Journalism, online writing, media law blog

Observations on the hacking scandal

2011-07-18T17:47:00.001+01:00

In light of the News of the World scandal, it is not press regulation that needs to change. It is a culture that exists within some news organisations discouraging journalists from behaving ethically.

The story is not over yet, but here are some observations:

The press in the UK is regulated. Possibly more regulated than in any other Western country. There are laws on libel, laws on privacy and yes... laws on phone hacking.
The failure in the News of the World scandal was not a failure of press self-regulation. It had almost nothing to do with self-regulation.
It has long been the case that governments, the courts and the police have been reluctant to investigate the press because they do not want to interfer with press freedom. This is a GOOD thing. If you think about the countries where government investgations of the press are common, you don't want to live in any of them.
Shoddy journalism has been a fact of life in the UK for (at least) my lifetime. Sensational stories sell.
All the young people going into journalism I have come across (and I've taught a few) have a pretty good natural sense of ethics. None of them would have thought for an instant it was a good idea to hack into Milly Dowler's voicemail.
Organisational culture has a lot to do with distorting journalists' ethics. High stress, pressure to be first with a story, pressure to get a byline: these things get out of hand in many news organisations.
Press management by politicians has become too sophisticated. This has led to a Stockholm syndrome that works both ways. The victims and the guards have become too close.

What needs to change:

News organisations whose culture encourages unethical behaviour should be sanctioned -- current employment law probably already allows for this.
Journalists who blow the whistle on their employer should be better protected.
Dealings between journalists and those in any position of power should be more transparent.
You should reward ethical journalists by reading their publications.

Journalism is ALL about credibility

2011-07-04T11:56:00.000+01:00

Reaction has been fierce to Independent writer Johann Hari's admission that some of his quotes came from his subjects' books rather than his interviews with them. It's a lesson. Trust is the basis for journalism. Break that contract with the reader and expect to be punished.

Interview technique and the Miliband Loop

2011-07-04T11:20:00.000+01:00

It's hard to believe Ed Miliband's PR handlers wanted the interview to turn out like this. He was so determined to get his carefully crafted sound bite on TV that he repeated the same answer over and over, no matter what question was put to him. Fine until the uncut video goes viral. But political interviewing is a game where both sides know the rules. Similar interviews happen all the time. Mr Miliband's problem was that he played with no finesse.

Why should Andrew Marr give up his injunction?

2011-04-26T17:04:00.000+01:00

Andrew Marr has told the Daily Mail he is embarrassed about the injunction he took out to stop the paper writing about his private life.

I did not come into journalism to go about gagging journalists, he said.

Everyone is entitled to a private life and injunctions allow invasions of privacy to be stopped before they happen. This is the argument in favour of injunctions. But there is also a strong argument against:

Censorship is a feature of oppressive governments. The right to say whatever you like without fear of official sanction is vital to freedom
Free speech is so important to freedom, we put up with all sorts of things being published that we don’t like: porn, the Mail, BNP leaflets
We may not like the News of the World writing tittle-tattle about us, but it guarantees that more serious stories are free of interference
Injunctions mean if you say what you like you could become a criminal. This is as close as the UK gets to behaving like an oppressive regime
Superinjunctions are particularly insidious because they stop public discussion about the rights and wrongs of limiting free speech
In a democracy, the judges work for us. Justice must be seen to be done to maintain confidence in the judicial system
It is difficult to argue the public interest in a story about a married footballer having an affair. But there is a wider public interest
There is a public interest in openness. Protect your privacy, for sure, but not at the expense of free speech
Without injunctions, a few individuals would suffer invasions of privacy but they could still seek redress after publication
With injunctions, we are protecting individuals at the expense of the greater good... at the expense of free speech
The Human Rights Act introduces a privacy law into the UK but it does not give individuals the right to secret injunctions
In fact, the Human Rights Act has a section (12) on injunctions specifically giving priority to free speech.

Photojournalists: lives on the line

2011-04-24T16:12:00.002+01:00

Working in a war zone is dangerous, the deaths of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros remind us. Yet without their bravery, and that of others like them, important stories would never properly be told.

A round-up of tributes and analysis on Storify:

Privacy injunctions and free speech

2011-04-21T22:05:00.001+01:00

David Cameron says that privacy law should be made by Parliament rather than judges. The PM was responding to a series of injunctions restricting what newspapers and others can publish about certain famous people's private lives.

Does court protection of celeb privacy go too far?

But the courts are applying the Human Rights Act which was passed by Parliament in 1998. And it is normal for judges to interpret the law (actually, it's their job). So why the fuss?

Parliament has looked at creating a privacy law several times over the last few decades. Each time, it has been argued that the press intrusion has become too much. But each time the argument that free speech must take priority has won the day, and the UK never had a privacy law, until...

In brief

Historically, the UK parliament has avoided a privacy law in the interests of a free and open press
But the Human Rights Act gives people the right to a private life.
It is the job of judges to interpret the law -- this has always been so.
Because privacy is bound into the European Convention on Human Rights, David Cameron may find it difficult to change the law
Section 12 of the HRA gives priority to free speech in injunction cases -- one MP suggests that judges are not applying this correctly
Privacy of individuals is balanced against public interest in publishing. Judges decide whether individual stories are in the public interest
Government has been reluctant to define public interest in other laws

In 1998, the European Convention on Human Rights was codified into UK law as the Human Rights Act. It includes a clause on privacy but it was generally understood to refer to intrusions by government into people's private lives rather that giving people an absolute right to privacy (media lawyer Mark Stephens points to the work done in preparation for the ECHR which clearly refers to the right to privacy in terms of government interference).

In 2004, Princess Caroline of Monaco took the German government to the European Court of Human Rights. She wanted to stop the paparazzi who had been photographing her and her family to such an extent it had become highly intrusive. Her argument was that because the German government had not prevented the intrusion, it was effectively interfering with private life and so was contravening the European Convention on Human Rights.

The court agreed and UK courts have to take European Court rulings into account. This effectively introduced a privacy law that went beyond protecting citizens from their governments. Arguably the European Court judges were just doing their job interpreting how the law applies in a particular case. Arguably they distorted the law so that it now applies in a way that was never intended by the governments who drafted the European Convention on Human Rights.

In the UK, the situation is complicated by the fact that we have no explicit privacy law. The mechanism lawyers are using is to ask courts to apply a law called Breach of Confidence in light of the HRA (as modified by the Princess Caroline ruling). For example, Max Mosely's privacy action against the News of the World was technically a Breach of Confidence case.

Like a great deal of English law, Breach of Confidence is enshrined in common law. This is, by definition, law created by judges rather than parliament. Recent court rulings have effectively extended Breach of Confidence from a law about confidential paperwork to a law on privacy. For journalists, the main defence to Breach of Confidence has always been public interest and modern privacy cases often also hinge on whether there was a public interest in publication.

To an extent, David Cameron is right that the privacy law has been made by judges. That is a normal part of the evolution of English law. But speaking on Channel 4 News, John Whittingdale MP, chairman of the parliamentary committee on Culture, Media and Sport suggested that judges' rulings did not take sufficient account of section 12 of the Human Rights Act.

If someone finds out that confidential or private information is about to be published, they can ask a court for an injunction -- a legal device that prevents publication (ignoring an injunction is a contempt of court: a crime with potentially serious consequences). A judge at an injunction hearing will not go through all the evidence because there is an urgency in preventing private information being published. To overturn an injunction, a newspaper has to proceed with a full Breach of Confidence case. This can take several months and because news is perishable, many injunctions are never challenged. Section 12 of the Human Rights Act is intended to counteract this imbalance, preventing people from using injunctions to limit free speech.

Judges are only supposed to allow injunctions where the claimant would be very likely to win if a full Breach of Confidence trial was heard. If there is a good public interest defence, an injunction should not therefore be imposed. In many privacy cases the question will be what counts as public interest and, again, this is up to judicial interpretation.

The government recently published a draft bill reforming the libel law. This will include a public interest defence but, in this law, the government has specifically avoided defining public interest, leaving it instead to ... you guess it ... judges in individual cases.

Personally, I am in favour of the government reviewing the effect that a privacy law that sneaked up on us is having on free speech. But judges are always going to be central to the evolution of the law and we should trust them to do it.

For working journalists, it looks like privacy is a fact of life. The important thing will be understanding the public interest in the stories we are writing so that we are in a position to defend them.

Libel reform: a (slightly) easier life for journalists.

2011-03-15T21:25:00.000Z

Libel reforms proposed by the government today should make life easier for responsible journalists and harder for frivolous claimants.

Don't get too excited: the truth defence, although updated, leaves the burden of proof with the journalist. But a new requirement for a claimant to show they have suffered substantial harm as a result of what you have published should make a big difference to journalists' day-to-day work.

Note that this draft bill is just the first stage of a consultation process. Any element may change following this process and as the bill proceeds through parliament. However, there seems to be considerable political impetus behind a move to improve our rights to free speech. Justice Minister, Lord McNally told the Daily Telegraph that the changes could be law by next year, if they government is prepared to allocate sufficient parliamentary time.

1. Having to show 'substantial harm' should stop people bringing trivial libel claims. In practice it makes it less likely you will be caught out by an unexpected suit. In the early years of a new libel law, there will be a succession of cases where courts are asked to interpret the meaning of 'substantial harm' in specific stories. To begin with, we will be operating in a distinctly grey area. But uncertainty over the meaning of 'substantial harm' may also make potential claimants think twice. See Legal Week's take.

2. The truth defence will replace the old justification defence. You will still need to prove the truth of your writing. But if you are challenged over several parts of your story and you are not able to prove they are all true, the defence will not automatically fail. If you can show the main part of your story is true and the other parts only have a minor impact on the claimant's reputation, you should still have a defence.

3. The new defence of responsible publication on matter of public interest exists already in common law (the Reynolds defence) but there are some changes in wording that may be significant. You have a defence if your story is on a matter of public interest and you can show you behaved responsibly. If you report a dispute between the claimant and another person, and you do so fairly, accurately and impartially, you will be treated as having acted responsibly. This would seem to give journalists much more latitude than they have at present. What counts as a dispute will be another grey area in the first few years until the courts rule in specific cases.

4. The existing privilege defence has been extended to many more situations including the reporting of scientific and academic conferences (press conferences are already covered by the privilege defence).

5. The one year time limit on people suing you for libel is currently worthless because web stories are deemed to be republished every time someone downloads them, and each republication counts as a new story. The draft bill changes that to allow a claimant to sue you for a story only once, and only for one year from first publication. This only applies to republishing your own stories in the same form. Rewriting a story (or incorporating a defamatory statement from an old story in a new one) or repeating an allegation made in another publication will still count as a new story and so could be subject to its own libel claim.

6. Other changes include doing away with juries in most cases. Claimants from outside the EU will need to show that the English courts are the best place to hear their claim. There are various changes to the pre-trial process designed to eliminate trivial or vexatious claims more quickly.

7. The government claims that a new defence called honest opinion which replaces fair comment will improve free speech. I am not convinced that it will make a big difference to journalists because there is still a requirement for you to show the facts on which you base opinions are correct. The current proposals do not excuse honest mistakes made in opinion pieces.

What people say about libel reform:

The right to speak freely and debate issues without fear of censure is a vital cornerstone of a democratic society. Ken Clarke, Justice Secretary via BBC

I am particularly delighted that the bill includes a "public interest" defence to strengthen the position of people who raise concerns about malpractice or dangerous products. Roy Greenslade, Guardian

The Government’s welcome proposals could help stem frivolous or abusive threats of libel and prevent powerful interests coming to Britain to shut down criticism and debate. Isabella Sankey, Director of Policy for Liberty

Libel law has more than its fair share of critics and what draws them out is the issue of cost, and I'm afraid this bill has higher costs written all over it. Nigel Tait of Carter-Ruck via Legal Week

The bill if enacted is going to result in considerable pre-trial litigation as the court is asked to consider whether the harm caused by the publication has been substantial, whether a subsequent publication is materially different to an earlier version. Anna Doble, legal director, Wiggin via Legal Week

The government’s draft defamation bill is a big step forward towards ending the practice of libel tourism which has led our Courts to silence free speech around the world. But without action to reduce the cost of a libel trial, reform will protect the free speech of some, but costs will silence others. John Kampfner, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship

The bill will update the law so that, finally, it will reflect the realities of the internet. Nick Clegg in the Guardian

Clinging to antiquated models, sky high costs and the deployment of super-injunctions have been a feature of reputational litigation for too long -- and shame this country’s professed commitment to free speech. Caroline Kean from Wiggin, who represented journalist Tom Bower in his successful libel battle with Richard Desmond, via Press Gazette.

Citizen clowns -- no such thing

2011-02-24T22:17:00.000Z

Restrictions on clowns in important areas of the world have reopened the debate about citizen clowning.


Journalist	Citizen journalist

But the truth is there is little difference between a professional clown and an ordinary person. Anyone can put on makeup and a giant pair of shoes. They aren't judged on how much they look like a clown. They are supposed to make people laugh. If they make people laugh, then they are a clown. It doesn't matter whether they define themselves as a professional or a citizen clown.

There is a certain defensiveness among professional clowns. And with good reason. Citizen clowns often have a better act because they have expertise in something else or a better knowledge of the local area. Professional clowning practitioners talk about quality and analysis of the comedy product. But actually, pro-clowns sometimes cut corners because of financial or time pressures. Anyway, it doesn't really matter.

Because there is no professional and citizen clowning. If you make people laugh, you're a clown. If you don't, you're just an idiot in a stupid outfit...

Sorry, did I say clown. I meant journalist.

Seriously now....

As pro journalists struggle to get access to the biggest story of the moment, ordinary Libyans are using social media to get their message out.

Journalists in Egypt under attack

2011-02-03T18:15:00.000Z

3 February 2011: in the maelstrom of the Egyptian revolution, journalists are becoming a target. As the New York Times' Nicolas Kristof Tweets: '[The Egyptian government] is trying to round up journalists. I worry about what it is they're planning that they don't want us to see.'

Mubarak seems to believe that if he wants to suppress the rebellion he also needs to suppress the flow of information. But, for now at least, the journalists are inspired to bravery by the Egyptian pro-democracy protestors and this important story is still getting out.

News writing's vital why

2011-01-23T23:02:00.003Z

A poor attention span means web readers think "so what?" unless you explain to them why they should care, right at the start.

Dear reporter: it is your job to report. That means you tell us not only what is happening and who it's happening to but also why it's happening.

Google co-founder Larry Page is to become chief executive of the US internet search giant in April. BBC

The writer of this BBC intro felt they could waste a few words to tell us that Google is a US internet search giant (in case anyone in the world wasn't sure) but not why it is changing its chief executive. I am reading this while I'm watching TV and eating an M&S extremely chocolatey mini-bite, so you don't have my full attention. The result is, I'm thinking "a Google guy is going to be in charge of Google -- so what?"

Larry Page, Google's co-founder, is taking over the reins at the search engine giant from long-time chief Eric Schmidt. Guardian

This reporter gives me a tad more info (but also wastes space telling me the blindingly obvious) and the why is still missing. I am still thinking "so what?"

The next writer gives me a sort of why but it is so vague it really doesn't grab my attention either.

Google has announced it will replace its chief executive Eric Schmidt with one of its original founders, Larry Page, marking a new era in the company’s history. Sky

Now we come to a reporter who knows I am thinking "so what?" but rather than telling me why I should care, hypes things up. You don't have much of my attention but I'm not stupid.

Google Inc. surprised the technology world by naming co-founder Larry Page to replace longtime Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, the biggest management shake-up since the Internet search giant was an obscure California start-up. Wall St Journal

Finally, I discover a reporter who hypes it up and misses out some important information, but whom I forgive because they tell me why I should care. So I read on.

Google made the biggest management shake-up in a decade on Thursday, handing the reins of the company to one of its co-founders in an effort to rediscover its start-up roots. NYT

Online journalism

2011-01-20T20:04:00.000Z

Journalists: the web has never been more important to your effectiveness and your career. You need to understand every tool and every opportunity. If you want to see journalists who do everything just about right, try Googling "Alison Gow" or "Sarah Ditum"

Sources, tools and your presence online all need to be managed

Every journalist should have their own blog.

Blogger is free and easy to use. Because so many people use Blogger, your blog can look a bit samey if you pick one of the standard templates. However, Blogger makes is easy to redesign (when you start or later) and there are a host of templates available if you Google blogger template.
WordPress is widely used and the standard templates look good. There are two flavours of WordPress. Wordpress.com (like blogger) hosts your blog but comes with some limitations. WordPress.org is more flexible but you need to find somewhere to host the site.
Tumblr is popular because it imposes less structure than other blogs.
Posterous is an excellent for photoblogs and has the best integration with social media.

Your own domain

There are advantages to buying a domain in your own name. It means that when someone does a Google search for you, your own blog comes top. It also looks professional. Most blog software allows you to upgrade to your own domain name. You can buy a domain through Blogger for $12. You can also use one of the many domain name providers whose help section will tell you how to attach your new domain to your blog. Here are the two that I use:

Why you should give a Twitter a chance

Twitter is an excellent way to do two things at once:

Build a super-loyal audience for you as a journalist and for your specialist subject
It provides a sometimes excellent source of material

But you have to work for the results. It takes a while for people to find you and for you to find useful contacts. There are a number of tools to help you build your Twitter audience:

Sometimes, in building a Twitter following, we end up following too many people ourselves. Easily solved. Create Twitter lists for the most useful people to you in different subject areas and then ignore the rest. You can make lists private if you don't want to offend the people you're ignoring.

While you're brushing up your online image

You may want to consider a second Facebook account so that when you make industry and PR contacts they don't see the same *you* that your real friends see. You should also set yourself up on LinkedIn.

Online business cards

There are a number of services that allow you build a contacts page on the web. This can be useful if you don't fancy blogging. My favourite is flavors.me

Enhancing your online journalism

Use Youtube or Vimeo to upload and embed video. It makes your life easier and gives you a second presence on the web. Again, you may want to create separate accounts to keep your private and professional web identities separate.
Use AudioBoo, iPadio or Podomatic for uploading and embedding audio files. Audio can enhance the credibility of your story.
Try CoverItLive for live blogging events.
Try Qik for live streaming video from your phone
Create and embed stories using social media with Storify
Upload and embed presentations with SlideShare
Upload and embed documents with Scribd or Google Docs
You can also use Google Docs for creating reader forms (for surveys for example)
There are many other sites for creating polls and surveys including PollDaddy
If you want to create picture slide shows, they come as standard with many photo-sharing websites. I use Flickr

Online sources

Twitter
LinkedIn
Learn how to do more advanced Google searches
Use RSS feeds from your regular online sources (news, blogs and PR) and feed them into an RSS reader. I use Google Reader and the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox.
If you are repeatedly searching on the same subject(s) Google Alerts will email you (or you can set up an RSS feed) if anything new pops up.

iPhone Apps

A good journalist will take pictures, video and audio wherever and whenever they can. A smart phone is becoming pretty much essential. I'm an Apple fanboy, I'm afraid, so all my recommendations are for the iPhone:
PicPosterous (to upload pics to my Posterous blog and auto-forward them to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and sometimes my Blogger blog)

Twitter
Audioboo
Dictionary
Skype
Wikipedia
Photoshop Express (for quick photo editing)
Reeder (syncs with Google Reader)
BlogPress (for updating blogs on the go)
Instagram (mobile photo social network)

Wikileaks and journalism

2010-12-08T10:25:00.000Z

It's a media storm and an internet war. But will it really change the face of : a) Journalism? b) Diplomacy?

A story created with Storify:

US diplomatic cables: how much is news?

2010-11-30T15:20:00.000Z

The 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks today are extraordinary for the scale of the leak. But how much of it is really a surprise?

A story created with Storify:

Libel reform: the pressure builds

2010-11-20T10:27:00.002Z

Campaigners make their case for libel reform and in particular for protection of bloggers and other internet publishers.

A story created with Storify:

Blogging: there is a new buzz

2010-10-26T22:49:00.001+01:00

People are buzzing about blogging again. With a raft of awards, it is finally being taken seriously as a way of communicating. Meanwhile, Andrew Marr says ...

A story created with Storify:

Storify brings together social media sources

2010-10-26T18:22:00.001+01:00

Does the release of thousands of secret documents from the Iraq war make Wikileaks an enemy or a saviour?

A story created with Storify:

The butler did it in Get Carter

2010-09-30T19:33:00.003+01:00

Simple sentences are the secret of clear writing

Michael Caine played Alfred the Butler in the movies Alfie and Get Carter, the BBC told the world today. I don't believe they meant to tell the world this, but they did.

Complicated sentences can leave the reader confused

Here is what appeared on the BBC News Entertainment pages:

The actor said he would resume writing "when I finish Batman, if I make Batman" - a reference to a proposed follow-up to Nolan's earlier blockbusters Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

The Alfie and Get Carter star - whose new memoir refers to his childhood in the Elephant and Castle area of south London - played Alfred the butler in both movies.

The cause of the confusion is an overly complicated sentence. But what caused he overly complicated sentence? It cannot have been that the writer was in a rush, because it is much easier to write simple sentences. Possibly the writer felt that the light tone of their piece would be ruined by a succession of boring detail and so they tried to get it over with as quickly as possible.

A sentence should contain only a single idea:

Michael Caine is best known for Alfie and Get Carter.
Michael Caine grew up in the Elephant and Castle and that is why is book is called The Elephant to Hollywood
Michael Caine played the butler, Alfred, in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight

These are all seperate ideas (number 2 is actually two ideas, but because they are closely connected we will allow them in the same sentence).

So the original BBC piece would make more sense if it was recast as follows:

The actor said he would resume writing "when I finish Batman, if I make Batman" - a reference to a proposed follow-up to Nolan's earlier blockbusters Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He played Alfred the butler in both movies.

Caine is most famous for his starring roles in Alfie and Get Carter.

The title of his memoir refers to the Elephant and Castle, the area in south London where he grew up.

If it now seems a little clunky, why not get around the problem by creating a bullet list of related facts.

The inside track on Michael Caine:

Played Alfred the butler in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies
His most famous lead roles were in Alfie and Get Carter
He grew up in the Elephant and Castle in south London hence the title of his autobiography The Elephant to Hollywood

What's the point of internal comms?

2010-08-31T23:45:00.002+01:00

What's the point of internal comms

View more presentations from writethinking.

Statistics for journalists

2010-08-08T23:47:00.001+01:00

From a recent course for working journalists: Statistics for Journalists

View more presentations from writethinking.

Urgency in news values

2010-08-04T21:08:00.000+01:00

News editors undervalue the urgency of developing stories


UK news websites valued the threat of nuclear war below less urgent stories that were closer to home

It's Saturday 24 July 2010 and a minor news item catches my eye. North Korea has threatened nuclear war. Remember the date: it could be the beginning of the end of the planet. Of course, it may not be. North Korea threatens nuclear war quite a lot.

This is the dilemma for news editors around the world. It is probably more than the posturing of a tinpot dictator: the US and South Korea have begun a military exercise that pours ships and planes into North Korea's field of view. They are doing this specifically in response to North Korea's hostile actions (including the sinking of a South Korean ship).

But it could be something and nothing. How are to we to put a value on this news? How are we to decide its prominence?

The serious UK news websites valued it as story number three. Pretty important, but not as important as:

a review into the way child-murderer John Venables was supervised after his release
a US senator urging Scottish ministers to come to a hearing on the release of the Lockerbie bomber
a claim that safety procedures in the run-up to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster had been ignored
the exposure of secret government plans to scrap the schools admission code

I had a little chuckle that possible nuclear war was being treated so lightly but then I looked more closely. None of these more important stories had any urgency attached. My life would not be much different if I had found out these things a week later. Nuclear war -- even a casual cry-wolf threat of one -- is something I need to know about now, I would suggest. There are consequences to leaving that one for another day.

Easy to miss the threat of nuclear war in the NYT site

Then I looked at the New York Times, expecting it to have done better. But no. The end of the world ranked lower than a story about an ex-president's daughter's wedding.

Maybe I am being old fashioned, but I would have done things differently. It is a sad trait of modern journalism that we are so driven by the imperative to entertain, we put things our readers are interested in above things they urgently need to know.

I would value urgency more highly, even if I am having to interest my reader in things they do not naturally care about. It's a duty thing. Duty is not a word you hear much in journalism these days. But if the planet is blown up and no-one knew because they were too enthralled by Chelsea Clinton's wedding arrangements, I would be a bit embarrassed to be a news editor.

The BBC's cool news redesign

2010-07-25T16:00:00.002+01:00

Web design is coming of age. Although it has received much criticism, the redesign of the BBC News website shows a detailed understanding of how people actually use news on the web. The whingers probably just need to get used to the new look and then they well start to discover how clever it is.

The useability of the BBC News website is the subject of a post on my new blog: Grow Your Own Website.

Context is king

2010-07-13T19:18:00.007+01:00

This page tells web writers to explain to their readers the benefit of reading on. By including context, writers can do their jobs better and so become extremely rich.

It is not obvious who some websites are intended for or
how anyone would benefit from visiting.
Try the FSA for example.

I used to tell people that web design was more like setting up a museum than publishing a magazine. Clear simple navigation was vital so that you could find your way around the exhibits.

Today, it's different. A website is still a bit like a museum but one where, rather than coming through the front door, people arrive and depart at random points via particle-matter transporter. Search has changed the way we communicate for ever. Web developers have to contend with people beaming in and out of their content at a whim.

The matter-transport-museum analogy is a strange way of looking at things but it sort of works. Your audience arrives dazed and confused, their molecules having reassembled only nanoseconds before and they look around blinking, trying to figure out where in the world they are. They may have arrived in a back bedroom in Cincinnati where a Jim Pigeon wants to show them his collection of late twentieth century spoons. They may have arrived at the plush offices of an intergallactic technology consortium which wants to dazzle them with binary gadgets. They may have arrived literally at a museum (well virtually literally).

This means two things:

Every bejewelled trinket box we put on display must speak for itself. We can no longer assume people are following the audio tour. Almost no-one is any more. Most visit for that one arcane exhibit and then leave immediately.
If our visitor arrives and is baffled about where they are in the universe, they don't spend long trying to work it out. Why would they? The matter-transporter can take them to infinitely more places at the click of a button than they will ever have time to visit. The world of Google is too exciting to pause long in a dull backwater.

It also means that good websites are no longer designed from the top down -- they are grown from the ground up. Each page one creates has to answer the following questions:

Who do I want to be reading this?
If they read it, what do they get out of it? How do they benefit? Why should they bother?
What am I trying to achieve? What do I want my reader to do differently as a result of the thing I have created?
How can I let my reader know quickly that this is for them and that they will find it valuable? By quickly, I mean the time it takes their molecules to reassemble (15 nanoseconds maybe).

I have been asked to review a number of websites for people recently. Easily the commonest problem is lack of context. As a visitor, the creators expect me to put in too much effort working out what they are about. Individual pages don't explain themselves and so the effect is that the whole site becomes a confusing place to be.

The writer's voice

2010-06-02T17:07:00.003+01:00

It has become fashionable for writers to have a voice but I am not convinced this is a good thing.* Writers are, by nature, peculiar people and you get more than enough of their eccentricities in the selection of material and posing of questions. We don't need their impressions or interpretations or, heaven forbid, feelings. We want those things from the people actually fighting the war or running the country or inventing the optical network devices.

I wrote this rant in an email response to my friend Roy who had forwarded a competent article by someone else and asked what I thought of their style. The piece was a hastily cobbled together hack, generated from a lot of half remembered earlier interviews. Light on sources; heavy on chat. All too common and, in my view, a mutated form of churnalism driven by modern journalism’s demands on time and cost. It is part of humanity’s futile attempt to fill the infinite void of the internet. Two trillion pages and counting. Most of it junk. As you can tell, I hated it.

I am a hypocrite. Many of my favourite writers have a definite voice, and they are the better for it. Much of my own writing has a voice and too few sources. Obviously, I think I have something to add.

But my preference remains a feature which is mostly quotes from authoritative sources with the lightest possible touch from the writer to steer them into making a point.

theVOICE

BBC 2’s Culture Show last week included a review by novelist Geoff Dyer of recent war books. His point was that we seem to be coming to terms with the truths of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through factual writing rather than fiction.** He picked out Sebastian Junger’s War for particular praise. Junger writes about the experiences of American soldiers with whom he was embedded. One of the things Dyer liked was that Junger himself was absent from the narrative. The voices were all those of the soldiers. Dyer seemed to believe this was something astonishing and new. I was thinking: this is just good journalism.

The internet has dragged writing style a long way in just a few years. Personal experience writing has become ubiquitous thanks to blogs and cheap journalism. The scary thing is that it has become a default to the extent that some have forgotten the multiple-source quote piece is even an option.

I suppose some people would take the view that they want to know a little about the writer so they can make their own judgment about the angle they take and the spin they may be applying. They have quickly got used to finding their own multiple sources on any subject. They are making ruthless and sudden decisions about any one piece of writing so they can move on to the next. It helps this kind of reader to be told what the writer thinks because it speeds up the formation of their own views.

But accepting that some form of voice or personalisation is useful (and I am not sure I do) does not remove the need for multiple authoritative sources. The thing is that credibility is at least as big a problem in modern communication as the need for the reader to deal with a huge volume of information.

A media guru speaks:

I think writing style is important in journalism but secondary to the collection of authoritative facts. For me, a style which makes the source of those facts transparent to the reader is a boon in this info-overload age. Any advantage that writing with your own voice might provide can mostly be better achieved with clearly delineated opinion panels, dummy's guides, and so on.

An approach I like is the BBC's where they sometimes put an opinion box in a news story. This helps readers form a view about the meaning or impact of the news without devaluing the factual part of the story. It seems to me to get the best of both worlds without devaluing the underlying journalism.

We need to think more carefully about where journalism is going because it has never been more important for factual writing to be good. Really good.

Matthew Lynn writing in Business Week predicts the failure of the pay wall recently erected around The Times and Sunday Times.

It’s too late to start charging for newspapers online now. The content isn’t good enough, he says. Even British highbrow newspapers have placed too little emphasis on substance, and too much on entertaining and exciting their readers.

And yet, if the content is not sufficiently good that people will pay, where lies the future for journalists?

* Note that this piece has been written in the first person using a ‘voice’. The irony is not lost on me. Nor should it be on you.
** By the time you read this, the Culture Show’s Dyer review may have disappeared from the BBC iPlayer. Its tenor is reflected in this Sydney Morning Herald piece on an earlier talk by Dyer.

Resources for web writers and editors

2010-04-28T15:43:00.003+01:00

A list of resources useful for web writers and editors who are getting more involved with the technical side of web site development. The list is by no means exhaustive. If you have any site or service you wish to add please let me know by adding a comment.

Design

Demonstration of the power of CSS: CSS Zen Garden
Design and emotion: Don Normal at TED Talks (video)
Taking your talent to the web -- entire book on web design from Jeffrey Zeldman in PDF format
40 examples of minimalism in web design
21 amazing CSS tech niques you should know

Accessibility

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Accessibility tools from Accessify

The web explained at Wikipedia

Web 2.0
HTML
ECMAScript (JavaScript)
Core fonts
The semantic web
Web application frameworks
Application pro gramming interface

Technology

HTML Tutorial from W3Schools
HTML5 and what it offers
Whois.net domain name look up
A list of content management systems (CMS): Wikipedia
Help in selecting a content management system at CMS Review
The Flash Explained blog contains tutorials on Flash animation for websites

Search engine optimisation

Google Webmaster Central
SEO tools from WebConfs
Design for Google: fun demo of SEO techniques
Google Adwords key word tool
Google Trends allows you to compare the number of people searching on different terms
Small business guide to SEO
SEO for websites that rely on Flash
Google's Matt Cutts' Blog
SEO page assessment tool
Inside Google’s Brain: How PageRank And Indexing Work
Redirect check tool
How Google works -- slide show
SEO strategies for Facebook pages

Web analytics

Google Analytics
What all the terms mean: definitions
Wikipedia explains web analytics
Analytics toolbox from Mashable: 50+ ways to track website traffic
Google Analytics: 24 features that make it best of breed.
Standards and metrics for ABCe audited sites

Web use

How users read on the web from Jakob Nielsen
Alertbox: Jakob Nielsen's site on useability
How readers scan web pages
Google's eyetracking studies
US Government site on useability

Useful Firefox addons

Web Developer adds site developer tools to the Firefox Browser
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page
Adblock Plus removes adverts from web pages
Better Privacy blocks Flash tracking cookies and other nasties
With ColorZilla eyedropper you can get a colour reading from any point in your browser, and paste it into another program

Other

A List Apart Magazine explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
W3Schools provides excellent tutorials on the technlogy behind websites
The web is us/ing us -- interesting YouTube video exploring Web 2.0
The Wayback Machine keeps an archive of old versions of websites
A completely unscientific look at social sites (fun)

Tools

Wordle lets you create word clouds from any text
How to embed almost anything in your website
Net2ftp - a web based FTP client (poss for uploading pages to a server)
CushyCMS is a free system that lets you add user-editable pages to your site
Build an RSS feed you can cut and paste into your website with FeedJ2S
Blastacasta adds feeds to your website
Rotating content tool
SquareSpace: recommended website building tool
Favicon creater
Podomatic is a podcast creation and sharing service
Audioboo is a podcast creation and sharing service with an iPhone app
Posterous is a free blog that allows you to post by smart phone or email and automatically forwards to social media accounts
Coveritlive is a sophisticated live blogging tool
Aviary is a suite of online tools for image editing, illustration and audio editing
Slideshare lets you upload and share powerpoint presentations

Site validation

Accessiblity
Cascading Style Sheets
HTML
Feeds
Links
Speed

Stats

Alexa: traffic metrics, search analytics for websites
How many people are using each of the main browsers?
Which screen resolution displays are people using?

Libel reform stalls

2010-04-07T10:32:00.001+01:00

Changes to no-win no-fee rules for libel lawyers have first been delayed by back-bench MPs and now dropped as parliament winds up business before the election.

Claimants can sue for libel without having to pay a lawyer, provided the lawyer thinks they have a good chance of winning. If they do win, the other side pays the lawyers costs and the claimant collects the damages with no financial risk. The lawyers take the risk, but they benefit from an uplift fee if they win.

Currently, libel lawyers can double their fees if they win a no-win no-fee case. This can mean defendents paying costs disproportionate to the defamation they have caused. Some libel lawyers charge £500 an hour. With the uplift fee, a defendant might be paying £1000 an hour.

Damages in a libel action are typically a few tens of thousands of pounds. Costs are often ten times that level.Costs in English libel courts are 140 times the European average a study by Oxford University found last year.

The Ministry of Justice was changing the libel law to reduce the uplift fee from 100% to 10% extra. That legislation has been set aside now and only time will tell whether the next government will restart libel cost reform.

Straw libel reform

2010-03-24T23:26:00.002Z

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:

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

2010-01-23T18:56:00.003Z

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?

2009-11-19T18:51:00.004Z

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

2009-11-08T13:32:00.012Z

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

2009-11-01T12:01:00.006Z

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

2009-10-27T20:59:00.006Z

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

2009-08-11T00:12:00.005+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

2009-07-27T20:20:00.007+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

2009-07-09T20:20:00.005+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?

2009-06-30T17:53:00.004+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.

When readers become users

2009-06-05T19:53:00.004+01:00

Understanding web users and their day-to-day behaviour has never been more important

The New York Times has stopped calling its readers readers and started calling its users users, Advertising Age reports.

It reflects the venerable US paper's realisation that no longer do we passively take what we are given. The web has changed all that. Now we expect to interact. To click, to vote, to comment. To drive with our reading (sorry -- using) habits stories up or down the most popular ranking. To add our own pictures and stories to the melange.

This week I found myself, on the recommendation of a friend, using two web stories:

The Interview with Alaa al Aswany from the Observer
Show or Tell from the New Yorker

The first was 2200 words, the second 5600. No in-line links, no commenting, no video footage. There were admittedly pictures and, in the case of the New Yorker, cartoons. But as an experience, frankly, it felt a lot like reading.

Web writers are beginning to realise that rules they used to apply do not always work. Or, perhaps, that others are succeeding without adhering to the same rules. How can this be? The two examples above show us that our stories can work without fitting into an arbitrary word count. It is not true that every story needs a direct headline and a news-style intro. We don't always fail if our work is insufficiently loaded with multimedia gadgets.

"As an experience, frankly, it felt a lot like reading"

In discussions about the future of journalism, two concepts have caught my eye:

Hyper-interest
Context

These seem to me to be the keys to rule-free web writing. Hyper interest (I didn't coin the phrase but I have lost the reference -- apologies to whoever did) is the same as interest but accounting for digital language inflation (geeks exaggerate). It is neologism meaning that no trick or gadget is ever going to beat something that genuinely catches our imagination.

I think the two articles cited above are genuinely interesting, but you may disagree. This is the problem with hyper-interest -- so much depends on the user. It means that before you write something interesting, you have to work out who it is going to be interesting to.

Context means that the same user will find different things interesting according to what is going on in their world. If they are sitting on the sofa on a Sunday morning surrounded by toast crumbs and cats, the New Yorker may be the very thing. If they are on their way to work on Monday and just want to know whether we have the same prime minister so they don't look stupid in the 9:30 meeting, then maybe the BBC's news feed 31 character headlines are what they want.

"If they are sitting on the sofa, surrounded by toast crumbs and cats, the New Yorker may be the very thing"

For writers, hyper-interest means you have to model your reader more carefully than ever before, so you know intuitively what will grab and keep their attention. Context means you have to go even further and model their behaviour patterns. This may mean providing information in a variety of formats so that users can choose the one that suits.

Reader modelling is old school but it is more important than ever. Ironically, some writers freeze on the idea that because anyone in the world (not really) can read their stuff, they have to write for everyone in the world. In practice, the web loves specialism. Writing that focuses on a small group of readers and gives them what they want is generally the most successful.

Firefox dominates

2009-06-03T23:39:00.003+01:00

Firefox is the dominant browser amongst WriteThinking visitors and IE7 has finally overtaken IE6, the latest statistics show.

Simon Singh and the jury

2009-05-31T16:15:00.003+01:00

Simon Singh, the science writer best known for Fermat's Last Theorum, must decide whether to contest a libel claim by the British Chiropractic Association following a High Court ruling that the meaning of what he wrote is much worse than he intended.

If he wants to continue, Dr Singh may have to prove the BCA was dishonest. A tall order. Everything seems to be against his continuing, but he may have one thing on his side: the jury.

In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Dr Singh described as bogus BCA claims that chiropractors could help (amongst other things) childhood asthma. In a preliminary ruling, the court said that this meant the BCA was being consciously dishonest.

There are three main defences to libel, as student journalists will recall. The obvious protection for an opinion piece comes from the defence of fair comment. In other words, Dr Singh is entitled to his opinion. But fair comment is a conditional defence and one of the conditions is:

you cannot pass off as comment allegations of criminal or immoral behaviour.

The High Court's interpretation of the article would seem make it an allegation of immoral behaviour and so the defence may be less robust than Dr Singh would wish.

It is difficult to see how the second possible defence, privilege, would help. The most useful flavour, a common-law form of privilege known as the Reynolds Defence, requires that the writer gives his subject the right to reply to allegations. It is not usual to include such responses in an opinion piece.

That leaves the defence of truth, known in England and Wales as justification. There are no conditions to the justification defence -- if it is true, you can publish. However, there are a couple of awkward wrinkles:

The burden of proof in libel is reversed -- the writer has to prove it was true; the claimant does not have to prove it was wrong
The meaning you are judged on is not what you intended but what would be understood by a reasonable person in the worst case (hence Dr Singh's problem with the High Court ruling)

There are many from the scientific community (and many more who care about free speech) who would like to see Dr Singh continue to fight the libel action. But there is a slim chance of success and, if he loses, he faces enormous costs.

"One glimmer of light is the
standard of proof required"

One glimmer of light is the standard of proof required. It is not the proof beyond reasonable doubt that we see in criminal cases. In libel, proof on the balance of probabilities is used. In practice, that means the winner is the one who convinces the jury.

Notoriously, in libel, the celebrity usually wins (of course, the celebrity is also usually the one suing and so this may not be a good guide in the Singh case). Juries tend to have a natural disposition to side with the well-known. As a famous author, this may give Simon Singh an edge. On top of that, there is the evidence that the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against a chiropractor who claimed he could treat children with colic.

Neither of these factors would amount to a proof that would see a defendent convicted in a criminal court. But could they be enough in a civil suit?

Juries are picked at random, so if Dr Singh continues there will be huge element of risk, with hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal expenses at stake. Hypothetically, one jury may be sympathetic to Dr Singh but feel the word bogus was going too far. But another may feel he had a point. No-one can say for sure until there is a real jury and they have heard the evidence. By then the losing side may be facing a bill for millions.

See also:

Notes:

The author is a journalist not a lawyer (and a lover not a fighter, but has no firm view on the dogs vs cats thing).
The piece is written for general interest and does not represent legal advice to Simon Singh or anyone else.

Journalists thwarted by FoI delays

2009-05-27T20:17:00.009+01:00

Journalists are being discouraged from using the Freedom of Information Act by the delay tactics of officials, according to a report.

A shock to the system [pdf link], written by the BBC's Jeremy Hayes for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism describes some notable successes for journalists using FoI. But it says the time government departments take to respond is limiting journalists' ability to be effective.

Hayes cites an investigation by Chris Hastings of the Sunday Telegraph into Formula One Boss, Bernie Ecclestone's donation to the Labour party and Tony Blair's involvement in F1's exemption from a tobacco advertising ban. It took two and a half years before Hastings was given the relevant documents and in the meantime Tony Blair had left office.

According to Hayes' report:

The evidence of the more contentious and disputed cases points to a standard gestation period of over two years before disclosure . . .

Examination of the decision notices by the Information Commissioner [shows] the propensity of officials to use exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act to prevent disclosure . . .

In case after case, the exemption clauses cited are many in number, applied blanket-style, and have the effect of creating layers of defence, each of which has to be considered in its turn, thus adding to the complexity of the process and the time needed to complete it.

Telegraph shuts down MP's blog

2009-05-24T01:03:00.003+01:00

Legal action by the Telegraph has resulted in the blog of tory MP Nadine Dorries being shut down, the Guardian reports.

The paper's lawyers moved against the blog's host rather than Ms Dorries herself. The 1996 Defamation Act was supposed to prevent this type of action. The section 1 defence protects people (such as internet hosts) who publish libellous statements but who are not directly responsible for creating the libel.

The problem is that the defence is conditional on the internet host taking all reasonable measures to stop a libel being propagated. If the libel is drawn to the internet host's attention, then they have to do something about it. The usual response is to delete the offending material without contacting the author.

In this case, the internet service provider has taken the entire blog off line.

Blogger settles libel claim

2009-05-24T00:39:00.005+01:00

A tax accountant blogger who wrongly accused Lord Ashcroft of helping people to dodge tax has paid a substantial sum to a charity as part of a libel settlement, Press Gazette reports.

Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research llp, claimed that tory deputy chairman's company BB Holdings helped customers unlawfully evade tax. Lord Ashcroft's lawyer said that Mr Murphy appeared to base his allegations on his interpretation of what he read on another website. That website subsequenty said it was not making such allegations and was not even referring to Lord Ashcroft's company.

The lawyer also pointed out that Mr Murphy had not approached his client for comment before publishing.

Sight and sound in writing

2009-05-22T22:15:00.003+01:00

Think about how your writing would work if you filmed it and what the soundtrack would be.

Media owners are launching a concerted effort to trumpet the power of their platforms as they attempt to ride out one of the deepest advertising downturns in decades.

This intro appearsat the top of a story in FT.com today.

The visual

If we were to film it, we would need a trumpet and something to ride -- a horse maybe. Then we'd need to find a rider who could play the trumpet while riding.

The phrases trumpet the power and ride out the downturn are metaphors -- there is no actual trumpet or horse in this story but they add visual elements to an otherwise abstract story. Metaphors are great. Cliched metaphors are less good because the reader is so familiar with them that they don't bother to conjure up the images (which was the whole point of the metaphor).

Mixed metaphors are bad too. Now the reader has to conjure up two images, but they are liable to get them confused, so they end up picturing a guy bouncing around on a horse trying to play the trumpet.

One metaphor in a sentence is plenty and if it could be original that would be even better.

The soundtrack

Writing is a representation of the way we speak. The sound of the words is an intermediate stage as the reader's brain processes language. Many writers use this to advantage -- repeating sounds to draw the reader's attention to certain words.

However, repeating sounds accidentally or for the sake of word-play can be counter-productive. Listen to the repeating sounds in the FT's intro.

Media owners are launching a concerted effort to trumPet the Power of their Platforms as they attempt to ride out one of the Deepest aDvertising Downturns in Decades.

The -p- and -d- sounds are hard, explosive even. The effect on the reader's brain is similar to someone rasping a washboard -- p-p-p. d-d-d-d. Not, I am certain, what the writers were going for.

Alliteration (repeated sounds at the beginnings of words) is a technique one should use sparingly. Save it for when it can really create an impact. Otherwise it may just be annoying.

Micropayment: the debate

2009-05-18T23:02:00.005+01:00

Rupert Murdoch says his papers will start charging for online content, the FT and others report. His News Corp announced a 47% drop in revenues.

But a New Media Age survey found that 77 per cent of UK regular online readers were not prepared to pay for access to news websites. Many commentators doubt if online subscriptions are viable.

Micropayment is one solution on offer. Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time says: a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.

Newspapers struggle to find an online business model that works

In today's Guardian, Frank Fisher says:

This needs a big player . . . Google already has the infrastructure and the reputation . . . Not only that, but they're touted as news content's No 1 enemy, via GoogleNews. They "owe" the press one.

Slate's founding editor, in a piece for the New York Times headed You can't sell news by the slice points out:

Newspaper readers have never paid for the content (words and photos). What they have paid for is the paper that content is printed on. A week of The Washington Post weighs about eight pounds and costs $1.81 for new subscribers, home-delivered. With newsprint (that’s the paper, not the ink) costing around $750 a metric ton, or 34 cents a pound, Post subscribers are getting almost a dollar’s worth of paper free every week — not to mention the ink, the delivery, etc. The Times is more svelte and more expensive. It might even have a viable business model if it could sell the paper with nothing written on it. A more promising idea is the opposite: give away the content without the paper. In theory, a reader who stops paying for the physical paper but continues to read the content online is doing the publisher a favour.

Talk of micropayments goes back 10 years, Stephen Dubner points out in a different article for the New York Times. He quotes Marshall W. Van Alstyne, an associate professor in the Information Systems department at Boston University:

Putting micropayments on news is like putting tollbooths on an open ocean. Internet users, awash in a sea of information, will avoid new barriers by navigating around them. And frankly, the interests of a free society are rarely served by building barriers between the people and their news.

See also Micropayments won't save journalism in TechCrunch.

Top ten writing mistakes

2009-05-17T20:20:00.001+01:00

Not clear what your writing is for or about
No illustrations
Doesn't get to the point quickly enough
Not easy for different readers to find the information they want
Lacking in hard facts
The structure suits the writer but not the reader
Incomprehensible language (passive, vague, jargon)
Doesn't answer obvious questions the reader may have
Headings and captions contain no useful information
Boring

Science writing: keep asking why?

2009-05-17T00:14:00.004+01:00

Hubble gyros fixed after struggle, the BBC told us on Friday, but didn't explain what a gyroscope is or why it needs to be fixed.

Every journalist knows the importance of the who-what-why-where-when formula but so often the answer to the why goes missing. In fairness, it is generally the toughest question to answer. But it is also the most significant because, without it, the reader doesn't get the point of the story.

Astronauts have completed the most critical repair to the Hubble Space Telescope after a long struggle, the story goes on.

Why is it the most critical repair? The writer doesn't make that clear either.

A gyroscope is like a spinning top. As long as it keeps spinning it will stay the same way up. Spacecraft use them so they know which way they are pointing. They are critical to the Hubble Telescope because a telescope is pretty hopeless if you don't know which way it is pointing.

This is what a NASA gyroscope looks like by the way

In practice, gyroscopes are a bit fancier than spinning tops. They are precision machined and work like an electric motor to keep them rotating. They also have tiny sensors to detect their movement and tell the telescope which way up it is.

Herein lies the problem. Keep a tiny, precision motor running for 19 years and it is likely to wear out or break down. Hence NASA's mission to replace them.

There that wasn't so hard, was it? Source of the information . . . wait for it . . . NASA.

Space repairs make an exciting enough story without detailed explanation. But don't you think the reader deserves to know more about the science after they have read a story like this?

Beware the cliched intro

2009-05-15T23:18:00.003+01:00

Writing in a way that is relevant to your reader is important right from the start. But some tricks are overused. Relating technology to sci-fi films, for instance . . .

Its not quite as advanced as Terminator technology. But a new concrete that can heal its own wounds may soon bring futuristic protection to bridges and roads.

Move over, Superman. The Man of Steel has nothing on the collapsed cores of massive snuffed-out stars, scientists say.

Cloaking devices, like the Star Trek technology that can make whole Romulan warships disappear, came a step closer to reality last week.

From National Geographic: three in eight days?

Simon Singh's bogus meaning

2009-05-15T01:19:00.004+01:00

Science writer Simon Singh has lost a preliminary libel battle in the High Court with the British Chiropractic Association, the Guardian reports.

The ruling centred on the meaning of the word bogus. In a comment piece for the Guardian, Dr Singh criticised the BCA for happily promoting bogus treatments. Mr Justice Eady said this implied the association was being consciously dishonest. Dr Singh says he never intended this meaning.

The case highlights the dangers of certain words in libel. Dr Singh may have felt able to prove a lack of scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of the treatments the BCA advocates. But the High Court's ruling means that for a defence of justification (truth) to work, he will now need to prove that the BCA was consciously dishonest -- a much tougher thing to show.

The writer's intention does not matter in a libel case. The test is how the text would be understood by a reasonable person. Importantly, where there is more than one possible meaning, the court is allowed to consider the worst-case meaning.

The defence of fair comment may also be open Dr Singh -- he is entitled to his opinion. But this defence has conditions including that he cannot pass off as comment allegations of criminal or immoral behaviour. Whereas questions about a lack of scientific evidence may be considered fair comment, accusing the BCA of being consciously dishonest is likely to taken by a court as an allegation of immoral behaviour.

Conjecture creates libel

2009-05-14T23:01:00.002+01:00

West Ham's manager and coach accepted undisclosed libel damages and costs from the BBC over speculation on Radio 5 Live that they were considering a move to Chelsea, AFP reports.

Gianfranco Zola and Steve Clarke signed contracts with West Ham running until 2013. Their lawyer told the High Court in London that an unfounded report on Radio 5 Live that they had been interviewed by Chelsea's owner may have damage[d] their relationship with their employers and with the players and fans of West Ham

The case underscores the difficulty under UK libel law for journalists reporting stories based on rumour or speculation. If the story is damaging to someone's reputation then the reporter may have to prove the substance of the speculation to have a defence. In this case, the BBC accepted that it could not prove the interview with Chelsea took place.

Note that since the intention of the reporter is not a factor in UK libel cases, it is no defence to have been unaware of Zola and Clarke's contracts with West Ham.

The BBC's apology.

SEO vs brand identity

2009-05-14T22:27:00.002+01:00

The Sun's headlines are so important to its brand that they shouldn't be compromised for search engine optimisation, Peter Moore argues.

He quotes an example from today's paper the head to a story on the breakup of Jordan and Peter Andre:

Sex with Jordan? That’s out of the equestrian

Wikipedia: the single source

2009-05-04T16:07:00.003+01:00

In their obituaries of composer Maurice Jarre, a number of writers included quotes which appeared only on Wikipedia. The Guardian's reader's editor comments in detail.

It turns out the quotes were fake but many serious papers were caught out.

Wikipedia is not the problem: they removed the fake quotes three times. The fake info was only visible for a little over a day. Wikipedia goes to a lot of trouble to reference sources and to draw it to one's attention when there is no verified source. The obit writers seem to have missed that the fake quotes were unverified.

The hoaxer is not the problem: he achieved his aim of highlighting sloppy editorial practices (although there was more wit in the hoax that BBC TV themetune composer Ronnie Hazlehurst had written the S Club 7 hit Reach which also appeared in several newspaper obits via Wikipedia).

My question is this: what is the point of journalism if readers can get the same information direct from Wikipedia?

So, some rules for journalists:

All facts should be checked with at least two reliable sources
The origin of facts should be traced to ensure their veracity
Everything you write should include a high proportion of original material -- otherwise you are just duplicating someone else's effort
The best way to obtain original and reliable material is to talk to people. Any fool can browse the web
Good writers have a network of contacts so they have someone to call even when they are up against a deadline

Amy Winehouse's paparazzi ban

2009-05-02T21:55:00.004+01:00

Amy Winehouse has won a high court injunction to prevent paparazzi photographers from pursuing her, the Guardian reports. Similar protection was given to Lily Allen in March.

Winehouse and Allen used the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The act does not clearly define harassment but makes it a criminal offence to cause a person alarm or distress.

If someone feels they are being harassed, they can go to court to seek an injunction to prevent that harassment. Breaching such an injunction is a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of five years in jail or an unlimited fine.

Allen's injunction specifically restricts two photo agencies, Big Pictures and Matrix Photos. Winehouse's injunction also mentions Big Pictures but includes a ban on "persons unknown" pursuing her. This would appear to limit any reporter or photographer from following her.

Swine flu hype

2009-04-29T20:03:00.002+01:00

Writing about media coverage of Swine flu in the Guardian, Ben Goldacre says:

...not only have the public lost all faith in the media; not only do so many people assume, now, that they are being misled; but more than that, the media themselves have lost all confidence in their own ability to give us the facts.

Twitter: pros and cons

2009-04-28T00:09:00.005+01:00

The story so far . . .

For Twitter:
Headlines and dedlines
ReadWriteWeb
Online Journalism Blog

Against Twitter (I think):
Paul Dailing at Huffington Post
Brainz

Headlines: BBC praised by expert

2009-04-27T23:27:00.005+01:00

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has nominated the BBC news website's headlines as the best in the world. He points out that the BBC's heads are:

Short (typically 5 or 6 words)
Information rich
Have key words first
Work without context (in the adjacent XML feed, for example - compare with the NY Times headlines further down)
Don't promise more than they can deliver

The Guardian comments that the BBC's style is in contrast with some newspapers who stick to a traditional headline style.

Although Nielsen is evaluating human reponse to the BBC's headlines, they also effective for search engine optimisation.

Downing Street sued for libel

2009-04-26T12:21:00.003+01:00

Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP smeared by Damian McBride in an email, is suing Downing Street for libel.

The News of the World reports that she is suing Downing Street as well as McBride because the emails were sent from a No 10 account on a No 10 computer.

Journalism by moving about

2009-04-26T10:48:00.003+01:00

Journalists cannot give a perspective of a multi-lingual and multi-cultural country like India sitting in Delhi or Mumbai, BBC World News Assignment Editor Mark Perrow told The Hindu.

So he hired a train to take a team of journalists on a three-week tour of India to cover its elections.

Speaking to writing

2009-04-24T13:03:00.005+01:00

Writing the way we speak is a good start. It tends to make our copy appropriate and chatty.

Most of us wisely take out the ums and the errs. But we do lots of other things when we speak that do not translate well into writing and these should be deleted too. Just like the ums and errs, they mostly happen because we are trying to think of the next thing to say while we are still saying the last thing.

Cliche and stock phrases give us plenty of time to think when we speak but they tend to deaden the language when we write. This start: What's in a name? It's all change at... is fine in speech. Two cliches while we work out what we're going to say. It will wash over a listener. But a reader has to process all these words and they really don't mean anything.
Waffle does the same job when we speak and has the same problem when we write. Get straight to the point.
Strings of verbs lengthen the communication process giving us time to think when we speak but the get the way when we write. So meet rather than hold a meeting, fund rather than put funds in place, protect rather than being able to meet the short term need to protect.
Lists of three things that mean more or less the same is another trick speakers unconsciously use. The costs, resources and capacities needed to tackle the problem might be better written as the resources needed to tackle the problem.

SEO for your audience

2009-04-21T22:28:00.002+01:00

Aiming a precise readership is the secret of a good website. It is tempting to broaden your message with a view to driving traffic to your site. In fact, the opposite approach works better.

The US Department of Health and Human Services Usability Guidelines rank the following most important:

Provide useful content
Establish user requirements
Understand and meet user expections

Online news only 3.5%

2009-04-14T20:25:00.006+01:00

Less than 4% of newspaper reading in the US happens online according the the Nieman Journalism Lab.

The Lab's Martin Langeveld has had to make some assumptions about reading habits to arrive at his conclusions but the result will surprise many who believe that internet has made bigger inroads.

A similar calculation for the The Guardian in the UK would suggest that online represents 20% of reading.

My Sums
Monthly impressions for guardian.co.uk: 228,136,292 (228m)
Daily print readership (3.61 multiplier on circulation): 1,264,000 = 910,080,000 (910m) monthly page impressions (if you assume each reader looks at the equivalent of 24 pages [1.264m x 24pages x 30 days]).
Total web and print = 910m + 228m = 1138m
Web % = 228m/1138m x 100% = 20.04%

See also Inksniffer's take on web metrics

Travel language

2009-04-11T23:05:00.005+01:00

It no longer seems polite to simply get off a train or a plane. These days one must detrain or deplane. The language seems stilted because train and plane are nouns and sticking the prefix de- in front doesn't really turn them into verbs.

The people at Eurostar insist that you embark and disembark and the thing you are doing when you think you are getting off is disembarkation. The root of the word -- bark -- actually means boat so maybe it conjures romantic images of ocean liners for some.

South West Trains still use alight to mean get off. This has a lovely 1950's Brief Encounter feel to it so, frankly, I prefer to alight if it means I can avoid detraining. However, it does rather imply that their trains are dark places.

A guard (sorry, customer services manager) on Scotrail invited me to uplift my personal items before leaving the train. So I sang a couple of hymns to my suitcase and left it where it was on the luggage rack before alighting at Perth.

Language news

2009-03-15T13:31:00.004Z

Irish police have discovered that Polish man Prawo Jazdy, wanted for motoring offences, is on their computer database listed at fifty separate addresses, The Irish Times reports.

In Polish, prawo jazdy means driving licence.

Ode to the sub-editor

2009-03-14T18:37:00.004Z

Sub-editors are a dying breed thanks to the internet. There are all sorts of reasons given but the real reasons are these:

Money
Money
erm... money

The truth is that the web is causing many publishers to re-evaluate their processes and when they stop to think about it, they cannot work out why they ever had subs. They are forced to rethink production for new media but while they are at it, they think, let's save some money.

In case you need reminding, here is what a sub-editor is for:

Reduces the chances of your being sued
Stops your writers looking like fools (when they cannot spell accommodate or get the name right of the person they spent four hours interviewing)
Removes the waffle and pretensions that afflict all writers
Sells the story (so people actually want to read it)

The change of medium does not dilute any of these reasons. In fact, since it is a vastly more competitive arena for information, the last of these is more important than ever.

One spurious reason increasingly cited for doing away with subs is that idea that somehow they get in the way of the real-time, dynamic dialogue that can exist between journalist and reader on the web. In its finest hour, the conversational tone of the web creates astonishing tendrils of communication.

But in practice, mostly what it does is encourage some perfectly good writers to become waffley and self-obsessed.

So let's hear it for a return to pith rather than taking the . . .

The sound of writing

2009-03-06T18:03:00.007Z

The secret of good writing is to listen. Philip Eales and Alan Whicker taught me this. Good writing has to sound good. Write something and read it back to yourself in a Whicker voice. If it sounds right then it generally reads well.

Of course, if you have no idea who Alan Whicker is, this approach may be problematic.

Philip Eales gave me the idea. When we were at school together he went around for some weeks imitating Whicker saying:
The gay cops of San Francisco. A world within a world. A community within a community. Where good is bad and bad is about as good as you're going to get.

I've no idea if Whicker ever actually said this (he did do a programme on the gay cops of San Francisco) but it has his cadence and the joy of repetition and balanced sentences. The point is that Whicker's writing had to sound good because his audience listened rather than read.

Here is how the approach can be used to improve (I hope) some copy:

Version 1
A quiet revolution is taking place in wireless that promises new operational and cost efficiencies for cellular base stations and handsets. Dubbed software defined radio (SDR), the development involves implementing radio functions in software. A simple enough technology trend, you may think, but with it comes significant ramifications for the wireless industry. And its biggest benefit is still to come: software defined radio is an important enabler of dynamic radio spectrum allocation that will benefit service providers and end users alike.

I like quiet revolution but it is kind of lost because the first sentence takes you down the garden path.

What about a full stop after wireless to give it more punch (you could even delete "in wireless" because it will probably be obvious from the context).

Could new operational and cost efficiencies be cheaper and easier?

Version 2:

A quiet revolution is taking place. The development, dubbed software defined radio (SDR), promises to prolong the life of cellular base stations while simplifying the design of smart phones. Implementing radio functions in software is a simple enough technology development, you may think. But with it comes significant industry ramifications. Indeed the biggest benefit is still to occur: SDR will help open up new spectrum once mobile operators' own exclusive bands become choked with data.

Now listen to the sound it makes. Try, for example, saying implementing radio functions in software is a simple enough technology development out loud.

Version 3:
A quiet revolution is taking place. Software defined radio (SDR) promises to prolong the life of cellular base stations while simplifying the design of smart phones. But the biggest benefit is yet to come. Mobile operators' own bands are fast becoming choked with data and SDR will help them open up new spectrum.

Short-long-short-long (like dancing) works quite well for flow. We could really do with another short at the end to tease people into starting the next par. Something like:
The challenge is getting everyone to agree.

The second sentence gives us an the opportunity for a balanced sentence of the type Whicker might use:
(SDR) promises to prolong the life of base stations and shorten the design-cycle of smart phones.

Version 4:
A quiet revolution is taking place. Software defined radio (SDR) promises to prolong the life of base stations and shorten the design-cycle of smart phones. But the biggest benefit is yet to come. Mobile operators' own bands are fast becoming choked with data and SDR will help them open up new spectrum. The challenge is getting everyone to agree.

Not quite the gay cops of San Francisco but getting there, I think. Many thanks to the anonymous donor of the original copy.

California latest to block UK libel

2009-03-06T15:00:00.001Z

California is the latest US State to initiate laws to block libel judgments from countries (such as the UK) that do not offer US levels of protection for free speech, Press Gazette reports.

Clear, concise writing examples

2009-03-01T16:17:00.004Z

Before	After
To support the proposed changes to policy and practice it is felt that a strong influence should be cascaded from the management population.	Managers will need to push the policy changes.
The procedure aims to encourage a dialogue in the workplace between employer and employee about how to meet both parties' needs. Therefore the meeting should be structured in such a way as to allow open two-way discussion about the employee's request.	You should talk with the employee to see if there is a way to keep everyone happy.
If frequent occurrences of sickness absence have been identified, careful investigation and consultation needs to be undertaken with the employee to establish whether there is an underlying problem.	If someone is off sick often, you should talk with them to see if there is a reason behind it.

Web libel time limit

2009-02-12T00:38:00.006Z

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary said he will look at the statute of limitations for web libel under English law.

Answering questions at the Press Gazette media law conference, Mr Straw said he will have a good look at the precedent which effectively means there is no time limit on online libel.

Claimants who wish to sue for libel under English law normally have one year from the date of publication. However, a case from the 19th century established the precedent that if back issues containing a libel continue to be made available, publishers can be sued afresh.

This ruling has been extended to cover articles on the web. Even if it was first published several years ago, a web story is considered to be published anew every time someone downloads it. This means that stories contained in a web archive are actionable as long as they are available to view. The one year time limit only begins when an article is removed from the web.

News Group lawyer, Alistair Brett (who asked Mr Straw the question) pointed out that The Times has an archive going back to 1785, exposing it to potentially huge legal risk.

Press regulation blasted

2009-02-11T11:15:00.004Z

The Press Compliants Commission does not maintain standards nor does it protect the freedom of the press according to a report on self-regulation by the Media Standards Trust.

The report, whose authors include senior journalists and lawyers, concludes that self-regulation can be effective but the PCC is just not doing a very good job.

The report suggests improving the PCC, including:

It should be independent of the press (currently newspaper editors dominate)
It should have the power to fine newspapers for transgressions
It should monitor whether the press complies with its standards (currently it only deals with complaints)
It should publish details of how it is funded

The report says the public trust in journalists is at an all-time low. According to a YouGov survey conducted in December for the report:

75% of the public agrees with the statement newspapers frequently publish stories they know are inaccurate
10% agrees with the statement we can trust newspaper editors to ensure that their journalists act in the public interest

Children in Need libel

2009-02-02T20:36:00.003Z

The BBC has paid undisclosed damages to a Leeds community worker over allegations on Newsnight that money from Children in Need was passed to the 7 July bombers, Press Gazette reports.

Newsnight did not identify Hanif Malek who successfully sued. But his lawyer argued that some viewers would be able to identify him because of his connections with Leeds Community School which did feature in Newsnight's report.

This was a form of libel by innuendo. Only viewers with special knowledge would perceive the report as libellous but that is enough for a successful action.

Confusing heads

2009-02-01T10:05:00.004Z

Recent headlines from the BBC news website succeed on brevity but fail on clarity.

Wife jailed over rap band killing

implies that she killed the band. In fact, she employed band members to kill her husband.

China firework bar blaze kills 15

suggests they have firework bars in China. Groovy. In fact, the blaze was caused by a firework set off in an ordinary Chinese bar.

The problem is caused by trying to squeeze two strands from a story into six words. Wife jailed for killing husband is a better single strand head, but a little mundane. Jail for wife who used rap band to kill husband gets the second, more interesting, strand into the head but now it is too long. Could be it is an impossible puzzle to solve?

When 'no-one dies' is big news

2009-01-21T21:42:00.004Z

No-one died when an Airbus A320 crashed into the Hudson river, New York, last week. So why was it such big news?

We get used to stories where the number of people who die determines whether or not they make the front page. It's a bigger story if 1000 die than if only 10 die —for some people that is beginning and end of judging news value. Yet US Airways Flight 1549 made the front page even though no-one died.

All sorts of other things drive news value. In this case, the visual nature of the story was important. Even without the pictures, a plane landing on water is a visual story. The reader can imagine the great plume of water as the plane hits and that makes the story compelling.

It is also dramatic. Most of us have been on a plane when that cabin crew demonstrates the life jackets and so we have a picture what the passengers must have gone through. It is a story most readers will relate to.

This story was a visual gift. But with any story it is worth thinking about the value of things we can picture instantly, and we can relate to instantly.

Event news

2009-01-21T21:13:00.002Z

News stories written about events are often dull because the journalist gives up before they even start. It is the approach, rather than the writing that causes the problem.

It is easy to become diverted by the agenda of the event organisers or people who contribute. The clever journalist keeps a focus on their own agenda or, even better, on that of their reader.

Instead of regurgitating the keynote speech as it's presented to you, look for things that are going to excite your reader:

The new
The surprising or quirky
Controversial material
Facts that have a scale or an impact on your reader
Information that has a direct relevance to your reader
The dramatic

Go beyond the prepared material:

Listen the questions in Q&As
Think about what your reader would want to know and ask those questions yourself
Have a private chat with a speaker once they have finished and ask them to explain the relevance for your readers.
If the person sitting next to you could be one of your readers, ask them what they think
Network during tea breaks and find out what speakers think of each other's presentations — create a bit of controversy

Events can be the source of exciting material. Sometimes you just have to work a little harder to get it.

Sharon Osbourne wins libel action

2009-01-15T23:39:00.002Z

The Sun has settled a libel claim brought by Sharon Osbourne over claims she was working her husband to destruction to pay for her excessive lifestyle, the BBC reports.

The Sun accepted the allegations were untrue and paid undisclosed damages and costs.

Online journalists should know this

2009-01-15T23:35:00.002Z

Online journalists should note Ten things every journalist should know in 2009 from journalism.co.uk

Writing with style

2009-01-06T21:36:00.006Z

Kurt Vonnegut offered the following tips on writing with style:

Find a subject you care about
Do not ramble, though
Keep it simple
Have guts to cut
Sound like yourself
Say what you mean
Pity the readers

His entire article can be found here.

He recommended Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

My complete reading list for journalists and writers includes:

Essential English: For Journalists, Editors and Writers (Pimlico) by Harold Evans
The Elements of Style by William, Jr. StrunkWriter's Handbook (Penguin Pocket) by Stephen Curtis
Bloomsbury Grammar Guide: Grammar Made Easy (Bloomsbury reference) by Gordon Jarvie
Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson
The "Times" Style and Usage Guide by Tim Austin
The "Economist" Style Guide
The Oxford Style Manual by Robert Ritter
The Guardian Stylebook by David Marsh
New Hart's Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors (Reference) by R. M. Ritter
Eats, Shites & Leaves: Crap English and How to Use It by Antal Parody
Mother Tongue: The English Language by Bill Bryson
The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg
McNae's Essential Law for Journalists by Tom Welsh
International Libel and Privacy Handbook: A Global Reference for Journalists, Publishers, Webmasters and Lawyers by Charles Glasser
Oxford Dictionary of English by Catherine Soanes

Knife crime stats fracas

2008-12-23T23:48:00.003Z

Knife-carrying down in 'hotspots'
Stop and search blitz cuts knife attacks
Crime falls in knife crackdown areas
UK knife crackdown leads to fall in stabbings

These were the headlines of some major news sources the day before the head of the UK Statistics Authority said the figures were irregular.

Many journalists reproduce statistics unchallenged. The same reporters would never publish information in other forms without checking its veracity. The UK government knows this and so has increasingly used figures to spin a story, knowing it is less likely they will be challenged (certainly by the press).

I suspect that some would blame the modern publishing environment which does not leave us time to check source material as rigorously as we would like. But the truth is most journalists hate mathematics; are scared of mathematics.

But checking stats is part of the job: we cannot rely on the head of the UK Statistics Authority always to be on hand. So here are a couple of simple pointers that would have prevented the knife crime story being taken at face value:

Never accept information where the full statistics are not made available to you
Be particularly suspicious of data that concentrates on hotspots.

New words in 2008

2008-12-21T23:21:00.002Z

Medal became a verb in 2008 (the team includes athletes who have medalled at Olympic, World and European level) while fail became a noun (that is an epic fail).

The New York Times gives us frugalista and recessionista.

Headlines: Deep Throat dies

2008-12-19T09:00:00.004Z

Deep Throat has died at the age of 95.

Former FBI official Mark Felt admitted in 2005 that he was the anonymous source used by Bob Woodward during his investigation of the Watergate scandal which brought down President Nixon.

Headline writers have come to various conclusions about how much detail to include at the top of this story.

Watergate scandal informant dies
BBC News

Watergate's Deep Throat, Mark Felt, dies
Guardian

W. Mark Felt, Watergate Deep Throat, Dies at 95
New York Times

For search engine optimisation you probably want Deep Throat to be prominent but it seems a disrespectful way to refer to someone who has just died. The BBC uses only the keyword Watergate.

Most other news sources use Deep Throat, but also include his name, Mark Felt, producing a more elegant, if longer, head. The name may also be a term some people search on.

The NY Times, Washington Post, Daily Telegraph and others include his age. This is important in defining the scale of the news story. For most readers, there is a big difference between someone dying at 25 and at 95. However, this produces a longer headline: NY Times is 8 words compared with the BBC's 4.

Search engines also care about which word comes first. Here is the first word chosen by some news sources:

Watergate
BBC News
Guardian
Telegraph
Times

Deep
Washington Post

W Mark
New York Times

Search engine optimisation means working out the significant words in a story and pushing those words towards the beginning of the story. The first word in the headline is particularly important. In this story the following words are significant:
Watergate
Deep Throat
Mark Felt
dies
95
Nixon
FBI
scandal
source
Woodward

The most significant should appear in head. The others should appear early in the story.

Santa insanity

2008-12-14T20:53:00.002Z

Stories with Santa in them are mainstream news this time of year:

The right to poke fun

2008-12-13T10:38:00.003Z

Elton John's libel action against the Guardian was thrown out yesterday because the judge said the disputed article was satirical rather than factual.

John claimed that the meaning of the column A peak in the diary of... Elton John (written by Marina Hyde and published on 5 July) was that he was insincere about the Elton John Aids Foundation and that he used it for self-promotion rather than to raise money.

The meaning that matters in a libel case is what would be understood by a reasonable person in the worst case.

The High Court Judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, ruled that words Marina Hyde used were obviously a form of teasing and that no reader would take the statements to be factual. The article (view here) is written in the voice of Elton John and is not presented as a news story.

In a statement, the Guardian said: the judgment is an important recognition of the right to poke the occasional bit of fun.

Advertising: a warning from 1974

2008-12-13T10:21:00.004Z

Advertising during recession works, although the beleaguered publishing industry is having a tough job convincing its clients.

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.

Headline: the pun is dead

2008-12-11T11:19:00.003Z

The witty, punning headline is finished when it comes to the internet. The greatest headlines of the web era will be the most functional ones and they’re unlikely to be remembered by anybody.

So writes Shane Richmond, communities editor of Telegraph.co.uk in an article on SEO in the British Review of Journalism.

For the web, headlines must be direct, short and obvious. That will ensure they are also search engine friendly and suitable for an RSS feed. Here is how you write a web headline:

Condense your story into a single 20-word sentence (if you haven't already done so).
Decide which 3 of those words carry the most meaning.
Check that the three words are the terms people are likely to search on, looking for your story. If not, find search-friendly synonyms.
Put the most significant word first.
If necessary, add some other words to create your headline.

For example:

Royal Mail is "bullying" postal workers into walking faster on their rounds in an effort to save money, union officials claimed today.
Key words might be

faster
postal
bullying

Postal is an unlikely search term. Post or postmen are better. Postmen is probably also the most significant word in the story. So the headline might read:

Postmen bullied to walk faster

The original story came from The Guardian whose headline was

Postal workers 'told to walk faster'

Postal workers is a term that people are unlikely to search on but I suppose it removes gender bias. Told carries less meaning than bullied.

The people: web writing secret

2008-12-09T22:47:00.007Z

The Irish government is expected soon to pledge to hold a second, high-risk referendum on the EU's reform blueprint within less than a year, writes The Guardian today.

What's happening within less than a year? It takes a moment to work out, doesn't it? That's fatal in web writing. You get seconds to tell the reader what's going on and to get them interested in it.

The problem is that we have expecting, pledging and holding all happening in quick succession. One verb per sentence is plenty but sometimes the information is too complicated and we need more. Here we have to understand three things to make sense of the story:

The Lisbon Treaty which reforms the EU
The rejection of it by Irish voters in a referendum in June
The need for a new referendum

Tough work in a single sentence which also has to get us interested in the whole thing.

Irish voters who rejected the Lisbon Treaty in June will be asked to vote again on the issue next year, paving the way for controversial EU laws to be introduced in Britain is how the Telegraph covered the same story.

It is still complicated: we have rejected, asked, to vote, paving and introduced all in one sentence. But changing the viewpoint from the Irish government to Irish voters seems to make it easier to understand.

This is a good general rule. In order of preference, make your writing about:

Real individual people
Groups of people
Organisations
Intangible or abstract nouns

Only consider 3 or 4 if you really cannot make it work with 1 or 2.

News approaches on the web

2008-12-06T21:04:00.004Z

Failing U.S. carmaker General Motors says it will run out of cash this month unless the taxpayer comes up with $4billion (£2.68billion) immediately, reported The Mail on 3 December.

This 21 word intro presents a complex news story simply and clearly but also manages to include elements that will grab the reader's attention:

Real people the reader will care about -- the taxpayer
A big number -- $4billion
An urgency -- immediately

Here is how the Washington Post started the same story on the same day:

General Motors, an icon of American manufacturing and the world's largest automaker, yesterday threw itself at the mercy of Congress, saying it needed $4 billion to avert a cash crisis by the end of the month and as much as $18 billion in federal loans over the next year.

This version has the big number and the urgency but lacks the human element. It also requires the reader to process a 49-word sentence with a diversion into a sub-clause almost immediately. There is so much information on the web and it is so easy to find, that readers tend to be impatient. This means that a 25-word sentence containing a single thought is plenty, even for an intellectual audience.

The WP writers know their intro is not grabbing attention so they have hyped it up:

...an icon of...
...threw itself at the mercy...

But sadly these cliches tend to deaden writing rather than enliven it. Talking of cliche, this is how the Times of India reported the story:

To tide over the turbulent times, the beleaguered auto makers are leaving no stone turned [sic] to secure financial aid from the US, with Chief Executives of General Motors and Ford even ready for an annual salary of one dollar.

US and British English

2008-12-05T12:41:00.003Z

US and British English are different but often the differences matter little.

Even if you notice that colour is spelled color, for example, you will still understand what the writer means.

The important thing is to standardise (or standardize) on one version of the language or the other. The reader certainly will notice if you keep changing the way you do things. The decision on which will depend where the bulk of your readers live.

However, there are some differences in the use of the language which are less well known.

That was quite good to an American means that was very good. To a Brit it means that was approaching good (not as good as good).

If you are writing in the version of English which is less natural for you, there are all sorts of pitfalls like this. It is therefore worth considering the predominant origin of the writers as well as the readers when you choose which version to standardise on.

This blog is in British English, but I am currently in Washington DC. Last night a waitress asked me are you getting dessert? I understood this but my first thought was that she was asking me whether I had behaved well enough to deserve a dessert. In Britain I would have been asked would you like dessert?

Suggestions of obscure differences between US and UK English gratefully received.

Paparazzi doorstep ban

2008-11-22T15:12:00.003Z

Paparazzi agency Big Pictures and its founder Darryn Lyons have agreed not to follow Sienna Miller nor to doorstep her at home as part of a £53,000 settlement for harassment and privacy. In a related case, The Sun and The News of the World paid her £35,000 in damages.

They will be allowed to photograph her in nightclubs, at red carpet dos and at other public events, the Guardian reports.

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (UK) allows a someone to sue over actions which cause them alarm or distress. To win the case, they have to show that the conduct of the defendent occurred in circumstances where a reasonable person would have realised harassment would be the effect.

The day-to-day activities of press photographers would not normally be considered harassment but they must take care that their behaviour would not be judged by a reasonable person to cause alarm or distress.

Blogging stimulates new language

2008-11-21T14:36:00.004Z

The word blog has spawned 214 derivatives according to Damp Squid by Jeremy Butterfield including:

Blogger
Blogosphere
Blogospheric
Blogospherical
Blogroll
Bloggerati
Bloggocks
Blogstipation
Bloglish