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He may be an investigative journalist by trade, but Guardian (UK) writer Nick Davies is not shy to criticize his own profession. Davies made headlines across the globe with the February 2008 publication of his book, Flat Earth News, a searing indictment of investigative reporting and modern journalism. The book, which details issues such as illegal acts committed by journalists on the job and "churnalism", or barely fact-checked information rehashed from PR professionals and spin-doctors, turned the spotlight on the news industry, launching a debate within the ranks of news professionals about the challenges facing the industry.

Davies is the author of five books, has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year, and Feature Writer of the Year. He was also the first winner of the Martha Gellhorn award for investigative reporting in 1999.

To launch our series on the Future of Investigative Journalism and the challenges ahead, the Editors Weblog spoke with Davies to see what all the controversy was about and to ask Davies his views on the future of his profession.

EW: What skills does it take to specifically be a good investigative journalist? How is it different to being a beat reporter or is it similar?

ND: In principle, the skills of investigative reporting are exactly the same as those of any other kind of reporting - because all reporting is investigative, all reporting is an attempt to get at the truth, so the distinction is a false one.

There is a sub-set of reporting where somebody is actively obstructing the reporter's access to information, which means the job will be more difficult and so the skills will be more obvious, but the key difference is not in the skills required but in the time that is required. The beat reporter is liable to be under pressure to produce several stories every shift and, therefore, will be unlikely to have the time to dig into anything which is being deliberately concealed.

EW: How has the business changed over the past 10 years, ie, skills necessary, training, and so forth?

ND: The big change in the business over the last ten years is precisely the reduction of time available for almost all reporters to do their work. The beat reporter as much as the 'investigative' specialist suffers from this, because so many news rooms have been taken over by profit-hungry corporations who have cut staff and increased output and thereby made it extremely difficult for any of their reporters to work effectively. The required skills have not changed (apart from the minor technical skills of dealing with websites).

The training, however, is in decline along with the industry as a whole, primarily because colleges now train students to fit with the demands of time-starved newsrooms, eg, the quick re-writing of press releases, the recycling of agency copy; and also because colleges set up courses with 'media' or 'journalism' in the title because they know it will attract student numbers even though they have nobody qualified to teach the course, so you have sociologists and literary specialists teaching the skills of a profession which they do not understand.

EW:  Is your job harder or easier with the advent of multi-platform news? Do you see podcasts and video content as useful?

ND: Multi-platform news has tended to make it more difficult for all reporters - beat, specialist, 'investigative' - to do their work because filing for audio, video and print
a) consumes precious time, and
b) dilutes concentration.
And I am not at all sure that our consumers are particularly interested in or attracted to the vodcasts and podcasts that we make available to them. Occasionally, there are stories where the print version is hugely enlivened by video - for example, the passenger video of the scenes inside the Qantas flight which blew a hole in its fuselage last month. But to make the production of audio and video versions a standard requirement for all stories is bad management and highly likely to accelerate the declining standard of our product.

EW: Do you use any of the new technologies in your reporting, ie, video, and mobile? Have these new technologies made your job easier or harder?

ND: As a reporter, I'm not concerned with the way in which my words are used. What I file may go into the print edition or onto the website or be subbed down for emails or mobile messages.

The one way in which electronic technology does impact me is my access to the worldwide web. That is a wonderful research tool, and I use it all the time. It is no substitute for dealing with human sources, but it enormously increases the amount of information that is available in the public domain. Personally, therefore, it has made my working life much easier.

However, for 'beat' reporters or for any reporter who has not been able to negotiate the time to do the job, the web does also represent a threat because it means they no longer have the benefit of a deadline at the end of the day: for most of them the deadline is always here and now because even if the printed edition is not calling for copy, the website is. Time - reporters can't do their job without it.

EW: What are your thoughts on lobby groups, such as the Taxpayers' Alliance, setting up investigative reporting units themselves and sending their articles direct to newspapers?

ND: The danger with funding by lobby groups is clear - that, at best, they will select story subjects and/or angles which suit their agenda and, at worst, that they will inject outright falsehood and distortion directly into them. But not all dangers are realised. I think most reporters would say that if they could find a lobby group which was prepared to back genuine journalism without imposing its agenda, they'd take it in a heartbeat.

The underlying point is that the inherent dangers of allowing corporations to take over ownership of news media are certainly being realised with highly destructive results for truth-telling journalism - and so any alternative is worth considering.

Over the coming weeks, The Editors Weblog will be examining how investigative reporting has been affected by multi-platform publication and the 24-hour news culture.  

Twitter reported this week that it is axing its SMS service outside India, the US and Canada, causing consternation across the Twitter community. Almost immediately after this was announced, reports emerged of IT entrepreneurs taking up the challenge to look for a solution. The Editors Weblog spoke to - we think - the first organisation to launch a solution to the Twitter SMS issue: Twitsms.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Delia Timms and Jeff Bonnes (the founders of Twitsms) after receiving their email announcing the launch of Twitsms, which was just two days after our posting on the SMS issue. (Our interview with Delia and Jeff follows below.)

Twitsms buys the SMS in bulk in advance to keep costs low. Prices start at 7 pence in the UK and 11 cents in Australia per SMS.
 
The Editors Weblog also contacted Twitter, to find out how it feels about Twitsms and other such services helping out the Twitter fans that have been affected. Twitter has previously acknowledged that SMS is a key part of its service, saying: "We love SMS. The lowest common denominator aspect of this service is a defining part of Twitter."



Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter Inc, told me: "We do not officially endorse any one service. However, we are interested in seeing what the response to these services will be."

There has been a certain amount of annoyance in aspects of the Twitter community about how Twitter have handled this issue, especially following Biz Stone's blog on the Twitter website calling for "perspective" on the issue. Svetlana Gladkova (Vice President of Business Development at Profy) does not sugar coat her views in her blog on Twitter's reaction, stating: "In my opinion, the team over at Twitter has committed quite a number of mistakes in handling this situation."

Here at the Editors Weblog, we try not to dwell on the negative and focus instead on solutions to our readers' problems; and Delia and Jeff look like they might just have one:

What inspired you to launch this service?

We use Twitter ourselves to keep in touch with friends and family both in Australia and overseas.  Jeff is American and particularly liked Twitter for staying in contact with his friends overseas.  So we understood personally how important it was for some Twitter fans to keep getting their SMS - even if they had to pay a very small fee for it.  Living in Australia we already have to pay fees for our SMS, so it is not unusual for us to pay to get our Tweets too.  We felt Twitter fans should at least have the choice to get their SMS, rather than just being cut-off by Twitter altogether.
 
How did you manage to set this up so quickly?

Experience and enthusiasm. We have built a few other successful internet businesses and have gained valuable experience over the past few years.  So we were fortunate to start out with some knowledge, skills and code. Jeff was able to apply learning from previous projects to speed up the coding for www.twitsms.co.uk. One of our other businesses does messaging and SMS already, so we were one step ahead with this. We were also able to use hardware and hosting from our other internet operations. We crowd sourced the graphic design for a fast turnaround.
 
What technology are you using?

We use Java and a web development framework called Grails. This allowed us to build  a very robust site quickly.
 
Can you explain exactly what arrangement you have established with the mobile companies?

Currently we buy SMS in bulk to keep the cost for users as low as possible.  As the site grows, we will look for ways to reduce costs even further.
 
Have you had any contact with the Twitter team about your project?

No we have not made contact yet, but will in the future. We hope that Twitter is happy that www.twitsms.co.uk and www.twitsms.com.au are keeping their fan-base connected outside of the USA, Canada and India!
 
What have been the early indicators been for Twitsms?

Early business is very strong. We knew there was a solid Twitter community and we knew they were annoyed about being shut off.  But were not sure whether they'd pay for their Tweets. However we have been happily surprised by the immediate interest from Twitter fans. They are more annoyed about Twitter shutting their service down, than having to pay a few cents to get their SMSs. Another surprising aspect for us has been the global interest.  www.twitsms.co.uk has been live for 4 days now and we've had contact from customers in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Israel, Russia and France (of course!).
 
The use of Twitter itself has been a great springboard for www.twitsms.co.uk.  Twitter is a handy and powerful tool for communicating and getting immediate feedback from customers! It is also an efficient way to keep our customers updated as we are responding to requests and developing new features quickly.
 
What is your competition?

There is one site that has launched in competition and several still 'coming soon'. There has also been one site that has stopped development before they released. We are not worried by competition; we developed www.twitsms.co.uk because it is a service that we needed and wanted to share with the Twitter community.  Being first to market has been great. The feedback and early input from our customers is helping us ensure that www.twitsms.co.uk is the best alternative for the international Twitter community.

Sources: Twitsms, Twitter, Profy

See also:

Twitter reduces its mobile service, ends SMS updates service

 

US broadcaster NBC reports "phenomenal" ratings for its multimedia coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with Alan Wurtzel, research president for NBC Universal, saying the broadcaster has been "stunned" by the popularity of its mobile content.

On 8 August, 210,333 people accessed the NBC mobile service, but by Monday this had more than doubled to 476,062. "These Olympics are influencing how people are using new technology," Wurtzel said. "Half of the people viewing on mobile are using it for the first time. After the Olympics, it will be interesting if these habits become part of their behaviour."

NBC has been using a new measurement system to combine viewing figures across all media outlets.

The NBC website saw unique users increase from 4.2 million on 8 August, the first day of the games, to 7.8 million on Monday, August 11, when viewers wanted to replay Phelps' US swimming victory. NBC recorded 1.7 million downloads of the final 4x100 relay final.

Wurtzel said NBC had feared that online content would negatively impact its TV audience share, thereby hitting its most lucrative advertising. However, this has not been the case. NBC's research showed that just 0.2% of its audience used the web exclusively.

"The internet hardly cannibalises - it actually fuels interest," said Wurzel. He went on to say that half the online viewers were watching events they had missed and about 40% wanted to see replays.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

See also:

Media companies reporting the Olympics, Google launches online tool

The Wall Street Journal Digital Network launched another mobile application today - WSJ.com Mobile Reader. This service provides users with instant access to business, finance and technology news and analysis from WSJ.com, as well as MarketWatch.com, Barrons.com and AllThingsD.com.  

This new tool is customizable and is currently available for free on most BlackBerry® smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM).

WSJ.com Mobile Reader, developed on the FreeRange Communications Mobile Publishing Platform, provides access to the latest headlines, news summaries and updates automatically with no manual refresh required.  

Content tabs include What's News, Tech, MarketWatch, Opinion, Columns and more. Users can customize category lists and add additional news categories, news sources, keyword alerts and customized stock quotes.  Headlines, article summaries and previously downloaded stories are also accessible even if out of wireless coverage, with full access to subscriber content for a limited time only.

Gordon McLeod, president of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network said: "The Wall Street Journal Digital Network users can now always be up-to-speed on the latest breaking news, on their terms, wherever and whenever vital business news and information is needed."

Source: Dow Jones and Company and Wall Street Journal

Social channels like Facebook, Digg, Flickr, Twitter and Youtube could help newspapers like the Chicago Tribune become "more approachable", according to The Huffington Post. After its entry into social media, the Tribune saw an instantaneous surge in traffic and an 8% growth in pageviews.

"Essentially, social media gives us a year-round, real-time focus group to monitor conversations and keep us in tune with what consumers are thinking," said Bill Adee, associate managing editor for innovation who also leads the Tribune's social media team

The Tribune came up with Colonel Tribune, a "web ambassador" whose purpose is to allow the social media team to "reach out and interact with online communities that congregate around similar interests", wrote the Post.

The Colonel was recently informed through Twitter about a bomb threat and building evacuation in Chicago's Daley Center. The paper's Metro writers looked into the story and it was soon published on the site. The story was then printed on the third page of the Metro section the next day.  

Source: The Huffington Post

See also:
Facebook: a modern tool for accessing news

CNN.com launched BackStory, an innovative tool that lets readers track the development of stories. The new feature permits news stories to be seen as scrollable sideshows.

Articles are shown as a timeline which has links to information about "key players" of a given story, reported Journalism.co.uk.

Background information appears as links in a panel on an article's page, offering a short summary of stories.

BackStory was first used by CNN when it reported on the FBI inquiry into the anthrax attacks after the aftermath of September 11 in 2001.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen has reported in an interview with Foliomag.com that Wired.com is looking at launching a series of widgets that they believe could change the way the site approaches content and is a direct challenge to Google.

Wired.com are looking at a Web reputation ranking tool - similar to one that Google recently launched - which takes the user data from big social networks using open API, analyses it, and produces a list-style ranking broadcast across Wired's widget network.

"We're trying to one-up Google," Hansen says. "We want to talk to a bigger pool, and have a broader reach."

Wired.com are also allowing their developers to spend 10 percent of their time on "anything they want." Hansen wants to introduce a culture of experimentation and inspiration.

Hansen also reports that the company is looking at launching a number of new blogs on subjects such as extreme sports. "No one really covers that area well." Hansen says, "It would also open up new advertising for us, sports drinks, things like that."

Source. Foliomag.com

Telegraph Media Group (TMG) has signed a deal with Google, after a six-month trial, which will enable its journalists to access email and share documents and other information through Google's applications, journalism.co.uk reports.

This deal is part of TMG plans to move towards a "cloud computing" model."

"The flexibility of having applications online is of special interest in the media sector where journalists need to be able to collaborate with others on copy," said Robert Whiteside, head UK and Ireland for Google's enterprise division.

Source: cyberjournalist.net

The Oregon Commentator states in an article today that blogging is a useful tool for advocacy journalism and "original" reporting. It believes the blogosphere is ideal for advocacy journalism since there are "no time, length or editorial constraints" and information is immediately available to everyone. 

However, the Oregon Commentator quotes Quark Soup's blogger David Appell, who thinks that there seems to be a credibility gap, since amateur bloggers "spread useless gossip" and professional bloggers are "useless" due to the fact that they are focused on posting many items per day.

"It takes blood, sweat, and tears, it takes going out and looking at rivers, pouring over government reports and spreadsheets, hiking to the tops of mountains for the big picture, calling 25 people a day -- precisely the thing the blogosphere does least of," said Appel.

To this, blogger Andrew Sullivan argued that blogs are "a form of conversation, not a medium of absolute authority." Sullivan adds links to other articles or includes informative content within the blog entry. He considers himself a Web DJ, "re-mixing and finding and editing the thoughts and images and facts of others."

Source: Oregon Commentator

"Lie by Lie," is Mother Jones' "history of the Iraq War." The editors explain the project was created to be "a resource we hope will help resolve open questions of the Bush era. What did our leaders know and when did they know it? And, perhaps just as important, what red flags did we miss, and how could we have missed them?"

In his Web 2.Oh... Really? blog, Craig Stoltz makes some key observations about the interactive graphic, what follows is an edited version of his original post:

Why I love this work of journalism:

It's nothing fancy, hardly a data visualization at all. It's essentially a timeline navigation of information on the Iraq War. The only visual grace note is the roulettey spin of the date slider as you move it around. But the tool is functional: It permits navigation of the same data by topic, tags or search. It engages and it works.

It is an aggregation of content reported by others... Smart people knowledgeable about public affairs paid close attention to a huge amount of information, made careful selections and used available digital technology to make it accessible and flexible in a way no print publication could.

By virtue of its form, it surfaces new understandings that a reader of the original reports would not achieve. For instance, noodle around with the "Dick Cheney" tag and you'll discover, right at the top, this entry dated . . . over 15 years ago:

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, speaking to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, says the first President Bush was right not to invade Baghdad: "The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that...we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."-Aug. 14, 1992

Stoltz also makes the necessary point that the reporting used in this project came from traditional media - The New York Times, The LA Times, The New Yorker. "The rub," Stoltz points out, "Is this original reporting cost a fortune. It was produced under the old, dying model of journalism, wherein investigative reporting is funded by advertisements for cell phones, new subdivisions, mattress-chain mega-sales, designer clothing, and so on....As Mother Jones has shown, people who are passionate about telling a story have powerful new tools at their disposal to do so. But without high-quality content-difficult, time-consuming, intellectually demanding, butt-numbing, sometimes actually dangerous reporting-the tools are just toys."

Source: Web 2.Oh...Really?

This week's cover of the New Yorker, called "The Politics of Fear", may have caused some turmoil, but the message may have been misinterpreted.

"The cover takes a lot of distortions, lies, and misconceptions about the Obamas and puts a mirror up to them to show them for what they are," said the New Yorker's editor, David Remnick.

Bill Burton, an Obama spokesperson said that even though the cover was a satire, readers might see it as "tasteless" and "offensive". Meanwhile, Senator John McCain thought it was "inappropriate", reported AFP.

"These inflammatory images and spurious associations will only serve to reinforce the racism and anti-Muslim stereotypes that the magazine says it is out to challenge," said The Council on American Islamic Relations.

However, Bill Maher, host of a political HBO show, asked, "If you can't do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?"

Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page defended the cover, saying that it's "within the normal realms of journalism" and that "it's just lampooning all the crazy ignorance out there", according to CBS News.

The magazine issue, which goes on sale on July 21, features a lengthy article focusing on Obama's history in Chicago politics.

Barry Blitt, the cartoon's artist, intended to come up with something that would caricature the way that misinformation floats around the political sphere and the way that terror is used as a political tool, according to Newsday.

Source: The New York Times, CBS News, AFP, Newsday