Weekly Link Digest – 30th August 2010

August 30, 2010

Five interesting journalism-related bits of internet, from the last week:

A flair for checkin’ yo-self (a TNTJ repost)

I posted this over at TNTJ for the August debate on the skills needed for young journalists. You can find it, and join the discussion, here.

It’s a fantastic world of opportunities we live in at the moment. Opportunities that allow us to communicate stories through more varied mediums and wider audiences than ever before.

Slightly ironic then, that one of the most important skills a new journalist needs these days is being made increasingly important by the number of employment opportunities being taken away.

That skill is the need to hone an efficient and methodical way to self-critique.

Newsrooms are becoming smaller across radio, newspapers and TV. Journalists are having to cover more stories across a wider area with tighter deadlines, and the number of people employed to focus on ‘quality control’ is falling.

For this reason, every time we finish a piece we need to give it a proper look and make sure it’s correct. Not just for the final output to be the best it can be at the time, but also so we can learn from it.

Take two minutes to ask questions of yourself; ‘how could I have made this more engaging?’ ‘Is there anyone I could’ve spoken to that I couldn’t/didn’t?’ ‘Can I justify every sentence?’. If you haven’t got the time to fix it, write it down. Start a log, and work on fixing common errors.

If we do that, we’re helping ourselves to learn, even in busy environments where the main focus is on just getting enough content. With the number of people on newsroom payrolls rivaling the number of goals Malta score in even their best world cup qualifiers, honing your ability to self-criticize will make you stand out from the crowd.

The true power of autotune is turning news into comedy.

August 24, 2010

The X-Factor’s production crew are getting some grief for auto-tuning their auditionees this week, which gave Channel 4 News a chance to give Jon Snow an audition of his own:

They obviously wanted to show the power of Auto-Tune in the situation it’s designed for. There’s another way to show what can be done, though, demonstrated wonderfully by the YouTube series Auto-Tune the News:

Weekly Link Digest – 23rd August 2010

August 23, 2010

Five interesting bits of journalism related content this week:

‘We have covered the Charles Taylor trial from the start’

August 19, 2010

Jon Slattery’s discussed this unfortunate headline cock-up from the BBC’s staff mag, but there’s something else that can be learned from the letter below ‘Write headline here’.

In it, the frustrated staffer voices his discontent at what he sees as the BBC’s apparent disinterest in the Charles Taylor war crimes trial until ‘a supermodel sashays into the courtroom’.

The response was akin to doing this.

There’s no arguing the Campbell evidence was extensively covered – but the BBC have indeed covered a number of aspects of the trial. The beginning. Charles Taylor’s evidence. Even Taylor’s wife having a baby.

I don’t know why the contributor doesn’t remember any of those, but there’s no arguing that the entire alleged ‘supermodel gets given a diamond’ story is one that’s rather memorable, rather newsworthy in it’s own right – and probably worthy of all the coverage it’s received.

Does that make it a sign that ‘celebrity news’ is now so divisive, even a newsworthy story gets dismissed simply because it contains a celebrity?