Save Darlo

I'm not a football fan, and I certainly can't call myself a Darlington FC supporter. But I work in the town and would hate to see the end of the Quakers.

So me and Jack went to the Northern Echo Arena yesterday to watch their game against Fleetwood. Loads of people were tweeting from around the ground, which made me think I should curate some of them into a Storify.

So, starting on Wednesday when the club was lost for ten minutes, here it is.

The story is so long that it doesn't fit on this page anymore, so it's probably best to view it on the Storify website.

PS: Hi to everyone coming over from Darlo Uncovered.

Rupert, James and Rebekah at the Culture, Media and Sport select committee

The transcripts of the appearances by Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee are now available online.

I took the text of the two sessions from the Guardian, and stuck the straight into Wordle. Then, because I didn't like the results, I took the words "James", "Rupert", "Murdoch" and "Mr" out of the Murdoch's session and the words "Rebekah" and "Brooks" from that transcript and tried again.

Here then for your enjoyment are yesterday's sessions as word clouds. The bigger the word, the more often it appears in the transcript.

Rupert and James Murdoch - click to go to a larger version.


Rebekah Brooks - click to go to a larger version.

Press regulation: what's to fear?

One of the likely casualties of recent events in the media is the Press Complaints Commission.

As a regulator it's been, well, pants. The Express group of papers - which really do need regulating - have been allowed to drop out, and many breaches of the PCC code go with relatively little comeback on the publisher. Self-regulation hasn't worked for the national press.

Broadcasters are of course regulated by Ofcom, which has statutory powers. And news broadcasters seem to manage alright under its jurisdiction. One of the star news services of the past few days has been Sky News: from it's fantastic hour at six o'clock on Thursday evening to Adam Boulton tonight describing the future of his own channel as "in the balance" as spotted by Richard Jones

Odd to see Adam Boulton on Sky News saying that the future of his own channel is "in the balance" after today's developments.less than a minute ago via HootSuite Favorite Retweet ReplyRichard Jones
rlwjones

Unlike the News International controlled press they've given space to this story, and haven't been afraid to interview people who've been critical of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. They've been across the story, covering it with balance and vigour. And all of this under the control of a regulator.

Journalists need some freedoms to do their job, but the loss of self-regulation doesn't mean the sky will fall in.

In Manchester football journalism really is dead.

Oh dear. Yesterday I blogged about Sir Alex Ferguson's heavy handed response to Rob Harris' question in a press conference. I suggested that football journalism is broken because of the balance of power between the media and the clubs.

Forty-seven minutes into today's PM programme (iPlayer link) there's an illuminating interview with Peter Spencer, the Sports Editor from the Manchester Evening News. Spencer basically says he doesn't want people coming into press conferences rocking the boat and upsetting the clubs; and he puts the pressure of filling pages above his reporters' right to probe a bit.

I'm not suggesting that journalists abandon commercial realities. Of course papers need filling, but we need to be honest with our audience. In countries where governments are hostile to the media or where correspondents can only travel with a state "minder" it's not unusual for the restrictions and conditions placed on the journalist to be made clear.

It'd be great to see sports journalists being as candid as their colleagues in hostile nations about the restrictions their working under, whether self-imposed or not.

(Thanks to Andrew Glover for giving me the nod about this interview)

Press injunctions: maybe it's Fergie's fault.

In the same way that Apprentice candidates have to call Alan Sugar "Lord Sugar", you're meant to call Alex Ferguson "Sir Alex", but he does little to deserve that respect. Manchester United, and Sir Alex in particular have a relationship with the press that's based on fear and loathing. He's scared of them and he hates them. Considering that the Reds just pocketed £60 million pounds via the Premier League from TV companies you'd think that they'd be better disposed towards the media, but not so.

Fergie thought he could ban a journalist from Associated Press who asked a non-injunction-busting question about Ryan Giggs at a press conference, where journalists are supposed to ask questions.



Rob Harris simply asked this: "The most experienced Champions League player in the team's obviously Ryan Giggs, it's the fourth final for him, how important for the team is he on Saturday?"

But for Fergie it was too much and he set about planning to ban Harris from the pre-match press conference on Friday. A press conference which is managed by Uefa and that United have no control over. I had been wondering how Giggs could have been so badly advised about managing the media recently, but if his boss behaves like this you can see where his influence may lie.

Football journalism is actually broken in this country. Newsrooms are scared of being denied access to clubs. They shy away from stories that show the clubs in less than glorious colours and don't ask difficult questions because they fear becoming persona non grata at the training ground or in the press box. I'd like to see a sports desk take the risk and if they're declined further access then tell it like it is and inform their audience what's gone in. In 2011 there have to be other ways of reporting football that don't depend on attending the regular press conferences anyway. I know it won't happen, but I'd love to see it.

Thirsk fire

I heard about Storify a while ago, and it's now gone into public beta so I was keen to have a play.

Then tonight there was a big fire in Thirsk, so I had a little play.



If you're not familiar with Storify it's a way to curate content from various social media sites to help tell stories.

That Fox News map of the Middle East

All over my twitter stream for the last few days have been people tweeting and re-tweeting this screen-grab of a map of the Middle East from Fox News.

Egypt is in the wrong place, it's where Iraq was when I last looked.

Everyone's getting hot and bothered about the channel's ignorance and the poor grasp of geography shown by American as the crisis in Egypt unfolds.

But it's not a new image. Do a little Googling and it soon becomes clear that the map dates back to July 2009, as these sites explain.

And just look at the picture. If it was anything to do with the current story wouldn't Egypt be one of the highlighted countries rather than Syria, Iran, Jordan and Israel?

And who's to say that it hasn't been Photoshopped? If it was a photo of a telly with the map actually on-screen I'd be much less dubious, but a clean graphic like that could easily have been tinkered with and who'd know it?

Last week I read this excellent blog post from Paul Bradshaw about verifying online content.

With some justification we're told not believe all that we read in the papers, but we should also remember that things are even easier to spoof online. As well as reading Paul's post it's worth being aware of snopes.com which is a great site for dispelling urban and internet myths, and a good way to waste hours of your time.

Reporting Statistics - when 25% isn't 25 out of 100.

Statistics often raise problems for journalists. Clearly some journalists don't get numbers, or find the concepts involved difficult to communicate.

Drive on BBC Radio Five Live today ran an interview with Jillian Satin on this story linking depression with reduced cancer survival rates. It's on the iPlayer here for the next week or so (about 2 hours 52 minutes in).

At the end of the interview I didn't feel much more informed than before. Some of that has to be down to Anita Anand who did the interview, but the contributor didn't do much to help either. For instance, when asked about the significance of the increased risk, she said "When we hear 25% we think of 25 out of 100, and that's not the right way to interpret it."

That made me stop and think for a bit, and put me off the rest of the piece. What I was hoping for was a clear explanation of how I should think of this 25% increase in probability. Unfortunately that wasn't forthcoming. Part of this is a problem with the format - Five Live tends to favour brevity, but on this occasion the item, and contributor, deserved more time.

As a listener I felt let down - the story is interesting and deserved a proper explanation, but Jillian Satin's answers didn't help explain her work and Anita Anand's questioning didn't give her the opportunity to tell the story.

AudioBoo on air?

This post is inspired by a tweet sent to me by @richardberryuk

He spotted that I'd been using AudioBoo and wanted to know if it would have any use in radio broadcasting.

I sort of replied, but the 140 character limit imposed by Twittter didn't really help me make a coherent response.

Hopefully I can fix that now.

If you haven't come across AudioBoo it's an iPhone app that lets you record short audio clips and and send them off to the internet - if Twitter is micro-blogging this is micro-podcasting.

I've really only played with it, but there are definitely situations where AudioBoo could help a broadcaster.

First of all what are the limitations? Well, at the moment it's iPhone only (although there is a beta test going on that lets you post Boos on the telephone). The built in mic on the iPhone isn't fantastic, but the one on the headphone lead is better.

The Boos are saved and published as mp3 files, which is fine for the internet, but some people may be squeamish about using such a lowly format on the radio (although I've filed quite a few pieces from home as mp3s and never had a complaint). The website doesn't allow for direct download of the mp3s, but does provide RSS feeds for each user and a button that subscribes to the feed in iTunes. Once you've downloaded the files in the feed it's easy to get them into your sound editing app of choice or load them up for playout.

There's an adage in photography that the best camera is the one you've got with you, and it may well turn out for radio reporters that the best recorder is the Boo they've got with them. At the scene of a breaking story if you've got AudioBoo on your iPhone you're ready to record interviews and send them back to the newsroom for broadcast. AudioBoo can also synch with your Twitter account and there are lots of options for for multi-media operations.

The Guardian used AudioBoo extensively in their coverage of the G20 protests in London, including this interview with Mark Thomas.

What about me? Well here's my first Boo interview, I don't reckon much to the reporter but the guest is great!