Gary Andrews

During my journalism training days, we once joked what journalism would have looked like had the internet not been invented. I facetiously commented that some reporters would have to find a method other than using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

Joking as I may have been, with staff numbers down and pressure to produce rolling content on the up, there’s a lot more churnalism and reliance on syndicated agency content. Much as journalists would like to be out and about, exposing wrongdoing and reporting original content, modern demands make this kind of hard.

As such, there’s a lot of copy and pasting from other sources. If one paper, radio or other media source carries a story, others will take the main line and reproduce this, namechecking the original.

Actually, this isn’t a new thing. It’s sort of vital for the news industry to exist. One outlet will look slow if they’re not leading with the line obtained by their rivals, so often they’ll take the main points and rewrite into their own news story. It’s pretty common and generally accepted practice in the news industry. Whether it’s a practice you feel is proper journalism is another question (although it’s quite a skill to be able to rewrite agency copy well).

Where it isn’t accepted is in the blogging community, which is much more open to quoting, attributing and, most importantly, linking back to the original source. As somebody who’s been blogging in various guises since in 2003, this is nearly second nature to me and something I’ve carried into online journalism without any problem.

But when two very different worlds collide, there will be problems, and this was the case earlier this week. Gav Stone, who writes the specialist Les Rosbifs blog, focusing on the careers on English footballers abroad, pulled off something off a coup by securing an interview with former England, FC Twente and Wolsburg manager Steve McClaren about his time managing in Europe.

Let’s just emphasise this. A fully independent blogger who edits his site as a hobby and no typical mainstream access secured an interview with a reasonably recent England manager and who is still active in the game today. Unless it’s part of a PR event, these type of interviews are unusual on independent blogs and rarer still to be in such depth.

Understandably Gav was, to put it mildly, a bit miffed when a chunk of his interview turned up a few days later as a lifted and rewritten news story (“Macca: Twenty joy my career high) on Sky Sports, Team Talk and other sites that Sky had syndicated the story to.

After emailing and receiving no response, Gav called them out on Twitter. The response from the journalists on these sites was a mixture of defensive, patronising, a tad arrogant and one that showed very little understanding of the web.

Chief among Gavin’s complaints was the lack of a link back to the source of the story. Team Talk et al had credited the interview to Les Rosbifs (although with no explanation as to who or what the site was) and hadn’t linked back, and hadn’t asked permission to use the quotes in the first place. What started off as a slightly miffed request from a blogger has escalated into a stage where lawyers are being consulted.

To my mind, there are four different aspects to this: the moral and ethical and legal implications of Sky’s actions, the issue of proper crediting, the issue of hyperlinking, and the general attitude of a mainstream media publication towards an independent blog.

Morals, ethics, and legality

Legally, Sky were probably just about on the right side of the law (although my own copyright knowledge is somewhat hazy). The fair dealing exception, whereby content is used for comment or rewritten is very common in journalism, and largely expected among media organisations – getting a paper or news bulletin out would be nigh-on impossible without it.

It’s also worth pointing out Sky didn’t, technically, steal the interview. The articles – now removed (in itself curious given the robust defence of their methods offered by Team Talk members on Twitter) – did lift several lengthy quotes from Les Rosbifs. However, the news angle was changed, there are some (admittedly, not many) original words in the pieces and much of the context and depth provided by the original interview wouldn’t be apparent without reading the full original piece.

So, setting legal concerns to one side (and it would be interesting to see if any lawyers think Sky overstepped the mark and the piece was problematic legally, the moral and ethical concerns still come into play. And largely politeness too.

Had Sky approached Gavin for permission, it’s likely that the response and conversation would have been much more amicable. But that in itself causes problems. As Tom Phillips commented on my Google+ (subscribers only, sorry), permission is an odd thing. Many bloggers quote from the mainstream press liberally. Should they contact the journalist or publication every time they want to write their own article based around somebody else’s work. The idea seems somewhat absurd when turned around, even if it is good manners.

But it still somehow feels wrong, ethically. This isn’t a writer working in the cut and thrust of journalism, this is a blogger who has done this work in his spare time, and now sees somebody else profiting from the work he has done. The attitude of some of the journalists working for Sky was far from classy and left something to be desired. Gav wasn’t playing with the big boys, who was pursuing an interest.

One final point here. Gavin secured the interview with McClaren on the basis that he was not mainstream press. When McClaren’s quotes (perhaps to be expected, and perhaps a small touch of naivety on both McClaren and Gavin’s parts) found their way onto Sky, that hurts the relationship built up by Gavin.

Relationships between the media and many football figures are touchy at best. By trampling over Les Rosbifs’ interview, Sky have strained that relationship between McClaren, the press and bloggers just that little bit further.

In the credits

From Sky / Team Talk’s point of view, they’d credited Les Rosbifs. From their perspective, that was it. The credit, though, isn’t entirely clear who or what Les Rosbifs is. The credit simply reads “In an interview with Les Rosbifs…”.

Be honest here. Unless you were a football blogger or happened to know Gav personally, would you know what Les Rosbifs was? For all was made clear, it could have just as easily been a French cooking blog that happened to have interviewed McClaren about nutrition, and wider football issues.

Gav himself has said there’s been no real spike in traffic and other articles that have appeared on other sites haven’t even carried Les Rosbifs’ name. That credit may work fine for, say, The Mirror, but again, feels disingenuous in the context of Gavin’s site. Should you wish to find the whole interview, there’s no indication how to go about this (and remember, many readers are lazy).

But where the issue really becomes important is that of hyperlinking.

The links effect

The hyperlinking issue is where we can see clear effects, differences between Gav and Sky, and, on the part of Team Talk, a complete misunderstanding of how the internet works.

Mark Holmes, one of Team Talk’s journalists, first told Gav on Twitter that Team Talk knew how to credit properly, but then went onto express amazement as to why anybody would ever request a link to the source material in a post. This is somewhat staggering from an online journalist.

I’ve written in the past how hyperlinks are one of the most valuable pieces of currency on the internet. From the most basic point of view, it’s just good practice to link back to your sources – it provides an easy way for readers to find the original in one easy click, shows how much has been taken and is an open and transparent way of acknowledging original material.

Adding a link is quick, easy (and wouldn’t, unlike Mark Holmes claimed, add 10% more work to Team Talk’s day) and good practice, and helps deliver more traffic to the original site. Personally, I’d like to see all agency syndication include links to sources in their copy – and it’s up to the site to decide if they want to link or not.

But this is just a small part of the benefits of linking back to the source. Had a site like Sky or Team Talk, with a high trust ranking in Google, linked back to the original article, then this in itself would provide an excellent virtual form of payment to Gav and help boost the SEO for his site and especially the McClaren article.

By not linking to the source, this becomes more of an issue. Some time after publication, the Sky article ranked higher than the Les Rosbifs article in Google. Not only had Sky lifted a chunk of the interview, it was now benefitting in search terms. Even entering LEs Rosbifs into search saw Gav’s site rank lower.

Mark Chalcraft at 2nd Yellow has written about the implications of duplicated content for bloggers in terms of SEO and Google ranking. What, to a big site, may seem like an insignificant link actually has big implications helping deliver hits to smaller, independent blogs (I’m personally of the view that all sites should link to source material, unless there’s a compelling reason not to).

This is why, to me, the issue of crediting online shouldn’t just be a throwaway line about the origin. It should be clear, transparent and include links wherever possible. Not only does this benefit the reader, it benefits and rewards original material with minimum of effort.

But you’re just a blogger…

And this all comes back to the original attitude of several Sky journalists, who seemed amazed that the blogger they’d taken the content was rather persistent in asking for a link.

To say Gavin wasn’t being professional and should be more polite when asking for a link back to content they’d taken from his site in the first place is not just patronising, it’s incredibly arrogant. Without the legwork Gavin put in, there would be no story at all.

We’re frequently told the boundaries between blogging and journalism have broken down. This is true to an extent. When everybody from the BBC to ITV to the Guardian to the Telegraph blogs, you can safely say it’s a valid medium.

The boundaries between bloggers and journalists, though, have still, if this incident is anything to go by, most definitely not broken down. Gavin’s interview is a well researched and written piece of journalism, although he’s not a journalist. The rewrite is only tenuously journalism insofar as it’s published on a journalistic platform. Yet it is the latter who are seen as the gatekeeper still.

Team Talk and Sky will always get the bigger hits, but that’s not what this is about. Les Rosbifs is niche, and makes a virtue of this. The work is just as valid this way (and, if anything, more impressive given it is written outside of a day job). There is a hierarchy in terms of page views, yes, but not so much in status.

Should bloggers expect to be compensated when their work is lifted? Debatable. I’d say proper, fully-linked crediting isn’t a bad payment.

Should bloggers be asked to have their quotes used elsewhere? Again, possibly. These aren’t, strictly speaking, journalistic publications. There is no established culture of lifting and rewriting content, thankfully. There is more of a culture of openness, transparency and respect for source material and this is something journalists would be well advised to be mindful of when using independent blogs as a source.

Was it stealing? In my view, no. I have nothing against the practice per se, even if I don’t necessarily like how lifting is a commonplace tactic in the industry (copy and paste is, after all, hardly journalism). It’s a necessary evil, sadly.

But even though it isn’t stealing, in the legal sense of the word, it is, overall, poor form, and reflects badly on Sky and Team Talk, both for the initial perceived transgression and subsequent attitude towards the complaint. What could have been sorted quickly and easily escalated into something much more unpleasant. Social media crises have been created for brands out of less.

As with so much on the internet, it comes down to a judgement call. It is absurd to request permission from every single source, every single time (although there is absolutely no reason for not crediting and linking to them). But if the site is a small, independent blog like Les Rosbifs rather than one of your main competitors, it hurts nobody to use a bit of politeness.

Who knows, if they’d asked nicely, they may have even got an original piece of content from Gavin, based on the interview, which would have been a win-win situation for everybody (ok, maybe not necessarily with this particular content. But it’s an entirely plausible scenario).

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging and journalism, journalism ethics, Les Rosbifs, Sky, Sky Sports, Steve McClaren, Team Talk

Earlier this week my long-time collaborator Chris Nee announced he was closing twofootedtackle.com, the site he set up in 2008 and I’ve co-edited with him for coming on for a couple of years. Chris had been wanting to do something different for a while now and, given my lack of time, it felt like the right time to call it a day, although the podcast – which we both hugely enjoy – will continue.

All of which left me with some decisions to make. TFT has been where I’ve posted the majority of my somewhat infrequent football writing over the past couple of years, interspersed with guest posts elsewhere, and paid work. And since I started football blogging back in 2008 for Soccerlens, the industry and community has changed – both overtly and subtly.

There’s a few thoughts I’d like to consider around that, but my main thought is, with the football writing, it’s probably time to call it a day and largely leave it behind although, like Orson Welles in Transformers, I’m sure I’ll return will an occasional ill-judged foray in order to pay the bills. Or I have something equally ill-advised to say.

Back in 2008, football blogging was a very different community. There were a handful of well-known sites, with one eye on commerce, such as Soccerlens or Who Ate All The Pies, and some smaller or less well publicised blogs, often done by an individual out of love for the game.

The idea of a football blogging community was almost unheard of. Twitter existed but was still the preserve of early adopters. The idea that bloggers would contact each other, let alone converse with established football journalists seemed fanciful.

Fast forward to 2011 and around fifty football bloggers and writers gathered together to drink beer, eat pies, watch football and mingle or network with like-minded people at the Socrates football blogger meetup. Later this year the second NOPA awards for football bloggers will be held. It has attracted more entries and interest than the inaugural event. The football blogging sub culture is alive and in incredible rude health.

The makeup of these bloggers has changed. There are more football blogs than ever before, as younger writers who’ve grown up with the Internet take it further into the mainstream. Many of these aim for or are already writing for mainstream publications, either traditional publications like the Guardian and Mirror or newer entrants such as BT Life’s A Pitch. The lines are most definitely blurred.

Guest posts are common between bloggers, there are more niche focused football sites than anyone would have imagined possible, and the conversation across Twitter is constant. This is to say nothing on the thousands of football fans who don’t blog but do have football specific Twitter handles.

If you wanted to, you could spend all day consuming and talking about football. Some do. Like Sky Sports, football is never ending. There is always something to discuss, shout about or get outraged over. If you love football, it’s probably an ideal that sounds close to Utopia.

Which is why it probably sounds pretty odd that I’ve decided to, by and large, call it a day, right?

When I first pitched Soccerlens to see if they’d like me to write for them, I’d just moved to London from a journalism job into the world of PR. I wanted to keep my hand in at writing and, given I’d thought of setting up my own football blog, it seemed like a pretty good fit.

And it was, largely. From Soccerlens, led to other writing, some paid, some unpaid (I’m particularly proud of the work I wrote for Pitch Invasion), and then onto twofootedtackle.

But even in the early days, there was a certain weary cynicism of football blogging on my part, which takes a bit of explaining.

During my training as a journalist, one mantra was beaten into me: Tell your reader (or listener) something they don’t already know. And yes, blogging isn’t quite journalism (the lines are very blurred, but there are slim distinctions, I think), but that’s a maxim most writers would do well to consider.

The trouble is with sports journalism – and especially football journalism – is that much of it states the bleedin’ obvious. There is a large amount of dog-bites-man reports that ‘s practically dog-gets-taken-for-a-walk stories.

Of course no striker who has scored for the last five games isn’t going to target more goals, or a goalkeeper who has let in three goals will say, “Actually, I’d rather not keep a clean sheet next week.” In an entirely unscientific estimate, probably about half of sports news stories could write themselves, or be randomly generated, and stand a good chance of being roughly accurate.

And much as bloggers like to consider themselves independent, a large portion of what they write will be dictated by the news agenda; the same bland non-stories that tell us nothing new, although make for good headlines (and, ergo, good sales). Bloggers write because they want traffic, hits, think it’s important, or simply because they believe they should be writing about it

The are many exceptions to this, admittedly, and who head down a singular path. They are in the minority though (although I may be wrong here).

Yet, and I’m as guilty of this as anyone, The Good Blogger Manual and received wisdom says you should post content on a regular, even daily basis, and keep writing to bring the punters back. Which inevitably means regular regurgitation of the main Premier League headlines of the day and a discussion or post that, in truth, has probably been written twenty times elsewhere already, with at least two of them being better than the one you’re writing.

This is fine for some. It will bring in readers, and possibly advertisers and money. Or if you’re shrill and pushy enough, and a good self-publicist, then you’ll also pull in the readers. If that’s your desire, then fine. It’s not for me to say how to run a website.

But if writing something for the sake of it – and writing something already written at that – means that’s the task in hand, then I’d rather close down my laptop and do something more worthwhile with my life. There seems little point for me in writing just to either look like I have an opinion or tempt in extra readers who, in all honesty, probably already know about this and don’t need opinions from an oik like me.

In truth, the most read posts we’ve seen on twofootedtackle have been one-offs that happen to have been well-written and very occasionally happen to coincide with a genuine talking point. These readers rarely returned on a regular basis. It was the content rather than the site that enticed them in, not a steady slew of pieces on Carlos Tevez.

I’m also not getting any younger. There was a period where becoming a sports journalist looked like a distinct possibility. At the very least, I could have freelanced and made enough to get by on. But that lifestyle has never appealed and the days where I had the time and commitment to attempt re-entering journalism in a different discipline are long departed.

I have plenty of non-footballing interests. I have a busy, challenging non-football job that I genuinely enjoy, and I get to write as part of this. There’s no burning desire to leave my position or spend significant amounts of time moonlighting as a football writer on the side.

I have infinite respect for those who do stay up all hours honing their posts, but that life is also not for me anymore. And most importantly, I don’t want my football blogging to feel like work. A hobby should be fun. It shouldn’t be something I’d rather procrastinate over by putting in extra hours for work rather than churn out another post. And work is what it feels like at the moment.

Equally, I don’t feel the need to say yes to every offer that comes my way, be it from PR or from more respected publications offering the opportunity to write on their site. For free. Again, for some it’s a necessary evil to take on unpaid blogging to pick up better paid gigs (or should be, if they’re serious about making money). I don’t want to build my profile, and while I’m always flattered, I dislike the implication that I should be grateful that I’ve been considered and offered this opportunity.

This isn’t to suggest that my work is perfect – anyone reading this can tell I could benefit from an editor, for a start. But I’d rather do what feels right for me than jump because a well-known brand is offering me an unpaid platform for my ill-conceived ramblings.

All this is a rather long way of saying that what feels right for me right now is to step back from football blogging. There is no strong need or compulsion to produce regular football content, and much of what I’d want to write about will have been written better by somebody before I get round to placing finger on keyboard.

More than this, though, I want to remind myself why I fell in love with football in the first place. Some reading this will have also read a rant on why I’m falling out of love with modern football. Cathartic as writing that piece was, football and me are not done, my enthusiasm for the ridiculous basics of the game are undiminished. It’s just my passion isn’t currently served by spending time considering new angles on whatever game I’m watching or reading about. As I said at the start, Orson Welles and Transformers.

This isn’t storming away from football blogging, vowing never to as much make reference to Luton Town’s Johnstone’s Paint Trophy victory in any blog post. I know I’ll still be roused to opine and write on occasions, and there are most likely outlets to publish this. I just don’t envisage this more than a handful of times a year at the moment.

The podcast will remain. That’s one fortnightly hobby I genuinely look forward to. Unobjectively, I think it’s sounding better than ever (down, in no small part, to our guests).

But blogging has changed. And so have I. If I’m going write on a subject I’m passionate about, then I don’t want to chase page views or court the approval of the professionals (although I’d certainly welcome forensic feedback pointing out potential improvements).I just want to write something that tells the reader something they don’t already know.

If that takes two months to research and put together or two minutes to put down loose thoughts, then so be it. And at the moment, there’s nothing I can say that you don’t already know.

Apart from my experimental recipes. But then you didn’t come here for a lesson in cooking.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging history, changes in blogging, Football Blogging, twofootedtackle

Those of you who follow me on other networks will have seen that a few weeks ago my co-host on the twofootedtackle podcast, Chris Nee, and I decided to call it a day for the pod.

I posted a detailed explanation on TFT as to why we were hanging up our microphones, but the basic and overriding reason was a lack of time.

It’s also, if I’m honest, the reason why this place looks a little neglected. I could use Tumblr or Posterous (both great platforms, I hasten to add) but I quite like to take my time to explain and think about issues. And much as I love Twitter, it doesn’t allow for much in-depth analysis or nuance in 140 characters.

It’s something I’ve touched on before but it’s one of the reasons I can see for a shift in attitudes to blogging among bloggers themselves.

If you’re young, a student or unemployed or retired then blogging is relatively easy to keep up. Similarly if the blog has some relation to the job then it’s no problem.

And when blogging was relatively new, it was a mixture of the enthusiasts, who could work blogging into a job, and those who had more time on their hands who led the charge.

Now many of those who led the charge are busier or have made a reasonably good fist of trying to monetise their blog.

Certainly those who blogged for fun – and are probably still leading proponents of blogging – have less time or work on a blog that pays. It’s become more professional, that’s for sure.

So where does this leave the professional amateur, the person who takes pride in their blog but holds down a day job and possibly a relationship, maybe with kids too? There’s only so many evenings you can stay up until the wee hours blogging merrily away.

Increasingly, I suspect, those early waves of professional amateurs have either got a career out of it or got out, bar for the occasional update on a semi-dormant blog (hey, I never said I wasn’t using myself as a case study).

And although the idea of bloggers still very much prevails as the single person hammering the keyboard in the bedroom, blogs are now major players in the content and media marketplace.

It’s why AOL’s acquisition of the Huffington Post and Techcrunch didn’t surprise me – although it’s not as if either of these were low profile hard-up bloggers trying to make ends meet.

But they general idea that more traditional media or Internet companies will be buying up or taking over the smaller blogs is one I’ve been predicting for several years now. Blogging 2.0, if you want to call it that, is smarter and more professional. The first age of the professional amateur is, in my mind, largely over.

But this isn’t a blogging is dead post, as the medium isn’t – far from it. Blogging wouldn’t be getting more professional and commercial if it didn’t have something going for it.

And while an older, busier generation of amateurs reluctantly hang up their keyboard to spend more time on their career and family, a new generation arrives and, if anything, this bunch have the potential to be even more exciting.

Obviously you’ll get natural churn and new bloggers entering the field each year as a new generation discovers blogging. That goes without saying.

But this generation – through circumstances beyond their control – find themselves living through a very deep and damaging recession where jobs are scarce. And that means more time on their hands.

There will undoubtedly be some very smart, unemployed young bloggers out there. Bloggers and those with general web skills who have a lot of time on their hands – and are willing to innovate and play by different rules, both for blogging and the web in general.

And that’s not only exciting, to me it means blogging isn’t going anywhere just yet.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging, Huffington Post, social media, twofootedtackle podcast

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read an article proclaiming the death of blogging, for reasons too numerous to mention. But while the independent blogging arena is constantly in a state of flux as it defines itself (mixing Heraclitus and Sartre, if you will), these last couple of weeks have shown how vital and how vibrant blogging can be when applied by the mainstream media.

Over at the Guardian, Steve Busfield’s three days of live blogging the unfolding Liverpool court drama was as good an appraisal and ongoing update of a topsy-turvy ongoing story as you’ll find anywhere, while today’s best coverage and analysis of the government spending cuts has been on assorted live blogs across the mainstream media. And earlier in the year, the G20 protests were well covered by live blogs.

In many respects, this is no different from Nosemonkey’s live blog on the London 7/7 bombings from five years ago, but, as the internet moves in circles, a little, live blogs have come back round into fashion and some. And with and even bigger wealth of sources to gather information from, they’ve become even more comprehensive in the information they provide.

This isn’t dismissing other mediums, both online and off, but none are able to tie all ends together quite like a well-written and curated live blog.

Twitter is still the best place for breaking news and developing stories that are unplanned, but when the story is expected, even if the outcome is not, then a liveblog often trumps Twitter (while drawing heavily from information on it), simply because journalistic resources have already been allocated in that direction.

Live chats, using Cover It Live and similar tools, are a fun and interesting alternative, but, having curated many myself, if the chat is successful then much of the time is spent managing the room rather than searching for extra information. It’s also quite reactive and doesn’t leave much space for analysis.

Broadcast media is still excellent in places. TV is both a fantastic medium for breaking news – after all, nothing quite hammers home a story like seeing it live – but can often be let own by the need to constantly be showing something on screen, hence the hours of filling by reporters at a scene where nothing much is happening (and is one of the reasons I tend to prefer radio at times like these).

But a liveblog can bring in all of the above. It can embed video and audio, it can tap into Tweets, it can easily flag up other relevant blogs and analysis on the subject, and the very best ones use the comments to both flag up points that the writer hasn’t already made, and steer the conversation. They also allow time for reflection and analysis during lulls.

There’s nothing new or revolutionary about live blogs but, as with so many mediums, some times all it takes is a slight improvement on what you’ve already got, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. And the fact the mainstream media live blogs attract so many hits and comments suggests they’re far from the dying industry some may suggest (although this doesn’t mean it’s an industry that’s overly secure in its future).

If anybody asks about the future of journalism, it’s hard not to get excited about what you can do with a live blog. The medium may have been around for ages but it doesn’t mean the technique is any less fresh.

written by Gary \\ tags: live blogs, livebogging, Liverpool, Liverpool ownership, spending cuts review

What happens when you put a load of bloggers and PRs in the same room and get them to discuss their industry? Fight? Or consensus? Or both?

The most recent London Bloggers Meetup didn’t quite reach either of those stages but the panel / open floor debate was interesting, partly because it showed how little the debate, and indeed industry, has moved on.

The panel lined up with Cate Sevilla from Bitch Buzz, Chris Osburn aka Tiki Chris, and Pete Stean from The Londoneer, with Stephen Waddington (Wadds) from Speed Communications, Matt Churchill from Edelman and Laurence Borel (Lolly) from Mindshare on the PR side.

Two things were very evident in the debate. There were some interesting points but listening felt very much like déjà vu. I’d sat in similar panels, debates and training sessions two years ago. But then, as Wadds said, the issue of poor PR pitching has gone on from the year dot.

Secondly, there was a lot of consensus between the two sides that things could and should be done better. Although it’s also worth saying that Matt, Lolly and Wadds are three PRs who know what they’re talking about when it comes to social media. They’re the shining examples from their profession.

Sadly not all PRs are like these three. Lolly also pointed out that often clients will give PRs very little leeway when it comes to blogger outreach campaigns and can make near impossible demands.

Broadly, though, there was a lot of agreement both from the panel and the floor on PR and blogger relations, bar the person who asked – and hopefully this was just playing devil’s advocate – whether bloggers would be more likely to write about something if they were paid for it.

There are several issues with this, which I’d briefly like to touch on.

1. It probably borders on the illegal, due to EU regulations. Darika can tell you more about this, as she knows the topic better than me.

2. If the PR is offering cash then chances are the subject of the pitch isn’t very good. An exciting, well-done pitch will snare the recipient’s interest regardless. Cash offers look desperate.

3. The sums on offer are often insultingly low. On the rare occasions I’ve been offered cash to post on this blog, which I’ve turned down, it’s generally been between £10 and £40 and often come with a lot of strings attached. My view is that if you’re offering cash in return for me writing then you’re commissioning a piece from me and I’ll charge according to the relevant NUJ rate.

Another point that could easily be coupled to this is advertising. Lolly, emphatically and correctly, said that PR is not advertising. However, offering payment for blogging on a topic definitely blurs a line between the two and it’s hard to view it as anything other than advertorial. But it’s worth emphasising again: PR is not advertising.

But although the general discussions weren’t new, the idea of the blogger-as-professional, as mentioned by both sides, has changed over the past few years.

It’s easy to lump all blogs into the same grouping, but that would be like lumping all TV programmes into the same category. Yes, the broadcasted medium is the same for all, but there are differences, both obvious and nuanced.

Broadly speaking, you can probably divide blogs today into four categories:

a) The professional blogger. This person blogs for a living and depends on the blog to some extent to support them financially, or has aspirations that the blog will earn them money one day.

b) The professional amateur. This person spends a lot of time blogging but will run their blog alongside their day job. However, they also take great pride in their blog and look for it to be as professional as a mainstream media organisation. Money is probably secondary to content.

c) The amateur professional. This is somebody who works in the media, possibly involving blogging, but runs a blog in their spare time (usually on a free template rather than paid hosting), which will be well-written and probably known within the industry. I’d probably say this blog comes under this category. They’re probably indifferent about money, unless needed, due to their job elsewhere.

d) The amateur amateur. They blog for themselves and / or friends. They are unlikely to realise or care if people other than friends or a few randoms read their blog. Would be surprised at any offers to making money. Will always be hosted on a free template.

Of these, the top two categories start blurring the line with journalist, although would as likely resolutely call themselves bloggers. These are the two types of blogs PR would be most interested in, while, unless the amateur amateur had an influential niche following, it’s unlikely PR would ever pitch to them.

Put simply, many blogs have got more sophisticated, and will either be collective efforts with an editor or writers, or sit as part of an over-arching (usually niche interest) banner, albeit with a free reign on topics (and it’s why I don’t think blogging is dead or dying, it’s just consolidating, just as the radical press did in the early days of print journalism).

But then, not all professional bloggers and professional amateurs will be open to pitches of all kinds. It’s always a case of ensuring they’re correctly targeted.

Does this make them journalists? Yes and no, depending on the blog and the individual. Should the PR be treating them as journalists? Yes and also no again. It’s just a question of adjusting your strategy to take in the medium. Just as you wouldn’t pitch a story with poor or non-existent filming opportunities to a TV journalist, so you wouldn’t pitch like a print journalist to a blogger.

The desired outcome and the pitch may not be wildly different, but it has to take into account the medium it’s being pitched to, regardless of the professional status or otherwise of the recipient.

So where does this bring us to? Well, not much different than the start of the debate. Everybody thinks PR could do better, while those journalists who open themselves up to PR pitches could be a little more understanding. The debate, arguments and conclusions aren’t exactly new, although there are detectable groundshifts.

But for all my scepticism on whether the blogging and PR debate has moved on at all in the past two or three years, it’s worth putting that to one side to say the debate was fun and interesting, and to congratulate all involved in putting their heads above the parapet. And also to say thanks to Andy Bargery, who continues to organise the London Bloggers’ Meetups and ensures everybody has a fantastic night (I know I did).

And of the debate itself. Well, as Cate Sevilla, probably the most impressive of the six, said as she rounded up, “It’s not frickin’ difficult.”

It’s  slogan that should be printed out and posted on the monitor of every aspiring PR, social media or otherwise.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogger engagement, London Bloggers Meetup, PR and blogging, PR pitching

If anonymous commenting on the internet had a users guide, then one of the more sensible pieces of advice would be “Don’t do it from your work PC.”

It’s advice a commenter on the previous post would have been good to consider. I don’t make a habit of running Whois searches on the IP address of every commenter but, given that this place doesn’t get that many trolls or sockpuppets, and given the subject matter, I was a bit curious. Turns out the IP address was from one of the (many) PR agencies who’ve pitched me this World Cup.

Fail.

My first instinct was to blog about it. Look at me! I’ve found another PR person not getting online! I can call them out and it’ll add to the legions of PR fails!

Yes, that would have been fun. But what would it really achieve, in all honesty?

I’m not in the habit of naming and shaming – it’s always struck me as a little counter productive. And, frankly, it the grand scheme of things immature PR leaves childish anonymous comment on insignificant blog isn’t really up there with war crimes.

After sleeping on it, I felt less comfortable with the idea of outing the agency. After all, one employee isn’t representative of the whole company.

The thought also occurred that if this had been a piece of journalism for publication I would have at least made an effort to get the accused’s side of the story before going anywhere near the publish button. And if, as I’ve often said, bloggers aspire to be journalists, then they should hold themselves to the standards journalists have as well. Even if journalists regularly fall short of these themselves.

So I emailed the director of the agency, who emailed back promptly, with an invitation to talk over the issues on the phone, which I did.

And I now consider the matter to be at an end, and I’m really satisfied with the response (and no, I didn’t demand any action against the perpetrator. It’s not my place to tell a company how to conduct their own HR).

Why? Because ten minutes on the phone was productive. The director came across as very switched on and took the issues seriously. I came away with a very favourable impression.

What’s more, we both agreed to keep each other’s contact details. They’d contact me if they thought it would be useful, but would also take me off the general mailing list, and I know that there’s somebody at the agency I can contact if I’m writing stories on certain topics, which I may well do in the future.

A win-win situation, really.

So, what’s the lesson (other than don’t try and post childish comments on a blog during work time).

While there’s a lot wrong with PR, there’s also a lot of good, sensible people working hard in the industry, doing their best to make connections with bloggers. And to a certain extent they have to tread on eggshells while doing this.

A wrong move with the wrong blogger, no matter how well meaning or unintentional and you can find yourself passed around Twitter, mocked by all and sundry. There’s no guarantee that if you catch the blogger on a bad day with a bad move, they won’t take umbridge and blog about it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with calling out bad practice, when appropriate.

But it did make me stop and think. How many bloggers have burned bridges or got themselves a reputation for being difficult for happily blogging PR fails.

Yet could they have improved things and actually developed a good long-term relationship with a good contact if they’d taken a step back and tried to resolve things behind the scenes first. It’s not as if anybody was going to beat them to publishing it, in a lot of cases.

One line from an old news editor of mine always sticks in my mind – “[Competitor x] may be first. But we’re always going to be right.” In other words, I’d always prefer to take a while longer to establish and verify the facts rather than rush to publish. Today was no different. I’m glad I did.

I consider today’s conversation confidential, although I think it’s worth quoting one line from my conversation. As an agency, I was told, we’re committed to treating bloggers the same as journalists.

I like that, I think it’s a good attitude. It’s something I’ve said roughly the same in the past, although you obviously have to make allowances for the different medium you’re working with.

And although bloggers are very good at calling out bad journalism, both blogs and journalists can be even quicker to call out bad PR – whether it’s justified or not – or calling out anything they consider wrong in general.

I’ve seen plenty of examples over the last couple of years where bloggers and PR have got into very public spats over something that has always struck me could have been dealt with without having to go public.

There’s a lot to be said for making an effort to build contacts and relationships rather than losing it quickly (although equally you can say that PR in general could avoid a lot of these issues if people from the industry didn’t continue to make elementary errors).

I’ve always maintained that others should be treated with the same respect you’d hope to be treated. I’d like to hope that, God forbid, should I make a similar fail one day, that the blogger has the good grace to contact me and give me a chance to talk over the issue before hitting publish.

I’d be interested in hearing your views on this one. Do you think bloggers hit publish too quickly? Should they blog first and ask questions later? Or is it only fair? What would you have done?

I don’t think there are any right answers, personally, but I’m very glad I took the time to contact them. Given the chance I’d much rather try and work on developing a relationship rather than kill it before it had the chance to succeed or fail.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging, journalism ethics, pitching bloggers, PR

Ding! Another day, another poorly worded and conceived pitch arrives in my personal inbox, and my heart sinks a little further towards despair. If it weren’t for the Germans, and Portugal’s goal fest against the North Koreans, I’d have received more useless pitches than goals this World Cup.

Quite simply, judging by the majority of pitches than have landed in my inbox, general PR from companies looking to take advantage of the World Cup has ranged from poor to truly shocking. Most have made no attempt to remotely engage.

At least one email has been so laughably bad, I’ve sent it on to friends and colleagues so they can marvel that, yes, some agencies are still much worse than had previously been imagined.

I’m not in the habit of naming and shaming, but at least one agency has come close to me breaking this general self-imposed rule. Not that they’d know – judging from their emails I’d be shocked if they’ve even ever bothered to read anything I write.

Here’s a few selected highlights:

• An email starting with the words: “Hi, we’ve created some virals for your blog.” No, no you haven’t.
• An fairly obvious copy and paste email email urging me to cheer on England three days after they were knocked out.
• A general assumption that I was a fanatical England fan. I support Wales. This is fairly obvious.
• An email asking me to send a copy of my publication to agency x if I ran a piece on the product they were hawking.
• The PR who sent a pitch during the opening game. We had better things to do at that stage.
• Several emails that had nothing to do with the World Cup, other than a hastily added sentence to include a reference. You’re fooling no-one here.
• All bar two emails started with ‘Hi’. Not ‘Hi Gary,’ or any attempt to make it personal. Just ‘Hi’.
• One insinuating I would be so desperate for content during a two day break of football that their pitch was the only way I could keep my readers hooked.
• Hardly any emails made any reference to the fact I write for half a dozen places at the best of times. It was always ‘for your blog’. Do they mean this place and its five readers?

There have been two exceptions to this general trend – two well-crafted, engaging pitches where the PR had clearly read the type of things I write about, read my profile and made a general effort.

They were the only two I replied to – and if they’re reading, you know who you are, and I’m sorry I’ve not been able to write about the information in your pitch. It was simply a case of lack of time. But I really did appreciate your emails and the personal touches. If I was using good examples of how to pitch to bloggers, these would be among them.

Speaking to other bloggers, the trend seemed to be depressingly similar. They too had received endless pitches from PRs labouring under the illusion that we were so excited about the World Cup, we’d write about any old tat that mentioned it.

They were half right. We’ve all been very excited about the World Cup.

I’d even go as far as to say that once the World Cup kicked off, unless the pitch was something very pertinent to the general narrative of the tournament, then football bloggers should have been the last people to pitch to.

The reason: we’ve all got more than enough to write about. With three games a day for the first two weeks, and then a couple more a day for a week after that, it’s really not as if any football blog is struggling for content during the World Cup. And as most bloggers generally have day jobs, unless it’s a pretty spectacular, the pitch is likely to be deleted, assuming it even gets read.

The really smart PRs – and there have been a few – would have got their campaigns and pitches in at least a couple of weeks in advance of the tournament. That stage is a bit of a deadzone, with a lack of any content or decent talking points.

And – on a small tangent – twofootedtackle’s Chris expressed amazement that I’d received so many general PR pitches. I’m such an infrequent writer, and aren’t fixed to any specific publication that I’m not an overly easy writer to target. Quite often the editors of the places I write for receive the same release, which is a bit of a waste of an email. There’s really not a great deal of point sending me a general release at the moment.

I’d like to stress that I’m definitely not PR-unfriendly – quite the contrary, if it’s a well-written, personalised and targeted pitch then I’ll make an effort to write about it, although this isn’t always possible. I’ve written some very interesting and enjoyable pieces off the back of good pitches.

But as somebody who has done plenty of blogger outreach, and still does the occasional bit in this area, I’m far less tolerant of badly done pitches, especially because I know that this stuff really isn’t rocket science and really isn’t hard to do well.

And at the end of the day, I can just hit the delete button. The guys at the brand who’ve paid for blogger outreach – and have no doubt been told that x number of blogs have been hit – are throwing thousands of pounds down the drain for incredibly bad PR and probably don’t even realise it.

UPDATE:

And the day this is published, the PR company I’ve already requested remove me from their mailing list, sends me another email inviting me to something I don’t want to go to. In Manchester. Next weekend. It’s fairly obvious, that I don’t live in Manchester. Or Birmingham, where the same thing I don’t want to go to is happening, but the weekend later. I have plans both those weekends. Exactly how many bloggers do they expect to get to this event? Or are they just box ticking?

My bad. I misread the email. They’re not inviting me to go to the events. Just write an enthusiastic blog post about them. Which is even less appealing.

Also, Chris O, as a final post on the excellent – and soon to be departed – Some People Are On The Pitch blog has done a list of every company that’s pitched them to write about brands that, if you ever read SPAOTP, you’d know they’d have little or no interest in writing about.

written by Gary \\ tags: football bloggers, pitching football bloggers, pitching to bloggers, PR, PR and bloggers, World Cup, World Cup PR