***My Feature Idea

Basically, because the emergence and growing importance of user generated content has dominated nearly every lecture this semestre, I plan to write a feature demonstrating how professional journalism isn't actually doomed because of citizen media. In fact, UGC can actually be a compliment to the work of journalists, an important and useful resource rather than a challenge and a threat. Although I'm sure this will not be a very original feature, it is of particular interest to me because I have spent most of the term worrying there may be no future in the profession I've spent so much money to learn about. I have already spoken to Daniel Meadows about his views and of course Capture Wales, and plan to use this in a discussion about reactivity and genuine interactivity. I want to speak to Pete Clifton again also, to ask him about the online courses he is planning to provide for the public to help them better use their content. UGC can't really be that much of a threat if the BBC are planning to develop the skills of newsers, can it? I hope to discuss questions like this in my feature, bringing in opinion from the other speakers this term.

Small Beginnings

I read an article in The Times on Tuesday November 21 discussing why blogs don't have to be bad for business. I have to say it made me giggle because I'm one of those bloggers the journalist, Chris Partridge, is writing about.

I wouldn't say my blog is in the vast majority which are completely rubbish, and I definitely don't regard myself as the next Oscar Wilde. I'd like to think I'm in the 0.1 per cent of blogs that have something to say and say it in style.

Basically the article advises big businesses how to best respond to blogs. Who could have imagined blogging would have business tycoons shaking in their boots? Only a year ago most people had never heard of a blog, now even farmers' wives blog.
Incredible.

So how should big businesses respond? Advertise on good blogs and allow their own blogging employees to be honest. Would it really have taken a genius to come up with that approach?

***Jack of all trades, master of none?

With newspaper sales dropping all over the country, small weeklies to the biggest nationals are all following the same trend-the creation of websites. At long last, the internet has removed the restrictions which were stopping papers moving forward. Now papers are effectively mini-broadcasters. With this revolution comes the advent of a new role for print journalists.

Broadcasting, filming, editing, recording...the list of skills expected from a print journalist is endless. Couple this with the conventional print standards which are obviously of timeless importance, mix them all up and what have you got?
Disaster in my opinion.

Sarah Radford, an online journalist from the Newbury Weekly News, admits copy can suffer because of pressures on the time of a print journalist. Newbury Weekly News has jut been awarded best newspaper website of the year, an even more impressive award given the newspaper is only a small weekly. But at what price?

With space to fill on multiple platforms and only a small amount of time to fill it, does quality of reporting and writing retain the same importance in an online newsroom as it had in traditional newsrooms? Pete Clifton spoke about the importance of multi-tasking as well, but he stressed balance was essential. I wonder what the ideal balance is.

The fight for survival has clearly moved up a gear. All newspapers, no matter how small, need to create a website. It won't necessarily detract from paper sales but it will at least attract a younger readership. So all print journalists need to think multi-media, think fast and most importantly, think flexible.

'Turn your hand to anything' is the phrase which springs to mind. In an employer's ideal world, all newsroom staff would be multi-media trained which will ultimately mean greater integration in a newsroom.

I wonder when salaries will start to reflect the increase in skills demanded.

Is Ignorance Bliss?

Question: What do Jack Straw, a local education authority in West Yorkshire and now BA have in common?

Answer: The sentiment that religious symbols cause offence and should therefore be concealed.

Jack Straw is at the extreme end of the scale, calling for all women to remove their veils. End of story. The education authority in West Yorkshire did not feel that Aishah Azmi could properly carry out her teaching duties wearing her veil. Now, in the latest twist, BA have ruled a female member of staff must conceal her crucifix at work, even though other faiths can wear veils etc. BA's reasoning? A veil cannot practically be concealed under a uniform. That may be so, but it seems to me that it's one rule for one and another for the others.

It has to be an all or nothing approach or the problems everyone thinks they are combatting will simply get worse. In France for example, where it is forbidden to wear head scarves and other religious symbols in schools, faith schools have begun to spring up, segregating communities further rather than, as Chirac hoped, bringing greater harmony.

Turkey has banned the wearing of veils both at school and in the work place. Is this the answer? I'm not convinced. Peace and unity are about acceptance and tolerance, not concealment and denial. At the end of the day, it is a question of basic human rights. Religion is about identity. Don't deny people the right to exist.

The Future's Definitely Bright, I Think...

As I sat listening to Pete Clifton I felt a strange sense of deja vu. There it was, the now too familiar term of User Generated Content. Each and every speaker so far this year has stressed UGC is not a new phenomenon, and Pete Clifton was no exception, highlighting the London bombings as a real turning point.

I can't help feeling a little naive, seeing as I had no idea of the extent of UGC before coming to Cardiff. But it's not all bad. Take Sundays for example, when there are very few staff in any media organisation. The general public who are willing to engage in news gathering sufficiently fill these gaps in the rota, and without pay. In fact, in the case of the BBC, they are actually paying to news gather because they pay, or should pay, Tv licences. Ironic?

It seems the public don't mind this, dare I say it, exploitation, given that they were happily sending 1000 pictures a day to the BBC after the London bombings.

Pete Clifton and his team seem so keen to harness this public participation they are actually planning to offer online courses to improve UGC. Talk about a stab in the back. No, says Pete. Nothing can eclipse the importance of the professional journalists in a team. Evidently, there is an increasing partnership with audiences, but it goes no further. So maybe my other posts have been a little extreme. I think I got a little carried away. Sorry. Let's face it, in reality only a tiny amount of UGC is actually ever used in the media so I think my future career will be safe for my life time, despite what some of my broadcast colleagues have been gloatingly posting.

MPTV

Internet TV seems to be the future of politics. Not so long ago we were congratulating Iain Dale on his innovative 18 Doughty Street, but internet TV must now be the norm. Or else there's just something in Conservative water. Douglas Carswell has just launched his very own MPTV, an initiative designed to bypass the conventional party leaflets and political mailshots. I thought it was simply a case of follow the leader after webcameron, but apparently Mr Carswell created the site before his pary leader created his video blog.

The creation of the site is definitely in line with Conservative environment policies. Think of the trees being saved. Well, actually, if the idea caught on in Parliament among all the parties, the amount of trees being saved because leaflets were not being used would be quite something. So internet TV is definitely the way forward.

***Easy if you know how?

The emergence of "newsers" is firm evidence that the age of doing news to people is well and truly over. User Generated Content is becoming such a norm that the general public feels it is their right to be involved in the news gathering process.

This user participation would make anyone think the media has been democratised, but we shouldn't be fooled. According to Daniel Meadows, digital storytelling is the only genuinely interactive new media which is currently on terrestrial TV, but this only exists in Wales and there has only been 1000 stories since 'Capture Wales' started six years ago. Nevertheless, digital storytelling is penetrating main stream media.

I wonder if digital storytelling is a method of democratisation of the media. It is genuinely interactive, rather than reactive, media but the funding comes from the BBC therefore essentially is it not still main stream media who pull the strings?

According to Daniel, sites such as Youtube appear to represent a democratisation of the media, but this is in fact a facade because you can't access these sites unless you have the "tools."

An 'easy if you know how' dilemma?

I have to disagree. 59% of Britons use the internet daily and the UK is the fastest-growing broadband country this year. Coupled with the sheer success of Youtube, does this not suggest the right tools are in the hands of the public?

If the barriers for entry into the media are lower than they were a decade ago, and are still falling, what becomes of us professionals?

The media has expensive literacies to deliver its message, and despite the fact that the internet and digital technology have arguably turned media into a conversation, I question whether audiences can effectively join these conversations without the literacies. How much UGC is actually ever used in the media? I wouldn't imagine very much.

Perhaps digital storytelling is the process by which people discover these literacies and subsequently learn how to use them...

One in 57 million

It's official. Everyone is now a journalist, and I can prove it.
25% of the online population blog, and there are currently 57 million blogs worldwide, with 75 000 blogs created every day. And every single one of my fellow bloggers are busy little bees, creating 1.2 million posts a day. So what's a journalism student to do? The technology which enables this democratisation of the media is there, and the process is arguably in motion. I would be excited if these overwhelming statistics didn't threaten my future!!

Media Cats and Rag Dogs

Over the past few weeks I've been wondering whether my online journalism module was invented to make everyone on the print options quit! I mean, if I sat down and thought about it, the one single theme that stands out from everything we've heard from speakers is that new media basically threatens everything that has gone before. Maybe this is just my own personal insecurities coming to the fore, but User Generated Content especially is like the atomic bomb of the media.

After listening to Richard Burton, however, I felt a new found confidence. Yes, he was a print journalist who then turned to the dark side, but I didn't feel threatened like I did listening to Amanda Powell. The difference was Richard didn't dazzle us with technological jargon and technical facts. He simply portrayed the Telegraph online as a new medium to express what he'd always written on paper. Most inspiringly, he said the web gave him his first opportunity to act as he thought a journalist should. There is no waiting for circulation figures and readership surveys. Comment can be gathered immediately and this is something I never considered. I can't just write. I have to write for an audience. Like a politician or a popstar, I will rely on the public to keep me where i want to be.

This task is even more difficult for online journalists because web readers are so disloyal, so everything comes down to capture. Not just what you write, but how you choose to display it.

I might have mentioned this before but I just don't like computers! You can imagine my delight when Richard asserted the importance of good old-fashioned journalistic skills. I had begun to think that only the Bill Gates's of this world would get ahead. That said, no matter how good a writer you are, you need to be able to multi-task. I do think all journalists should be able to wok a camera and edit pictures on photoshop, but the reality is everyone has different strengths. Rather than ignore these strengths I think they should be developed.

Isn't it better to have lots of people who are all really good at one thing instead of having a handful of people who can do most things, but just not very well? Obviously the Telegraph online doesn't think so.

A Whole New World.

Do not be confused by the title of this post. I am not going to blog about the theme tune from 'Aladdin.' Unfortunately some might say. It might be a little more deserved of my precious blog inches. I am in fact referring to the whole new world of new media presented to us today by Iain Dale, a Conservative, eh, well, I don't actually know what he is apart from a Conservative. I suspect that's the only point he wanted us to pick up on!

I have spent a while wondering if there is a future for print journalists, given the constant developments in new media,and was beginning to wonder if I should have chosen the broadcast option instead. But Iain Dale made me question the future of broadcast as well. His innovative internet TV station,18 Doughty Street, allows random bloggers to create two-minute film reports which are then uploaded to the server and used for discussion. Why pay a broadcast journalist to do the same job?

What annoyed me about Mr Dale, apart from his bias, was the comments he made about the ridiculousness of a proposed EU Directive to regulate the internet. An unregulated internet leads to so many problems; child porn, terrorist propaganda sites etc etc etc. Critics argue regulation would effectively lead to the loss of free speech but surely there are already restrictions on sites. I mean, 18 Doughty Street presenters can't be libelous or defamatory so what harm would an EU directive cause? Mr Dale kept referring to "the little guy," the ordinary person empowered by new media. He said that if an EU Directive is passed, the little guy is banished from internet TV. But little guys can't really get far with or without internet regulation unless they have money.

I am not just aimlessly ranting. I did ask Iain to explain himself. He does think markets should be regulated, but just not this one. Talk about having your cake and eating it...

New media, new values??

I was really excited about our first guest lecture as journalism students. I mean, who wouldn't be? The line-up is impressive by anyone's standards and Amanda Powell, editor of news interactive for BBC Wales, should have been a great opening act. Unfortunately, I wasn't impressed.

To be honest (because that's what this blog is all about) I'm slightly technologically challenged, but believe me it's not because I lack enthusiasm. I think that part of my brain just never developed. This is exactly why I was looking forward to Amanda's talk. I was hoping I would be converted and perhaps even begin to consider online journalism as a career. Let's face it; new media, as it is dubbed, is definitely the way forward.

I was very disappointed though. Amanda is obviously a competent online journalist, but her presentation was dry and lacked substance. Yes, she explained in great detail how the BBC's Content Production System works, but I felt this was too technological and went over alot of our heads.

One thing that did grab my attention was the fact that the average person only spends 0.82 seconds/page on the BBC Wales website. Amazing. Can our brains actually consume a news story in that time? The waffling that most broadsheets are guilty of is unheard of online. But does this mean that society has become so lazy that even reading a newspaper is out of the question? Apparently, if users had to spend any longer/page BBC online would effectively be failing. Frightening.

The i-player is a direct response to this very society, an innovative BBC initiative allowing users to access video and audio clips online. The phrase 'spoon fed' springs to mind. I thought alot about the i-player after the talk because I wonder if it means that the role of a broadcast journalist will effectively be dead in a few years. In fact, will any journalist's career be safe? Because of new media, people might stop reading newspapers completely. But if you are thinking of seeking financial refuge in online journalism, think again. The advent of User Generated Content, like blogs, means democratic participation is more and more normal and it seems that online journalists may become more like editors for this content rather than being news gatherers. This worries me considering I've paid so much money to do this postgrad when I could have just stayed at home blogging for a year.

But with 30 million page impressions a day on BBC online I think Amanda's job is safe for now.

Hello fellow bloggers. My name is Alana Fearon and, after graduating from Queen's University in Belfast with a Law with French degree, I am now an old crinkly postgrad. I'm studying newspaper journalism and the plan is that, by June, I'll have officially entered the world of the media. I can hardly wait...