George Brock – Frontline Club

Is Traditional Media Actually Dying and Does it Matter?

Frontline Bloggers — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 11:41:33 +0000

“That four thousand word report from the Syrian refugee camp…will not be read as much as ‘10 cats that have got thoughts about Syria’,” New Statesman‘s Deputy Editor Helen Lewis said in her opening statement on the second panel of the Grapevine event at the Frontline Club on Thursday 23 January.

Read highlights of the first panel discussion here.

Merope Mills, Luke Lewis and Pete Picton

The chair head of journalism at City University, George Brock, got straight to the point and asked the panel ‘is traditional media actually dying and does it matter?’

Deputy publisher of Mail Online Pete Picton said categorically:

“If journalism is what we’re talking about then no absolutely not, in fact it’s thriving.”

Editor of Buzzfeed UK Luke Lewis:

“It’s an amazing time for journalism, not just for new outlets like Buzzfeed, the traditional ones are thriving. It was only a week or two ago that The Telegraph posted their figures of a £60million profit last year. The Guardian has had their best scoops in their history.

“Media is a really big place and we don’t need anyone else to fail in order to Buzzfeed to succeed.”

All the panelists agreed that, while media isn’t dead, the business model has to change.

http://twitter.com/rebeccacmyers/status/426478712826368002

Editor of the Saturday Guardian Merope Mills:

“The way people approach print media has to change…the traditional media money making model is dead.”

"There is still an appetite for print journalism, but the business model has to change." Merope Mills, @guardian #fbj

— Sarah Biddlecombe (@_sarahstweets) January 23, 2014

http://twitter.com/bspeed8/status/426469810109939713

H Lewis said that there is a real problem with public interest journalism:

“Who is going to be in an online only economy commissioning that four thousand word report from the Syrian refugee camp – I just don’t see that that’s a viable business model for anybody because it won’t be read by enough people. It will not be read as much as ’10 cats that have got thoughts about Syria’ – no offence to Buzzfeed.”

Buzzfeed taking a hit for cats – good retort from luke lewis #fbj

— Tom Witherow (@TomWitherow) January 23, 2014

L Lewis:

“Yes most of it is entertaining lists, you’ll also see some other stuff in there… Max Seddon we’ve got on the ground in Kiev at the moment, he wrote a series of explosive reports on what’s happening in Kiev as good as impact reporting you’ll see anywhere.”

@lukelewis says that he wants Buzzfeed to eventually supply as trusted news as the @nytimes #fbj

— Max Benwell (@Max_Benwell) January 23, 2014

Mills noted the changes she’d recognised in print media:

“There is a theme among the [print publications] that are growing and they do tend to be those longer analytical – the New Statesman is one… Nobody wants to read breaking news anyone, we all know the Victoria Line’s flooded with cement and that will be old by tomorrow.”

Mills echoed the comment made by Mona Chabali in the first panel of the evening:

“All the reporters have to be reporting a more in depth piece, the why’s of the ‘gays in Russia’ rather than the just ‘gays are being beaten up’. That is the piece you want to read at the end of the week.”

In reference to another signifying characteristic of Buzzfeed the idea of a move away from display to native advertising.

L Lewis:

“It’s nothing new, people talk about sponsored posts like it’s a new thing…[in magazines] advertorials have been around for decades. The only thing you have to worry about is that there’s a clear dividing line between what is editorial and what is commercial.”

A question from the audience asked, if you don’t charge for it how can you put a value on it?

Picton said:

“You value it in time. It’s far more competitive to get our readers to read us… time is a big currency now…that’s one of the key metrics for us now, to keep them on the site.”

Time spent engaging with online content is the new form or readers' currency. #fbj

— Hari Sethi (@Hari_Sethi) January 23, 2014

Another audience member asked the panels opinion on maintaining journalistic integrity in the battle for getting as many clicks as possible in light of the recent CNN headline which seemed to go a step too far.

@MartinBelam @jburnmurdoch @alexparsons CNN had a go & got it fairly wrong today #fbj: pic.twitter.com/uwukxg3UrE

— dan barker (@danbarker) January 23, 2014

The panel agreed that the headline missed the mark on the sensitive issue, L Lewis said about the wider topic of click bait:

“You keep hearing this word clickbait and it really annoys me because it suggests there’s another kind of headline you don’t want people to click on. I don’t know who these journalists are who are writing articles that they don’t want people to read.”

http://twitter.com/rebeccacmyers/status/426477918437801985

H Lewis added:

“Isn’t it sad that the art of the pun is now dead? I loved a good/bad pun.”

To which L Lewis replied:

“I think the pun’s had a good 200 years.”

Following the success of their events, Grapevine are launching a data-focused site in the coming months. Get in touch with Harry Lambert (@harrylambert1), Max Benwell (@maxbenwellreal) or Rebecca Choong Wilkins at contact@grapevinevents.co.uk.

Watch and listen back:

The Leveson Inquiry comes to Frontline – what have we learned?

Millicent Teasdale — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:32:26 +0000

By Thomas Lowe

Passionate exchanges, heckling from the audience and caustic wit – that’s what you get when a panel of journalists sit down to discuss what Peter Wilby described as the media’s ‘truth and reconciliation commission’.

Anne Diamond, who now hosts the Anne Diamond show on Berkshire radio believes she was ‘targeted’ by Rupert Murdoch for confronting him about the conduct of his newspapers. She got quickly to the crux of why the Leveson inquiry is important:

“[the invasion of privacy] came to a head when my little boy died of cot death… My husband and I wrote to every Fleet Street editor we could think of to ask them and beg them personally not to send a reporter to the funeral. The Sun chose to put a photographer there and made it their front page the next day…”

So who’s to blame for this and other invasions of privacy?

Diamond says reporters can be ‘terrified’ of returning to the newsroom empty-handed and are forced to push boundaries. Peter Wilby, columnist and former editor at the New Statesman, says that readers who buy and sustain the papers ‘should accept part of the responsibility.’

The panel agreed on the need for the Leveson inquiry, but is it working?

‘We haven’t heard enough from working reporters’ says Ben Fenton of the Financial Times ‘because… well most of them are frightened actually.’

Fenton made the point that the inquiry may be unearthing too much, in that its remit has become considerable – an opinion taken up by Tom Latchem, former TV editor of the defunct News of The World: “I think that it’s too broad, too messy. I don’t think Leveson knows what he’s looking for.”

Professor George Brock, head of journalism at City University argued that Leveson is achieving something.

“The first thing the Leveson inquiry has done is to absolutely make it ok to say what you think… Function number 2 is before an inquiry ever reports people concentrate a lot on things they didn’t think about before. The third function… it might say ‘we should do this’… I would say it’s already worked on levels 1 and 2 – I’d say that was a gain.”

The question lingers whether there would have been an inquiry at all if the false accusation that NoTW journalists had deleted Millie Dowler’s voicemail messages had not been made. Dan Sabbagh head of media and technology at The Guardian, which made the allegation originally, was in the audience.

“We had reliable sources that didn’t turn out to be quite right… We acknowledge we’ve made a mistake… we acknowledged it 34 times.”

In his final comments, Latchem spoke in defence of tabloid newspapers and the journalists who worked on them.

“Tony Parsons for example… he’s got a broadsheet mind and a tabloid tongue and he speaks to people in the country who don’t understand complicated issues in language that they understand – and that is the great thing that tabloids can do.”

Watch the whole event here:

FULLY BOOKED First Wednesday: The Leveson Inquiry – what have we learned?

Millicent Teasdale — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:00:00 +0000

View in iTunes

Since the Leveson Inquiry hearings began on 14 November some of the worst of British journalism has been laid bare by the victims of phone hacking, politicians, journalists and editors who have spoken.

As revelations from the phone hacking investigation continue, join us for the first event of 2012 to discuss what has been revealed about the workings of the tabloid press and what the fall out will be for the journalism industry.

A lively public meeting hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

With:

Tom Latchem, freelance journalist, writer, broadcaster and former TV editor for News of the World. Twitter: @theboylatch

Anne Diamond, a journalist who for the past 25 years has been working in daily TV, radio and national newspapers. She is a regular panelist for The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 and a regular columnist for the Daily Mail. She hosts The Anne Diamond Show daily on BBC Radio Berkshire. She gave evidence at the Leveson inquiry on Monday 28 November.

Peter Wilby, who writes a weekly column for the New Statesman, the magazine he edited between 1998 and 2005. A former education correspondent for both the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, he was editor of the Independent on Sunday from 1995 to 1996.

Ben Fenton, chief media correspondent at the Financial Times. Twitter: @benfenton

George Brock, Professor and head of journalism at City University. A journalist at The Observer from 1976 to 1981 he moved to The Times in 1981 and held positions from foreign correspondent to managing editor before leaving in 2009. He is a board member of the World Editors Forum, and a member of the British committee of the International Press Institute. Twitter: @georgeprof