psmith, journalist - Latest Comments

Re: Experimenting with Google+ hangouts – live, interactive broadcast conversations

Hannah Waldram — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:59:46 -0000

Thanks for mentioning the Guardian Hangout Patrick - I was helping run the hangout and it was incredibly frustrating and I think there are a few bugs which need to be ironed out, but agree there is some interesting potential to explore here.

Re: The journalist’s guide to the internet… from 1999

Simon Clarke — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 11:32:51 -0000

Ironically, the guide has since vanished! Unless the URL is wrong. Another key quirk of the internet – great as a vehicle for disseminating information; lousy as a vehicle for preserving it...

Re: Audio: Frontline Club/New Statesman whistleblowing debate – Can we trust the leakers?

Blub Blab — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:54:24 -0000

Regarding Douglas Murray: I think asking those thousands of questions is some rhetoric way of belittle Julian Assagne as he couldn't answer the question immediately and thus forgot to answer the most of them, which makes the people believe that Assagne conceals something from them.

Re: After the news has gone: life without your local newspaper

patricksmithjournalist — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:48:12 -0000

Wolfie,
Thanks for stopping by. It's astonishing to think the Reporter had 14 editions - can you remember what they were? Also, it's very odd to think that it covered the city centre as late as 1982, meaning it was competing with the MEN, the national press and several other locals. It must have made a good deal in advertising to have supported all that. How times change.

Re: After the news has gone: life without your local newspaper

Wolfiepix — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:49:30 -0000

Couldn't agree more Patrick.... happening all over the country. I started my career as a photographer on the Reporter Group in Ashton back in 1982 and well remember people dropping in to the office all the time with gossip and stories. The Reporter used to have 14 local editions, each with a dedicated reporter covering Peak dstrict to East Manchester and City Centre, now it's just got 2 !

Re: How to be a reporter in a digital age: don’t take no for an answer

Peter English — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 07:11:21 -0000

When, as an HPA employee, I wanted to know the number of measles cases recently, as part of dealing with an outbreak, HPA's Centre for Infections were not permitted to give me the recent numbers because they'd recently been sent to DH prior to publication, and until they were published, they were secret. If they hadn't recently been sent to DH for publication, they would have been able to give them to me.

The purported reason appears to be so that government departments can check the figures; but I get the impression it's more because they want to be able to publish their story with the spin they want to put on itdon't want to have their story spoiled

Re: How to be a reporter in a digital age: don’t take no for an answer

Chris Wheal — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:22:43 -0000

I have blogged about my dealings with the Treasury Press Office

http://www.chriswheal.com/trea...

Re: How to be a reporter in a digital age: don’t take no for an answer

patricksmithjournalist — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:06:31 -0000

Jane - no the details were not released, as Chris outlines here: http://www.chriswheal.com/trea...
The 4pm deadline came and went without anything being released and as Chris says, he kept his side of the bargain.

Re: How to be a reporter in a digital age: don’t take no for an answer

Jane — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 09:41:20 -0000

Spot on. Btw, what happened at 4pm - were the details released to him in the end? Clearly the intention was to release these stats only once everyone had switched attention elsewhere.

Re: The importance of journalism and building communities

patricksmithjournalist — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:47:46 -0000

Ryan - good luck with it, let us know how you get on with it - would be interested to see a link and find out more. You are not insane!

Re: The importance of journalism and building communities

patricksmithjournalist — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:47:04 -0000

Cheers WH - what you're doing is v impressive.
In a sense your community is other students or young journalists in the same situation - they will naturally gravitate towards your coverage of your experiences.
The fact you're doing meet-ups and getting out there is a very big deal - there's no substitute for doing that and I don't think there will be.

Re: The importance of journalism and building communities

patricksmithjournalist — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:44:58 -0000

Great stuff Jo, thanks for joining in. What you're doing is a great example of what I'm talking about: you've identified an area and are publishing for the people in it. You could perhaps argue that Preston is too big a place to really count as a homogeneous community: I imagine what you're finding is that there are sub-groups within sub-groups in your audience.

But the main thing is responding to what people say and it sounds like you've cracked that side of it.

Re: The importance of journalism and building communities

Ryan GS — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:59:57 -0000

Great post. And great comments.

As someone who's trying to build a niche site outside the support network of an MA course, these niche journo publications (which just so happen to be online) are a real lifeline.

Learning as one goes along seems the business - even celebrated.

Posts like these help focus the mind and calm the nerves. Anything to stop me thinking "Am I insane for trying this?!"

Re: The importance of journalism and building communities

Wannabe Hacks — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 13:06:14 -0000

Again - this is mirrored in our experience at Hacks. It is much better to have 50 really engaged people, than 500 that aren't that bothered. It is so satisfying when our community take the time to point out things we missed, things we might like and talk among themselves about how or why an issue we have raised is important (or not)

Surely many, smaller niche sites with editors and writers that really understand the audience they are writing for is the way news and content will develop over time. Rather than large catch all websites that lack a deeper sense of identity.

Re: The importance of journalism and building communities

blogpreston — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 11:17:07 -0000

Good post Pat. Based on my own experiences at Blog Preston, I think it takes a while before you really start to understand who you're writing for. Indeed my perception of what our audience was when I first starting working on it compared to now is radically different.

Our community is small but it's very focused and active - we now receive regular emails from readers either asking to be listed in our local blog directory, wanting to write for us or publicise an event they're putting on.

Our twitter followers are similarly engaged, and in my opinion it's a lot better to have a small, focused and highly engaged audience rather than a very large general one. It streamlines the content you're providing and also means that people are more likely to come to us with content ideas because they feel part of a tight-knit community that talks offline as well as online (we've organised several events and meetups).

Re: What I learned about Twitter and journalism in 2010 – tips and advice from a compulsive tweeter

patricksmithjournalist — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:41:25 -0000

The key thing here Guille is the difference between the new and the "classic" retweet.

If you are using Twitter.com (I would advise against doing this for many reasons, some outlined above) then you are using the new retweet facility. That means that you automatically repost the message into the timelines of all your followers.

If you use Tweetdeck on desktop and mobile (as I do) you have the choice between the new and old RT styles on your dashboard each time you RT and you can change the default to classic in the options. Hootsuite offers something similar and I'm sure the others do.

But there are 2 problems:

1. It misses out your user name, therefore denying you the chance to meet new people.

2. You can't edit RTs in the new style. Very often I add a one or two word comment, sometimes another link or I just shorten ppl's tweets and leave in the most important bit.

I quite literally sub-edit people's tweets and leave in the bits I'm interested in. This has got me in trouble at least once, when I was accused of changing the meaning of what someone was saying, so you have to be careful and I've learned that lesson the hard way.

Another issue is that you want to give credit to whoever made the original tweet and the person that alerted you to it. It's impossible to do that all the time without shortening the tweet. As any sub knows, many words in the average sentence are utterly redundant anyway ('that' and 'which' for example) and this is even more the case with Twitter when characters are at a premium - so don't be frightened of cutting down within reason.

Someone who is very good at this is @IanBissell who instead of RTing people summarises the main points as he sees it and adds a link. RTing isn't always the best solution.

Re: What I learned about Twitter and journalism in 2010 – tips and advice from a compulsive tweeter

patricksmithjournalist — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:30:25 -0000

Many thanks Elisabeth

Re: What I learned about Twitter and journalism in 2010 – tips and advice from a compulsive tweeter

guille — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 08:27:38 -0000

I don´t know a lot about twitter, cause I´m new on it.

Why do you use "RT", instead of pushing "retweet" button? What is the advantage?

Thank you and merry christmass

Re: What I learned about Twitter and journalism in 2010 – tips and advice from a compulsive tweeter

Elisabeth Winkler — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 07:39:13 -0000

Hi Patrick You make such good points I have added a link to
my post about social media. It is also
interesting to get the low-down from a fellow journalist. Twitter
is a must for compulsive communicators - which surely includes most
journalists? All the best for the holidays Elisabeth

Re: What I learned about Twitter and journalism in 2010 – tips and advice from a compulsive tweeter

patricksmithjournalist — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 16:05:04 -0000

Thanks Anon. That's the main point isn't it: while it's important to optimise your content and take social media seriously, it is still about the story, the video, the goodness of what you're doing.

As I told a room of journalism students recently, no matter what you do, 'if it is crap no one will read it!'

Re: What I learned about Twitter and journalism in 2010 – tips and advice from a compulsive tweeter

anon — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 15:10:23 -0000

Fair play, this makes sense. It's important to put social
media in perspective. It's not going to generate traffic for
worthless content, and it's not going to save the world. It is what
it is. And sensible, measured posts like this do a lot to insulate
us from the social douches who'd have businesses believe that a
twitter account and a facebook fan page will turn dust to
dimes...

Re: Blog to get a job in journalism: build a community, promote yourself and get networking

Guido Fawkes — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:22:45 -0000

Or if you are really good, you'll become a successful blogger.

Re: Smoke and Mirrors: Why the Daily Mirror will not build a paywall

Patrick Smith — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:21:28 -0000

Thanks Paul, updated now. I tend to forget that the People exists - it's not a bad paper, just still seems odd that TM would want to own two red-top Sunday titles.

Re: Smoke and Mirrors: Why the Daily Mirror will not build a paywall

Paul — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 08:54:07 -0000

Just to say Trinity Mirror has four national titles - the three you mention plus The People.

Re: Are your tweets endorsed by your employer?

Marco Leitao Silva — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:50:55 -0000

Good afternoon, Patrick!
From my point of view, you are right - but only to a certain extent. In your post, you mention example of BBC3's new schedule. However, I don't think the same line of thought could be followed if we talk about political points of view.
Personally, as a journalist covering politics in Portugal, I never expressed any points of view on Twitter/Facebook. I never wished that my readers were biased when they read my work.
However, I DO understand that some journalists might be willing to express their opinions, as any other citizen. And, if that "empty" sentence is the only way they can protect their news outlets from their own comments, why shouldn't they use it?
There are several different shades of grey between black and white.
Cheers!
Marco