That's all, folks?

And so, two months, much procrastinating and 20-odd posts later, I have finally found a way to love the blog. But, even so, without impending assessment always at the back of my mind, will I keep it up?

I heart blogging

In case you haven’t noticed, there has been a lot of talk on the Online Journalism lecture series about blogging. To blog, or not to blog? What makes your blog worth reading?

As I have discussed, Adam Grant-Adamson asked – on his Wordblog – “What is the point of newspaper blogs?” This sentiment was backed by Richard Burton, who said, “Anything that costs has to earn its keep.”

The issue of the worth of blogs to newspapers is a real one, but during the past few months I have found more personal benefits to joining the blogging race. Maybe I am nobody to say what I’ve said, as Richard Burton probably (and perhaps rightly) thinks.

But I’ve found that necessity (as demanded by Diploma assessment) to post on the Online Journalism lectures has forced me to clarify and organise my thoughts on issues the speakers raised. And the necessity of other Diploma students to complete these posts has made me aware of issues I hadn’t thought of.

There’s much talk about how keeping a blog is hard work – and it is. But if you post as things crop up – and, despite my whinging, it doesn’t take that long if you just get on with it – it just becomes habit. And being in the habit of writing something – anything - on the day’s issues is surely valuable journalism training.

At the PTC New Journalist of the Year 2006 Awards, Eve editor Sara Cremer advised budding and practising journalists alike to write something everyday, just to keep practising and stay in the habit. Blogging is surely a good way of doing this – with the added benefit of receiving feedback from others.

Can the BBC do local news?

Last week, Pete Clifton admitted of BBC News, “We don’t do local news very well”.

The Head of BBC News Interactive said they were trying to improve this, and that the personalisation of the UK front page on the site was one of the most popular changes they had made to it.

This Media Guardian article reports another BBC executive questioning the BBC’s current success in representing the voice of the people and their need to get more involved in local news in order to do this better.

Sarah Radford of Newbury Today was asked what she thought of the BBC’s plans to move closer to local news. She said, “The Newbury Weekly has a whole newsroom of journalists who are the eyes and ears of the area. The BBC just can’t do the grass roots stuff – not without a huge increase in numbers of staff.” It remains to be seen whether or not the BBC really can authenticate it’s claim to being ‘of the people’.

Skill dilution (Postscript)

Sarah Radford showed us the video attached to this article to demonstrate the content Newbury Today provides. She was clearly a bit embarrassed by the quality of the clip but this only illustrates the point about the dangers of expecting journalists to do too much all at once.

Dilute skill at your own risk

Sarah Radford is an online journalist on the award-winning Newbury Today website. This means she is one very busy woman. She goes out reporting, conducting interviews whilst filming (and checking the sound is working) and wondering if she will have to write the story for the newspaper as well as the website.

Radford said she felt frustrated she wasn’t able to give things the time she would like because of restrictions of such multi-tasking. This echoes my post about Richards Burton’s reservations against requiring journalists to be so multi-skilled.

When asked if she saw members of an expanded team having more defined roles, such as including a dedicated cameraman, Radford said she didn’t think so. She envisioned simply having more people involved in reporting a story, but all of them being fully multi-talented.

I wonder if this is the case. If, as Radford says, the quality of journalism is affected by expectation for multi-tasking, once online news rooms are further established surely there will be a movement back towards specialisation? This might involve the integrated newsroom which Radford’s boss Martin Robertshaw discussed and which BBC News Interactive’s Pete Clifton talked about last week.

However, Robertshaw said that when the whole of the newsroom was multi-skilled, he would be a happy man. I wonder if, instead, we will see the integrated newsroom come to fruition by all areas of the media using their particular specialisations to complement each other and provide integrated news output - without compromising the quality of the journalism.

The miracle of life

Go to Times Online to see amazing pictures of an unborn elephant.They were apparently taken using 3D ultrasound scans and other complicated tecnological things - and the effect really is breath-taking.

The stills are taken from a programme called Animals in the Womb, to be aired on National Geographic and Channel 4 next year - I only wish I could set my digibox recorder that far in advance.

*Google D for diagnosis

Following the news (reported in this Times Online article) that doctors have been advised to use Google to resolve difficult diagnostic cases, I will be writing my online journalism feature on this topic.

What do doctors in the UK think of this advice? Do they already use Google as a diagnostic tool? It is well-known that many patients use the internet for ‘self-diagnosis’; will this latest news and the increasing power of the internet have an effect on the doctor’s role? Do doctors use other databases or online ‘communities of interest’ to share information? What would patients think if they knew their doctor was using Google to diagnose them?

I will talk to doctors, in both GP surgeries and hospitals, patients and, hopefully, the GMC (General Medical Council) and BMA (British Medical Association) in order to address these topics.

Cash for clips?

This article reports that “The BBC is to pay viewers who send in user-generated content”, which is in direct contrast with what Pete Clifton said in his lecture.

The article, published on the day of Clifton’s lecture, says, “Just three weeks ago at the News Xchange conference in Istanbul, the News Interactive head, Pete Clifton, was asked if the BBC would pay for user-generated content (UGC).

“‘Not on the budget I've got,’ he said. ‘We don't expect to pay for it and I don't recall anyone asking for that. They retain the copyright and if they want to try and sell it elsewhere, they can.’”

This is almost word for word what he said when questioned on the topic at his lecture in Cardiff.

Clifton highlighted the danger of blurring the line between sharing material people happen to have and commissioning them to collect it. This raises issues of employment along with legal obligations regarding risk and safety.

I wonder how The Sun and Five News, who both recently announced plans to pay for UGC, are dealing with this potential banana-skin.

New media?

“If you can’t spell, you can fuck off,” was Pete Clifton’s succinct message this week.

This phrase sums up the Head of BBC News Interactive’s no-nonsense views when it comes to the changes and challenges facing those in the fickle world of journalism today. He confessed to being “obsessed by core writing skills”, and this emphasis echoed Richard Burton, who a fortnight ago said he was “keen to preserve old journalistic practices, because they’re not there by accident.”

Clifton went further, saying, “News on demand is not new – we’ve been doing it on Ceefax for 32 years,” and, “Everyone goes on about UGC, but it’s not a new thing.”

What is new, says Clifton, is the ability for this user-generated content (UGC) to be sent quickly and immediately via the internet and mobile phones (as opposed to popping into the office for a chat, or – shock, horror, remember this? – writing a letter).

This reflects what I said in my post on Daniel Meadows’ lecture. The heart of journalism and what we do as a profession has not changed with the arrival of the internet and UGC. Technology has simply expanded the range of forms in which we are able to produce and provide it.

The death of the print journalist? (Reprise)

Having said what I did below, see Dominic Ponsford’s article, “How many journalists do you need to run a national newspaper?”

The answer, apparently, is 16, in the case of the Sunday Express. Perhaps I should be more sympathetic to the plight of The Newspaper Journalist. Or I’ll feel mighty guilty when they appear on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The death of the print journalist?

Another week, another Online Journalism lecture, another round of “are print journalists doomed?” questions from the Newspaper Diploma students.

Perhaps they haven’t noticed, but every pillar of the journalism community they’ve asked so far has answered that question with an emphatic ‘no’. But that obviously hasn’t been enough to stop the worry keeping the poor lambs awake at night.

Perhaps Pete Clifton’s comment that he has in fact employed more journalists to deal with the rise of UGC and to meet the demand of other forms of new media will finally convince them that they can have a future in journalism, if not in print itself then at least in some form of written news provision. We’ll find out at next week’s Q&A session.

*News is people - in all its forms

“Journalists will need as many skills for telling stories for other people as for telling stories they generate themselves,” says Daniel Meadows of the changing world of media in the digital age.

I struggle to see a clear difference between these two categories. In the immortal words of Harold ‘Soundbite’ Evans, “News is people.” The stories journalists generate have always been about and for people. That is the core of journalism. As far as I can tell, the difference between then and now is only the range of tools and platforms that journalists can employ to do this.

To the soundtrack of (repeated) cries from the Newspaper Diploma students of, “Is there a future for professional print journalists?” Meadows says, “Video didn’t kill the radio star. All these things can work in parallel.”

Exactly. So while Meadows’s brilliant digital storytelling movement, Capture Wales, may be one of the few examples of a real “electronic embrace”, surely such truly interactive media are destined to work alongside, and not instead of, more reactive and traditional media?

Why then does Meadows brand so-called interactivity such as pressing red buttons on remote controls, phone-voting and comment-posting as “tokenism” and “cynical”? Because it “doesn’t need the controller to let go of the reins”?

If the controller let go of the reins completely and always, wouldn’t that be tantamount to the death of the proverbial radio star, the occurrence of which Meadows was himself so quick to dismiss?

Have your say - but only if it's worth saying

“No-one’s interested in your views,” Richard Burton told Cardiff University’s wannabe journalists at this week’s lecture.

He did go on to clarify this with the caveat “unless you’re relevant,” but that’s exactly the point: who is relevant?

According to Burton, the kinds of people that bring something to his party range from the Daily Telegraph’s South Asia correspondent Peter Foster to Big Brother’s Chantelle.

Presumably he might also have cited fellow bloggers listed on his Blogroll, such as Roy Greenslade and Shane Richmond.

So, Iain Dale’s archetypal little guy may have been given a voice, but the real issue is: does he actually have anything to say with it?

“You must have a commodity – something to sell,” says Burton.

This idea echoes Bob Atkins’s comments about blog credibility: “Who are you to say want you’re saying?” he asked.

The point seems to be that what you are saying is only interesting if the podium from which you’re speaking is on a relevant stage.

Even newspaper columnists do not get off lightly and can't, apparently, assume that a loyal readership perhaps straddling the length and breadth of the country is justification in itself for airing their views via the medium of the blog.

In his Wordblog, Adam Grant-Adamson asks, "What is the purpose of newspaper blogs?", saying, "A blog by an opinion columnist always makes you wonder whether you are reading the bits that were not good enough to get into the paper."

Multi-tasking mania

Richard Burton, former editor of the online version of the Daily Telegraph, is due to speak at JOMEC tomorrow. His most recent blog post warns of the dangers of taking multi-skilling in journalists too far.

This is something of a welcome antidote to the torrent of instructions to us journalism students to learn how to do everything, all of it, all at once, which sometimes feels as if it's drowning any capacity I might have to learn the basics - such as writing well.

I look forward to more eminently sensible advice in tomorrow's lecture.