Capturing News, 15 Seconds at a Time

The Wall Street Journal has been asking its correspondents to use their smartphones to post and share short video news reports to a live streaming site, Worldstream.  The videos can be live captures of news events, interview responses, or even full packages - but short (15-45 seconds).  The WSJ's made things easy for their correspondents, with a proprietary app and site built by Michael Downing, and based on his general public video sharing app and site Tout.  Worldstream added some analytical tools and a content management system that allows WSJ editors to vet (and in some cases clean up or edit into longer pieces) submitted videos before they go public.  While everything goes first to Worldstream, many clips make it onto WSJ live broadcasts or are embedded with online news stories.

  Why would a heavily print and text oriented news organisation push video sharing?

“Consumer behavior has become much more accustomed to consuming the news they want as it happens,” says Downing. “The WSJ was trying to be much more in line with real-time news and real-time publishing.”

From the business side, Worldstream's been fairly successful, contributing heavily to the Journal's 30-35 million video streams a month.

The big issue, however, is how the Journal's print correspondents reacted to the push to shoot and add video.

But the surprise, both for Downing and WSJ management, is how readily — and ably — the WSJ’s reporters have taken to the new medium; getting reporter buy-in has been a struggle for many newspaper video initiatives. “It started out as an internal tool because we didn’t know how many people would be able to accommodate this kind of approach with the technology and the software,” (Journal head of video production Andy) Regal says, “but they think about it as part of their daily work now...
In many cases, Downing said, the reporters didn’t even need training: “They just jumped right in and started using it.”

A large part of the success is the smartphone app, which makes it easy to shoot and upload video.  Christina Brinkley, a style columnist at WSJ, likes the ability to capture lots of visual information and interviews quickly at events like New York Fashion Week: “I can add a lot of value to my column very quickly without having to mic somebody up.”  (Check recent videos from New York International Auto Show).  WSJ foreign correspondent Charles Levinson added his perspective: “What are the assets that give us an advantage over the competitor? We have 2,000 reporters around the world,” adding that the quick uploads and vetting can put stories before the public quickly - sometimes faster than wire services, network and cable news.  A mark of Worldstream's adoption by correspondents is the fact that in less than 8 months online, hundreds of correspondents have created and posted almost 3000 videos, in a permanent archive.

“It’s a real-time, reverse chronological vertical feed of updates,” says Downing, “Whether it’s Twitter or LinkedIn, that is becoming the standard form factor for being able to track that information that you curate yourself.”

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the Worldstream idea is catching on.  Since Worldstream went online, a number of publishers and news organizations have pursued similar arrangements with Tout.  Downing expects to be hosting some 200 media outlets on the Tout system by the end of the year.

Source -  At The Wall Street Journal, a smartphone app has reporters on board for shooting video,  Nieman Journalism Lab

When Journalists Get Bullied

Ran across this editorial from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), noting that 68 journalists were killed on the job last year, and bemoaning that -

according to Guy Berger, Director of the Division of Freedom of Expression and Media Development at UNESCO, is that “killers are not being brought to book.”

The editorial, and accompanying infographic bemoans what they call a culture of impunity that seems to be spreading - -despite international efforts to improve journalist safety, such as resulted in the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists, adopted last November.  But as one journalist working in a high-risk area noted,

“Such initiatives haven’t done any good because there is no will to make the laws and programmes designed to protect journalists actually work.”

 

Source - Bylines Lost on the Frontline, WAN-IFRA editorial

Speaking of DVRs - Hopper, CNET, and CBS

Interesting story to start the week - as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) came to an end, the folks at CNET generated nominees and selected winners for their customary "Best of CES" awards for innovative technologies and services.
  In the running was the Dish Network's new "Hopper" service and set-top box.  The Hopper is essentially a DVR service that automatically records all prime-time programming from the 4 major broadcast networks in the U.S. (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC) for replay, while allowing viewers the option of automatically skipping commercials embedded in the broadcasts.  In fact the ad-skipping feature is a prominent feature in Dish's Hopper advertising and promotion.  And it was among the publicly announced nominees for "Best of CES" awards.
  Then came an announcement on Jan. 10, from CBS, which owns CNET.  Dish and the Hopper were banned from any CES awards - reportedly due to a "policy" that prohibited any CBS-owned outlet from reviewing or commenting on any product or service that was "under litigation" from CBS and its various companies.  All four of the major broadcast networks, including CBS, are suing Dish over the Hopper service, alleging its service is a violation of copyright.
  Some intrepid reporting from The Verge has brought to light some of what happened behind the scenes, and it doesn't look good for CBS.
  First, if there is such a policy, it seems to have been created as an excuse for the Hopper ban, as CNET, as well as other CBS outlets, have reviewed and/or commented on the Hopper service without repercussions through last week.  Another hint that the policy was hastily devised came yesterday as CBS had to clarify that the ban wasn't on covering companies and devices involved in litigation, but only reviews - and specifically promised not to interfere in CNET's "actual news" coverage.  (Which raises the question - are "Best in Show" selections reviews, or news reporting on what technologies and services are generating the most interest?).
  Second, it turned out that the Hopper wasn't just precluded from the competition, it had already been selected as the "Best of Show" by the CNET editorial staff.  According to the reporting, when CBS top executives learned of the pending award, the word came down directly from CBS CEO Les Moonves' office to spike the award.  It fell to CBS Interactive News senior vice president and General Manager Mark Larkin to tell the CNET editorial staff that they would have to drop the Hopper and come up with a new "Best of Show" winner.  Larkin reportedly told the CNET staffers that he had fought strenuously against the interference, but it came down as a mandate from the top. 

The news raises questions not only about CNET's editorial independence, but concerns over why editors at the site have remained mum on the events surrounding the decision to remove the Hopper as winner of its "Best in Show" award. It suggests a growing influence of CBS' corporate interests in editorial decisions at its digital news subsidiaries. One source says that both Larkin and (reviews lead Lindsey) Turrentine fought for full disclosure, but were rebuffed by CBS.

  Interestingly, in a suit brought against CBS Interactive that sought to claim that parent company CBS was responsible for its subsidiaries' actions, the CBS lawyers argued that holding CBS responsible for CNET "would create grave uncertainties for writers and publishers — including search engines, web encyclopedias, blogs and most technology journalists."  A later statement from CBS tried to argue that this was an isolated incident, prompted by fears that Dish would use positive reviews in CNET to undermine CBS's lawsuit allegations.

  The incident will further blacken the famous CBS eye, as well as CNET's reputation among its readers.  Even if there is no lingering impact on straight news reporting, I think the top executives at CBS don't realize that CNET's reputation is built at least as much on the independence and integrity of its reviews, as it is on the independence of its news coverage.  This instance has shattered the credibility of CNET reviews - particularly now that there is clear and formal policy instituting corporate control over what products do, and do not, get reviewed.  It's a small jump from that to influencing the outcome of the review itself.  And there's not too much basis for believing that CBS and its top execs will behave nicely in the future.

Source - Exclusive: CBS force CNET staff to recast vote after Hopper won 'Best in Show' at CES, The Verge

Getting It Wrong - "The Era of Error"?

Paul Farhi has an interesting and troubling piece in the latest American Journalism Review - Mistaken Nation, about the growing problem of errors in journalism.  He starts with a tale of one big story that turned out to be only half right.  In 2007, Ben Smith, at then start-up Politico, got a tip from a trusted source that Elizabeth Edwards' cancer had returned, and as a result John Edwards was going to withdraw from the 2008 Presidential race at a scheduled press conference later that day.  Politico went with the story, and created a modest media firestorm.  At the Edwards presser, he confirmed his wife's relapse, but announced he was staying in the race.
"It was a really awful moment, personally," Smith recalled, adding he saw no clear lesson from the event, although his credibility might have taken a hit.  No lesson? How about this - don't make predictions based on a single unverified source; people can change their minds.

  American journalism students are weened on the apochryphal "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline in the Chicago Tribune missing the call of the 1948 Presidential election.  Blamed on deadline pressures and a printer's strike, the rush to get the big story first is still an embarrassment for the venerable daily.  And for all the emphasis j-schools place on getting it right, once in the real world the focus seems to shift to getting it first, often at the expense of accuracy.
In addition, the capacity to review and verify is shrinking with the decline of copy editors.  A press that still reflexively and arrogantly proclaims its accuracy and veracity as the product of "layers and layers of editors and fact checkers" has laid off most of them.
  Scholars have been looking at the issue of accuracy and errors in news reporting for more than a half century - and in one of the biggest and most recent, found that more than 60% of local news and feature stories contained errors.

The reported inaccuracies included the relatively trivial and objective kind — misspellings, incorrect ages, titles and dates, etc. — to the more profound and subjective, such as misleading or distorted quotes, the omission of information or the overplaying of inconsequential facts (read: hype).

That study also found a correlation between the amount of errors and source's perception of the newspaper's reputation, and their willingness to cooperate with the paper's staff in the future.  Farhi concludes "errors not only hurt the newspaper's reputation, they damaged the media's working relationship with the very people they cover."

  And it's not just sources that notice errors and find that they damage credibility.  Gallup and Pew have regular tracking polls on the credibility of various news sources in the U.S. - and the number that find them to be generally credible keeps declining.  (here's recent posts on Gallup and Pew numbers).  Only about one in four (or less) feel that news generally gets their facts straight, and more see reporting as favoring one side and influenced by the powerful.  This should be a big problem for news organizations - after all, the value of news (as journalism) is directly tied to perceptions of its accuracy and veracity; to borrow a common claim among news outlets - "News You Can Trust."
   If you can't trust it, all that's left is a story's entertainment value.  While that may keep the readers and viewers happy and bring in the revenues, it's not what makes journalism the "Fourth Estate."
  After a few more anecdotes about "mistakes" large and small, Farhi brings the discussion to the confounding factor of the Internet.  The speed and reach of the Internet certainly makes it easier to compound errors, and certainly makes it easier and faster for people to note the errors.  You'd think that it would also speed and facilitate the ability of reporters to check and verify at least some of the more straightforward mistakes, but there's a bit of a problem there.  Reporters have to acknowledge that there may be mistakes - and most are loath to do so.  Another study from 2007 found that reporters and news organizations are reluctant to acknowledge errors.

News sources noticed lots of errors in the newspapers' stories... but they rarely complained about them. When they did, the response was about the same as if they hadn't bothered. Of the 130 cases in which a source informed the newspaper about an alleged error, the newspapers ran a correction only four times.

   Another issue is the rise of pack journalism, a groupthink mentality that almost rises to cult status - or in academic terms, the building of self-reinforcing memes that seems to create a truth that really never was.

As it happens, some of the greatest myths perpetrated by the media are about the media itself. One popular notion is that CBS News anchorman Edward R. Murrow's famous "See It Now" broadcasts in the 1950s "brought down" Sen. Joe McCarthy, the communist-hunting demagogue. Another is that President Lyndon B. Johnson concluded that he could not win reelection after another legendary CBS anchorman, Walter Cronkite, declared in 1968 that the Vietnam War was "mired in stalemate." Still another is that the press, particularly Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, drove President Richard M. Nixon from office in 1974 with a relentless stream of revelations about the Watergate scandal.
These tales have been told so many times (often by journalists) that they seem true. But each is a case study in what satirist Stephen Colbert labeled "truthiness" — a statement having an emotional foundation or the ring of truth but with little or no evidence to support it. Each of these myths is dismantled in W. Joseph Campbell's 2010 book, "Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism," which demonstrates the self-reinforcing power of mistakes. 

 It's something I see a lot of, both among my students and among the journalism profession - a belief that all you need is one source that backs you up, particularly if that source is from a "trusted" news source.  And, incredibly, even after that "trusted" news source has issued a correction, most will rely on that first report that reinforces the meme and their beliefs. Farhi provides some additional anecdotes, including one from his own past about a missing footnote.
   Farhi wonders if "this may be a Golden Age of non-facts, the Era of Error."  I'd like to think that the reporting's not gotten so biased or sloppy that it's a fundamental problem.  It's pretty clear that the changes in the media landscape has increased the pressure to get the story out quickly, and that economic pressures have reduced the "layers" of fact-checking and copy-editing.  I'd also make the argument that the Internet's given those errors and mistakes that are made greater exposure, and eliciting more, and more public, challenges.  In other words, errors, and news organizations' reactions to errors, are more visible and public - and that most organizations haven't come to grips with that reality, retaining their fundamental belief that as journalists, they're more likely to be right than their readers and viewers are.  Which is not always the case. 
   All these factors compound the impact of journalistic errors and mistakes - continuing the decline in the public's trust of news media.

   Anyway, the article's worth a read.

Source  -  Mistaken Nation,  American Journalism Review
  

Gannett reporters to get mobile support

Gannett has joined the BBC as a major news organization that has decided to provide its journalists with a variety of tools to report remotely, via mobile.  Gannett will be providing thousands of new iPhones, iPads, netbooks, portable wireless hotspots and A/V accessories for their newspaper reporters.  The initial memo indicated that more information on training and use expectations would come at a later point.
  The new iPads and iPhones provide sufficient capabilities to capture sound, video, and pictures, write stories, and send reports in while in the field.  The equipment is also small enough, and light enough, that we will have to come up with a new catchphrase for the one-man reporting team - instead of "backpack journalism," perhaps "coat pocket journalism."

Source - Gannett buys thousands of iPhones, iPads for its journalists,  Poynter MediaWire

Social Media and Net Use by Business Journalists

Business-to-business media continues to do quite well, arguably in part because they have embraced new media forms, both for distribution and as information resource.  The 2011 Arketi Web Watch Media Survey shows high levels of social media use, as well as use of other Internet resources for information-gathering.

This latest report found that 92% of business journalists surveyed had a LinkedIn account (up from 85% in 2009).  Respondents reported using LinkedIn to research and connect with potential sources.   But they don’t rely solely on one social media outlet: 85% had Facebook accounts, and 84% had Twitter accounts (up from 24% in 2009).  Roughly half also reported having YouTube accounts (58% - YouTube is increasingly used by businesses and PR firms to post interviews and other promotional materials) and 49% of the business journalists reported subscribing to one or more blogs.

What’s perhaps more important is that the report showed that business journalists use these resources – 64% spend more than 20 hours a week online, and 21% report being online more than 40 hours a week.  71% reported getting story ideas from email pitches,, 56% had found ideas for stories on blogs, and 44% indicated using Twitter or similar sites. Virtually all used the Net to read news (98%), and 91% report using the Net to search for story ideas or resources to use in their stories. Two thirds report microblogging (such as Tweeting), and half report also contributing to blogs.

Other interesting findings dealt with credibility.  In the 2011 survey 82% of the journalists saw companies without websites as being less credible.  On the other hand, in an earlier survey (2007), 84% of business journalists indicated a willingness to use blogs as primary or secondary resources for articles, and most felt that monitoring employee blogging was ethical.

Sources: “Journalists Get Idea on Social Networks: Company Sites and PR for Support”, Research Brief from the Center for Media Research.

“2011 Arketi Web Watch Media Survey”, Arketi.com (2011, 2009, and 2007 reports available for download)

From Backpack to Pocket Journalism

Reflecting the inexorable pace of technology, broadcast journalism has seen the field reporting crew shrink from 3-5 (reporter, camera, sound, lighting, producer) to one - sometimes called the backpack journalist.  The BBC's taking the next step, developing an app that will enable reporters to upload images, audio, and video to BBC servers, directly from an iPhone or iPad.  In areas with 3G or better cellphone service, reporters can use third party app Luci Live to broadcast live from their devices.

Several of the larger US networks (CBS, CNN) have apps enabling individuals to record and submit multimedia content to intermediaries who might use some of it, but haven't widely used apps for direct filing of stories or live reports.

Sources: "BBC Developing iPhone App for Live Broadcasting", Mashable
"BBC Developing new iPhone app for field reporters," Journalism.co.uk