Balancing the scales

Find a Nazi near you! That is the game that has overtaken the internet ever since a British National Party membership list, including details of over 10,000 BNP members, was leaked to the internet by former associates.

However much we may disagree with the party member's views, is it right that private information such as this gets posted on the web for all to see? Many would argue that we should have access to this information as it’s in the public interest, but in reality, the BNP is a valid political party. Its members, like the rest of us, are entitled to privacy and freedom of speech.

The BNP immediately asked for the list to be removed, which I suppose is fair enough, but the damage has already been done. Once a piece of information has been posted into cyberspace, it is virtually impossible to remove.

This incident made me think about the issues surrounding justice and the internet, an idea that was also brought up by Shane Richmond, Communities Editor of Telegraph.co.uk. He made the statement that "contempt of court laws will not survive the internet".

This problem has already been raised this week with the Baby P case. The names of Baby P's mother and her boyfriend could not be revealed for legal reasons, yet if you tap ‘Baby P’ into the Google search box, you will immediately be able to find the names and addresses of all those involved in the case.

It’s a reminder of the crazy speed at which information can now travel on the web and raises real questions about the legal process.

Is it now impossible to keep a defendant’s name confidential?

Is it possible for a jury not to be exposed to a defendant’s past before the trial, when all the information is only a few clicks away?

Contempt of court is in place to ensure the neutrality of the jury, and in doing so, ensures the integrity of court proceedings. But in today’s web riddled society can a defendant ever receive a truly fair trial?

The internet is revealing cracks in our legal system. The old laws do not work in this new environment. It’s time we come up with a new concept of justice for today’s web world.

image courtesy of johnlinwood @ flickr.com

Search Engine Optimisation

Google, the King of the internet. So popular we have even converted the noun into a verb- let’s google it! Without it I doubt I would use the internet half as much. I challenge you to try and find someone who hasn’t googled their own name to see what comes up! I did recently (for research purposes obviously) and the results included a voiceover artist, an award winning cook book writer, and an actress who’s credits include the slightly dubious title of ‘the Empress Strikes back’. I must point out that although I have a voice, I can cook and I can attempt to act, none of the above Rebecca Woods are me. As I scrolled through the results, number seven jumped out at me, it was me! my Facebook page!

This got me thinking, what do I have to do to get my Facebook page to be the top result when someone searches for Rebecca Wood? This is exactly the same question newspaper websites ask themselves when posting an article. What do we have to do to ensure our story gets to the top and as a result gets the most views?
The answer: Search Engine optimisation (or SEO if you want to be media ‘trendy’)

Google tracks 1 trillion websites, so just how does it work out which ones to put first in its search results?

It is all based on a sites reputation. Google looks for signs of quality clues, such as, who has the best links or the most visitors. When you enter a topic into the search bar, Google will scan all its websites and pick up on articles, videos and any other material if keywords have been tagged along with this information.

This can cause a real problem for the pun meister at the Sun. Its witty, outrageous and often blatantly offensive headlines work brilliantly for the front page of the daily paper, but they do not work well with search engines. Many headlines consist of few words, and none of them are keywords, making search engine optimisation efforts more difficult. Let’s go back in time to when Caledonian Thistle staged the huge upset over Celtic in the Scottish cup. The Sun printed the famous headline ‘Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious’. Now, this is a flash of inspiration for the print version, but for online- what googler is going to think to put that into the search box when they want to find out about the match? In today’s world you would have to include the keywords in the title, such as, ‘Caledonian Thistle beat Celtic in Scottish Cup’. Okay, I know it lacks creativity but if you want the traffic, you have to make sacrifices!

With all of this fresh on my mind I have created this blog for optimal traffic optimisation. It is full of links, keywords and has a simple to the point title.
All I have to do now is sit back and wait for the traffic to come hurtling through like the M4 on a bank holiday weekend. Well, I can dream can’t I?!

Image courtesy of manfrys @ flickr.com

Dear blog...

This is a blog about blogging- sounds a bit inbred doesn’t it!

Only the other week I was being told that the blog is a dying breed and that the internet is awash with unused blogs - the ‘jetsam and flotsam’ of the cyber world. It seems that millions of people got caught up in blogmania and dabbled with blogs, only to abandon them after a few months.

Having only just recently got to grips with my own blog, this disturbed me somewhat, and I was relieved when this week Adam Tinworth, head of blogging for Reed Business Information, stressed the importance of blogging for widening the internet conversation.

And that made me think; even if the number of bloggers is slowing down, there will always be new bloggers, just like there is always new writers.

What’s also being over looked is that other forms of social media are also growing rapidly. For many, social networks like Facebook and microblogging tools are taking the place of personal blogs. Once again we are faced with the question ‘What is the definition of a blog?’

When I started out, I imagined a blog to be a kind of online diary, a personal pulpit to express my thoughts and opinions. Oh, how naïve I was. Tinworth explained that blogs that are purely opinion tend to FAIL. Great, my blog and I were not off to a flying start.

So, I hear you asking, what is the secret to a successful blog?

The blog must cover two key things:

1. Conversation – discussing topics of mutual interest
2. Be interesting – links, photos, discussions, opinions

If you want a good blog you have to first of all find a niche, be enthusiastic, have a range of content and post regularly. (The last I must admit, is a major hurdle of mine). According to Technorati (the blog tracking people) the best bloggers post 4 or 5 times per day!

Once the blog material is up to scratch, you must link it to the wider web conversation. Tinworth explained the three ‘spaces of the internet’:

1. Private space – Content is hidden. E.g. social networks, members only forums
2. Public space – Open to all but hosts have control. E.g. forums, comment sites
3. Distributed space – Traffic moves freely. E.g. wikis, microblogging

If your blog is to be successful, you have to try and link it to all three of these spaces.



And that is it in a nutshell- Happy Blogging!

Image courtesy of monicaA @ flickr.com

Publish, Participate, Choose

More doom and gloom i'm afraid... three big players in American media (the Christian Science Monitor, Time and USA Today) have either stopped publishing their print version, or are cutting down on their workforce dramatically. The New York Times gave my favourite description of the situation, “the sky is falling; the question now is how many people will be left to cover it”.

But just when the newspaper business is 'dying', the face of media is changing and all poor trainee journalists are left with dwindling spirits, Mathew Yeoman burst onto the scene and informed us that we can make money from the internet! Hurrah, at last some good news!

Mathew runs Custom Communication, which in his own words, takes all the best bits of journalism and applies them to the new media world we find ourselves in.

He believes the internet has caused a “storm that has swept through the media landscape” in three ways:

1. The power to publish
2. The power to participate
3. The power to choose

The individual now holds the power and has created a more conversational, transparent and speedy media world.

But, I hear you cry, what does all this have to do with making money?

Well, the most important thing for media to do now is to understand their community. Take a look at the Living insurance website. They have their own journalists who find stories of relevance for their ‘community’, in this instance, topics on ethical living. Mathew himself makes a news email for a bank, with aggregated news of specific interest to the bank employees. And this, he says, is where the money lies.

I think the idea of community specific news is a great one, but the phrase aggregated news doesn’t sit easy with me. Surely, we want to be journalists because we are inquisitive, creative and itching to be the first to get a story, not because we want to sit at a computer, sorting and filtering through other people’s work.

It seems that there is a faint flicker of light at the end of the tunnel, but we are a long way off stepping into broad daylight.

Photo courtesy of just.Luc @ flickr.com

Digital Storytelling

Nature of human beings + new technology = new TV

This is Daniel Meadow's philosophy, which he explained during his lecture on Digital storytelling. It is in our nature to tell stories. It is almost as if we popped into this world with the story structure already embedded in our head. When this need for story telling is combined with digital media, the result is interesting television.

This is exactly the idea behind the BBC's 'Capture Wales' project. They take people's real-life experiences and transform them into a digital story, using their own photos, words and voice. Even if technology sends you into a cold sweat, this is something you can do! From childhood teddybears to a girlfriend's shoe obsession, everyone is capturing a memory, a little piece of history. People have a voice, and their voice is being heard.

With all this fresh in my mind I got inspired to do a little bit of digital storytelling myself. At my annual family get together I became a sort of digital spy. Armed with a dictaphone hidden up my sleeve (I didn't want to cause shyness among my subjects) I proceeded to record my Granny and her sister talking about their somewhat hectic childhood growing up in an old farmhouse in Northern Ireland.

All that remains now is to dig around in the loft to find a photo of the farmhouse, put their voices over the top, and hey presto! my very own digital story is born.

It’s all about networking…

Journalism is all about contacts.

They give us the news.

Those journalists with the fattest little black book, tend to have the fattest CVs. Look at the BBC's Robert 'man of the moment' Peston. His bulging contact book ensured that he was the first with economic exclusives, thus bagging himself every consequent financial interview going and becoming our very own credit-crunch pin up. Word on the grapevine is he hasn’t changed his mobile number in 17 years in a bid to never lose a single source. (A case of contact craziness in my opinion, but each to their own.)

Having contacts hasn’t changed, but the way we get news stories has. Contacts in the past would have put pen to paper, rang up, or popped into the newsroom to tell you about Little Miss ASBO living next door. Now that Web 2.0 is on the scene, the number of contacts and news sources at a journo’s fingertips has increased by millions.

Online communities such as Facebook and Twitter mean you can now be in a constant dialogue with potential sources and stories. If you need an expert on the red squirrel, put it out there on Twitter, and within minutes you could be talking to your dream interviewee. Similarly, if you put a news story out into cyberspace, people will come back to you with new angles and information. The journalist’s network is now increasing way beyond the newsroom.

But what does all this mean for the role of the newsroom?

The old-fashioned (and I am sure the somewhat enjoyed) media view, is that the journalist sits at the top of the ladder, while his contacts cling on to the rungs below.

This concept is no more.

The modern day journalist is a collaborator. He is out there in as many networks as possible, working with contacts and citizen journalists, pushing the newsroom out in to the community. With new methods of news sourcing, the newsroom organisation has to change. Jeff Jarvis looks at the idea of the ‘new newsroom’. What was once organised around sections such as sport, business and job titles, will now, he predicts, be organised into topics and stories.

Whatever the changes that have to be made, Charlie Beckett warns us that we have to embrace network journalism to secure the future of our profession. We still need contacts and sources, that won't change. It's the way we work with these sources that will evolve - let's call it back to the old school with a twist!

Image courtesy of Steve Punter @ flickr.com