All the news that’s fit to Tweet

July 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

Yesterday I wrote about how great journalism should be impartial rather than neutral, and today it’s the related subject of distribution mediums – in this case, what should and shouldn’t be reported on via Twitter.

It was sparked by an article by Matthew Ingram over at GigaOm, who is definitely someone worth reading if you’re interested in journalism and the media. I originally tried to leave a comment on his article ‘Are there some things that shouldn’t be tweeted about‘ but when it vanished into the ether upon submission, I figured it made more sense to blog a full response here.

Matthew’s article was sparked by recent outcry in the media community in Boston, due to a sports reporter tweeting from the funeral of the wife of New England Patrios’ owner Bob Kraft, and also references other notable incidents when people have tweeted about personal experiences, such as sexual assault or the death of their child to try and ask whether Twitter is a suitable medium for these topics.

Twitter and suitable content:

I think that perhaps there are a few different issues being rolled into the one question here, and seperating them out might be helpful:

  • Is it fine to be tweeting on your smartphone during a funeral, for example?
  • Does Twitter differ to reporting on the same event for print or TV?
  • Should it be the media community judging as gatekeepers on what is the right medium?

 

So, the first issue is fairly easy to discuss, as it’s really a question of how an individual reporter is handling themselves at an event – I don’t think many people would necessarily have a complaint about a reporter making notes on paper during the funeral of a prominent public figure, and the comment on Matthew’s article which equates using a smartphone to using a Nintendo DS or playing Angry Birds is pretty disingenuous, as it presumes that the method of reporting is less serious if it’s using technology, rather than a reporter doodling in their notepad. Whether reporting is being done with paper, smartphone, laptop or TV camera, it’s about using the right level of respect and decorum to be able to avoid detracting from event itself – for instance, if proceedings have to stop due to the incessant click-clack of keys being pressed, that would be worthy of critiscism, or if there’s a bank of reporters in the front pew all waving phones around in front of mourners.

Is reporting on Twitter different?

So the mechanics of Twitter are different to those of an article published elsewhere, due to the fact that it’s possible to update in real-time, and the 140 character limit.

The real-time nature of Twitter can be used as an excuse for sloppy spelling and punctuation when you hurry to get a tweet out, but that’s a reflection on the skills and accuracy of the reporter, not the social network itself. If you’re reporting on an event, why would you take less time to craft a tweet than to craft an article headline or your first sentence?

The second critcism is the perception that reporting via Twitter lacks the gravitas of other formats, as if reading ‘Singer Amy Winehouse dead at age 27′ has less impact if it’s not accompanied via a full opinion piece, photos and a byline. That’s quite blatantly a load of old rubbish, as underlined by coverage of the recent tragedy in Oslo, or the Mumbai terrorist attacks on Twitter, for example. If we believe that a well-crafted impactful headline covering an event can stop people in their tracks and perhaps lead them to buying a newspaper when they’ve scanned it on the newstand, why would we believe that a well-crafted impactful tweet would not have the same effect, unless digitising words makes them meaningless?

The last gasps of the media community as gatekeepers?

The process of print publishing with limited space and limitations on who can afford to print or broadcast mass media led to journalists, subs and editors as gatekeepers who made judgements on the right way to present the news in those formats. And that’s completely changed with the availability of formats for news consumption.

As a reader, I can choose print, TV, radio, websites, social networks, podcasts, photo sites, audio microblogs. And that is right which I’m far more empowered to exercise now that I can select from such a range of formats and outlets. Much of my general news information comes from social networks, and without going into the debate over echo chambers and filter failure now, I have yet to see any concrete evidence that has damaged by general news awareness or any serendipity in finding out about events.

However the media community thinks their debate and decision about formats may make any difference to me, I’m not really sure? As digital tools and technology democratise news production and coverage, the odds are that someone somewhere will be covering events and publishing on the format I choose to enjoy, and the decision of my preferred format comes down to my choice, not that of the journalist elite.

So what could be improved in Twitter journalism?

Having said all of that, there is one glaring error which can occur in digital journalism, and which is pronounced in certain cases – consistency. If I follow a reporter for sports updates on scores and transfers, and suddenly it switches to funeral coverage, that can be jarring, as it is when someone switches from general daily updates to discussing the loss of their child or a physical attack.

In the later cases of personal events, that jarring shock and the resulting upset is something that we as readers need to realise is our personal response, and those tweeting shouldn’t feel obliged to hide their thoughts or responses from the network which they may rely on for emotional support (In one of those cases, the local police did have legal reasons for curbing their output, which is understandable).

In the former case of professional journalism, then it’s probably advisable to seperate those reports which are out of context of the general daily output of your account – to allow those who wish to follow to choose without necessarily offending those who would rather not.

But in all cases, readers carry the ultimate decision of what they may or may not find acceptable, and have the choice on social networks to follow or unfollow accounts as they wish – and although stretching the boundaries may carry risks at the moment, the changing opinions of society and readers measured by what they actually do (following, clicking links, rubbernecking at accidents when they drive past), is a good way of seeing what people actually find acceptable, rather than presuming that as the media, we might know readers better than they know themselves. And as much as you may believe society and readers have become more salacious over time, the response to the Huffington Post’s ill-advised Amy Winehouse and small business lessons article is just one example of how readers are more than willing to let you know directly if you’ve overstepped the mark.

Filed Under: journalism, newspapers, Privacy, traditional media, twitter, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

Great journalism – impartial but not neutral?

July 27, 2011 By 3 Comments

It’s sad in some ways that a lot of great writing and journalism has been inspired by tragedy and loss, but at the same time, it often allows some good to come out of the events by providing insight and inspiration. Three articles I’ve read recently reinforced that, along with also highlighting an interesting point from a book I’m currently reading on media ethics which states that journalism should be impartial but not neutral.

The mainstream media has been full of coverage of both the tragic events in Oslo, and the death of singer Amy Winehouse at the age of 27, with the usual mix of straight news reports, opinion, and a particularly horrific example of someone trying to cash in on search traffic on the Huffington Post. I’m not going to dignify it with a link, but using the example of Amy Winehouse to supposedly illustrate lessons for small business owners is pretty bad, compounded by the fact it’s not a great article, and the author has claimed she wasn’t aware of the term ‘linkbait’ despite running a marketing and PR company for about 9 years.

Out of all of the mainstream media coverage regarding Amy Winehouse, it’s telling that the best article has been written by comedian and actor Russell Brand, who covered both his personal relationship with the singer, but also the treament of addiction and addicts by society. Published on The Guardian website, it’s received a lot of respect for the way he tackled the subject.

At the same time, I caught up on two posts by Christian Payne – sadly within the last month, two pilots he’d flown with, interviewed and got to know have both died. One heroically saved the life of his passengers, whilst the other worked for the Kenyan Wildlife Service to help prevent animal poaching amongst other duties. Christian’s articles are even more touching due to the fact that he’s also an accomplished photographer and interviewer, and his photos, videos and audio interviews with each pilot helps us to know them posthumously.

Journalism: Impartial not Neutral

Both authors knew the subjects of their articles to some extent, and that personal insight and knowledge of the subject (and in Brands case, his own experience with addition), gives an additional impact to stories which elsewhere would be a straight news report. I’ve also been involved with reporting on the deaths of people I knew via my work, including former colleagues, and to be completely neutral about it would be impossible.

But all three articles, and hopefully my own, do provide impartiality – Christian is not writing his posts for a news organisation, but for his personal blog, and doesn’t have the editorial restrictions he might have done for a media organisation, but as an experienced and talented media creator, he’s done a great job of sharing his reaction, the background of the people involved, and also leaves us feeling sad about the loss of the two men involved, but inspired by what they had achieved.

Neutrality is defined as refusing to take sides or make a judgement. Impartiality is defined as making decisions based on objective criteria rather than bias or prejudice. We can say that the loss of those in Oslo, Amy Winehouse and the two pilots is tragic for all of us for a number of reasons, and be thankful that there are those who can provide the context and insight into the reasons why.

On one hand I do worry that resource and time-stripped media outlets chasing page views via attention-grabbing breaking news and linkbait headlines mean that these types of article will be increasingly harder to find. On the other, I’m thankful that the availability and access to self-publishing, combined with the recommendation of social networks, mean that they’ve never been more accessible to us all online. The rise of content farms and the mishandling of increased knowledge of analytics, SEO and digital marketing means that far too many writers and journalists are pursuing the wrong things, and perhaps we should all try and do something as engaged readers to encourage others to be more active in highlighting and sharing writing which is really giving us something valuable, rather than simply regurgitating links almost mindlessly to increase our own audience on social networks?

 

Filed Under: journalism, social networks, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Artifacts of my past and of the future

July 24, 2011 By 1 Comment

I took my son down to visit his grandparents for a few days, and took the chance to finally venture up into their loft to retrieve enough boxes from my childhood to fill the back of my car (and once opened, most of the living space in the house). Besides bringing back a lot of old memories, it’s also sparked some thoughts on how influences and memories are evolving so rapidly as online storage becomes cheaper, online marketplaces have opened up buying and selling, and what we are (in terms of music, books, films, etc) is able to be scrobbled, tagged, logged and interrogated.

For example, I recently wrote about a sci-fi book I’d finished on one of the many sharing sites, and claimed that I didn’t really get into science fiction when I was young, and it was only really in my mid and late 20s I started reading Gibson, Doctorow, Clarke, Strauss etc.

Turns out I was mistaken, as a box full of ‘teen fiction’ sci fi books have proven, along with the obvious omission of the Warhammer 40,000 manual and about 5 years worth of White Dwarf magazines from the hallowed halls of Games Workshop, depicting all kinds of Space Marines.

Some of the toys recovered from my parents...

Just some of the recovered treasure. The high heeled shoe isn't mine, by the way!

Will my son have any memories to re-discover?

It’s a fairly safe bet that in the next couple of years my son is probably not going to be receiving many more print books, as most of what he’ll read is likely to be electronic. Certainly by the time he reaches his early teens, which was the peak for me in terms of accumulating books and magazines, things will have changed a heck of a lot. So everything he reads can be tracked and logged by retailers or by him.

What will it be like having his entire literary history at his searchable disposal? Is there something he’ll miss out on in finding an old box sealed up by me at the age of 11, and opening it 20 years later to find some of the books I’d loved but forgotten?

The loss of ‘mythic scarcity’?

I was pretty fortunate as a child in that my parents and grandparents were able to indulge me in a lot of the interests and hobbies I had. But even then, there were certain toys and gadgets that weren’t obtainable even despite my constant pestering – which is the cause of a lot of adult collections of pop culture and toys.

But online marketplaces for everything from books to comics to toys means that it’s easy to see how quickly they depreciate (rivalling new cars in price drops), and suddenly everything becomes attainable fairly quickly. How will that change his desires, buying habits, and that sense of achievement when 20 years later you actually do own a mint condition Millenium Falcon in the orignal box, or the mint copy of Street Fighter Collection on the Sega Saturn?

Is there a value in having something to strive and desire as a child which isn’t readily available 6 months later on eBay?

Am I selling my own memories too soon?

As I’ve switched to a more digital existence for all my entertainment, I’ve been selling off a lot of stuff. Generally it makes sense that someone else might benefit from books I’ll never re-read, or magazines for things I no longer have interest in, and I’m still keeping a selection of my most valued possessions for myself, and the most reasured objects I want to pass onto my son.

But I can’t help wondering if I’ll regret it at some point in the distant future. I combine the hoarding tendecy of a neurotic squirrel with the cataloguing habits of a particularly obsessive librarian, and that’s taken a long time to overcome in digitising my music, and accepting that most books will now reside on a Kindle or similar device, rather than being displayed on a shelf to possibly impress visitors.

Whereas the author Umberto Eco apparently has a massive library of books he has yet to read, mine are all queued up in wish lists and notepad files for a time when I have the money and space to actually read them – is there the same impetus as having a print copy sat accusingly on the shelf nearby?

Beautiful visions of a past future:

One thing I do know is that it’s fascinating reading all sorts of encyclopedias and factual books from my childhood on space and computing, and seeing what visions of the future existed in the 1980s (and the 1970s in some of the books I must have inherited from other family members). It’s quite poignant given the final flight of the space shuttle programme so recently, and also thinking about the time and context they were written in.

I’m sat with a phone that packs more technology that a moon mission, I do business via the internet and communicate via videochat. Hybrid cars are increasingly common, commercial spaceflights are an evermore practical proposition in my lifetime, and robots are now picking my shopping from warehouse shelves and are starting to be used for household chores.

Robot at the British Library Science Fiction Exhibition

One of the robots at the British Library's Science Fiction exhibition

Still, whatever happens, there’s one reassuring thing – if I do change my mind about letting any of my childhood artifacts be sold – I can always buy someone else’s online with just a couple of clicks. Which is handy, considering I now have a bag full of articulated Action Force figures in 3 parts as the rubber connecting them has perished, and there’s the sad sight of a small army in pieces spread across the floor beyond practical repair.

Now if only I could go back in time and prevent my parents giving away my huge collection of original Star Wars toys I’d be able to stop worrying about a nest egg for my old age…

Filed Under: Digital Culture, Lifestreaming, Robotics, technology, user generated content Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

A great opportunity for Nokia that no one has mentioned…

July 22, 2011 By 1 Comment

The news is full of reports on the abysmal second quarter results posted by Nokia today, which saw such a massive drop for the company that it has been surpassed by Apple in smartphone sales for the first time (16.7 million Nokias, compared to 20 million iPhones).

Some are suggesting that it’s a sign the move to Windows Phone 7 was the right one, but most analysis and opinion is that Nokia might not survive long enough at this rate, given that we’re only likely to see one WP7 handset by the end of the year, and although the operating system is a nice one, it might not be nice enough to make any impact into the growth of Android and iOS. For a full and complete analysis of how far Nokia have floated up the creek without any propulsion, Tomi Ahonen is as comprehensive as ever in his figures, predictions, and critical analysis of Microsoft and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.

But I think I may have spotted a big opportunity for a core of growth for Nokia, and it’s all based around Windows Phone 7 and their relationship with Microsoft

Here’s where Nokia, Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 could nail it:

  • Microsoft posted record quarter profits for Q4 last year, and record annual profits of $69.94 billion.
  • The biggest growth has come from the Entertainment and Devices division, which includes Kinect, and the Xbox, which was picked out as contributing significantly to the record profits.
  • Whether you prefer WP7, Android or iOS, you can certainly see that WP7 is a good enough OS to on a par with the others, but the perception is that the huge app catalogues of Android and iOS and the continued increase in developers devoting time and effort to them make their leads pretty unassailable.

But here’s what I think would give Nokia, Microsoft and WP7 a significant core group of growth from which to build….

  • Xbox is growing and making significant revenue.
  • Kinect is a record-breaking success.
  • Integration with Xbox Live and gaming on mobiles has been mentioned by senior Microsoft staff for years, even before the Xbox 360 launched (One of the chief people involved in the Xbox project, J Allard, talked about it in-depth in an Edge magazine feature back in 2005).
  • The biggest selling entertainment product of last year, which broke records for all videogame sales, was Activion’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, which is currently time-exclusive for the Xbox, meaning all updates etc are released way earlier for the Microsoft Console.

Non-gamers may still be asking why this matters, but consider the fact that there is a huge group of Call of Duty gamers who have bought an Xbox purely to play Call of Duty. And these generally aren’t 15-year-olds – these are mainly late-20s and early-30s men (and some ladies) who also bought an iPhone when they became cool and fashionable because a guy at work showed them Angry Birds.

These are people with limited time, and limited interest in comparing operating systems, or app inventory. There are plenty of other great games on the Xbox, but they’ll possibly buy a football game (Fifa for English football, Madden for American football, or maybe a golf game, and that’s it. They’ve spent £200 for a console, £40 for a game, and £30 for additional content, plus a £40 annual Xbox Live subscription to play one game online with their friends.

 

  • Now most manufacturers using Windows Phone 7 also produce Android handsets which have a much, much higher rate of sale and adoption at the moment by a massive margin, so Nokia is in a position to be a massively preferential partner with Microsoft.
  • If Nokia hardware, which is still trusted by consumers, and Microsoft WP7 could be put to Activision in a way that gets exclusivity on the Call of Duty franchise for mobile in addition to the Xbox console, or if they’ve already set up the contract that it’s Xbox Live exclusivity regardless of device.
  • Suddenly you have hardware people still remember as trustworthy, even if Symbian was perceived as stone age compared to smartphone rivals. You have Xbox Live which is doing massively well as the established online videogame network, and you have the game which gets a large audience of adults with a disposable income in a position to spend £300 plus just to access that game. If they can figure out the right way to get CoD onto a mobile handset in a way which is enjoyable, ties into the console game as well (Most likely feeding into the new Call of Duty XP social network/stats package), then they’ve got a strong and solid core from which to build.

And given that the mobile/console interaction was being discussed 6 years ago, and increased Xbox Live connectivity is constantly being mentioned in every WP7 upgrade, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was announced pretty soon. Given the fact that one Nokia WP7 handset is out this year, and the next installment in the series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is due in early November, marketing for such a phone and app would have to begin pretty soon, but having work on a launch app for a previous Nokia handset, the turnaround times for actually producing something were relatively short in that case.

Now the one thing that would probably scare anyone inside of Nokia from the idea would be remembering the ill-fated N-Gage – the gaming/phone ‘sidetalking’ abomination which ranks as one of the most notable gaming hardware failures of all time (and also produced the stil funny ‘sidetalking’ meme of imitating the N-Gage will all sorts of objects).

Nokia NGage

Just pretend the sidetalking taco phone never happened...

Fortuntely we’ve come a long way since then, with the Sony Xperia Play as the ‘Playstation Phone’ and the success of games including Angry Birds lifting simple mobile games. At the same time, most big games publishers, such as Activision and EA, are already publishing their games on the bigger mobile OS platforms.

If I was Stephen Elop and wanted to grab an established userbase which has disposable income for both hardware and digital content, and already has a strong word-of-mouth community with an established property, I’d be trying to get in a room with Ballmer and Robert Kotick in days or hours to get a deal done.

Filed Under: Gamification, mobile, Videogames, xbox 360 Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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