Roy Greenslade and the West Seattle News

One must walk on eggshells here of course but Roy Greenslade's Subeditors: another attempt to explain why they are becoming redundant nevertheless makes for interesting reading (although the subtext can be reduced to: we have to save money somewhere; where else are we going to save it?).

Meanwhile over in the US of A arrogance or desperation leads the West Seattle News to publish an editorial explaining why their newspaper is vastly superior to the local bloggers who can offer more detail and faster along the way containing gems such as:

Professional journalists don't waste your time. [...] Instead of 3000 (sic) words about a community council meeting that was 'live blogged' with updates every seven minutes, wouldn't you honestly prefer 300 words that tell you what happened and what was decided?

which, of course, is an utterly pointless question. As the blog herald responds:

Let’s say I’m really interested in local politics but can’t attend, then the live blog is a great way to keep up to date as it happens. Is it the perfect way to cover a council meeting? No, of course not, but it is live and happening right now.

Another question (presumably intended to be rhetorical):

Do you seriously want to simply be referred to a series of links where you must delve deeply into issues spending hours of time to glean the facts?

Ummm. Yes. Of course. I always want the option to go and get more information elsewhere.

Anyway, the connection to the Greenslade piece is this comment attached to the WSN editorial from a reader which made me lol.

"Professional journalists don't waste your time"
Yeah, but the blogs can use a spell checker, and have a basic sense of grammar. Have you even read your own paper? It looks as if it was written by a 3rd grade special ed class.

Whether the West Seattle News rcently jettisoned all its sub-editors I do not know.

Quarkbase: "everything about a website"

Thanks to today's "tip of the day" in journalism.co.uk for alerting me to the existence of quarkbase.com which aggregates a whole lot of stuff about a website including a useful "social popularity" section which diplays - in one handy place - number of delicious bookmarks, pages on Digg, references on Yahoo! Answers etc etc.

Love it.

Here are the results for one of our sites - fwi.co.uk

National Post reporter has total Twitter melt down | MediaStyle

I like technology reporters and I like marketing consultants but which is better? There's only one way to find out:

National Post reporter has total Twitter melt down | MediaStyle

It's just too easily done, isn't it ?

Falling Off A Blog: The Web Production Desk

I agree with what Karl Schneider says in Falling Off A Blog: The Web Production Desk and not just because he's my boss.

Also because he's clearly bee thinking about it very hard (for the last nine months, since your last blog post, Karl ? :-) ).

What surprised me when I read it was the impression of just how different web production is from magazine production. I know that seems obvious, but the aims are much the same: to engage readers and to make it as easy as possible for them to assimilate meaning and/or information.

There's a huge gap between the two in terms of basic skills. I mean, a lot.

Data Visualization

We've been doing some work here to try and expand people's thinking about what an "online feature" might look like.

Actually, the issue is more about what an online feature isn't. It almost certainly isn't 1,500-2,000 words with a couple of pictures and maybe a sidebar if you're lucky.

Of all the migrations from print to online, the journey of the Features Editor is perhaps the hardest.

Anyway, our list of ideas for more engaging ways of presenting non-news content grows by the day but even so I was thrilled to discover FlowingData recently, a website dedicated to data visualisation.

Here are its 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year to give you some examples.

Here's an example from the BBC's Britain From Above:

Twitter lies

Bless @StephenFry.

Britain's National Treasure is following 32,014 on Twitter and 88,728 are following him.

In his latest blog post on the topic, he suggests that people should not be offended if he doesn't follow everyone back and doesn't respond to every direct Tweet.

It's a lovely idea. With that many followers, he has more people reading him than there are circulated copies of most of our B2B magazines; he is even following more people than some of the most niche B2B titles.

Two possibilities - both of which may be true - are:

A. There is no point in following 32,000 people on Twitter. It can not be done. Not while you have a full time job as a National Treasure.

B. The publishing system employed by magazines is really rather a lazy form of communication.

Where have all the bloggers gone?

Strange, the number of people who have expressed difficulty in resurrecting their blogging activity in 2009.

I think a lot of people have been distracted by Twitter which seems to have achieved some kind of tipping point here in the UK.

Indeed, this is my first post of the year so I thought I'd start gently with what is basically just a picture taken from Contract Journal's newly launched community - ConstructionSpace.

It's from their Construction Rogue's Gallery - "A selection of photos sent into Contract Journal demonstrating all the 'don'ts' and none of the 'dos' in construction. This gallery is open, and we welcome your additions."

Love it so much that here is another one:

Tableizer: turn spreadsheets into HTML tables

This is wonderful. It's like an early Christmas present. So useful. What a lovely tool.

Of course, I didn't have a need right at this moment so to demonstrate it I just took a spreadsheet at random and had a go. Here's the result:

115	31/07/08	Code Convergence - Phase 1	Prepare a 'cookbook' - a guide on how to set up and install community server for a new market and a comprehensive lists of dos and don'ts for the future
145	03/10/08	Code Convergence - Phase 2	"Code refactor of SRS" [Medium Priority] - Some design issues with our single signon library that have increased the amount of time to identify and fix bugs during the past few weeks. There would be benefit to refactoring this feature but it might also be worth waiting until after the current convergence phase as there may be other changes required when upgrading to 2008/9 anyway.
150	10/10/08	Code Convergence - Phase 2	Flight Convergence - Home page enhancements
172	05/11/08	Code Convergence - Phase 2	SEO bug - in a forum click on a post - the SEO url rewriter creates the wrong url.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

Thought-provoking post by Alison Gow here: Headlines and Deadlines: Achieving a more transparent newsroom.

Alison reports that there were a few raised eyebrows in the newsroom over the decision to be completely open about the fact that the investigative work behind its article "Bullied" Liverpool council staff go on sick was not its own work but the result of a Freedom of Information request made through www.whatdotheyknow.com.

I can understand why journalists would like to preserve the mystique of news-gathering but in the Web 2.0 world that's getting harder to do.

Still, at least the nationals can continue to pass AP items off as their own without people being the wiser.

The very model of a modern major newsroom

Brilliant post from Paul Bradshaw - part six of his model for the 21st Century newsroom.

This one includes six new journalist roles - a brilliant checklist (although in B2B there are of course, quite a few newsrooms which would be happy to have six journalists full stop).

Paul's six new journalist roles are:

• The Aggregator-Sub
• The Mobile Journalist (MoJo)
• The Data Miner
• The Multimedia Producer
• The Networked Specialist
• The Community Editor

Read the entire post here. Required reading for all journalists.

[It also links to this great article on Passive-Aggressive News Gathering which I hadn't come across before.]