. They have their place.

Subbing for Twitter's 140 chars

2009-07-10T23:07:00.003+01:00

The secret of a good Tweet is to cram as much information as will fit in your 140 character allowance.

This requires good old-fashioned sub-editing skills and some editorial judgement. In the example below, I was determined to keep the amusing quote which meant I had to be ruthless. You decide: did I go too far? (This is the actual process I went through: it may not be the most efficient way of getting there.)

253 chars (cut and paste original)
Swedish newspapers threaten to boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "The next step would be to tell critics they can't write anything critical." Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/10/swedish-newspapers-threat_n_229582.html

190 chars (trim link URL)
Swedish newspapers threaten to boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "The next step would be to tell critics they can't write anything critical." Huffington Post http://tr.im/rN8T

172 chars (sub down text)
Swedish papers threaten to boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "Next they will be telling critics they can't write anything critical." HuffPo http://tr.im/rN8T

160 chars (lose "threaten to" - changes meaning but within acceptable limits?)
Swedish papers boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "Next they will be telling critics they can't write anything critical." HuffPo http://tr.im/rN8T

145 chars (close)
Swedish papers boycott Britney concert over photo restrictions. "Next they'll say critics can't write anything critical" HuffPo http://tr.im/rN8T

138 chars (final)
Swedish papers boycott Britney concert over photo rules. "Next they'll say critics can't write anything critical" HuffPo http://tr.im/rN8T

Web news: 10 things on the BBC

2009-07-09T20:20:00.004+01:00

Analysing a typical BBC News story reveals some important lessons for web writers. Many of us are so familiar with the BBC format that we don't realise how clever it is.

Limiting heads to 33 characters means they work for readers, for search engines, for news feeds. Everyone working online should do this, but it's hard work.
A single sentence intro in bold works on its own in a feed but also leads into the main story.
A pic or video adds visual interest. Often these show people which helps to humanise the story. Pics and videos carry a caption: important in enticing a visual audience to start reading.
An early quote, often by paragraph 4, makes the writing livelier but also adds credibility and authority to the story. The first quote usually justifies the head and the intro.
A balancing quote offering the opposing view or an alternative insight is also important in adding credibility to the story. Giving voice to several views may broaden their audience too.
Covering the story in as many different ways as possible also broadens the audience. Video may not be ideal for a reader who is in a hurry, but it will make the story real for those who browse.
Expert analysis helps readers understand the significance of the story. The personality of the analyst adds a human touch. It also adds a link to the blog section of the site.
More visual interest as readers scroll down. A second pic also has a catchy caption.
Encouraging readers to respond to the story helps them to become involved. News becomes more like a conversation than a broadcast.
Giving that itching mouse finger lots of things to click keeps readers within the site and adds value to the story.

The original story can be seen on the BBC news site.

Headline howlers

2009-07-08T18:58:00.003+01:00

Classic headline howlers printed in the August issue of Word magazine included:

Churchill flies back to front
Prostitutes appeal to Pope
Miners refuse to work after death
Juvenile court to try shooting defendant
Hospitals sued by 7 foot doctors

News: can you believe it?

2009-06-30T17:53:00.003+01:00

Michael Jackson dies and teaches us that the new media is exactly the same as the old media.

When celebrity news site TMZ reported that Michael Jackson had died last week, we didn't quite believe it. The BBC, the LA Times and others reported the fact that TMZ had reported it but wouldn't confirm it. A number of serious news sites reported the story with inverted commas around the word "dies".

Who can blame them. The TMZ story, of course, turned out to be true. But so many others have not. Jeff Goldblum, for example, was reported dead the same night. This was a fake story. If you want to recreate the fake go to fakeawish and type Jeff Goldblum into the boxes. That's exactly how the story got started. Harrison Ford also didn't die that night, despite rumours.

It is heartening to see the news working exactly as it should. The Jeff Goldblum story got little traction because it could not be confirmed. The Michael Jackson story was huge. The truth outweighs the fake. (Although one suspects that for many outlets, confirmation involved waiting for the LA Times [whom we trust] to publish it and then going for it ourselves, which is not quite the same as getting a statement from the presiding doctor).

1. We don't run a story until we can confirm for ourselves that it is true -- the way it should be, the way it has always been?

The Guardian later described TMZ's story as "the scoop of the decade". Although it is a big story, and although TMZ undoubtedly got there first, it is difficult to accept it as the scoop of the decade. After all, what would have happened if TMZ had not existed? We would have read about Jackson's death about 40 minutes later than we did. Not quite Nellie Bly exposing New York asylums or William Howard Russell reporting from the Crimean War. They changed things with their scoops. TMZ really didn't (sorry guys, but you didn't).

It is the same as it ever was. In our rush to break a story, we forget that the news is elsewhere. The only reason that someone dying is news (I hate to tell you, but many people die every day and don't make it on to TMZ or anywhere else), is because of its impact on others. The mass emotional response to Jackson's death is where the real story is.

This is why the BBC, despite much criticism, was right to send Emily Maitlis to LA to film young people moon walking. The fans and their response are real story. I must be right -- Boris Johnson agrees.

2. Journalism is more than writing a story. It is about how that story affects people.

Yesterday, the Sun had a scoop of its own when it reported that Jackson had been bald and emaciated at the time of his death. TMZ reported the LA Coroner's statement that the story was false:

The report that is being published did not come from this office. I don't know where the information came from, or who that information came from. It is not accurate. Some of it is totally false.

he said. This is the same TMZ which picked up and ran with the Sun story about two hours previously. So maybe other news sources were right to pause over the celeb site's original story.

One Twitterer on a commuter train out of London on the night Jackson died reported that people around him could not resist gossiping about the story. But the concensus was that they wouldn't believe it for sure until the saw it on the BBC.

3. You only become a trusted source if you get your stories right most of the time. Being first doesn't help your credibility.