New.Journalism.Review

It’s a lovely sunny day and I’m feeling happy, but I  took a deep breath and mentally prepared myself to feel miserable before reading Paul’s post [Should journalism degrees still prepare students for a news industry that doesn’t want them? | Online Journalism Blog] .

Paul’s question is highly controversial and, of course, the responses make for very interesting reading.

One thing that dominates a lot of journalism degrees is the philosophy that journalism is a profession and only the ‘pros’ can do it well. It’s this kind of arrogance that needs to change. Courses need to be far more inclusive.

I agree with Paul’s view that students often come in with a ‘mono-media’ view of working in the industry. We’ve just ‘re-valed’ our degree at Solent and hopefully, with the new structure, we’ll beat this kind of thinking out of students [not literally] at level 1!

Kevin Anderson’s view on changing ‘mindshift’  is important. I may want to show his YouTube video to my class – it seems quite important.

I also totally agree with Alison.  On the positive side, students have this amazing  opportunity to create their own brands online. Eventually, if they wish, they will seek jobs in MSM or perhaps not.  Well-known journalists seem to be becoming multimedia  brands themselves. They are bigger than the newspapers and websites that they write for.

Guardian Media Group (GMG) say “The BBC and BBC Worldwide are encroaching into online areas where
commercially funded players could provide the content required.” [Yahoo Pans Ofcom’s Search Plan, Says BBC.co.uk May Be Too Big - PaidContentUK]

The report also states, rather too vaguely for my liking, Yahoo! has “joined the growing ranks grumbling about the BBC’s scale.”

Really? Who the f***k are these grumblers?

The only sound of grumbling I hear (apart from that coming from gastro pubs in Farringdon) is from the British Internet Publisher’s Alliance (BIPA). This rather secretive organisation is bankrolled by large media companies, including  Rupert Murdoch’s News International (no surprise) and, oddly, the ever-so liberal – Guardian newspaper.

So whenever you read a news story or opinion in a broadsheet newspaper regarding the BBC, it’s worth checking whether its publisher declares its membership of BIPA [Check its membership list NOW!]

Those that wish to curb the power of the BBC are in a minority in the UK. Unfortunately, they are a minority who happen to work in publishing, have massive public influence and tend be vocal sods.

The Guardian has the facility to spread the BIPA anti-BBC message to the great and the good using its well-read Monday media section.

It also now has a new platform  – PaidContent – which GMG bought recently. Can the Guardian possibly resist the temptation to dominate the online news funding debate using its new baby as a tool?

BIPA would like to see a ‘level playing field in the online news environment’ – sounds okay, right? In reality, many would like to see funding withdrawn for key BBC services enjoyed by millions. At the extreme end, some even would like to see the large and very popular news site pulled completely.

Commercially, The Guardian would find it very, very, handy if license fee funding for BBC.co.uk was abolished or it service significantly scaled back – not just in the UK, but USA. BBC News is a massive player in  the US online market, a market which The Guardian is hoping to also dominate.

The reality is that BBC.co.uk is a fantastic site and the on-demand, iPlayer, stuff is great. As it does with TV and radio, the BBC sets the standard in online journalism in the UK.

It is enjoyed and relied upon to give honest and accurate information by millions of people around the world, but this means nothing to those commercial rivals at BIPA who will do anything to attack the BBC.

I suspect that many Guardian readers enjoy the BBC site and see it for
what it is – a fantastic resource which is an absolute bargain in terms of what we pay for it per a month. They would be shocked to hear that their respected newspaper is privately lobbying against it.

Commercial rivals need to get real. Work out how to raise your game and compete. Quit complaining into your chardonnay and DO NOT INSIST ON FURTHER CRIPPLING REGULATION THAT WILL EVENTUALLY KILL THE BBC.

But competing in a poor economic climate is difficult and that’s why we can expect the grumbling from commercial rivals to get louder and more frequent in the pages of newspapers like The Guardian.

Our new BA (Hons) Journalism degree structure has got the official stamp(s) of approval and is set to launch in October [2008].

We spent a lot of time trying to understand the changes which have occurred in the industry and what it means to our students. The new degree has convergence journalism at its heart and this has required a far more integrated approach to teaching.

When it comes to technology, to paraphrase a speech by the BBC’s Kevin Marsh,“you don’t need to be right, just be ready.” I like the sound of that approach. We don’t know exactly where things are going in the industry, but I think we’re on the right lines now. Our students will be much better prepared for entry into the industry.   

A few reflective points:

Here are a few reflective thoughts about the process…

1) Convergence journalism IS happening: Yes sir! Sounds pretty basic, but some people still seem to think that it’s some kind of blip. We’ll somehow return to a time when people only get content from the newspaper or radio. Normal service WON’T be resumed soon! It won’t ‘settle’. Most UK media companies run converged operations. It may not be quite as advanced as what is happening in the US media, but even the smallest local village paper normally has a web site. If they have a web site then there is usually a desire to integrate (even if it’s just to save money). Social media, crowd sourcing…these are not just buzzwords.

2) ‘Online journalism’ versus ‘convergence’: There is a difference! All students need skill in convergence/multimedia. We kept online journalism as an option. Read on for more…

3) The old pathways remained: Initially there was an idea to have a separate online journalism pathway (possibly even an entirely separate degree!). This would be a mistake.It was decided to keep two pathways at L2 and L3 -  ‘print’ and ‘broadcast’. It would have certainly been easier to simply add a new pathway for online (in terms of timetabling), but that would be a non-converged approach. We decided that convergence had to be embedded into the existing print and broadcast pathways.

4) Students can still specialise: We want students to be able to operate in a multimedia and multi-platform way, but we were not creating ‘jack  hacks of all trades’. Students must have competent multimedia skills, but we kept the specialist teaching in the pathways and options. It’s pretty obvious that good research, interview, reporting and editing skills are as important as ever. You don’t want to do anything to damage the teaching of  the sacred cows.

5) Have something to converge with: You have to worry about those courses based around single media ( like all those NCTJ pre-entry courses). How can they teach multimedia? We already gave students flexibility

6) Some software is non-converged: Students get teaching in a range of industry standard software, like : Quark,
InDesign, Photoshop, FinalCutPro etc. But some of this software is pretty non-converged [take a look at Quark]. Adobe products are better because they have been built around the ‘web workflow’. There is a whole new raft of software that needs to be looked at for internet publishing. New content management systems etc.

7) Visual skills are really important: Students often think they are on a writing course, but they need to understand how content is presented in linear and non-linear ways and the role of images. Audiences need help in navigating their way through vast amounts of information slush. Students need skills in managing content in different formats.

A few challenges still needing to be faced:

There is a lot more than this, but what the heck…..

1) Closer links with the computing courses: The design director of NYTimes.com  [see the full post here]  explained what he looked for in an ideal candidate (it makes for quite a list): XHTML, CSS,
JavaScript, Flash and a “commercially viable comfort level
with database and application programming”. Wooooooah!. With the exception of some Flash, we don’t teach this stuff in the arts faculty. But I am guessing there are specialists in the computing faculty who are experts in this. Cross-faculty links can be tricky to arrange, but we need to do it. 

2) Mobile: Will this eventually become a significant platform for media consumption? Mentions of mobile are a little absent from the unit descriptors that I wrote! 

3) Web First?: I’m slightly skeptical about this. How many ‘newspapers’ are really operating in a ‘web first’ way? Come the big story, don’t  we always save it for the paper version or broadcast? 

4) Getting students to take multimedia seriously: It can no longer play second fiddle to the perceived ‘glamour’ of print or TV!

There are some links and journal articles that influenced the thinking about convergence and I will list these soon. I will also be blogging about how I am getting on writing the new Inside Multimedia News course material and New Media contexts stuff. Speaking of which, I better get on with it…

This month's PC Pro magazine (available in the UK, August 2008 issue) reviews the mobile broadband offerings from UK operators – 3, Orange, 0_2, T-Mobile and Vodafone. The article compares the services on price, ease of use, speed etc. It's certainly the most comprehensive review that I've read to date.

I was particularly interested to see how the five networks performed outside London, where mobile broadband coverage can be patchy at best. Part of the tests involved a reviewer using each of the services on a train commute from Sussex to London.

I commute by train from Surrey to Southampton, but South West Trains appear unable to provide WiFi connectivity which would obviously be ideal.

In the meantime, an ever-growing number of my fellow commuters obtain Net access using various dongles and USB sticks.

Vodafone seems to be the most popular service on my particular route. But coverage must be pretty shaky, particularly in the stretch from Winchester to Eastleigh in Hampshire where deep embankments and hills obstruct mobile reception. It's so bad that you can't even make a voice call at times.

Vodafone also comes top in the the PC Pro tests. This comes as no surprise as most people seem to think it has the best coverage of all the operators. T-Mobile is runner-up in the test, followed, perhaps surprisingly, by the cheapest mobile broadband provider, 3. As for 0₂ and Orange the least said about their performance the better.

The article warned that unless you are located in select areas of  London, you're highly unlikely to get the really fast access speeds. Forget those advertising billboards that promise impressive speeds of "up to 7.2 meg", outside the main cities you may only pick up internet via GPRS  -  which can be REALLY slow.

More worryingly, PC Pro is reporting that the 3G mobile networks may be unable to cope with demand in the future.

Watch out for those services that attempt to compress image files, apparently it's really annoying. And on a similar theme, the costs of going over your usage limits (out of bundle costs) can be horrific (up to around £4 per MB when abroad).

The good news is that they all boast easy set-up, although Mac users find that they have to do a little more configuring. But software packages vary in quality. If you hope to use broadband service on a train,  it can be handy to have software that tells you when you are connecting via HSDPA (i.e. fast Internet) and when are slumming it on GPRS.

Where does it leave me? Still looking. I need a service that A) Works on my train commute – Vodafone seems to be the obvious choice for coverage B) Is affordable. I want a PAYG or a short contract because I won't use it every day or even every month. Perhaps T-Mobile at £4 a day will be best.

I reckon for those outside the big cities, these services are still too expensive for the kind of speed and coverage you are likely to receive.

The Guardian, the producers of Media Talk and the Sony Award nominated Islamophonic, has revealed some impressive download stats for its range of podcasts.

Some stats:
1.5m – downloads for its 12 Guardian pods in December.
80-100,000 downloads of it’s Football Weekly pod a week [Proving that football and cricket analysis has a massive, global, audience - but we don't need to tell The Times or Telegraph this].
15-20,000: MediaTalk downloads a week.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

To put these figures in some kind of perspective BBC London, a local radio station, pulls in weekly audience of around 500,000 a week for its entire output.

Assuming the other Guardian pods not mentioned above are getting an average of around 10,000 downloads per week each, it appears its investment in pod studio technology is finally paying off and the service should become profitable soon.

But how easy is to generate revenue from podcasts? On paper, they have a lot going for them. If you look at the ludicrous way traditional radio figures are counted in the UK by Rajar [Rajar reissues listening figures], you can be far more precise with measurements. Evidence from Edison in the US suggests podcasts audiences are upmarket, I also feel podcast audiences really do listen.They’ve bothered to download the file after all. But whilst the market is expanding, it is still relatively small. Rajar estimated around 15-20% of those with MP3 players have downloaded podcasts,  this is broadly matched by figures from the US.

But I’m not entirely sure how The Guardian plan to integrate the adverts into the broadcast. It has tried sponsorship before on the Media Talk pod, but I just fast forwarded through it.

It would be less annoying if sponsorship messages or adverts appeared on the screen of your iPod or Zen Micro, rather than having to listen to it.

But hopefully these stats will give a much needed boost to UK podcasts. It would be nice to see some successful independent and home produced pods coming through, as has happened in the US. But we need the big guys to prove a revenue model first.