Rentoul’s clichéd critique is easier blogged than done

John Rentoul charmingly criticised the work of his colleagues across the country with a list of the most over used sentences in journalism for journalisted this week.

Lobbywatcher’s comment on Jon Slattery’s blogpost that repeats the list sums up my sentiments exactly.

No doubt Mr Rentoul, who gets paid a six-figure sum for writing a couple of columns and a few leaders each week, can afford to take his time searching for freshly-minted phrases for his opinion pieces. Those of us who have to rattle off 1,000 words by next deadline on Vince Cable’s future prospects as well as covering the news story in print and online can surely be forgiven for resorting to the odd hackneyed cliché now and again.

I was in Brixton at 8am this morning after leaving the office past 8pm last night, covering what was supposed to be an all day event in 600 words that had to be filed by 11. From a café.On a laptop with iffy wifi and an uncooperative camera lead.

As always I tried my absolute hardest to keep it free of clichés or at least imbue the ones that local news at Christmas demands with a whisper of wit but I am sure I failed to some degree.

I didn’t have any of the top phrases in my copy – although it’s perfectly possible that I could have – but I did have the necessary hilariously dressed pet, a somewhat trite Christmas carol intro and maybe even a couple of hackneyed sentences.

But with a three hour deadline for copy including pictures, interviews and a potted history of the organisation I think I did quite a good job Mr Routoul, thank you very much.

Want to read my masterpiece? Buy the Ham&High. Someone has to pay me for my clichés, crappy puns and Christmas carol intros don’t they?

The list:

• Learning curve: 771 articles

• Way beyond: 746 articles

• A no-brainer: 651 articles

• Game changer: 524 articles

• Perfect storm: 520 articles

• Raising awareness: 405 articles

• Elephant in the room: 353 articles

• Not fit for purpose: 327 articles

• Out of the box: 229 articles

• What’s not to like?: 206 article

Should the Telegraph ‘crowdsource’ the identities of violent student protesters?

Yesterday’s violence was a bit of a shocker to be honest. I would expect that in Paris or Barcelona but London’s young protesters have kept their cool for at least the last ten years.

They aren’t scenes anyone wants to see – wide eyed bandanered youth with little more on their minds than destruction. It made a mockery in many ways of the legitimate protesters outside. But then maybe that is what some people get like when they are dispossessed by those they voted into power a few short months ago.

Debates of the morality of violent protest aside an interesting point about web-based journalism has come up – The Telegraph are using their considerable online presence and the high social network interest in the protests to name, and one must believe, eventually shame, the protesters that have been caught on camera.

Immediately it feels a bit ‘crimewatch’ to me. But then it’s not that far from what a journalist does everyday, it’s just making innovative use of the social media available. A country wide doorstep if you will.

And yet watching the tweets appear on my timeline it didn’t feel like the journalism I like to think I practice. This just felt like schadenfreude. Looking through the photos for a familiar face and the opportunity to dob in an acquaintance for the thrill of it.

At least on crimewatch we know what the consequences will be if we tell on them. The Telegraph offers no such clarity.

It’s a completely knee-jerk, old fashioned reaction but the dispossessed, recent student in me didn’t really like it.

The Times paywall should reveal all

The figures have been out for almost two days and we still know little more than we ever have about the relative sucesses and failures of The Times paywall.  Even Roy Greenslade is none the wiser and he is very wise.

Robert Andrews at PaidContent has made a good go of making as much sense as possible of the opaque figures. He points out that from a pre-paywall readership of 20 million unique monthly users The Times now claims 105,000 cumulative reader payments in the last four months. Which means, he says, they have managed to get just 0.5 percent of their online audience to pay.

An interesting comparison Andrews makes is to the music streaming website Spotify. He says that the freemium business model demands a 5% base to become valid. While it is clear that the News International paywall has a way to go before it reaches those dizzying heights – but I think the similarities need not end there.

What has always endeared me to Spotify is its ability to change peoples’ perception of their presumed right to free music. It offers a fantastic free service, one many of my friends are quite content with. All the while it ensure the full premium service is affordable and that the added value is simple and quantifiable an obvious to all it’s users – no ads need be endured.

It is this value adding that a simple paywall falls down on. The Times, hidden so securely behind it’s paywall, has little lure for me now. Unlike free-spotify users who continue to use and interact with a brand on a daily if not hourly basis. The switch, when feeling flush or frustrated with advertisements, is a natural one.

The Times does not have this. I don’t visit that home page anymore because it just frustrates me – no one wants a door, digital, or otherwise slammed in their face time and again.

There must be a way to keep people interacting with the interface of The Times without giving away the premium service. I haven’t thought of it yet, but when I do you’ll be the first to know.

In many ways I want the paywall to work – and I wrote this blog saying as much when it was launched – but by releasing figures so opaque figures that, as the head of journalism at my old university George Brock puts it: “Any business journalist on either title [Times or Sunday Times] confronted with this sort of chicanery from another company in the online market would gleefully rip into the executives releasing numbers in such opaque form,”  they aren’t doing anyone any favours.

Tweet in the name of the law – social network training for police is better late than never

A few weeks ago a detective knocked on my door.  They thought a neighbour had been badly attacked on a street late at night but couldn’t identify him.

He was in a coma, his family abroad and his wallet gone – they had a clue he lived next door but had no pictures with which to identify him and no way to contact his next of kin.

Within minutes of logging on to his Facebook page another woman in his block of flats had established contact with the family and provided a library of photographs the detective could use. Except, despite our encouragement and the exceptional circumstances, he wouldn’t.

Raising his eyebrows, as if to say ‘silly old me’ he told us that he wasn’t very good with computers and had never really ‘got round to’ Facebook. So, he smiled hopelessly, if it was all alright with us, he would wait for the girlfriend to arrive at Gatwick.

My neighbour and I were astounded. There was a man was lying in a hospital bed unconscious, a family half way around the world worried sick and no proof positive of his identity.

And on a computer in the next room was a library of photos showing him from every possible angle, a list of contacts at our fingertips and even, conceivably, information about his last movements.

As a journalist and regular facebook and twitter user all I know the power these social networks can provide. It just seemed like such a waste.

So it as a relief that it has been announced that police officers will finally receive training on social networking sites.

Considering Facebook launched in Februrary 2004 (Twitter in 2006) it is outrageous this training has taken over six-year become part of standard training procedure.

As a journalist, feigning ignorance wouldn’t get you very far with your news editor if a rival scooped you with a story from a social network – and why should this be any different in other professions that rely on information?

Officers will now be taught about evidence-gathering on these sites as part of detectives training at the National Policing Improvement Agency. 3,500 detectives pass through the agency’s training courses each year so this is a good start, but in all likelihood my polite but social-network-ly inept detective is likely remain just as bemused as ever.

Apps for Democracy – why Boris should encourage crowdsourcing



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Welcome death knell for council propaganda papers

Some really good news this week for local papers everywhere  – the tories have banned the council newspaper.

Eric Pickles has announced that councils will only be allowed to publish free titles four times a year. They will also have to remove any content that praises the council – including quotes from local residents .

Council newspapers have, long before I worked for a local paper, driven me to distraction. It confounds logic that, in a democratic society that prides itself on a free and open press we have let them carry on as long as they have.

Where I live in Whitechapel the ubiquitous East End Life flops infuriatingly onto my doormat every week. I have no choice whether I receive this pseudo-independent paper and it’s presence in my hallway means in times of desperation, it sometimes even gets read.

Few things in the world anger me more than it though. it makes no attempt to fully declare it’s allegiance to the council and at first or even second glance it looks exactly like an independent freesheet.

This paper does not simply fulfil the valid purpose of letting locals know what the council is spending its money on and the services it supplies. It is filled with crimes stories, feel-good features and ‘exclusive’ interviews and the pages are peppered with adverts that should be in struggling local papers.

Funnily enough the one thing they don’t write about is council cock-ups, wasted funds and dodgy dealings. It is the equivalent of having a free government-run national newspaper delivered to every door in country. They don’t even do that in China.

With an annual budget of an astonishing £1.6bn mainly dervived from advertising East End Life  ‘only’ costs the taxpayer £118,000 a year (still a huge amount of money for a piece of council propaganda, particularly as taxpayers also fund a large press office at the council too.)

Last year councillor Tim Archer called for the council to scrap its “propaganda paper” telling them to save £670,000 annually by advertising its vacancies in its local paper, the  East London Advertiser. A famous stalwart of the East End which is now struggling to survive after the loss of council. Hopefully it can expect some level of resurgence in advertising revenue – very much-needed in these turbulent times.

n.b. The Ham&High doesn’t have a weekly council paper  to compete against, we have the fantastic Camden New Journal, so this post is not  simply shadenfreude. I find council papers morally objectionable.