Gary Andrews

There are certain moments when your stomach lurches. One of them is when your girlfriend, a seasoned traveller, sends a text saying she’s had to be evacuated from her hotel and she’s scared. This from somebody who has been halfway around the globe and takes most things in her stride.

I rarely put any kind of personal stuff on this blog because, well, I just choose not to. But, equally, I’ve decided to blog about the flooding and mudslides in the Cusco area of Peru (home to Machu Picchu) in case, like me, you’re one of the friends, family, or relatives of the 2000 or so tourists stranded in the area and are just looking for information and happen to stumble across this. Not knowing is one of the worst feelings ever

I don’t speak Spanish, so have a bit of a job following what’s going on over there, but I managed to get ten minutes on the phone with my girlfriend earlier and have a slightly better idea of what’s going on (and please bear in mind my knowledge of Peruvian geography is next to abysmal so I may get some things wrong here).

Cusco has had heavy rain over the past few days, leading to swollen rivers and flooding. These, in turn, have caused landslides. Between the floods and the landslides, they’ve managed to take out the train line into Machu Picchu and surrounding roads. The only way in or out of the area is currently via the Inca Trail, which I’m told takes six days to walk.

The group of tourists S was with were due to leave at 4pm local time on Sunday, only to be told there was no train due to landslides, and were sent back to the village and given hotel rooms for the night.

S’s room was close to the river and she could hear the water rushing outside all night. At 5am the group was told to leave the hotel and move to a new one, and to ring their friends and family to let them know they were all right, in case they’d seen reports on the news.

The group were moved to a hotel higher up and away from the river. They were lucky enough to get rooms. Other tourists are still arriving, via the Inca trail, only to find there is no way out. People are sleeping in inns, train stations, and wherever they can get a space.

Later in the day, S went down to look at the hotel they’d been evacuated from. There was a large crack in the road outside, due to the flood water.

If this all sounds very dramatic, things have calmed down as people wait to find a way out of Machu Picchu. Ironically, the weather is currently gorgeous. If it weren’t for the floods and the damage, you’d never have known there was a problem with the area.

At the moment it seems as if everybody is safe, albeit a little frustrated at being stuck and perhaps a little uncomfortable if they’re sleeping in the train station. But safe, nonetheless. The question is how long they’ll be stuck there for.

The government has declared a state of emergency in Cusco and is making plans to send in helicopters and airlift the 2,000 or so stuck near the Inca citadel out of the area, although S says it’s not clear how long this will take and when it will start.

For the meantime, all the stranded can do is sit and wait, but at least they’re safe. Which is the main thing.

Judging by other reports, the floods have devastated the crops and agriculture of the surrounding area and around 300 families have been displaced. It’s probable Cusco will be declared a disaster zone. The tourist groups will get out sooner rather than later, but the clean up will take some time, while the impact will be felt for even longer.

[There's another perspective from somebody caught up the other side here. Thanks also to everybody who hunted down links to what was going on after I initially Tweeted about it. There are more images of the floods here.]

UPDATE:  Haven’t heard from S yet, but, judging by Twitter and other reports, the evacuation operation is underway and it’ll take about 20 hours to get everybody out via helicopter (or, I suspect, long, if what S told me last night). My Spanish isn’t good, but huge thanks to Chris White, who has been translating for me today.

Also, there’s a very good first-person blog from a CBS reporter, which gives you another idea of what things are like on the ground.

written by Gary \\ tags: Cusco, Cuzco, floods in Peru, Machu Picchu, Peru, Peruvian floods

Just a quick(ish) addition to the post I wrote at the start of the week about the Sunday Express’ “Jab as deadly as the cancer” article about the cervical cancer jab.

Ben Goldacre has covered the story in his Bad Science column, and it’s quite damning, especially his conversation with the expert, Dr Diane Harper. I’ll repost a paragraph from his article, which speaks for itself.

“…I contacted Professor Harper. For avoidance of doubt, so that there can be no question of me misrepresenting her views, unlike the Express, I will explain Professor Harper’s position on this issue in her own words. They are unambiguous.

“I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a ‘controversial drug’. I did not ‘hit out’ – I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview.”

Journalists are fallible. We do make mistakes. Occasionally we get the wrong end of the stick. But there’s getting something wrong that you haven’t understood properly and bending the facts to a state where they can do longer be called facts any longer.

It depressed me, it really does. In an industry that’s going through upheaval and can be subject to greater scrutiny than ever from anybody with a computer – and that has serious trust issues – articles like this just serve to undermine the public’s trust in journalists even further.

As was highlighted in the Royal Institution debate, the Express can produce good, accurate journalism. And it’s always worth asking questions on health issues.

But not like this. This isn’t good journalism. It barely even passes as a form of journalism. It’s irresponsible writing that has the potential to lead to women needlessly developing cervical cancer.

Did the Sunday Express really think this was an acceptable trade-off for a headline-selling front page?

Like I say, thoroughly depressing.

written by Gary \\ tags: bad journalism, Ben Goldacre, cervical cancer jab, misreporting. Dr Diane Harper

There’s reporting that you disagree with and then there’s an occasional point of journalism that’s just wrong. Not just wrong, but dangerously misleading to a degree that goes beyond scary.

Case in point – the Sunday Express’ front page from yesterday: “JAB AS DEADLY AS THE CANCER”

Now, with the death of Natalie Morton, hours after she’d received the cervical cancer vaccine jab [1] was always going to lead to some interesting reporting. Some has been good, some has been bad and some has been scaremongering. Especially after the point where it was established that she died from a tumour and not the jab.

The story itself is largely built around the fears of an expert, Dr Diane Harper. In many respects, this is nothing unusual. Most journalists have built stories around experts. I’ve done it myself, although they’ve usually be economic stories rather than science.

And there’s nothing wrong with this, per se. Often an expert provides a new, different angle and also helps with one of the first rules of good journalism: tell the audience something they don’t already know. I’ve learned a lot from chatting to them and the stories are usually interesting.

But a lot depends on the expert themselves, who they are and what they are saying. And that, rather than the story they’re talking about, is the important part. Because there are a lot of interesting experts out there.

Let’s take AIDS as an example. It’s not stretching things too far to say Africa has a serious problem with the disease, and that antiretroviral drugs stop Aids becoming a death sentence for sufferers. Yet there are people, who have lots of expert-looking expert credentials, who will use arguments such as population growth in South Africa as a reason why the numbers of being dying from Aids is too high. Or that vitamins can cure the disease.

In short, they can sell themselves as experts but their claims aren’t necessarily the kind you’d put on the front page of a newspaper, and strongly suggest this outsider view is worth listening to.

But back to the Express and the cancer jab story, which, by the time the Express ran the interview, was fast becoming old news.

Reporting on just about any kind of issue is always going to ensure somebody shakes their head and disagrees with it. The more high-profile and emotive the story, the more likely this is.

I don’t often agree with the Sun or the Mail’s take on current affairs, but there are plenty of others who’ll be in tune with this line of thinking. There are tabloid scares – some justified, and some not – but usually there’s some basis to start from.

Not here. Virtually every bit of the Express article is just plain wrong. I dislike hyperbole, but there’s a very real chance that parents could read the story, refuse to allow their daughters the jab, only for their daughter to catch the virus, and contract cancer. This isn’t politics, or food scares, or the like, this is the health, life and potentially death of the next generation of the female population. Is it really worth getting blood on the hands to sell a few extra papers in this manner?

I’m not hugely fond of jumping up and down and crying bad journalism at the tabloids (or the broadsheets) – stones and glass houses and all that. There’s a lot of good journalism in all of them, and I’m continually amazed in the best possible way at how good some of the journalists I know one these papers are.

But just because we’re in a profession, doesn’t mean we can’t hold it to account and call it out when publications get it badly, dangerously wrong. There’s a line between reporting potential health problems and dangerous scaremongering that could cost lives. On this occasion, the Express have crossed it [2]. I posted a link to the piece on Twitter earlier. One response from a journalist said: “That makes me want to disown my profession.”

In fact, this story has got me so upset at the reporting that I’m going to do something I’ve never even come remotely close to ever wanting to do before: complain to the Press Complaints Commission.

Frankly, I don’t expect it to have much effect. The organisation is somewhat toothless at the best of time. And writing to it feels like grassing up somebody at school.

But if nobody says anything, it means there will be more bad science, more panic and, potentially, more lives lost. I’m not trying to set myself as an arbiter of what’s good or bad journalism; I’m just beyond appalled at this one article.

If you feel the same, then I’d urge you to also complain.To help, my old colleague Chris White has already written a letter (about 3 minutes after reading the story). He sent me the text of his complaint and I’ve reprinted it below. Feel free to adapt it for your own use:

“The front page of the issue of the Sunday Express published on 4 October 2009 leads with the headline “Jab ‘as deadly as the cancer’.”

The “jab” in question is the Cervarix vaccination against the two strains of human papillomavirus shown to trigger up to 70% of cases of cervical cancer.

The story follows the death of 14-year-old schoolgirl Natalie Morton, who died shortly after receiving the vacciation – but whose postmortem found her cause of death to have been a previously undiagnosed tumour.

The claim that the vaccination is as deadly as the cancer is manifestly untrue. At the time of this solitary death, around 1.5 million girls had received the vaccination. Cervical cancer affects an estimated 16 women per 100,000 per year, and is fatal for around 9 women per 100,000 per year. Even if the vaccination had been responsible for the death of Natalie Morton, then the cancer is clearly almost 150 times more dangerous than the vaccination.

That this is based on the opinion of “expert” Diane Harper is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what her opinion is: it only matters what the data show. (This is why academics are subject to a process of peer review for publishing their work: despite their supposed expertise, papers must be approved of by their peers before publication. The mere opinions even of experts count for little within their own communities and should not carry any greater weight with the public, nor with journalists.) There are no data suggesting that the vaccination is dangerous.

Furthermore, the quote from one Richard Halvorsen questioning the postmortem finding that Natalie Morton died from cancer, “If you have cancer you have symptoms”, is, essentially, a lie. Many cases of cancer can be asymptomatic — including, in a tragic piece of irony, most cases of cervical cancer.

This is little more than ill-founded scaremongering and irresponsible journalism of the worst kind. Its only effect is bound to be — as was the case with the coverage the MMR “controversy” — to reduce take-up of the vaccine, in which case the Sunday Express will share responsibility for further deaths.”

EDIT: Malcolm Coles has flagged up his campaign to get Google’s results to show better advice and information for parents concerned about the jab, so I’m more than happy to include links to cervical cancer jab information, cervical cancer vaccination, and a Q&A about the cervical cancer vaccine.

[1] Ok, I’m taking liberties here as well. I know it’s jab about the virus that can lead to cervical cancer rather than the cancer itself.

[2] Ironically, a story from the Express was held us as a good example of science reporting at the debate between Lord Drayson and Ben Goldacre, and I’d go along with the Science Minster to a point when he says that sensationalist reporting can be good for science. The Express’ article goes long beyond that point.

written by Gary \\ tags: bad journalism, bad science reporting, cervical cancer jab, scaremongering, science reporting, Sunday Express, vaccines

Science reporting is in rude health in Britain, and also in a poor state, often getting basic science wrong and misleading the public. So (roughly) said Lord Paul Drayson, Science Minister for the government, and Dr Ben Goldacre, writer of the Bad Science column in the Guardian in a highly entertaining debate at the Royal Institution last night.

Ok, so I’ve somewhat condensed the argument, but, strangely, they’re probably both right (a reflection, perhaps, of how well they both argued). Lord Drayson made good points as to why science journalism has improved and why we need to celebrate it, and Ben Goldacre was entertaining as ever with his points and examples of very bad science reporting, many of which were still worryingly recent.

The most telling comment, though, came from Michael Hanlon, the Daily Mail’s science editor, who was in the audience. Taking the example of the Mail saying that coffee could both cause and cure cancer, Hanlon pointed out the [1] number of studies done on coffee actually reflected this, with half saying coffee was beneficial and half saying  it was harmful.

Now, short of going into the lab and watching each experiment, the only way you’re going to be able to say if this is significant or not is by doing a systematic review of all these papers – one paper alone is not necessarily an indicator in itself one way or the other – and coming up with a conclusion.

But therein lies the problem. Individual papers make good news, and the Mail is not necessarily wrong when it reports that coffee both causes and cures cancer. There’s a good chance both reports are accurate with regards to the source material.

These both make good headlines. A review that concludes that it’s difficult to say whether coffee is indeed good or bad for you doesn’t have quite the same level of attention-grabbing.

What, Hanlon asked, would you have me do?

It’s easy to feel sympathy for both sides here. Goldacre is right to despair at some science reporting. When you read some of his clinical dissections of poor science journalism (for example, ‘Exercise Makes You Fat‘) you shudder and feel ashamed for your profession.

But then, the journalist has space to fill, deadlines to meet, and papers to sell. And science isn’t quite like your political scandals or natural disasters. There’s no clear narrative. One paper may be produced, peer reviewed and shown to be not all that. How does a journalist get something exciting, sexy, reader-grabbing AND accurate out of all this.

A lot of Ben’s suggestions – features, encouraging bloggers, getting the public to be more discerning readers, getting scientists to write columns – are great intentions. Not all of them are without problems, and my worry would be if you did this, you may start to lose science from the news pages, which would not be a good thing.

On a slight tangent, I’d like to bring in my brief experience as one of those arts and humanities graduates, mentioned occasionally in the debate, who’ve ended up in journalism and isn’t overly scientific (which is to say I understand science methodology and the philosophies behind it a hell of a lot better than I do the science itself. Which I often definitely don’t understand).

In my reporting days, I’d tend to shy away from science stories (other than the fact they often weren’t things that our target audience were meant to be interested in) because I didn’t feel confident enough in handling them, or handling them accurately. I struggled with basic GCSE biology. I really wasn’t the best person to critique or summarise an academic’s work.

When I did cover science, the interviewee tended to get a relatively easy ride, again, due to my own lack of knowledge. And, yes, all too often I’d end up relying on a press release, especially if they were well-written and clear. It’s perhaps not something I can say I’m overly proud of, but hopefully you can understand why (especially given how understaffed we were). Give me a football or local government story on the other hand…. No need for press releases there.

[This isn't to do I'd do this for all science or health stories. Lifestyle stuff, like your miracle cancer cures or food x causes y usually tended to get my bullshit alarm ringing].

Again, the question: what would you have me do?

Also, a secondary anecdote from my time editing the student paper.

Coming into the editor’s chair, I was painfully aware how under-represented the science and medicine students were in the paper, especially given their bulk around campus, so we launched science and health pages – the first time, to my knowledge, the paper had ever included such sections.

I put out appeals to all science and medicine students, via email, asking them to get in touch if they were interested in editing or writing. I’ve no idea exactly how many students that went to, but it would have been in its thousands.

I got four responses. One ended up becoming our science editor, the other wrote a brilliantly vivid piece about his time on placement in hospital in Pakistan, and I never heard from him again, despite several emails almost begging for more articles. The other two never followed through. Ok, we got a couple more throughout the year, but that was still less than ten students (roughly).

I’m not quite sure what conclusions you can draw from that.

But back to the debate. It would be hard to say either side won, although that wasn’t really the point. Both are right – it’s good to praise good journalism and encourage it, and Ben Goldacre’s right to bang the drum against poor science reporting which, at best is embarrassing and, at worst, dangerous.

The main thing was the debate was taking place in the first place. Just discussing whether science journalism is done well probably indicates both sides are right in their own way.

There’s a more coherent write-up here and here from people who probably, unlike me, took notes. You can watch the debate here. I’d highly recommend it if you have a spare 90 minutes.

[And if anybody's wondering about the title of this blog post, it's a reference to a particularly demented and brilliant episode of South Park where Cartman freezes himself to get a Nintendo Wii but ends up in the future where Richard Dawkins' teachings reign supreme and there's a war between mankind and otters. It makes sense, honest.]

[1] It’s late at night and I’m going by memory here.

written by Gary \\ tags: bad science, Ben Goldacre, Lord Drayson, science in the media, science journalism, South Park

Earlier today, Mr Justice Eady [1] ruled that the author of the NightJack blog could not stay anonymous. This will probably mean nothing to most people, but could be a significant case law ruling when it coming to blogging and, potentially, whistleblowing.

If you’ve never heard of NightJack, he’s a policeman who blogged anonymously and candidly about his job. It was an eye-opener and a great read that made you emphasise with hiss job. The blog won an Orwell Award for the quality of it’s writing.

That blog is no more and the author has been disciplined after The Times ‘outed’ NightJack. One of their reporters worked out the bloggers identity, the blogger took out an injunction, the Times challenged that injunction and today’s ruling is the end result. Bloggers cannot expect anonymity.

The Times says of the ruling: “Today newspaper lawyers were celebrating one of the rarer Eady rulings in their favour.” I’d beg to differ. It leaves me with a slightly sick feeling in my stomach and a slightly bitter taste in the mouth.

Let’s go, if I may, on a slight tangent before getting back to the case in hand. Generally speaking, for both blogging an the internet, I think moving away from anonymity is a good thing. We’re moving to an era, especially with social media, where identity is more open and the internet is all the better for it. It cuts down on trolling for a start.

I’m also a big fan of openness and accountability. If somebody asked me about starting a blog, I’d suggest they do it under their own name, or at least made it clear who they were. It clears up any misunderstandings from the off – setting out your stall so people know who you are.

Let’s also be clear, when we’re talking about anonymity, we’re not talking about identities created around blogging here. NightJack was very different to the likes of Devil’s Kitchen, Chicken Yoghurt, Doctor Vee, Bloggerheads or many of the other well-known bloggers. They have their online identity which sites alongside their real name. Anybody can find out who they are in a matter of seconds – their pen names are their blogging personas.

Moving onto the judgement, I can see why Mr Justice Eady came to his eventual judgement. It’s still a bit of a mess but can be fitted into the letter of the law, by and large (although, and this is one of the wonders of the vagueries of the English legal system, you could easily have seen him ruling the other way).

But the judgement: the reasoning, the logic and the whole lead-up to this just doesn’t feel right. As Paul Bradshaw says:

“… this is a ruling that has enormous implications for whistleblowers and people blogging ‘on the ground’. That’s someone else’s ‘public interest’.

And that last element is the saddest for me.”

Let’s leave aside the judgement itself for a minute (the judge can only really rule what’s in front of him) and look to The Times and their role in unmasking NightJack. This is the part that leaves me uneasiest of all.

Their journalist pieced together who NightJack was and then went to publish. And the question I have is why? [2]

NightJack is a public servant, true, but in the grand scheme of things he really isn’t that important. Certainly, going to all this effort to unmask him seems a little, well, excessive.

He’s a blogger. A well-read blogger, yes, and an award-winning one. But is it really in the public’s interest, as opposed to being merely interesting to the public, to know who he is? If he were a Chief Constable, a high-ranking BBC employee, an MP or a civil servant, I could understand this. But a Detective Constable in Lancashire? It’s hardly a high-level scoop is it? Or, indeed, a high-profile and significant victory for openness, as they portray the judgement.

[The other thing that sits uneasy with me here is The Times have previous in this area when they unmasked Girl With A One Track Mind for no other reason, seemingly, than they could. That, more than NightJack, seemed like a particularly pointless act for the sake of a story].

Justin McKeating makes a very good point with regard to The Times’ victory today: that of anonymous sources for journalists. They may not be bloggers, but you can see where Justin’s coming from – the principle is very similar (and apologies for copying a large chunk of his text here, but it helps place his argument in context:

Would I be wrong in thinking that anonymous sources, insiders and friends are conducting the business of democracy in the media with the willing collusion of journalists? If nothing else, it’s in direct contravention of the ‘different type of politics’ promised to us by Gordon Brown – a politics promising a ‘more open and honest dialogue‘.

It would seem to me that some kind of public interest challenge in the courts is in order. Imagine the story in The Times…

Thousands of ’sources’, ‘insiders’ and ‘friends’ churn out opinions daily — secure in the protection afforded to them by the cloak of anonymity lent to them by obsequious journalists.

From today, however, they can no longer be sure that their identity can be kept secret, after a landmark ruling by Mr Justice Eady.

The judge, who is known for establishing case law with his judgments on privacy, has struck a blow in favour of openness, ruling that democracy is “essentially a public rather than a private activity”.

What could be more in the public interest than that?

This comes back to Paul Bradshaw’s earlier point about whistleblowers and ‘on the ground’ bloggers.

When it comes to the majority of bloggers, it probably doesn’t matter too much whether they’re anonymous or not. It’d be nice if we knew who they were, as I said earlier, but, at the end of the day, most of the time it’s not really a huge issue.

But those bloggers who write detailed and informative posts about their profession are much rarer and are worth treasuring. Blogs like NightJack, PC Bloggs, Dr Crippen and The Magistrate’s Blogs are essential reads.

They are candid and often eye-opening and enables you to get a better idea of the problems facing our police force, judiciary and NHS. They lift the lid, often a very small lid, on the inner workings of these professions. If anything, they give the public a remarkable insight into the inner workings. And to my mind, this is largely a good thing, as Tom Reynolds points out:

“What bloggers do is humanise and explain their section of the world – public sector bodies do well to have bloggers writing within them, after all these are the people who careabout what they do, about what improvements should be made and about where the faults come from. They highlight these things in the hopes that, in bringing this information into the public consciousness, they can effect a change that they would otherwise be powerless to bring about.

Anonymity provides a protection against vindictiveness from management who would rather do nothing than repeat the party-line, or lie, that everything is perfect, there is no cause for concern. Having seen management do, essentially illegal things, in order to persecute and victimise staff – anonymity is a way of protecting your mortgage payments.”

You can understand why they are anonymous [3]. The blogs probably contravene the terms of their employment. Yet, in their own small ways, they are important for the public to read, more so than the person writing them (in all honesty, the writer of NightJack could have been any Detective Constable). [4]

There are very few bloggers for whom anonymity is a near-necessity, and if it stops others coming forward to give their insights then the internet will be poorer for it. And for what purpose. One article that doesn’t really amount to much.

Not everybody will agree with this. David MacLean makes some very good points as to why NightJack shouldn’t remain anonymous, although even he calls The Times’ decision to publish “a tough one”.

In the grand scheme of things, The Times’ unmasking story by itself really isn’t overly big. The legacy of if could well be.

[1] A name familiar to anybody who’s studied media law.

[2] Anton Vowl asks the same question.

[3] Not all are. Tom Reynolds from Random Acts of Reality, who has some fairly strong words about this case, and Suzi Brent from Nee Naw are more public examples. But I’d wager they’ve had some awkward conversations with their line managers at some point.

[4] One of The Times’ arguments was NightJack was committing Contempt of Court with his posts, and there is an argument here. Certainly if the blog had collapsed a trial there would be little argument against naming the author. That said, the internet is a hideously grey area when it comes to contempt. A reasonable amount of time on Google would probably produce enough to piece together extra information on any significant trial covered in either the national or local press. You’d probably have to do a fair bit of work to piece together events from a trial and link them back to the blog, and the level of threat the blog posed to a fair trial… possibly minimal. It doesn’t make it right, but I’d be surprised if anything NightJack wrote would have led to a trial being abandoned.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: anonymous blogging, blogging, journalistic sources, NightJacker, public sector blogging, The Times, unmasking bloggers

Otherwise known as a quick, likely-to-be-ill-thought-out, ill-informed pondering on the state of the media industry.

Everywhere media-related seems to be making cutbacks. Even places that you would normally have put down as safe are tightening their belts. Friends, colleagues and people I don’t know but have heard of are all getting laid off, and many of these have surprised given, given their jobs.

It’s not just that we’re in a global recession. It’s also that this industry really doesn’t know where the hell it’s going. Journalism. Broadcasting. PR. None of them safe. Or with any real idea of where they meant to be going.

If this were an interview and the media was asked where it would be in five years time, it’d have a hard job in answering. If it were then asked where it saw itself in ten years time, it’d find the question impossible to answer.

You do wonder if the skills you’ve been trained in, and others you’ve picked up along the way, will be completely redundant in the not-too-distant future.

Everywhere seems to be in trouble. We’re constantly told online is the future – and it IS the future – but it just doesn’t seem to be entirely sure how it wants to be the future.

I have an inkling things will pick up. Not in the sense of green shoots of recovery, but more to do with the fact that when this recession, and downturn and general media crisis of identity is over, there will be a need for quality journalism, PR and broadcasting.

Sadly this need will be because there will probably be huge holes in the market by this stage and, as with any good market, where there’s a hole and a demand, something will inevitably plug it.

So, yes, there will be an upturn. At some point. But when is anybody’s guess. If this were a Hollywood war movie, the sergeant would turn his face away and to the ground and sadly say: “We lost a lot of good men out there.”

At this stage it’s common for a blogger to offer his twopence worth on “hey, but this is how you can get through it.”

If only it were that easy.

All those of us in the industry – be it journalism, PR, broadcasting or a combination of some or all of these – can do is watch, learn, adapt to developments (both online and offline), try innovative stuff, and never ever compromise on quality or belief that nobody else, to quote Carly Simon, nobody does it better, no matter what we do. There, by the grace of God, we will survive. Hopefully.

(Then again, you do wonder if any print papers will survive when you read something like this.)

If anybody has any idea what they think this industry will look like in five to ten years type, please do leave a comment below. I’ll post my own thoughts at some point in the near future.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: future of journalism, future of the media, newspaper, PR, recession

Adam Tinworth’s two posts on the National Union of Journalists and their attitude to blogs and social media in general makes for rather depressing reading.

I’m well aware that this is just one discussion on one blog and isn’t necessarily representative of the whole organisation, but it’s illuminating on the (one) mindset of NUJ.

It all started when Adam’s colleague Martin Couzins wrote an impassioned plea for better online training from the NUJ on his personal blog.

The chair of the NUJ’s Professional Training Committee, Chris Wheal then responded in the comments, starting with the opening of “Try to be more constructive.” Not exactly a great start to addressing the question, although, in fairness he did offer a list of what was available.

Adam then picked up on this despairing that the response was rude and not overly helpful, and followed up a day later noting he’d had traffic to his blog from an NUJ internal email entitled “Effing blogs”.

What’s followed in the comments in both blog posts is uncomfortable to watch as it shows some very basic (wrong) assumptions on the behalf of Wheal and an attitude to blogging that, at worst, has the potential to alienate digital journalists the country over (please note: that says at worst.  And potential).

I don’t want this to seem like I’m picking on Wheal [1] but while he comes accross as web-savvy, his comments in both pieces just don’t seem to grasp how social media (God, sorry) operates.

Now, it’s certainly the case that there’s a massive grey area in the whole blogging / journalism arena. There are many blogging journalists and many journalists who blog (there is a difference), as well as many bloggers who do journalism and bloggers who just blog.

It can sometimes get a little tricky to sort out which shows how difficult it is to define what constitutes journalism in a Web 2.0 world, which, in turn is probably one huge problem the NUJ face. I don’t envy them trying to sort that definition out, as it often escapes those of us who work in the online medium on a daily basis.

But, if you’re really insisting on a straight definition (if such a thing is possible) then a blog (usually a group blog) that’s set up with the intention of making money through articles and opinion that resemble traditional journalism, kind of comes under the first.

That’s a completely imperfect definition, I know. It’s the best I can do on a Friday evening. It was rewritten half a dozen times before I gave up.

But then plenty of journalists blog on a personal level in their spare time. Adam’s One Man And His Blog is clearly a personal blog musing on the industry and other things he finds interesting, just as this blog is a personal blog. What I do elsewhere, mostly at Soccerlens, I classify as journalism.

Does that rough definition make sense? It’s the best I can give.

The reason for going into this somewhat lengthy and winding discussion on what classifies as journalism on a blog, his because Chris (and apologies if I’ve misinterpreted what he’s written as this is how it reads to me) seems to think all blogs should be lumped into the principles of journalism while at the same time utterly dismissing the notion that blogs have journalistic worth.

Now, there’s undoubtedly a point to be made on the standards on blogs. If blogging wants to be taken seriously as journalism then it should certainly hold it up to the same standards as offline journalism [2].

But, by and large, I think the best blogs do that. Why are, say, like likes of Shiny Media or Techcrunch any different from Roy Greenslade blogging at the Guardian, or a non-professional blogging for a local newspaper site on a community issue? Or Ben Goldacre who writes for the Guardian and blogs on the same topic and is VERY passionate about journalistic standards.

Or how about my writing for When Saturday Comes and Soccerlens. They’re on the same issues (slightly different audience) but one is print and one is online. Does the fact that you can’t hold a copy of Soccerlens in your hand make my articles have less worth?

But, by the same token, if you’re clearly writing personal thoughts on a personal blog, should you contact the subject of your thoughts (often personal posts are written on a whim in a spare moment) as Chris indicates?

I’ll leave that one hanging, if I may.

But, no, what has really got the digital journalism and bloggers fired up is not just the rather dismissive and condescending attitude in the comments (sorry Chris, that really is how it comes across) but this following comment:

“The NUJ fails to maintain standards in blogs because bloggers themselves rejoice in having lower standards.”

Ouch.

And Chris had earlier complained about huge generalisations in Adam’s post as well.

I honestly think that any points or arguments Chris made about encouraging bloggers to contact the NUJ have been undermined in that one sentence.

How many blogs actively make a point of celebrating the fact they’re, well, a bit shit? One of the joys of blogs and the internet in general is that it’s far easier to call out bad writing and journalism than ever before.

But let’s put blogs to one side for the moment and go back to the NUJ and the future of journalism itself, starting with a quick detour on my own quick history and thoughts on the organisation.

I’m not a member. This isn’t out of any conviction or protest on my part. I was a student member when I was at university in Cardiff. The Cardiff branch were excellent at keeping in touch and keeping me informed even though I never got in touch with them. That was comforting.

When I left Cardiff and moved from student to full-time journalist, I had a quick go at upgrading my details and signing but didn’t get anywhere.

A couple of emails went unanswered and I couldn’t get hold of anybody on the phone and it wasn’t high on my list of priorities, and I forgot about it. I’ve thought about joining over the years, but again, it’s always slipped by the wayside. No bitterness, just absent mindedness on my part coupled with no real pressing need to join.

I certainly wouldn’t go as far as Dave Lee, who, a few weeks ago, asked what the point of joining was. If anything, I think Dave’s given them too much of a harsh ride, although he has several valid points as well.

If I were freelance, I think joining the NUJ would be top of the list of my priorities, as I know they’re excellent in supporting that area of the profession.

The NUJ also offers excellent legal protection and help, from what I’ve read (thankfully I’ve never needed this) and if you’re a journalist facing redundancy, I’d imagine their support is second-to-none. They’re also very good at protesting against job cuts.

However, as Dave points out, it can sometime feel with the NUJ that the protests against job cuts fail to take into account the rapidly-changing nature of an industry that is all-too-often desperately short of money and facing an uncertain future.

It’s all too easy to say job cuts = bad. But, and this comes back to the point I think Martin was making that originally sparked this little brouhaha, while protesting about job cuts is one thing, giving efficient practical training and advice to help make journalists more employable in a digital age is quite another.

This isn’t to say that the NUJ is necessarily behind the times. After all, with a membership that vast, there’s plenty of online evangelists [3]. They had a very good article on Twitter in the Journalist magazine about nine months ago, showing they were very much awake to the potential of the microblogging site as a newsgathering tool. General Secretary Jeremy Dear has a blog, which is a good thing.

Again, in fairness to Chris – and without ever having been on the courses listed – from his list on Martin’s blog there looks like a good basic level of online training.

But, again, Chris’ comments on Adam’s blog combined with the Effing blogs email combined with the NUJ really don’t having a great reputation in the online and social media community really doesn’t help things.

Adam is (or perhaps soon to be was) a member of the NUJ and is a different generation from me, who could see the usefulness but never got around to joining, and we’re both different generations to Dave, who can’t see the point and hasn’t joined.

Ok, now three out of God knows how many isn’t representative. I know that. But it highlights a couple of issues, I think.

Dave and I have both grown up in an era where unions aren’t as influential or prevalent than they used to be [4]. We’re not expected to join a union. Indeed, of all the people who I trained with, I don’t think that many joined the NUJ.

Now, to bring in Adam, we’re all working in a digital age and environment (although, in my case, my day job is now in PR). The NEXT generation of journalists will have grown up not only without unions but immersed in that online environment.

They will blog, Twitter, podcast [5], vodcast and whatever else comes along between now and then. They will work for web-only publications, some of whom probably haven’t even been conceived at this point in time.

And if you’ve got their professional representative body taking a dismissive attitude to blogging on Adam’s blog and throughout the web (and this will all show up in Google when they search for the NUJ) then it’s hardly going to encourage them to join.

Putting my PR hat on, I could easily tell Chris that one of the quickest and most surefire ways to damage your brand online is to lash out in blogs comments, especially on blogs of respected people in their field, like Adam (who is well-known and highly regarded in his field).

No matter how wronged you feel your organisation has been, getting angry doesn’t help the cause. If there are any perceived errors, politely point them out. Offer to help with any of their gripes (which Chris did try to do at various points).

Above all, don’t get drawn into a slanging match. Your brand will be better off for it. If you feel the blog is that influential and the matter is that important, then you can always drop the author a polite but firm email and ask for corrections.

I love the openness and transparency of blog comments, both as a PR and whenever I turn my hand to journalism again. I can correct and acknowledge mistakes, enter into debate and learn things I didn’t know. What’s not to like?

The fact that the NUJ’s Chair of their Professional Training Committee doesn’t seem to understand blogs and comments – one of the most basic aspects of social media that has been around for ages – does not bode well for the organisation’s future. And it does not encourage me, or, I suspect others that work in an online or digital environment, to want to join the organisation. God alone knows what it says to young, digitally aware journalists of the future.

This is a personal view. It’s not written as a professional article (although if it were an opinion piece for a media industry publication, the sentiment would be the same).

But if anybody – and that includes Chris and anybody from the NUJ – wants to disagree with me, correct me, or add something to the discussion I’ve not thought of, then I’d love to see the comments used for this purpose. Because that’s what they’re their for, regardless of who I am or what I do.

[1] Who, again, does seem to have a good grasp of the tools available on the net. He’s already a better man than me if he can use Yahoo Pipes to their full extent – something I’ve never really tried, and something I know I should try.

[2] Offline journalism is, in itself, a ridiculous notion, as very few ‘old’ media don’t have a web presence. And those who don’t probably won’t be around for much longer if they don’t.

[3] Yuck, sorry, hideous terminology there.

[4] Not saying if this is a good or a bad thing, but certainly Thatcher and Murdoch did their best to get to this state of play.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Adam Tinworth, Chris Wheal, journalism training, NUJ, NUJ online training, online journalism