The Evolving Newsroom

Chris Bourke, always a pleasure to read, has a nice post on obituaries - the good, the great and the hard to find.

He points to what he loves about obits - "the inclusiveness beyond the worthy citizens who sit on boards and get QSOs is a big part of the attraction"; where to find a good obit in NZ - "the master of the obituary is Peter Kitchin of the Dominion-Post, who goes to great trouble to research well-written obits of colourful, but often unknown, local characters"; and where you have to work harder - "you’ve got to really hunt for [the NZ Herald's] obits: who would think of looking for a feature on Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the inside-back-page of the sports section?"

He's also done a nice job on Isaac Hayes.

Johnston Press, which publishes the Scotsman and a host of regional newspapers in the UK, is selling overseas advertising on its websites. Visitors outside the UK and Ireland will see ads relevant to their countries. Johnston Press is using the same ad agency as the Telegraph, AdGent 007, according to journalism.co.uk.

Via Silicon Alley Insider:

Staying with the 'what happens when you die these days' theme, the Guardian has a story by Dave Lee looking at what Facebook does when a member dies. Interesting.

In 1975, if someone died you would have read about it in the paper - having scanned the death notices (along with births, engagements and weddings) for familiar names.

But what about in 2008? I know my Mum used to check the death notices before scanning the headlines and doing the crossword and I think my aunties do too.

But I don't and nor do many of my friends (a lot don't buy newspapers anymore). Nor do any of the colleagues and students I canvassed yesterday.

I'd say we're not alone. My Mum died a few weeks ago and we got a few kind phone calls after the fact from people who'd heard she was sick and wondered how she was doing.

Close friends and immediate family get a phone call. But if my extended circle of friends and colleagues don't check death notices, how are they going to know I've died?

This has been a good week with much spirited conversation about journalism, daily news and how the web is changing how, where and when we get our news.

It's Spark Week at Wintec in Hamilton - a festival of international and local speakers, workshops, films and exhibitions open to students, staff and the community at large.

Well worth a look at the Spark website to check out the programme if you're in town. There's still a lot to come including Pecha Kucha 7.30pm tonight in the Hub - Wintec's new high-tech function centre, meeting space, library and cafe rolled into one.

My contribution to proceedings started on Tuesday with a Media Bites lunch - a regular Wintec event open to students and the local media and business community. Media Bites, hosted by Wintec's Editor in Residence (that's me), brings in industry speakers to share ideas and experience and spark conversation about what's happening in the industry, and what should be happening.

In previous years we've heard from Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst, TV3 news chief Mark Jennings, John Campbell, former Al-Jazeera bureau chief Trish Carter and Morning Report's Sean Plunket.

Earlier this year Waikato Times editor Bryce Johns spoke about the way his paper handled coverage of the Tamahere coolstore fire, a major story for the region.

This time Sam Farrow joined us to talk about his time at New Scotland Yard developing new media systems to improve communication with the UK media. Sam, whose background spans PR, news and IT, managed the development of an online news programme at the Yard. He's now back in NZ and until recently was New Media Manager at NZPA.

Early on Sam told us that when he joined the Yard its only means of talking to reporters was by phone. That meant fielding 300 phone calls on an average day. It was closer to 1,000 on a day like September 11, 2001.

That's a logistical headache by anyone's definition. So they started setting up email networks, sending out press releases with print-ready quotes and later broadcast-ready audio.

Interesting stuff, made more so by the fact that Sam cheerfully let us in on some of the mistakes made along the way. I think Sam's going to set his slides up online soon and when he does I'll post the link. If you're interested in coming along to Media Bites or presenting some time, drop me a line at juliestarr@wintec.ac.nz.

Yesterday Sam followed up with a workshop based on a real-life scenario. Police received a taped phone message of a distressed young woman saying she'd been abducted and was in trouble. The message cut out before she could say where she was.

What followed was a slow drip feed of information, and those of us in the workshop were asked each step along the way whether we should start talking to the media and how much we should say if we did, given that a young woman's life hung in the balance.

I'll be honest, I found it really difficult to decide - I wanted to be open with the media but I didn't want a mob of reporters showing up outside the barn where the girl was thought to be held for fear the abductor would react badly to the added pressure. A very interesting exercise if you ever get the chance to do the workshop, or something like it.

Before I go, a quick nod to the Sparkettes, two Wintec students working on Spark week who are blogging about their 12 days of Spark.

I remain relentlessly optimistic about the future of journalism, believing that it will outlive its current institutions and models - and I'm not alone in this judging by a few conversations I've stumbled across online recently (on Twitter and blog comments - too hard to link to just now).

For a start, I still read a lot of quality journalism. It's just that much of it is in non-fiction paperbacks, specialist magazines and blogs. Nothing wrong with that.

But in case you were in any doubt that our current, familiar news institutions - daily newspapers, for example - were in a spot of bother, here's the latest round up of gloom that landed in my inbox from the INMA (International Newsmedia Marketing Association).

• A.H. Belo to Cut 500 Jobs Across Its Newspapers
• Detroit Media Partnership Decides Against Layoffs When Buyout Offer Fails to Meet Its Goals, to Seek Cost Savings Elsewhere
• Telegraph Media Group Plans to Move Printing Work to News International's Plants Could Cost Up to 140 Jobs at Its Own Facilities
• Associated Press Reduces Rate Structure, Saving Member Newspapers Roughly US$21 Million in Fees
• Survivability Behind the Cuts at the Tribune Company as the Company Struggles With Steep Drop in Revenue
• Copley Press Exploring Sale of the San Diego Union-Tribune
• Newspaper Publisher Mecom May Sell Off Its Norwegian Unit, Edda Media
• Northcliffe Media Revenues Drop 7% in 2008's 2nd Quarter
• New York Times Company Profits Slip 82% in 2nd Quarter as the Print Advertising Market Declines
• Metro International Planning Expansion in Latin America, Asia, and Russia as the Economy Cools in North America and Western Europe
• Revenues Grew at the Daily Mail and General Trust's Business-to-Business Division in 2nd Quarter 2008, Offsetting Slipping Advertising Income at Its Publishing Arm

Back on the investigative journalism theme, this Editors Weblog post (based on a stronger Wired story) looks at Wikileaks, the document-leaking website set up to "help journalists change the world" according to its founder Julian Assange.

Wikileaks has been responsible for the leaking of several major news stories: the U.S. military's operating manuals for its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; lists of U.S. munitions in Iraq; reports of the looting of Kenya by former president Daniel Arap Moi.

For investigative journalists, this powerful new resource has the potential to provide an endless stream of stories. Assange is beginning to tweak Wikileaks to better accommodate journalists, pre-releasing selected documents to reporters. He is also considering making Wikileaks a subscription service for journalists.

The site has so far survived legal assaults and temporary setbacks including having been taken offline. There's some interesting background on Wikipedia and the Wired story has a good wrap. You can easily lose a couple of hours wandering around the site itself and I recommend having a look at the Media Kit page for some useful links.

I've lost track of how many times I've heard people bemoan the lack of investigative journalism these days.

I think there's still quite a bit about, albeit appearing more in specialist magazines and non-fiction paperbacks than in daily newspapers.

But the genre is not entirely dead even there. This post from Editors Weblog lists the top 10 investigative stories chosen by the Washington Post for the last year.

I haven't had a chance to read them but thought I'd share them and see if anyone has any thoughts on how well they measure up.


1. Charlotte Observer, staff, Sold a Nightmare

2. Chicago Tribune, staff, Hidden Hazards

3. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, David Umhoefer, Abuse of county pension funds

4. National Journal, Edward T. Pound, Investigation of HUD Secretary Alphono Jackson

5. The New York Times, Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker, A Toxic Pipeline

6. Palm Beach Post, Tom Dubocq, Palm Beach County's Culture of Corruption

7. The Salt Lake City Tribune, Loretta Tofani, American Imports, Chinese Deaths

8. The Seattle Times, staff, Victory and Ruins

9. The Washington Post, Dana Priest and Anne Hull, Walter Reed and Beyond

10. The Washington Post, Bart Gellman and Jo Becker, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

This piece about Harold Evans is a nice read (thanks to Chris Bourke for the link).

The former UK Sunday Times editor whose books on editing, typography and layout inspired a couple of generations of journalists/designers in the UK and beyond, talked to the Independent on Sunday about newspaper design, now and then.

A couple of key quotes:

"...don't dismiss the classic news photograph in black and white; don't exaggerate the use of colour; and do think, as well as the visual appearance, 'What the hell is it saying?'"

"Design can't be considered without the context, the information. Design is absolutely no substitute for content."