Freelance Unbound

Tuesday’s trip to Bristol to meet fellow blogger and digital evangelist Bristol Editor, and hang out with my old animation buddies from UWE, was enlivened by a drama playing out on local radio station Original 106.5FM.
The station was apparently hijacked by “shock newspaper columnist” Mike Ford – a supposedly controversial contributer to the Bristol Evening Post. A row between Ford and breakfast presenter Jed Pitman sent Pitman storming out of the studio, leaving Ford to keep broadcasting and cause offence to various interest groups.
I missed all this. By the time I tuned in at about noon, the station was broadcasting music tracks interrupted only by the occasional advertisement and a periodic message that:

“This is 106.5FM. The current service has been suspended. Please tune in tomorrow at 6am for more information.”

All very exciting. Though the next morning’s rebranding to Jack 106.5FM and some cynical comments on the station’s web site indicate that, just perhaps, it could have all been a publicity stunt.
Never mind. The really fascinating thing was how familiar the listening experience was.
I didn’t miss the presenters at all.
In fact, listening to the themed streaming track selection (which could loosely be categorised as “dad rock” and “late 70s/early 80s oldies”, and fitted my demographic like a glove), interrupted by a few ads every 15 minutes, was achingly familiar. Where was it that I had such a similar audio experience recently?
Oh, yes. Spotify.
It was almost exactly the same. The only difference was that strange, post-apocalyptic recorded announcement. Ditch that and you might as well have been listening to the web’s most-hyped personalised radio experience.
And you know what? It was great.
Tellingly, though it promises a new breakfast crew from 6am, Jack 106.5FM is still playing DJ-free music into the evening. Is this the future of local commercial radio? Will we see the demise of the presenter in favour of a few pre-recorded links and a computer-driven playlist?
Radio’s doing pretty well in the current media climate (though digital commercial radio is on the slide). But I wonder whether listeners would tune in if the DJ-free, personalised, Spotify experience was as widely available as FM radio.
Maybe radio is making the move first and the DJ is on the way out, along with typesetters and paid journalists.

I loved this comment on Tim Luckhurst’s recent journalism-is-so-up-itself-it-believes-it’s-the-cornerstone-of-democracy opinion piece on the Guardian web site.

“Dinosaur rages against approaching asteroid. Blog at 11.”

There’s almost nothing else to say.
But what the hell.
One problem with the Luckhurst analysis is that he recognises the economic drivers that created the modern newspaper, but then tries to sidestep the economic drivers that are essentially making it obsolete.

After stamp duty on newspapers was abolished in 1855, allowing the price of a daily title to drop from 5d to 1d, new investment and technology produced a blitz of paper.

Er, yes.
And after Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web (broadly), new investment and technology produced a blitz of web content. That was free to produce and consume. Which completely undermines the old printed media economics.
But what really made me roll my eyes was the common complaint of “professional” journalists that:

Journalism is not free and that no good has come of the nigh universal pretence that it should be.

So – the near universal availability in the west of nearly free publishing tools that allow almost unfettered access to a potentially global readership is a bad thing. And undermines democracy.
I don’t think so. As I’ve wittered about endlessly, gaining free access to publishing tools is inherently much more democratic than having access to what a professional cadre of journalists choose to inform us about.
For a longer, and far more convincing, argument on these lines, check out this excellent piece from the Huffington Post yesterday on the desperation of journalism.
[HT: Karl Schneider]

[vimeo width=”500″ height=”280″]http://vimeo.com/7937150[/vimeo]
Channel 4 news reporter and More 4 news presenter Keme Nzerem speaks to UCA Farnham journalism students on why now is a good time to enter journalism. Really.
The video was shot by first year UCA TV journalism students and edited (quickly but with consummate professionalism) by TV lecturer Sean Walsh.
Much like Reed’s Karl Schneider, Keme Nzerem believes it really is a great time to be starting out in journalism – if you make the fullest use of its digital tools and opportunities.
Topics in brief:
Is it a good time to become a journalist?

• Google News and Twitter create the same number of news page requests as each other
• It’s really important for new journalists develop a relationship with the social media world
• In the social media world your personal brand and your relationship with your audience becomes crucial

Ways to get into journalism

• Do your research
• Don’t send out generic applications for work experience or jobs
• Include idea suggestions
• Offer constructive criticism that highlights your skills
• Know your market and be interested
• Have a very thick skin – be prepared to contact a lot of people and face rejection or be ignored

Foreign assignments

• Who makes up the team?
• How do you operate?
• What sort of assignments are you sent on?
• What are the implications of multi-skilling for the news team?
  (less money means less resources – is this fair? What is the impact on quality?

Should a journalist have an agenda?
Keme’s core agendas are:

• Social justice
• To entertain the public
• To enjoy his work

“Any journalist who claims that they don’t have one is deluded or lying”

We could and should try to be objective, but we are never objective.

Steve Yelvington has a very interesting post here on the whole “is Murdoch an idiot for blocking visitors from Google?” question (he thinks not). Perhaps more interesting is the argument it generates in the comments, which manages to be both slightly vitriolic and also well-informed – an almost unheard of trick normally.
Whether the planned move by Murdoch to erect a pay wall around News Corp content makes sense depends really on what he’s actually trying to achieve.
Not many of us are actually willing to pay for online content, if this survey from paidContent:UK is to be believed. (Though I never really trust surveys that talk about what people say they’ll do. Surveys only count when they reveal what people actually do.)
But maybe, as Steve Yelvington suggests, Murdoch isn’t focused on paying for his publications with subscriber money. Instead, closing off his web sites to Google:

is nothing more than a negotiating ploy to try to squeeze some cash out of Google, which – thanks to zillions of website owners signing up for its opaque AdSense deals – has more cash than it knows what to do with.

Chatter that News Corp is cozying up to Microsoft and its Bing search project indicates that maybe this is all about getting more money from search, and is nothing much about readers after all. Who, let’s face it, haven’t had much to do with paying for newspapers forever, pretty much.
So, what, if anything, can we do to save the news media?
In another sector, Michael Castello on mistypedURL has written a really interesting post on how we could save the music industry in the age of the download and peer-to-peer data sharing.
Recognising that there is no marginal cost involved with producing an extra digital copy, he realises that its value as an object tends to zero. It’s difficult, in effect, to persuade consumers to pay for something they know cost nothing to produce.
Yes, I know the argument is that all the costs are upfront, in artist development and recording. But it doesn’t seem to hold water any more in practice.
In response, then, Michael Castello suggests two ways of monetising music.

• Sell music, not copies
  That means connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy more valuable merchandise – “things that have a personal value to the fan and thus are worth their money”. These include t-shirts, gig tickets and signed albums – up to the personal experience of meeting the band.

• Taking what’s free, buying what’s valuable
  In essence, those free digital music copies are an endless promotional stream, pouring out across a potentially global market to create more fans to buy more valuable merchandise.

Does this make sense?
Apparently it does – but for the artists, not the record labels. According to the latest research on P2P in the music business, artists have generally been earning more over the past five years, though record company revenues have been falling.

Fascinating stuff. But is it of any relevance to the news media?
In some ways, I suspect, yes. These are not exactly analagous products. You don’t keep news stories on your iPod to read over and over again, for example. But the idea that fostering reader loyalty is vitally important seems to ring true.
Our individual bits of content are not what are worth money. It’s whether or not they can attract a loyal readership that matters.
Murdoch seems to believe that visitors from Google search are random and transient: they are not likely to become loyal. But maybe his problem is that his products aren’t doing enough to make casual visitors loyal ones.
There’s another implication. Newspapers used to collect a range of journalistic talent together in a package to sell to readers. Part of that package was the newspaper brand itself. And part of it was a few star reporters or columnists who readers sought out especially.
But perhaps this old model of newspapers has run its course too. Just as music acts are starting to find that they are better at earning money in the P2P age, so perhaps writers may have to find ways of monetising their work outside the old newspaper/media model.
It won’t be easy. I predict there will be a great hollowing out of media employment.
Those at the top may be able to make a good living at their trade. Those at the very bottom will be paid minimum wage – or less – to churn the vast information pool for content.
And those in the middle will probably have to find other work…

That is, not for actual jobs that have a salary attached. Not even minimum wage.
Try this one for size:  “Freelance writers for online magazine”
This is an ad for “The world’s most comprehensive independent online magazine: written and edited by professionals, trusted by over 24 million readers monthly!”
This is what it wants from you:

• A minimum of 10 x 400-600 word non-fiction articles every three months
• Research to support fact based, unique articles
• Self guided use of training materials
• Commitment to following editorial guidelines
• Excellent writing and grammatical skills
• High level of self-motivation and fastidious attention to detail
• Ability to accept and respond to editor feedback
• Experience writing for the web considered an asset, though not required
• Familiarity with social networks and online marketing is beneficial, though not required

Quite demanding, really. And this is what it gives in return:

• Freedom to write about what you want, when you want
• Lifetime royalties with added bonuses and incentives
• Exposure to over 20 million monthly readers
• Free, comprehensive training on writing for the web
• Access to a vibrant online writing community and forum

Wow 20 million readers (or, you know, 24 million readers, depending on which figures you use). And “lifetime royalties” yet. What’s that all about? Could this be the route to a lifetime of unearned income flowing into your bank account as you sip margaritas by the pool?
No. From the Suite101 web site:

It’s difficult to provide static figures about how much revenue writers earn at Suite101; there are a number of variables that can affect your earnings. To give you an idea of the revenue range, some top writers earn over $1000/month. Other writers may earn $30/month but it depends on the popularity of your articles and their searchability online.

Mmm. $30 a month. I can’t wait.
It’s also telling that a lot of the testimonial quotes featured on the Suite101 site focus on the satisfaction of writing, rather than its profitability.

“At Suite101 I enjoy professional camaraderie with other writers”

or:

“Suite101 provides both structure and creative liberty”

or:

“Writing for Suite101 gives me the opportunity to more deeply research a topic I am already seriously invested in”

Which is nice. But doesn’t pay the rent.
Having said that, the site is admirable in its transparency. It even has a downloadable example of the contract it offers new writers.

Suite101 agrees to use commercially reasonable efforts to secure, but cannot guarantee, sponsored advertising links that attempt to match content of an individual webpage (“Contextual Advertising”) for every page of the Content published on Suite101. Suite101 agrees to pay the Writer a fee (the “Fee”) that constitutes a share (at the discretion of Suite101 and its partnering advertisers) of revenues earned from Contextual Advertising displayed on all Suite101 webpages where the Writer’s Content appears in full.

So, you get an unspecified (read: “tiny”) share of whatever sponsored ad revenue the site may or may not be able to sell against your lovingly written copy. That’s about what I get here, actually. Only I have some guarantees that my posts won’t get removed at the whim of WordPress without me knowing.
Don’t get me wrong – I have no objection to performance-based models of payment for writing. In fact, I think in some ways it’s inevitable, given the nature of the web. But I don’t think this could be described as an ad for a “job” in any sense of the word.
Nevertheless, we’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the media classifieds in future I reckon.

Here’s an interesting piece from the Guardian about the deep web – the more than 99% (it claims) of the world wide web that is invisible to everyday search via, say, Google.
Also interesting is the paper’s editorial stance on this. According to the standfirst:

Freenet software allows users complete anonymity as they share viruses, criminal contacts and child pornography

Nothing there about escaping political or religious repression in totalitarian countries, then. Which would also be a use for a more invisible internet.
Freedom is never easy – but it does strike me that it is often painted as essentially a bad thing nowadays.
Despite the one-sided set-up, the article is a fascinating read though.
[HT: Bristol Editor]

Anyone using the very much under-the-radar Sidewiki toolbar gizmo from Google to add browser-located comments to web sites will now be able to see an entry for Freelance Unbound on the left of the screen next to the home page.
I’ve only just come across Sidewiki myself – I caught a reference to it in an internet marketing newsletter I monitor. The author flagged it up as a major potential problem for brand protection:

The site owner has no editorial control – anyone can say anything they like about your page, your company, your product, or you. Your competitors can trash you. Sidewiki has the potential to be one of the most damaging and destructive things online.

That may be a bit extreme. Let’s face it – anyone on the internet can start up a blog slagging you and your site off. The only real difference is that, with Sidewiki, their posts will be linked to your pages in the same browser.
But he was also concerned that any attempt by a site owner to block Sidewiki from working might prompt Google to delist their site from search results. I’ve no idea if that’s true, but it would be a worry – I’m not alone in thinking Google (motto: “Don’t be evil”) is actually becoming the hated 600-pound gorilla of the web that Microsoft used to be in PC software. (Remember those days? I miss them somehow.)
So of course I had to download the toolbar to see how it worked. That’s journalism in action for you.
If anyone else is reading this using Firefox, or maybe IE6, feel free to download it too and put up a comment. It would be interesting to see how it works.
However – I too understand that brand protection malarkey. Bear in mind that any comments need to meet Google’s terms of use. Specifically:

• Keep Sidewiki spam and malware free
• Speak your mind without being hateful or threatening to others
• Keep it legal
• Respect copyright laws
• Don’t post or link to sexually explicit material
• Don’t pretend to be someone else (though I think using your internet identity should be fine)
• Don’t share personal or confidential information

Is all of that enough to prevent wanton web reputational carnage?
Well – probably. Although I suspect it will be a bit of a palaver to get Google to take action against any Sidewiki user with a grudge who disses your site (unless they post dodgy sexually explicit content, I suspect).
But the truth is that the internet opens up content to everyone – not only to read, but to comment about and respond to. The only difference is that you can’t turn them off, or delete them at will. I just hope it’s got Akismet installed…

How do you get your student news story at the top of the Google rankings? And without really breaking a sweat?
Basically: write it.
Last week’s talk by Karl Schneider of Reed to journalism students at UCA Farnham sparked some interest on the web.
Freelance Unbound provided a full report – complete with ropey video – and was rewarded with some good traffic and links from outside. But it was a bit of a slog. Transcribing the content, writing it up and editing the video took quite a few hours – and that’s without the hours and hours it seemed to take to compress to MP4 ready for upload to Vimeo.
But one UCA student didn’t bother with all that – and yet still nabbed Google’s top slot.
Max Raymond’s short blog post on Karl’s visit didn’t bother with all that video malarkey – and it didn’t even have a picture from the talk.
But, weighing in at less than 300 words, it did have a handy summary of the talk that covered all the salient points. And it also had a handy link to the Reed site, as a nod to that interactivity malarkey that sets online journalism apart.
As it turns out, that was enough to push Max to first place on a Google search for Karl Schneider of Reed [NB: search is dynamic, so this position will change over time. Correct as of 23 November 2009].
Here’s why:
Karl Schneider has very little web presence
Karl Schneider is fairly important in media terms – in that he’s a senior figure at a big, business-oriented publishing house. He’s also quite prominent as a speaker – he gave the keynote address at Evolved Media’s Fast Track to Online and Social Publishing event in July this year.
But for some reason he’s not that well represented online. Twitter, more so – but not the web. Bar a few business listing-type pages and some references on Computer Weekly, this is an open field.
This means that Max needed to put a minimal focus on search engine optimisation to achieve his result. One namecheck in the headline and one in the first paragraph, plus a company mention, was enough.
On the downside, Max heads the pack for one search string: Karl + Schneider + Reed. Try a range of others – Karl + Schneider + Reed + Business + Information, say, or “Karl Schneider” + Reed – and he appears much lower down, or sometimes not on the first results page at all.
In contract, Freelance Unbound is consistently at or near the top for a wider range of searches. That extra time and multimedia content did pay off.
So what might cement that top ranking?
Nurture inbound links
The video of Karl’s talk was interesting enough to prompt a number of sites and Twitter users to link to the posts on Freelance Unbound. In turn, that has helped boost their Google ranking.
It also helped to split the material into themes. The post on the changing nature of the journalist’s day was by far the most heavily trafficked. Having a few posts up in succession also gave readers a chance to catch up with the series. (Though this is easy to overdo.)
Tips for search engine success
Your subject should be:

• Of interest in your chosen field
• Not heavily represented online

Techniques:

• Use keywords high up in the story (but not so many you get mistaken for spam)
• Vary your keywords – pick up other searches with related terms
• Add value – eg with video
• Publicise your post – via other blogs/sites and social networks such as Twitter
• Develop incoming links

But most of all – write the damn thing. Max also had a clear run at the top of Google because he wasn’t competing with dozens of other UCA journalism students doing the same thing. Their loss is his gain.

It’s not the whole truth, honestly…

Part 1;    Part 2;    Part 3;    Part 4;    Part 5;
Last in this series of videos and write-ups of Reed Business Information editorial development director Karl Schneider’s talk to journalism students at UCA Farnham.

The discussion comes as a result of a typically trenchant question from pugnacious student newspaper editor Michael Copus.
It’s one that probably bothers all journalists faced with the prospect of working under the glare of audience visibility. What happens when you screw up and post information immediately that then turns out to be, in Michael’s apt words, “a load of bollocks”?
Does posting inaccurate information undermine your credibility and that of your brand?
It can do – but it depends how you deal with it

Be open

• The audience understands you are human
• If you’re open and transparent, they will forgive you
• You can instantly correct your online posts

Best practice is to leave the error in place, but crossed out. This provides visual evidence not only of your willingness to correct mistakes – but also of the proportion of material that is right.
It provides more credibility as a news source – unless you are making errors all the time.

“Clearly, over time, if you’re covering a beat and half of everything you say turns out to be wrong, then absolutely it undermines your credibility”
Karl Schneider

Doesn’t remove the need for good journalism

• Checking facts
• Knowing how to gather information
• Developing good judgement about what you can publish and when

The boundary of where this point lies has changed thanks to the web – rapid publishing and rapid retraction.

“Often, the importance of getting stuff published early outweighs the risk of getting it wrong – as long as you’re honest”
Karl Schneider

Give the audience some context – let them be the judge of how valid and useful it is.
Journalists are learning how to use the medium – audiences are learning how to consume it.
Watch the tech media and the tech audience to see how journalism will develop – it’s at the cutting edge of practice.
Part 1;    Part 2;    Part 3;    Part 4;    Part 5;