Neil's in America pontificating on journalism, and he's written something fruitful and thought-provoking:

Serious journalism was described at the conference, repeatedly, as something like broccoli, or medicine the citizenry needs to spoon down, no matter how unpalatable, if democracy is to survive. That’s despite the fact investigative, or civic, journalism is still seen inside the industry as being at the top end of what we do. Yet I struggle to think of another industry that views its premium product as something akin to a nasty cough syrup - necessary, good for your health, but irredeemably foul-tasting.

Indeed. Remember when journalism used to be fun as well as important? Hair shirts off, please.

Thanks to Hilary for the link to a brilliant post by Kyle MacRae, Unedited. Unfiltered. Untrue, which brilliantly skewers CNN's new iReport site. If you haven't seen iReport yet, here's what CNN had to say about it:

Welcome to a brand new beta site for uncensored, user-powered news. CNN built the tools, you take it from there. All the stories here are user-generated and instant: CNN does not vet or verify their authenticity or accuracy before they post. The ones with the "On CNN" stamp have been vetted and used in CNN news coverage.

Anyone who knows anything about online communities and their intersection with online media should have all their lights flashing now, and Kyle obviously did. He uploaded a spurious picture, claimed it represented a fire in Scotland, and then sat back. He even managed to get the post on the front page of iReport by opening multiple tabs in Firefox and getting them to autorefresh. A citjournalism site that allows stuff like that is like a newspaper site that allows anyone on its editorial team to edit the front page. Stupid stupid stupid.

Read the whole post, and then wonder on the thing that got to me about it: the pompous prognostications of Mashable, who declared:

Ultimately, I’d say that CNN “gets it” with the iReport site. In addition to clearly understanding how to organize user-generated content, they are taking a fairly hands-off approach by not screening or censoring content, and not requiring registration to navigate around the site. Plus, with the bonus of being so closely tied to CNN, it should serve as a “minor leagues” of sorts for those that aspire to work in broadcast journalism, since citizen reporters will have an opportunity to become “stars” on the site and have their work aired on the cable network.

This points to a whole category problem with online journalism: people with no understanding of it, and with no understanding of how useable media comes about and comes to be trusted, can airily and condescendingly claim a company "gets it" just because they've put some UGC tools together, refused to moderate and generally just been super-cool and laid-back about the whole thing. Media cannot and will never be created on that basis. You need an editor. Otherwise it's just a message board with pretty pictures and a cool toolbar.

Involve the editors, says Howard Own:

Sure, blogs use some form of pre-screen (first-time commenters on howardowens.com, for example, go into a moderation queue), but any filters on blog comments these days have more to do with trying to block spam than worries over the content of reader comments.

Why is that?

I would say, primarily because blogs get the close attention of their owners. There is little opportunity for trolls to get a foothold on a well-run blog.  Most blog owners apply high standards for the conduct they will allow.  They monitor closely. They participate in the conversation.  In other words, they are actively engaged and involved.  They are owners.

How involved are reporters and editors involved in participation on their web sites?

Not much.

<>And until we fix that weak link in our participation strategy, we will continue to struggle with developing the kind of online community our newspaper communities deserve.

I would say more than that, actually. Editors have to own the entirety of their web offering, including the technology. When they produced newspapers, editors instinctively understood the technology they were using to produce newspapers, and that instinctive understanding led them to feel, organically, the limits and capacities of the technologies they were working in.

That hasn't happened - yet - online. Technology - and by extension commenting and moderation systems, and the CMS - has been left to the geeks on the top floor or in the basement, leading to a corrosive "us and them" situation where editors can choose to ignore issues facing their profession, and geeks have to end up making what are essentially journalistic decisions about content organisation because editors simply aren't making them. Get involved.

Interesting stuff from Nick Davies in the Press Gazette today. He's citing research from Cardiff University's journalism department which suggests that 80% of the copy in newspapers is now recyled pres release and agency fodder:

Looking at newspapers on a case-by-case basis, the study - which looked at 2,000 stories over two weeks last year - found that 69 per cent of home news stories in The Times were wholly or mainly made up of PR and/or wire copy. The proportions for other newspapers were: The Daily Telegraph: 68 per cent; The Daily Mail, 66 per cent; The Independent: 65 per cent and The Guardian: 52 per cent.

The research also claims that less Fleet Street staff journalists are now producing three times as many pages as they did 20 years ago.

Davies also looks at the diary of a regional newspaper reporter - who over a week said they produced 48 stories, worked 45.5 hours and spent just three hours out of the office.

I'm not going to go over Davies' arguments because I haven't seen them yet, but I will say this: the way a lot of newspapers have gone after online is almost certain to lead to this kind of thing. The rush to attract an audience has, in too many cases, been simply equated with the need to produce more copy. Now, it's probably true to say that having a wire news feed on your news site is, on balance, a good thing to have, but this does not mean your journalists are most usefully employed writing (or rather, rewriting) news stories. Less can be more, particularly if your journalists are trained to curate the entirety of your online offering - community, search, incoming links, story updates, pictures, video, the works.

Adrian Monck provides a few snippets from David Leigh's speech last night, in which Leigh listed some of the investigative campaigns he had undertaken which had actually led to change. His concluded:

There’s only one reason why these stories have an effect. I like to think, of course, it’s down to our own extreme personal brilliance. But it’s not. It’s because a story on the front page of the Guardian carries clout.

...

And that’s perhaps one of the biggest dangers of the media revolution. When the media fragment – as they will – and splinter into a thousand websites, a thousand digital channels – all weak financially – then we’ll see a severe reduction in the power of each individual media outlet. The reporter’s voice will struggle to be heard over the cacophony of a thousand other voices.

Interesting, very interesting. There is a response to this - that a thousand voices can self-organise into something very powerful (as Dan Rather will tell you) - but I think there's also a very valid point in here. We've had several decades of influential media moguls and editors who could shift opinion with a sweep of their pen. While we should not mourn Beaverbrook and his nefarious ilk (or the influence, real or perceived, of the Sun on domestic UK policy), we should also be wary of how the way media operates as a check on government is shifting in this country. Worth keeping an eye on, at the very least.

The always-interesting David Montgomery has asked a question I know a lot of people are thinking about: who needs sub-editors anyway?

And for good measure he threw in a reference to the "twilight world" of subs. 

But Montgomery used the example of TV journalists – who are not sub-edited for live reports.

He said: “I see a situation where experienced journalists that can be trusted have no barrier to communication with their audience.

“Sub-editing is a twilight world, checking things you don’t really need to check…Senior people will always monitor the content, a core group will create the product.”

But he added that individual journalists need to have “more discretion over what can be published”.

He said: “I come from a world where editor-in-chiefs are control freaks who want to control every word. We’ve got to let that go.”

I once encountered a sub whose normal week involved subbing - wait for it - two articles. Obviously an edge case, but I don't think it's a surprise that the most militant NUJ members tend to be found on subs desks.

That said, we have to tread carefully here. For one thing, legal teams will look askance at the idea of journalists talking straight to readers without any kind of formal filter (remember Andrew Gilligan). For another, big media organisations will always see a large chunk of their value being invested in reliability and accuracy, and the subs are a big component of that in any text-based news structure.

That said, subs will have to change, and I see that change being an evolution into a profoundly different role: that of curators of the news space created by the news brand. If Arianna Huffington was right when she described news media as having attention deficit disorder while the blogosphere was obsessive-compulsive, then we need some more obsessives around the place to keep the place tidy. By which I mean keeping content organised around topics, farming tags, checking search terms, seeding communities, enriching text with pictures, sound and video. As well as keeping those childish reporters in line with their spelling and grammar. More obsessives required, please. There's a ready supply on the subs desk.

The Web is having a rare old time attacking the National Union of Journalists for its continuing attempt to out-dumb Dumb and Dumber. In fact, it's somewhat unedifying to see a bunch of people who don't actually do journalism turn their "you so do NOT get it" ray onto the NUJ. However pointless the NUJ's pronoucements are (and, let's face it, the spectre of a union saying "this web thing, it's all a bit rubbish" has been pretty pointless) I think it makes sense to take the concerns of journalists at face value and see what they represent. I think the real thing we should be accusing the NUJ of is doing such a god-awful job about representing the issue and arguing it effectively.

To find an effective argument, look no further than Roy Greenslade, who is rapidly turning into a national treasure as someone who really gets journalism (he edited a tabloid, for God's sake) and who now really gets how journalism is changing as it moves online. His latest piece, a follow-up to an earlier post about his plans to leave the NUJ because of the current kerfuffle, argues the issues around journalism and representation calmly and effectively, by taking the example of a correspondent who works for a local newspaper and who finds himself at odds with his Union chapel, since the Chapel is resisting change:

The NUJ and me: a considered response | Greenslade | Guardian Unlimited:
So his predicament is obvious. He wants all the paper's journalists to embrace new working conditions, including the acceptance of unpopular weekend shifts and, presumably, multi-media skills. Though the NUJ chapel is hostile to these essential changes, and he finds himself arguing against it, he will remain a union member because he thinks it the best way to maintain overall journalistic skills.

In essence, this argument - along with its central contradiction - was advanced by Tim Gopsill, editor of The Journalist and Hélène Mulholland, mother of The Guardian's NUJ chapel. Tim wrote: "The union wants to try to preserve professional standards in a somewhat challenging environment."

Similarly, Hélène wrote: "What we defend, and are right to defend in my view, is the threat to quality journalism which we fear could be eroded by media companies who see the digital age as an opportunity to load more work on individual shoulders by cutting back on staff at a time when working across a number of platforms is increasingly becoming the norm."

Read the whole piece. As an ex-hack, I've got the following fairly random observations:

• journalists who identify themselves as "not-management" are making a big, big mistake
• journalists have historically thirsted for a collective identity, and the NUJ has historically provided that
• this has led to an "us and them" mentality, not just towards management, but also towards audiences (see, for instance, the NUJ's recent pronouncements on the evils of "citizen journalism")
• as journalists get closer and closer to their audiences, and in some instances become indistinguishable from them, this need for a collective "other" identity is going to fade
• if you don't like what management is doing, set up your own publishing brand. The only thing stopping you is fear.
• when it becomes trivial to establish new businesses, union power (almost by definition) begins to evaporate
• isn't it rather wonderful that this debate about the nature of journalism is taking place out in the open like this?

I was very taken with journa-list.com which I came across this morning thanks to a Bobbie Johnson post on Technology Guardian. The site seeks to search across the output of all online-published journalism in the UK. You can tap in a journalist's name, and up pops their most recent articles. On the front page of the site is a tag cloud, and you can click on a subject to see which journalists have written about it. And on the journalist's page itself, there's another tag cloud showing which subjects that journalist has been covering.

Personally, I find this kind of thing amazing, but it raises an interesting question: how should a journalist respond to it? The journalists I speak to (even the ones who work exclusively online) rarely look backwards over what they have done; they don't tend to have a notional tag cloud in their heads with a list of subjects, apart from maybe a few very major ones (political journalists will tend to know how often they've written about Gordon Brown in recent weeks). They tend to be looking forward, not backwards. To paraphrase Arianna Huffington, they've got attention-deficit disorder, not obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Journalism is a trade which is, almost by definition, sniffing around for the next big thing. Journalists don't tend to hang around thinking about what they've just worked on (an exception is investigative journalism, where long-term obsessive-compulsive behaviour is part of the job). But sites like this raise the question: should journalists be more aware of the history they've created? Should they pay more attention to their vapour trail?

I would argue that, today, a really effective journalist is someone who is looking forward and backwards; who is aware of the fact that the stuff they create is no longer ephemeral, here-today-gone-tomorrow. Sites like journa-list show, for those who didn't know already, that journalism is now as much about recording as reporting. Just as a site accrues Pagerank and Technoratirank and general online reputation by simply being, so a news story (or collection of stories) is a permanent state of record for as long as it sits in a database and is available via the web. That is a profound change, and one which I find most journalists are only dimly aware of.

The fantastic Mr Cowen makes some comments on the decline of the music industry:

In the past most people didn't much like or listen to most of the music they bought, or in any case most of the value came from their very favorites.  A relatively small percentage of our music purchases accounted for most of our listening pleasure.  So if people can sample music in advance, and know in advance what they will like, music sales will plummet.  This will be a sign of market efficiency, not market failure.

Admittedly copyright issues are being superimposed on this scenario at the same time, so the net assessment of current music trends is complex.  But when there is uncertainty about consumer tastes, falling output can be a strong Pareto improvement.  (It's just like how having lots of dates is not necessarily the sign of a happy love life.)  Less music is being produced, but we're getting more of the stuff we want.

The first point clearly has a lot of truth in it, and also applies to an awful lot of packaged media (including newspapers). As we find it easier and easier to get hold of exactly what we want, and as it becomes available to us in individual, unpackaged form, we turn away from the packaged entities because, for us, they're economically inefficient: we have to buy a bunch of stuff we're not interested in in order to get what we want. But this destroys the economics of packaged media (including newspapers), since they relied on us subsidising the production of something we're not interested in in return for access to the stuff we do want (it's actually more complex than this, but this is an OK summary for now).

The second point - that less music is being produced is, I think, very wrong. My strong impression is that more music is being produced, of greater variety. Just like more words are being produced every day by bloggers and independent publishers. By giving people access to the tools of creation and distribution, we have unlocked a lot of new content. Whether there's more good stuff than before is a very interesting question, and one I'm not going to attempt on a Sunday morning. 

This was interesting on the BBC NEWS | The Editors blog:

In an interview with Jeremy, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband took exception to a figure we had quoted in a piece about UK companies' investment in Burma. He also admiited - and this is a rarity for a politician - that he didn't know the answer to one of Jeremy's questions, and promised to clear up both points by posting something on our website.

I've often thought politicians should feel comfortable saying "I don't know, I'll follow that up." Not least because it opens the debate out to include the rest of us, away from the sterile me-versus-you format of TV debate. As the BBC editors go on to say:

The next day the FCO duly sent through a statement confirming that the figure we'd used was out of date. Then the Burma campaign group sent us a statement taking a dim view of the FCO's clarification. Viewers piled in too, demanding and debating the answers, while the programme producer responsible for the piece went online to direct the traffic.

Now go and look at the sequence of statements on the Newsnight site itself. It's very sterile, very "corporation shall speak unto corporation," but it is a start, and a very interesting one.

One small gripe: can't someone at the BBC do something about the URL http://bbc.co.uk/newsnight resolving to a 403? Shouldn't that be a URL that works?