8th Journalism Leaders Forum to tackle the influence of digital technologies on sports reporting

There’s been quite a bit of discussion about the opportunities that digital technologies afford traditional media companies to use more platforms to create more interaction with more users around more nuanced stories and, even sometimes, to make more money.

At the start of another Olympic year, the 8th Journalism Leaders Forum on Tuesday, 29th January 2008, will consider if there's a darker side to the digital proposition by taking a closer look at developments in the world of sports.

Chairing the discussion will be Charlie Lambert (right), a veteran BBC North West sports presenter and commentator, who now runs the highly-regarded sports journalism programme at UCLan. Charlie outlines the premise for the panel discussion, which will be Webcast live, as follows:

The digital explosion has rent asunder the traditional relationship between sports journalists and the organisations they cover.

Already with many cards stacked in their favour, powerful bodies like the Football Association and individual clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool now have their own direct route to the public.

The old argument from newspaper and broadcast companies that “the clubs need the oxygen of publicity” no longer holds water. Clubs have their own media outlets including TV and radio stations and increasingly-sophisticated websites. They believe they can reach out to their customers without the need for interfering, bolshy journalists.

Clubs are increasingly using their websites as the outlet for breaking news, instead of picking up the phone to the local hack. Radio stations who access news from the sites frequently credit ‘the club website’ as their source, thus increasing the credibility of the club’s own media operation.

Does this mean that sports journalism as an independent conduit of information is on the way out?

The Forum, which coincides with the Winter residential seminar of the Journalism Leaders Programme, also helps mark 45 years of journalism at Preston, and is open to all - practitioners, academics, would-be journalists and others who are interested in the challenges of journalism in the Digital Age.

The event starts at 5:15pm with a networking reception in the foyer of Greenbank Building and the 90-minute panel discussion kicks off at 6pm . To attend, please RSVP to leaders @ ukjournalism . org . There is no charge.

If you can't be there in person, you can view the live Webcast online and join othes in the chat room [Log in as a guest] .

NOTE: Earlier the same day, we'll also be hosting an afternoon of workshops and discussions for the Digital Editors Network. For details about that event, please visit the DEN blog or link with the group on Facebook, where you'll also find the 'Journalism at Preston since 1962' group for alumni of England's oldest journalism course.

Revisiting "Local Turf Wars" Forum

With a panel comprising Jay Rosen of Press Think, Neil Benson of Trinity Mirror Regionals, Darren Thwaites of the award-winning Evening Gazette in Teesside, UCLan alumnus Andy Mitten of United We Stand, and Emma Hemmingway of Into the Newsroom, it was always going to be a lively - and insightful - discussion. The 7th Journalism Leaders Forum, chaired by Mike Ward, head of journalism at UCLan and author of Online Journalism, was exactly that.

If you missed the event or want to revist the discussion, you will find a recording HERE.

Also, mark your calendar. The 8th Forum is scheduled on 29 January 2008, to coincide with the winter residential seminar of the Journalism Leaders Programme . Earlier that day, we'll also be hosting an afternoon of workshops and discussions for the Digital Editors Network.

Of course, if you have any comments or suggestions, we'd certainly like to hear from you.

Crowdsource journalism advocate Jay Rosen joins panel on 'Local Turf Wars'

"A highly satisfying failure" is how Wired's Jeff Howe described Jay Rosen & Co's first pro-amateur, open source journalism project, Assignment Zero. The verdict: doing open source journalism is harder than you might think.

But Rosen & Co aren't giving up. They've teamed up with the Huffington Post and launched, Off theBus - "[US Presidential] campaign coverage by people who aren't in the club."

Rosen, an associate professor of journalism at New York University and the author of Press Think, will join in the 7th Journalism Leaders Forum discussion on 16 October entitled, Local Turf Wars: notes from the digital news frontline.

Other confirmed panellists include Neil Benson, editorial director of Trinity Mirror Regionals, and Emma Hemmingway, author of Into the Newsroom: exploring the digital production of regional television news. Mike Ward, head of the Department of Journalism at UCLan and author of Journalism Online, will chair the forum.

The event is of the first of a series of activities planned to mark 45 years of journalism education at Preston, the oldest programme of its type in England.

The open event, which is the first of three planned for 2007-8, starts at 5:15pm with a networking reception in the foyer of Greenbank Building. The 90-minute panel discussion begins at 6pm.

Please RSVP to: leaders[at]ukjournalsm[dot] org. Afterwards, you're invited to link up for a drink at the journalism department's traditional local, the Lamb & Packet . For those who can't make it person, the Forum will again be webcast live too [Log in as a Guest; on the right of the screen].

Trinity Mirror's Neil Benson examines local news at 7th Forum

The folks at the UK's largest newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror have been pretty upbeat lately.

Early in August , the interim financial results for 2007 showed that profits were up, despite below-forecast income from the titles they shed. A few days later, on the back of the announcement of a spate of redesigns and relaunches , regional editorial director Neil Benson hinted that things had gone so well with the rollout of their hyperlocal news project at the Teesside Gazette (also the Press Gazette Regional News Website of Year 2007) that more reverse publishing (online-to-print) products may be in the offing.

Benson is amongst the panelists considering the global impact of the local news business at the 7th Journalism Leaders Forum on 16 October. The event is of the first of a series of activities planned to mark 45 years of journalism education at Preston, the oldest programme of its type in England.

The open event, which is the first of three planned for 2007-8, starts at 5:15pm with a networking reception in the foyer of Greenbank Building. The 90-minute Forum begins at 6pm. Please RSVP to: leaders[at]ukjournalsm[dot] org.

Afterwards, you're invited to link up for a drink at the journalism department's traditional local, the Lamb & Packet . For those who can't make it person, the Forum will again be webcast live too.

Learning from digital media entrepreneurs

OK, I admit it. Perhaps the title of the 6th Journalism Leaders Forum in Preston - 'Editor as Entrepreneur: Lessons from the Digital Front' - was a bit misleading: none of the panelists nor the chair was strictly an "Editor". In fact, at the time, only one of them, Robin Hamman, was actually employed by a maintream media house (he's the BBC's Blog Network Coordinator and author of his own highly-rated blog.). And the other? Eamonn Carey had left traditional media operations to launch his own mobile start-up , Random Thoughts Media , while Nick Jaspan of How-Do has been a media entrepreneur all along.

Which raises a key question for traditional media houses: What can we do to retain talent in an age when the ease of access to technology and bandwidth means that today's star employee can (more easily?) be tomorrow's competitor?

If you missed the excellent case studies and provocative discussion chaired by the journalist-turned-tech whiz, Bob Eggington, you can watch an unedited version of the live Webcast here.

Reminder: the next Journalism Leaders Forum has been scheduled for Tuesday, 16 October 2007. On the occassion of the 45th anniversary of journalism education at Preston, we'll be looking at the opportunities digital technologies give local media to reach global audiences - and to make a global impact.

Hope you will join the conversation.

Serial media entrepreneur Nick Jaspan to join Forum panel on May 15th

Sure Nick Jaspan got his fingers (and probably his wallet) burned last year by opening and closing the independent weekly North West Enquirer. But it'll take more than that to stop a serial entrepreneur like Jaspan.

Just this month the co-founder of Newsco Media, which he sold, and j4b (Just for Business), of which he is a non-executive director, launched his latest venture, 'How-Do', a media industry news portal for the North West of England.

On May 15th, this survivor of the (first?) dotcom bust will join the 6th Journalism Leaders Forum panel entitled, 'Editor as Entrepreneur: Lessons from the Digital Front'. Other panellists include Eamonn Carey of the mobile media start-up, Random Thoughts Media, and Robin Hamman, co-ordinator of the BBC's Blogging Network. Bob Eggington, the journalism-turned-tech whiz whose projects have included establishing BBC News Online and TV Genius, will chair the discussion.

The event, which forms part of the Winter residential week programme for participants in the Department of Journalism's Journalism Leaders Programme, is open to all - practitioners, academics, would-be journalists and others who are interested in the challenges of leading journalism in a digital age.

To attend this open programme at 6pm on Tuesday, May 15th, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the network reception from 5:15pm - please RSVP to leaders@ukjournalism.org. There is no charge. If you can't be there in person, you can view the live Webcast online and join othes in the chat room [Log in as a guest] .

NOTE: Applications are currently being accepted for the Spring seminars, which will include sessions by Eggington and Hamman, as well as other accomplished practitioners and academics: Managing Multimedia Projects: Harnessing the Potential fo the Digital Age. Please see the Journalism Leaders Programme website or email the director François Nel for more information.

BBC über blogger Robin Hamman to join the 6th Forum panel

BBC über blogger Robin Hamman , who is one of the drivers behind the much-discussed BBC Manchester Blog project, will be joining the panel for the 6th Journalism Leaders Forum panel discussion on May 15th.

With that in mind we should probably modify the panel theme from 'Editor as Entrepreneur' to 'Editorial Entrepreneurship' because Hamman and his colleague Richard Fair aren't strictly editors (both officially have hold positions of 'Senior Broadcast Journalist'). That, I think, makes an important point: creativity and entrepreneurial flair aren't confined to the top of the organisational chart. What that means for the newsroom management is amongst the issues to be explored by the panel - and the audience - in the interactive discussion that will be chaired by journalist-turned-tech-whizz Bob Eggington.

The Forum, which forms part of the schedule for the Spring block of the Journalism Leaders Programme, is free and open to the public. Preceded by a networking reception at 5:15pm in the Greenbank Building Foyer, the panel discussion will start at 6pm in Greenbank Lecture Theatre and will also be webcast live.

RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism.org . And contact the programme director François Nel at FPNel[@] uclan.ac.uk with any questions.

Media Entrepreneurs at the New Front Line of the Digital Revolution - Mobile Phones

The good news is that mainstream media are [slowly] waking up to the potential of mobile phones, if recent studies and analyst predications are anything to go by.

A study of 38 US news sites published last week as part of The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2007 State of the American News Media Report showed that about a third (12 sites) of the sites in the sample allowed content delivery customization, such as RSS feeds, podcasts or mobile phone alerts. According to Visiongain, by 2008, 89% of brands in Europe will use SMS & MMS to reach their audience and 1/3 will spend more than 10% of their marketing budgets on the mobile channel.

The other news is that traditional news organizations aren’t the only alert to the potential of mobile. Others - including alpha players in the digital space, such as Google – are getting in on the act. The buzz about Google’s move into mobile, which I first picked up late last year, ratcheted up last week after a Google official in Spain acknowledged the company is "investigating" such a project.

It’s not really surprising. Google guru Vinton Cerf has been talking up the importance of mobile phones quite a bit recently saying that the future growth of the Internet lies in the hands of mobile phone users, not computers.

Cerf has pointed out that while the Internet population has exploded from 50 million to 1.1 billion since 1997, it still only reaches a sixth of the world's population. “You will get those other 5.5 billion people only when affordability increases and the cost of communication goes down," said Cerf, 63, who joined Google in 2005 as Vice President. By contrast, analysts say mobile phone connections recently topped 2.5 billion and are expected to reach 3 billion by the end of 2007 . A recent study showed that more than half of mobile phones in circulation were enabled to access data services and that 56% of users accessed at least one data services each a month, up dramatically from a year ago. “The mobile phone has become an important factor in the Internet revolution, " said Cerff.

Eamonn Carey is one new media entrepreneur taking advantage of the mobile explosion. A former producer and presenter with RTE Radio and Newstalk Radio in Ireland, Carey is the co-founder and director of Random Thoughts Media who recently produced a series of six video podcasts or vodcasts for O2 mobile, sponsors of the Irish national rugby Team. [Featuring rugby experts George Hook and Brent Pope , the final programme was available on March 17^th, the eve of the Ireland’s sensational eight-try victory over Italy.]

Eamonn will be discussing some of his projects for mobile during the 6th Journalism Leaders Forum panel discussion on May 15th. Entitled, ‘Editor as Entrepreneur: Lessons from the Digital Front’, the panel discussion will be chaired by journalist-turned-tech-whizz Bob Eggington, who’s many new media projects have including helping establish BBC News Online.

The Forum, which forms part of the schedule for the Spring block of the Journalism Leaders Programme, is free and open to the public. Preceded by a networking reception at 5:15pm in the Greenbank Building Foyer, the panel discussion will start at 6pm in Greenbank Lecture Theatre and will also be webcast live.

RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism.org .

‘Editors expected not only to manage existing operations, but to be entrepreneurs’

Time was when the typical editor’s job was pretty straightforward, even predictable. He [and, in the main, it was ‘he’] needed to make sure that, when the presses rolled at a pre-determined time every day, the newsroom had produced enough pre-planned stories of reasonable quality and variety on pre-determined themes to fill the preset space between the advertising.

On rare occasions the news-making machine would be temporarily disrupted by an unexpected event of some magnitude. Then, the spine-tingling cry would go out from the editor: ‘Hold the front page!’ All too soon, though, the normal ebb and flow would resume like clockwork.
That’s changing. Mainstream media managers are expected not only to be custodians of existing operations and to satisfy existing (often shrinking) audiences, but many are also expected to investigate new opportunities to reach new users using new formats on new platforms. Increasingly, editors are expected to be entrepreneurs.

It’s that new challenge which will be the focus of the 6th Journalism Leaders Forum panel discussion on May 15th. Entitled, ‘Editor as Entrepreneur: Lessons from the Digital Front’, the panel discussion will be chaired by journalist-turned-tech-whizz Bob Eggington, who’s many new media projects have including helping establish BBC News Online.

The Forum, which forms part of the schedule for the Spring block of the Journalism Leaders Programme, is free and open to the public. Preceeded by a networking reception at 5:15pm in the Greenbank Building Foyer, the panel discussion will start at 6pm in Greenbank Lecture Theatre and will be webcast live.

RSVP to leaders[at]ukjournalism.org .

Can magazines help newspapers navigate Web 2.0?

Newspapers navigating the tricky Web 2.0 Age should look to the magazine industry for some coordinates, Alan Moore suggested at the 5th Journalism Leaders Forum in Preston last week:

"Trust, engagement, connectivity, life-enhancement, life-simplification and navigation sums up magazines and their current success, not least through internet contact with their readers."

Perhaps Moore is on to something. A look at the 2006/2007 World Magazine Trends report from the International Federation of the Periodical Press or FIPP (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Périodique) certainly suggests rather more optimistic figures than those typically reported in the newspaper sector:

The [UK] consumer magazine industry was valued at £2,984 million in 2005, up by £135 million on the previous year. Consumer expenditure increased by 6.2% year-on-year to reach £2,157 million while advertising expenditure rose by 1% to £829 million. Total annual sales increased by 7% to 1,438 million copies per annum which means that since the year 2000, consumer magazines have enjoyed continuous year-on-year growth in both annual sales volume and purchasers’ expenditure. The number of consumer titles published rose by 42 to 3,366 between 2004 and 2005, the fourth consecutive year of growth.

The magazine industry is certainly not suffering the declines that are so typical of newspapers, but the extent to which that is due to that's because the magazine industry is Net-savvy isn't obvious. And listening to Janice Min, editor-in-chief, Us Weekly, at the Media Summit New York last week (see below), it’s clear that her magazine, at least, is still ‘trying to figure out what is going to make people come to the website in addition to buying the magazine”. (Sound familiar?)

So, if the magazine industry's edge isn't digital, perhaps it's worth examining how the industry's practice as it relates to the other issues to which Moore points: 'Trust, engagement, connectivity, life-enhancement, life-simplification and navigation".

Replay the 'Media Mashups' Forum debate - and keep the discussion going

After more than an hour and half, we hit ‘pause’ – not ‘stop’ - on the provocative 5th Journalism Leaders Forum discussion on the challenges facing traditional media in the Web 2.0 Age.

At the time, the distinguished panel - Jane Singer, Alan Moore, Heather Hopkins and Mark Tungate – were responding to this question posted online by Mark Comerford from Sweden:

still talking to a large extent about your "traditional" base. How do you extend your brand to audiences you dont traditionally reach?

Afterwards, Jane Singer, the new Johnston Press Chair in Digital Journalism at UCLan, had this to add in response:

One of the advantages that traditional media have in the online world is their
'institutional memory' of their own communities, commonly stretching back through
many years and many generations -- which they can draw on in a variety of ways
and in combination with the new voices of users (including those both new to the
community and those with their own long-term knowledge and connections with it
as their home). None of the other companies jumping online and providing content
have a comparable capability that comes from long-term association with and deep
knowledge of a particular place, its people and its issues.

You can review a (unedited) recording of the Webinar here - and join the discussion by posting your comments on this blog. Or you can joining us for the 6th Journalism Leaders Forum scheduled for 15 May 2007. Better yet, why don't you do both?

Co-author of "Communities Dominate Brands" joins Forum on Media Mashups

Alan Moore is CEO of SMLXL, described as a "Engagement Marketing specialist firm", and co-author with Tomi Ahonen of "Communities Dominate Brands". He's got some pretty strong views on the challenges media operations face in the what he calls "Generation C ", the connected society, and he'll share some of those as part of the panel for the 5th Journalism Leaders Forum on Feb 6th entitled, "Media Mashups! How Traditional Media Brands Survive and Thrive in a Widely Wired World."

Alan’s belief is that within the near future community-based engagement initiatives and the enabling of peer-to-peer flows of communication within organisations, and those that engage with them, will replace the traditional orthodoxies of government, management, business, media distribution and marketing as the primary media by which these organisations will successfully engage with their audiences. His message is has lots of people listening.

Alan’s notable projects include the brand strategy development and integrated communications program for a Pan-Nordic 3G mobile service; Saab’s global brand communication strategy; H&M’s store opening strategies in the US; and a number of existing brand and NPD projects for The Coca Cola Company.

Alan will join Heather Hopkins, VP for research for Hitwise, and Jane Singer, the new Johnston Press Chair of Digital Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, in a discussion chaired by Mark Tungate, author of "Media Monoliths: How Great Media Brands Thrive and Survive".

The event, which forms part of the Winter residential week programme for participants in the Department of Journalism's Journalism Leaders Programme, is open to all - practitioners, academics, would-be journalists and others who are interested in the challenges of leading journalism in a digital age. To attend this free programme at 6pm on Tuesday, February 6th, in Greenbank Lecture Theatre in Preston - as well as the network reception from 5:30pm - please RSVP to leaders@ukjournalism.org.

If you can't be there in person, there are other ways to join the discussion.

You can post your questions and comments on this site, or you can view the live Webcast by logging in as a guest at: http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/journalismleadersforum/. Online participants will be able to post questions to panellists in a chat room.

NOTE: Applications are currently being accepted for the Winter seminar Feb 5-8th, which will include sessions by Hopkins, Singer and Tungate, as well as other accomplished practitioners and academics:. Please see the Programme website or email the director François Nel for more information.