Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: journalism

  • Feeding the content beast

    Feeding the content beast

    One of the sad truths of the tech media is just how much news is really regurgitated media release, this is part of a bigger problem where online channels demand that sites deliver content and are ‘first’ to get announcements online.

    Yesterday’s Google-ICOA scandal where a forged media release was regurgitated world wide across the tech and general media illustrates the weaknesses in the latter imperative when a fake announcement was released through PR Wire, a news release service.

    To exacerbate the problem, the forgers used PR Wire’s Premium service which guarantees the release is not only distributed across services like Bloomberg and Reuters but also passed on to Associated Press which in turn distributes the story to hundreds of media outlets world wide.

    Which is exactly what happened; here’s the Sydney Morning Herald’s report ripped straight from the wire. A quick Google search on a phrase in the AP report shows 1,259 other outlets also spat out the same Associated Press story.

    Nobody at PR Wire, Associated Press or at any of the 1260 outlets chose to call Google or ICOA to confirm the story was true. Neither did anyone at the various tech blogs who chose to rewrite the PR Wire release as ‘news’.

    Around the world at mainstream newspapers, tech blogs and online news services writers are under massive pressure to feed the content beast which is why these mistakes are inevitable.

    The content beast also means a lot of rubbish gets published, just to keep new material churning across the home page. A good example is in yesterday’s Gizmodo article on how to save money on soda machine gas refills.

    While the writer and editors thought this tosh – which was probably inspired from a media release – was worth posting, readers quickly pointed out that using industrial gas for food uses is dangerous and the economics dubious.

    A classic example of the audience being smarter than the writer; something becoming increasingly common as poor quality garbage is posted under provocative, attention grabbing headlines.

    The question is whether the content beast is worth feeding, readers don’t care and increasingly we’re all struggling to reduce the noise and clutter in our inboxes and social media channels.

    Reducing the noise is becoming most internet users priority and this means publications whose value is dubious will end up being winnowed out or, even worse, being ignored.

    In the market where users are reducing clutter it’s only the useful, relevant, trusted and genuinely informative sources that will survive.

    For Associated Press, this means they are going to have to terminate their relationship with PR Wire if they are going to remain useful and trusted.

    AP’s clients are going to have to add more value than just spitting out whatever turns up on the wire as the SMH and 1,200 other sites did with the Google story.

    The tech blogs are most challenged of all. Increasingly they have little to offer except a race to the bottom in regurgitating spin and third rate articles.

    It’s possible that the Google scandal is good for the tech media, it’s going to force the sites with a future to do smarter, better writing and rely less on PR releases or shouting “first” when they get a story.

    The ones who don’t are history and no-one will miss them.

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  • Who do journalists serve?

    Who do journalists serve?

    In an excellent video explaining how to pitch the tech media Milo Yiannopoulos, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Kernel and public relations agent Colette Ballou discuss PR and startups at the Pioneers Festival in Vienna.

    One thing that jumps out from the presentation is Milo’s confusion about who their market is – at no time in the spiel does he mention readers or advertisers.

    At one stage he says “we’re here to serve you,” this is to a room of tech entrepreneurs.

    Milo’s focus raises the question about where do journalists add value and who they serve?

    Traditionally that focus has been on giving the readers or viewers  useful and valuable information.

    In order to do this, the businesses employing journalists have either raised funds through advertising, subscriptions or government subsidies.

    That in itself created conflicts and it took strong courageous editors and managers to resist pressures from advertisers and governments.

    With the web stealing advertising revenues, journalists and the organisations that employ them have a problem.

    The question now for journalists is where can they add value in a form that people will pay.

    Maybe it is shouting into social media echo chambers or spruiking the wares of the latest hot tech start up although it appears those channels are no more profitable than the old forms of journalism.

    Another point Milo makes in that presentation is pertinent as well;

    The arrogance of a journalist is inversely proportionate to their talent. So the tech bloggers are massively arrogant and have huge opinions of themselves.

    Ne’er a truer word spoken.

    The question remains though, who do those bloggers or journalists serve?

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  • Driving agendas

    Driving agendas

    A feature of the new question and answer service Branch are “featured questions” highlighting popular or interesting conversations on the service.

    One of those early featured conversations was a question from investor Michael Arrington, “when is it good for founders to leak stuff to the press?”

    Strategic leaks have become the staple of most news services, time poor journalists are desperate for scoops and clicks which gives an opportunity for companies and governments to feed information that suits their agenda of the moment.

    As the answers in the thread indicate, this style of reportage is very common in the Silicon Valley tech press. The greater fool business model of many web start ups require they get lots of media coverage in order to attract buyers.

    That media coverage includes ‘leaking’ stories that one big company – a Google, Microsoft or Facebook – is interested in the business. This always creates credulous headlines on the tech media sites and one of these leaks prompted Arrington’s question.

    Strategic leaking isn’t just a tech media phenomenon. Australian politics was paralysed at the beginning of the year when numerous stories that “un-named Labor Party sources” were plotting against the Prime Minister dominated the headlines for weeks. All of these were pointless leaks from various minor politicians try to push their agendas. Often to their long term detriment.

    In the sports world the agendas often revolve around contract negotiations – remember this next time you read that a star player may be going to another team, almost certainly that story has been planted by that player’s agent in an attempt to increase his client’s value.

    The same thing happens in the business, property and the vacuous entertainment, travel and dining pages.

    Agenda driven journalism fails the reader and the writer, it also damages the publication as once readers start asking what the motivation is for a story, then the credibility of that outlet is failing.

    Increasingly this is happening to all the mainstream publications.

    Resisting the push to agenda driven journalism is tough as editorial resources are stripped from media organisations and as journalists come under more pressure to write stories that drive traffic.

    One of the great assets of big media is trust in the masthead. A hundred years ago people took what was written in their city’s newspapers as truth, a few decades ago it was what was on the evening news. If Walter Cronkite or your city’s news anchor said it was true, then that was good enough for most people.

    In the race for clicks, that trust has been abused and lost by all but the most dedicated fans. It’s probably the greatest loss of all for the established media giants.

    For readers, the web and social media is their friend. They can check with their peers to see if a story stands up and if it doesn’t they can spread this across their networks.

    Agenda driven journalism fuelled by pointless leaks helps no-one in the long term and it will probably kill many established mastheads. It’s another opportunity for smart entrepreneurs to disrupt a market that’s failing.

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  • Saving Fairfax

    Saving Fairfax

    “The writer and art critic was one of the great ex-patriots of Australia and he put our country on the map.”

    One typo illustrates all that is wrong with Australia’s two oldest newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning, who are both part of the Fairfax stable.

    It’s particularly disappointing that one of the leading newspapers in the city of Hughes’ birth could have such a dumb typo, but adding to the insult is the paper’s underwhelming and disappointing coverage as compared to the New York Times, the paper of his adopted home town.

    Hughes was one of many in his generation left Australia because of the lack of opportunity. Fellow expatriate (note the spelling) Clive James said he could have never have developed his writing skills without the sharp editing his copy was subjected to at London’s newspapers. That is as true today as it was in 1960.

    Poor editing lies at the core of Fairfax’s problems, not just in silly typos but also with inappropriate stories like leading with a shop assistant’s Facebook profile or the hysterical regurgitation of spin doctor’s talking points.

    This isn’t to pick on Roy Masters and Asher Moses, both are capable of great work — Asher’s Digital Dreamers series profiling Australian technology expatriates (that word again) was excellent work and when Roy doesn’t get sucked into the petty ego wars that dominate Sydney’s Rugby League community his sports writing can match the world’s best.

    Both Roy and Asher, along with every other journalist at Fairfax, are let down by poor editors who don’t have the balls to tell them when work isn’t up to standard, let alone pick up dumb typos.

    If Fairfax is to survive, it requires strong and good editors that are prepared to hold their writers accountable and back them when the going gets tough. Right now Fairfax lacks those leaders.

    That lack of leadership extends throughout the organisation’s management and board. Fairfax’s management lacks people committed to delivering a great product or capable of grappling with the challenges of making online journalism pay.

    Making online journalism pay is more than just having one-way Twitter accounts, plastering your site with ads or irritating your users with auto playing video clips. Web strategist Jim Stewart dissects how these tactics aren’t working for Fairfax.

    Whoever figures out how to make money from online journalism will be the Randolph Hearst of the 21st Century, currently it’s safe to say there are no budding Hearsts or Murdochs among the comfortable ranks of Fairfax’s management.

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  • Hacking the hacks

    Hacking the hacks

    Hacks and Hackers is an informal global network of meetings discussing the intersection of technology and journalism. The inaugural Sydney Hacks and Hackers meetup recently looked at how journalists use data and showed the challenges the news media face in an age where information isn’t scarce.

    The panel in Sydney were Sharona Coutts, Investigative Reporter at Global Mail; Edmund Tadros, Data Journalist at Australian Financial Review; and Courtney Hohne, Director of Communications Google Australia.

    Courtney looked at some of the big data opportunities for journalists, a topic covered in the Closed Data Doors post. One of the areas she highlighted was emergency services sending out PDFs of updates during crises like bushfires and floods.

    Listening to Sharona and Edmund, it was clear they were two overworked but keen young journalists who had neither the resources or the training to deal with the data flowing into their organisations.

    Because journalists in modern media organisations don’t have the skills or the resources to properly understand and use raw data the public ends up with relatively trivial stories like league tables of school exam results or council building approvals – both of which are important, but are misread and used to confect outrage against incompetent public servants and duplicitous politicians.

    For the public servant, school teacher or even bus driver it’s understandable they don’t want their performance measured if the measure is going to be misused and possibly jeopardize their jobs.

    A deeper problem for journalism is the skills of the trade. Both Edmund and Sharona are smart young journos who will go far; but both admitted they had no training in statistic and mathematics.

    Even more worrying are the older journalists, when I mentioned the lack of older and more experienced journalists to the organiser she said none would agree to come on the panel. One suspects this is because forty and fifty year old journalists have even fewer data skills than their young colleagues.

    This lack of skills or understanding of data is probably one of the biggest challenges facing the media. In a world awash with data, the role of journalists is to filter the feed, interpret and explain it.

    Pure reportage is being overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of news and information available; the 1980s model of opinion based journalism is also failing as the audience now realise they have a voice, and better informed opinions, than the experts and columnists.

    One of the notable themes that seemed to jump out of the evening was the divide between journalists and the wider community that always seems to appear when the future of journalism is discussed.

    Usually this expressed in terms of those employed by major mastheads sneering at “citizen journalists” but at Hacks and Hackers it was about “geeks and journos coming together.”

    In reality there is no divide – good analytic and technology skills should be as much a part of journalism as any other field in a modern economy.

    The fear from the Sydney Hacks and Hackers night is that the media industry is one of the sectors that’s failing to deal with technological change.

    It’s hard not to think that journalists wondering at the power of spreadsheets and pivot tables is like 18th Century blacksmiths trying to figure out how steam engines can make better horseshoes.

    For an industry that is so deeply challenged by technological change, it seems the news media is still unprepared for the changes that hit nearly a decade ago.

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