Gary Andrews

At Exeter St David’s train station last week, I picked up something I’ll never be able to buy again – a daily copy of the local paper, the Express and Echo. It was just under a month ago that the somewhat sad news that my hometown’s paper would become a weekly rather than daily publication.

I say sad for two reasons. Firstly because it’s never fun to see local journalism cut back, even if the economic climate is heading that way.

But it’s also sad because this has been coming for a while, largely due to continually bad decisions from the Echo’s owners, Northcliffe.

I’m not saying that the daily Echo’s demise was preventable – it may well have been inevitable no matter what – but the paper could have been given much more of a fighting chance.

Even when I moved away from Devon, I made a point of picking up the Echo whenever I returned to visit friends and family. The past few times have been painful to read.

The last few Echos I’ve purchased have been a shell of the brash, confident publication that was happy to cause trouble for local politicians and had an instinctive connection with the communities it served.

What was in front of me was like seeing a once-proud athlete towards the end of his life. The only surprise about the Echo going weekly is it didn’t happen sooner.

Let me declare my feelings. I am an unashamed fan of local media done well. That is, after all, my background.

Yes, I’m well aware of the foibles and failures of local newspapers. They can be unnecessarily hyperbolic and trivial, often in the same news story. They can sometimes become parodies of themselves.

They could, as I found out from speaking to various focuses of the subjects of their stories, occasionally play somewhat fast and loose. At my old office, we had an file of some of their worst hits, including one story several experienced journalists were amazed they didn’t get pulled up on contempt charges.

But despite all this, much of the Echo is recalled with fondness. They were terrier-like in holding local politicians to account. When a big story broke, their coverage was never less than impressive. And they knew how to serve the community and readership.

Yes, some stories may have seemed mundane but locals from outlying areas really appreciated the coverage given to these smaller stories.

Given the Echo’s patch took in the regional capital city, seaside towns, rural market towns and sleepy villages, their ability to strike a balance with these readers was impressive.

When I was much younger and dreamt of going into journalism, at that point I always considered the Echo the paper I wanted to work for. And 20 years ago, it had a well-liked reputation with its readership.

Even as recently as six years ago, the Echo was a pretty impressive regional paper. It had a confidence and swagger about it. Yes, that also brought out some of the worst aspects, as detailed above, but it also brought out the best.

Working in a competitor (of sorts) newsroom at the same time, I would frequently roll my eyes, but would frequently be impressed with their scoops and determination to reflect and be a heart of the community they served.

Those qualities have seriously declined in recent years. Journalists were cut back. Fewer reporters meant a restricted ability to embed with the community. It became easier to spot the press releases in the paper.

It made sense, financially, to re-use the same reports from the sister Devon-wide Western Morning News. But this paper served a different audience, and it became harder to find distinctive news in the Echo as a result.

And then there’s the web, something regional media companies never seemed to get or be prepared to get.

For a period, the Echo went big into video, posting clips of any and every story, plus doing a news in 60 seconds, featuring cutaways to the headline in the paper.

It wasn’t particularly well done or thought through. A couple of people I knew there said they were given very little training. But at least they tried something, although it didn’t seem hard to see how this could have been much more focused, and relevant to their audience. And it asked a lot of print journalists to learn a new skill and do it well, with a minimum of training.

But at least it was better than how the web is currently being treated. The pages are, astonishingly, updated from a central location in a different county on the other side of the country.

News is often not uploaded until 10am. Sports reports, one of the key selling points of a local paper, are often uploaded up to two days after the game. By this stage, anybody interested will have found the news elsewhere.

There is little incentive for readers to discover or return to their website on a daily, even weekly basis. It is as if this part of the paper has been deliberately left to die.

Perhaps a weekly Echo will see the paper regain some of its swagger. Perhaps I’m optimistic but I think a daily could work in Exeter. Just not a daily in the current form. And they may need to be more innovative elsewhere.

But, going offline, it’s the local communities who will be hit the most by this. The Office of National Statistics shows that 23% of the UK population have no internet at home. In Devon and Somerset, that accounts for around 750,000 households. In the most rural areas of these counties, the number is, I would wager, even higher.

For the outlying villages in Devon, this means they are even further cut off from the news. One of the strengths of the Echo was balancing the ultra local with the big stories, and knowing each of these communities. What’s more, these were read and appreciated. Will that continue? It’s not as if many rural, elderly households can log online for their information.

Local businesses may also feel the pinch, initially. These small-to-medium size businesses probably don’t have the PR budget to go all out on a campaign, can’t go beyond a certain level of advertising, and often rely on local papers to print their good news stories. Will there be space for these?

I say initially, though, because for businesses there’s generally an opportunity to be innovative and less reliant on the local press.

But the local events, such as fundraisers or community days, may seriously struggle to compete for attention. Granted, these aren’t exactly the hardest-hitting news stories, but they do serve the community.

Sports fans and clubs wanting local reporting will also be badly served. That’s not to say there’s not alternatives online, but local sport is a staple of a local paper, and a key reason for purchase.

How many of those will discontinue reading it because the results are a week late? And how will the clubs reach out to attract new fans or members? The Echo says the coverage will be even better. Many will be skeptical.

Time will tell what effect a weekly Echo will have on Exeter, and East and Mid Devon. It may revitalise the paper. Or it may be a large step towards the eventual collapse. In the immediate term, the main losers are the readers.

written by Gary \\ tags: Exeter, Express and Echo, local news, local newspapers

This is the third thread in the last month or so I’ve seen from Exeter City fans fed up that the local newspaper – the Express and Echo – still only posts up a teaser for their stories as opposed to the full article (usually a couple of paragraphs followed by the words ‘for the full story, see x day’s paper’).

The refusal to post full articles online is frustrating and it’s understandable that readers – especially Exeter exiles like myself who don’t have the option of buying the paper – are removing the Echo from their favourites site.

It’s also a shame. As a City fan, the Echo is a great resource for keeping up to date with news from the club. They also, unlike many counterparts, have a good website and a decent editorial standard applied to videos on the site (bar the player occasionally not working in Firefox). They’ve moved on vastly from the old approach of dumping any old video stuff and a good portion of their work is as good as some local TV journalism.

Which makes it even more maddening that users can’t access news stories on the day they’re published. It’s an incredibly short-sighted move, and one I’ve not seen any other local paper do (although that’s not saying others don’t).Can you imagine a national or large regional paper adopting the same attitude?

More to the point, their sister paper, the Western Morning News, puts up news articles in full and probably steals away a fair few online readers.

One of the contributors on the original thread fairly asks why the paper should put on online content for free when they’ve got a paper to sell. There’s a couple of simple answers here though.

Firstly, the news is available elsewhere, if you’re prepared to look for it. If I can access the story now or wait a day for a slightly more detailed report, I’ll probably take the one today. By waiting a day, the site loses out on potential readers.

Secondly, those who buy the paper are not necessarily going to be the same people reading the site online. If you’ve brought a copy of the paper, there is less incentive to go online. There is a decent amount of material to tempt the paper-buying reader onto the website, but it’s unlikely they’ll want to re-read the stories unless they have a pressing urge to comment on them.

In contrast, the web readers need an incentive to read online, and if they can’t read the news when they want to, they’ll as likely go elsewhere and not come back. As seems to be happening, judging by comments on Exeweb.

So, by taking the decision to delay the content for the sake of newspaper sales, the paper could be scoring an own goal, firstly by sending web-readers into the arms of rival papers. And with newspaper readerships declining, if the Echo tries to win back readers by opening up content online, they may find online-only readers have already gone elsewhere.

I’ve already got plenty of Devon-related feeds in my RSS reader to keep up with news from home. I can even get my Exeter City news direct from the club via Facebook updates. In short, I don’t actually need the Echo, but the Echo needs online readers like me.

As I’ve said – I do like the Echo’s website and want to read what’s going on in my hometown. But if I can’t access it on the day, then I, and others, will simply give up. And that would be a shame, give the quality of the writing and the website.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Exeter, Exeter City, Express and Echo, online news, RSS

If you’re the type of chap, or lady, who reads newspapers you’ll be aware of something called the credit crunch. If you’ve not come across this catchy piece of alliteration before, essentially it means there’s less cash floating around so we all have to recycle our socks, make do with stickyback plastic rather than gaffer tape, use cardboard boxes for shoes, give up at least one child for adoption (or else risk them getting repossessed) and take our holidays in Blighty.

I’ve just booked my first holiday abroad for around ten years. I clearly don’t read newspapers enough.

But while I’m busying myself saving money by attempting to make a guide book out of string, let me throw the recommendation of Devon for a holiday at you. It’s rather picturesque, the locals aren’t as backwards as some would make out, and generally it’s all a bit pleasant.

And having grown up there – and returned for a brief period of time – it’s safe to say there’s a great variety of restaurants around the county. And if there’s one thing I’m passionate about, it’s social media food. Really good food.

Should you find yourself in God’s own county, here’s a few recommendations – all sampled, and returned to, lovingly, over the years.

 

Harry’s

86 Longbrook Street, Exeter

As a teenager in Devon’s capital city, Harry’s was viewed as the height of sophistication. It was where you took a girl if you wanted to impress her without going overboard on price or poshness, and if things didn’t go well, at least you knew you’d always have a good meal. It was also close to a few pubs that never checked ID, which was an added bonus.

Fast forward to today, and my tastes may have changed since those teenage years but Harry’s still remains a favourite. It won’t break the bank, the portions are generous, the service is friendly and the food is first class.

The menu benefits from a wide range of familiar meals from around the world that sound simple on paper but are a world away from standard pub grub. The burgers – which include Ostrich – and most meat dishes come from local producers and are completely traceable, while there’s a comfort food for every fussy eater.

The pizzas tingle with flavour, the Mexican dishes are a cut above your standard tequila-joint and the salads are enough to tempt away any hardened steak-lover. For dessert, there’s Harry’s Heart Attack, which my friend Jemma refers to as Harry’s Heart Breaker – essentially a dish that’s ideal to leave your girlfriend with after you’ve split up with her over the main course. Chocolate brownies, marshmallows, chocolate and vanilla ice-cream, flakes, fudge and hot chocolate sauce all together in one huge glass. Four of us couldn’t finish one.

Harry’s also has celebrity connections. During his time at Exeter University, Will Young worked as a waiter in the restaurant and we were once lucky enough to be serviced by the singer, although in a strictly gastronomic sense only.

 

The Cricket Inn

Beesands, Kingsbridge

The first sign that we’d stumbled upon something quite special was when my mother – a notoriously fussy eater – announced that she could eat practically everything on the menu. And faced with a blackboard of fresh, locally caught fish dishes that made your tastebuds salivate just reading the description, it was difficult to argue.

The family had picked a gloriously Sunny Devon day – the type that makes you never want to leave the county – to explore the coastal paths around Start Port, one of the most southerly points in Devon. The plan was to wonder up to a nearby hotel, grab a spot of lunch and wander back, except the hotel was closed, so we decided to take advantage of the fantastic weather to walk until we reached food. The Cricket Inn was food.

The bar menu, listed on their website, was tempting enough. But it was the specials board with fish pancakes, fisherman’s pie, salmon, bream, bass, scallops and mackerel that was just too good to resist. Even my father – no great lover of seafood, unless it’s beer-battered cod and chips – conceeded it would be a shame to pass on the temptations of the menu and ordered what he proclaimed to be some of the best mackerel he’d ever tasted in his life.

Sat on the seafront tables, the fisherman’s pie was no less beguiling, with a creamy sauce that melted in your mouth and a real sea-freshness in the taste, while the seafood pancake – with prawns, cod, scallops and crab in a creamy sauce – got a rave review from my mother.

Quite how you get to The Cricket Inn is another question, given the surrounding roads barely fitted a Citroen ZX down them, and road-signs are few and far between. Just find a place to dump the car, and walk to build up the necessary appetite that will do justice to such perfect seafood.

 

al-Farid

3 Cathedral Yard, Exeter

Apologies, if I may, for starting with a spot of name dropping. At an event launch I blagged my way into was sent to cover during my days as a journalist, the audience got to take part in a general food Q&A with Michellin-starred chef Michael Caines, after his treated us to a mouth-watering cookery demonstration.

During the discussion Michael (if I’m name dropping, I may as well use first-name terms here) expressed his disappointment that Exeter’s new multi-million pound shopping development, Princesshay, was packed with chain restaurants.

Casting around, he has a point. Ubiquitous stomach-roulette chain Nandos has an obligatory presence, Wagamama’s is inevitably there, while Strada, Cafe Rouge and La Tasca are a decent class of chain restaurant, but ones I can visit wherever I am in the UK. Perhaps the police may wish to consider it as a theory for the failed bombing of the Giraffe chain – militant foodies resort to extreme action in middle-class shopping centre.

Princesshay is impressive and smart enough to warrant several seriously good mid-to-high end restaurants, but it’s to a much older part of Exeter – the Cathedral Green – that anybody after a good meal should turn to. 

Assuming you’re not planning on stopping by Caines’s own Abode restaurant at the Royal Clarence Hotel (which, in fairness, does a very reasonable and mouthwatering lunch menu), then al-Farid on the other side of the green is a treasure worth exploring. There’s the option of a more formal dining setting upstairs, but to get the true flavour of this Moroccan, perching on one of the many poofs or sofas while picking at their meze menu is the way forward.

Many of the meat dishes were scoffed without a second thought, while I very nearly decided to eat nothing but their humus and flatbread had the other dishes not looked so tempting. The cous cous and tabuoleh was spot on, while the stuffed filo rolls were so tasty, we ordered several more rounds before our bellies could take no more, and the waiter bagged up the remainder for lunch the next day.

The plan was to hit a club after the meal, but none of us could move and after a very slow amble towards a bar, two drinks were enough to send almost all of us off to sleep while all around us got down to a loud and vibrant jazz band.

 

The Duke of York

Iddesleigh, nr. Winkeigh

A confession: as a child, later a teenager, predictably I was embarrassed by my parents, regardless of whether the embarrassment was merited or not. I have now, however, learnt to live with and appreciate my father’s hobby of Morris Dancing. This was, also predictably, not the case when I was younger.

There are memories – still scarred into my conciousness – of being dressed up in Morris kit as a young child in the centre of Exeter whilst classmates stood looking in open disbelief. It was not something a ten-year-old easily lives down; it was kept quiet at my next school.

But there were not-so-hidden upsides, mainly the pubs. My father has probably visited the majority of country pubs in the county with a younger version of myself in tow. At first, there was reluctance, but once I realised Morris Men usually got free food after dancing, my protests became as much of a show as the Upton-Upon-Severn stick dance.

The Duke of York was one pub I would never dream about protesting, pseudo or otherwise, about visiting. Iddesleigh may be a tiny village a way of the beaten track, but the fact the pub is packed most lunchtimes and evenings is a testament to its qualities.

It is what you would call a proper pub. It retains a homely glow all throughout the cosy, if a tad cramped, bar, which comes complete with a low beam and a dartboard that nobody can ever get to. The service is unfailingly friendly and if you close your eyes, you can quite easily picture yourself in a BBC period drama, alas minus the corsets.

When the Morris Men danced, the landlord, Jamie, would bring out a steaming vat of one of the most delicious curries I’ve ever tasted in my life. We’ve returned many a time, with no bells or hankies attached to my father, for Sunday lunch. It is a lunch worth savouring.

As a pub expert, dad has had his fair share of Sunday roasts and this one ranks near the very top. Their vegetarian options vary, but are always inventive and highly edible. I would mention the desserts, but I may start salivating and I don’t want to dribble on my Mac.

 

21 Cathedral Yard

Go on, guess the address in Exeter.

One of the welcome additions to Exeter’s cultural scene over the past decade has been the establishment of the annual Exeter food festival, largely instigated by Michael Caines. Around this event comes a week or so of restaurant offers to tempt the travelling foodie into an extended Devon break. And the oiks like me who gaze longingly into the expensive restaurants but may need to amputate a limb and donate to medical science before I could afford meals on a regular basis.

You may have guessed by now that 21 Cathedral Yard isn’t cheap, although during the day it functions as a much more affordable cafe. Evenings are a much more expensive proposition, especially for an underpaid journalist and his low-earning friends.

But if there’s enough loose change rattling around your sofa, Andrew Shortman’s minimally-decorated restaurant is worth a visit. Exeter Cathedral makes a stunning backdrop and the service is some of the friendliest – and most patient – I’ve come across. The food is a bit better than not bad either.

The menu’s changed slightly since my visit, but the layered vegetables and goats cheese sticks in the memory, while the fish looked as if it had been lifted straight from the cover of a glossy Sunday broadsheet food supplement and, according to reports, tasted even better.

But the real praise was reserved for the duck breast. Months after the meal, just a passing mention of the bird was enough to send all who ate it into near-orgasmic raptures. Tender to the point of melting on your tongue, came one description, while another was just limited to a small moan of delight.

If Harry’s was the place to go to impress a potential date, then on the basis of this meal, 21 Cathedral Yard should be a foregone conclusion for a marathon 8-hour sex romp, probably involving cream, strawberries and champagne, that only exists in Hollywood melodrama.

Who needs Viagra when you have duck breast with cassis berry sauce?

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: 21 Cathedral Yard, al-Farid, Devon restaurants, eating out, Exeter, Harry's, Michael Caines, The Cricket Inn, The Duke of York

Now the dust’s settled both around Giraffe restaurant in Exeter and in the general world of breaking news, and yesterday’s events are becoming clearer, it’s interesting to see how the coverage of the event has also settled down both for traditional media and more Web 2.0 sources.

While yesterday the best sources for breaking news were the online Exeter City fans forum Exeweb, and Twitter, today things have settled down somewhat. The thread on Exeweb has slowed and hasn’t been updated in a while, while Tweets on the issue have been restricted to those from traditional media accounts like ITN and the Guardian [1].

Likewise, Technorati and del.icio.us have sporadic entries, but nothing traditional media hasn’t already told me.

[A quick aside here - partly to blow my own trumpet, but partly because it fits in well here - POLIS director Charlie Beckett followed up his very nice comment with a blog post praising what I wrote yesterday, which is as unexpected as it is flattering (and humbling). But where did Charlie find my piece? Via his colleague on del.icio.us. QED.]

But where it gets really interesting is Digg. If you search upcoming stories for Exeter then the majority of articles ‘Dugg’ are from traditional sources: the BBC, the Telegraph, etc. [2].

Now, I’ll admit this has only been a cursory glance and any research I’ve done hasn’t been as thorough as yesterday but there’s still a few strands of hypothesis we can draw from this.

The main point being, when you have a breaking news story, traditional media is a lot slower than online sources and social media tool and, in many cases, less reliable. This also suggests that people are moving towards these tools rather than more traditional sources when they want to find out more information.

However, once the story moves beyond it’s initial ‘breaking’ stage (usually 24 hours, or an overnight gap), traditional media reasserts itself. The posters on Exeweb or Twitterers are likely to have the time or access to compete with media outlets, so at this stage the fastest, most reliable sources online will revert to the familiar brand names. They have the lines to the police, they eyewitnesses, and the politicians and now can be seen to be across the story.

The big loser in all this now is not social media, which can happily exist outside of the mainstream media and isn’t solely news-orientated, but the Express and Echo, Exeter’s local paper.

Yes, the Echo have continued to add updates to their site, but I still can’t read today’s coverage, which is maddening – the message to buy the paper for full information has been on the site since they posted a brief summary of their lead story, and they’re already telling us to buy Saturday’s paper for the update. Which would be great if I still lived in Devon, but I don’t.

Now, the Express and Echo may well have some of the best journalistic coverage on this topic, and today and tomorrow’s papers may well be ground-breaking award-winning stuff, but it’s really too late. Any smart reader, Exonian or otherwise, will have gone to somewhere like Google News, done a search for Exeter and read a lot of the pieces available there, most of which contain not just yesterday’s story but up-to-the-minute articles with today’s events (the Telegraph’s is particularly good). In the meantime, the Echo sits with none of this.

Taking this logically to its conclusion, why would I – the online reader – then need to buy tomorrow’s Express and Echo or visit it’s website when I know there is better information elsewhere? In looking to maximise the paper sales, the Echo could potentially lose out on readers both on and offline.

[By the way, if you want to contact me with any links or aspects of this online case study I may have missed, or anything that may be interesting or relevant to the blog or, for whatever reason, you don't want to leave a comment, there's a contact form on the About Me page.]

[1] Assuming you can actually get onto Twitter – it’s having another bit of downtime/crash. Honestly, it’s more tempramental than all of my ex-girlfriends morphed into one.

[2] Anti-fascist campaigners may want to note the amount of Diggs BNP links are getting (and on Technorati as well).

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: del.icio.us, Exeter, Exeter bomb, Exeter explosion, Exeweb, Express and Echo, journalism, online journalism, social media, Twitter, Web 2.0

Moving off social media briefly (although I’ll be back onto the topic in the next few posts), yesterday’s ‘bombing’ [1] got me wondering how I would have covered the event if I’d still been in Exeter, specifically in regard to the word “terror”.

I’ve written before how unimpressed I am when the T-word is thrown around, and while there’s more justification for using it in relation to yesterday’s event, there’s still some debate to be had.

Judging by a cursory glance at the newspaper front pages this morning [2] you’d have though Devon’s capital had seen event’s comparable to 7/7 as opposed to some bloke doing a bit of damage to his face [3]. Now, putting on a pedant’s hat for a minute here, a terrorist is somebody who creates terror. Judging by eyewitness accounts from the various sources I checked yesterday, Exeter may have been ill at ease but certainly by no means terrorised. Quite the opposite, in fact, when you’ve got people laughing at the attempt.

Being serious again, terrorism is notoriously difficult to pin down to an exact definition. As Primal Scream sang, “One man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist”. There are acts, generally (unfortunately) of mass murder that once they’ve occurred can be classed as terrorism. But what of a lone bomber or gunman? They create terror, are they a terrorist? And more to the point, does a man with a bomb who explodes it in his face without injuring anybody count as a terrorist if nobody is terrorised? A potential terrorist, yes, but that’s getting into an even broader category.

I’ve got an aversion to using words like terrorist and other hyperbole in relation to small-scale local incidents [4] where it’s difficult to qualify exactly what’s being dealt with in the story. These words always feel forced and even lazy.

There are better, more accurate, synonyms that could be used. In this case, bomber, or alleged bomber, fit perfectly and narrow the description down. It also avoids attaching greater kudos and importance to the actions than absolutely necessary, which already strikes a small blow at any would-be terrorist. Being a bomber is a lot less glamorous than a purveyor of terror.

[1] And much as I hate scare quotes, this is one occasion they’re done justice.

[2] Having difficulty finding links to these, especially the Sun.

[3] Ok, I know it could have been a lot more serious but the end result shows this was a woefully laughable attempt to create terror.

[4] And while it can’t have been pleasant initially for those caught up in it, it was just that: a small scale local incident, in the context of things.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: accurate reporting, bomb, Exeter, Exeter bomb, Exeter explosion, hyperbole, sensational journalism, synonyms, terror, terrorism

It terms of the unexpected, getting several tweets and rss notifications of a bomb blast of my home city of Exeter had to be pretty high on the list of things I never quite thought I’d see [1]. As, until just under eight months ago, it was also my reporting patch, it also gave the opportunity to follow the story from a variety of sources, analyse coverage, and see what, if any opportunities had been taken or missed online, and with social media.

It also made me a teeny bit jealous and nostalgic that I wasn’t down there reporting.

Breaking news: the sources

While the story was continually breaking I was hitting Twitter, Digg, technorati, Google and the local media’s online site, chiefly the Express and Echo and Gemini Radio. Anything that follows certainly isn’t a criticism of them (in terms of Gemini, my old employer, they sounded fantastic on-air from the hour I listened in on, and given how few people there were in the newsroom, they were stretched as hell. I’ve no idea on the echo, but I’d imagine they were also juggling plenty of balls with not enough hands).

How web 2.0 savvy were the journalists on the case? I have no idea, but through a cursory glance of various social media sites I dug up a few bits and pieces, which would have been a good addition to any story, and maybe worth storing for another angle or another good voice to the story.

Digg didn’t yield anything [2] while delicious didn’t immediately have anything either and technorati only really came alive between leaving work at six and logging on again at 10pm, although a lot of the posts were from the usual anti-Muslim brigade. It did, however, yield this lovely and rather sweet piece of user-generated content:

“I contacted Gemini radio to tell them about the Exeter City Council webcam, and they put the link on their website!”

The tool that really proved it’s worth, though, was Twitter. Not only was this the first place I heard about the story itself, but there were rich pickings, with a quick search within Twitter for ‘Exeter’ bringing several users Tweeting about their experiences, as well as a couple of interesting blog posts. John Hood, who was one of them, also noted Twitter’s worth:

“This afternoon, Twitter, yet again, proved its intrinsic value with regards ‘breaking news’, when a nail bomb exploded at Exeter’s Princesshay Shopping Centre! I had, literally, only driven by Princesshay minutes prior to the explosion. Wondering if Peter Lacey, an eye witness interviewed by the BBC at Princesshay, is the same Peter I knew at primary school? Small world if it is!”

And in more proof, if any were needed, of the high proportion of the social media enthusiasts on Twitter, the search also uncovered The Daily Ack’s brief unfolding timeline of his personal experiences, plus another piece of wood for the traditional media coffin [3] notes:

“I’d expect that over the next few hours, just like the 2005 blasts, I’ll also be getting most of my news from non-mainstream sources. However unlike the 2005 bombing this, unless it turns out that the initial information is very wrong, is a local story and that means that, unlike a story of national interest, any follow up by the main stream press will be sporadic at best. They’ll probably not just be the best news source, they might be the only news source available.”

But, perhaps surprisingly (or not – I wasn’t), the first place I looked was the best. Exeter City’s fan forum, Exeweb, has a very strong Exeter-based community and, to my mind, it was inevitable that somebody would start a thread about it.

Many of the posters worked nearby the city centre, and some were close to the main scene – the thread actually turned out to be the best way to follow the news, with any unsubstantianed rumours quickly quashed and the news hitting Exeweb before anywhere else, even Twitter.

Now, before you think I spent the whole afternoon scouring the web for sources, the above all took me just half an hour to set up. Once I’d found the right areas to look in, the rest was done with Google and Technorati alerts and refreshing the other pages when I got a spare moment. That, to me, is the exciting part. The web has moved journalism on to such a point that with just 30 minutes I felt as informed as if I’d been living in Exeter.

The traditional media, online

Now, putting aside social media for a moment and onto the local media, specifically the Express and Echo [4], the fascinating area was to see firstly how their website covered the event, and secondly, what opportunities could have been used to link into social media and enhance the user experience.

There was some good stuff too – regular half hour updates, and a gallery that was uploaded pretty quickly and continually added to. The video that was posted later tied all the ends together nicely and was one of the most informative pieces available anywhere on the web all day [5].

On a basic level, very good. As a user, I have a reason to visit their site throughout the day. However, there’s aspects that are far from perfect. The bitty nature of the articles is quite frustrating. Also, every piece is finished with a plug for tomorrow’s echo, where the full story will appear.

Now, as a regular user of the paper’s online service to keep up to date with events back home, I’m willing to bet tomorrow will see what the Echo do every day – a brief summary, followed by a quick line about full story in the paper, before the full piece is posted up a day later. As somebody who can’t get hold of the paper on that day, it drives me nuts [6] and is really poor practice, plus puts them 24 hours behind when it comes to social bookmarking, and that will lose them hits in the long term.

It’s easy to understand why they do this – to maximise print sales – but is a very Web 1.0 way of doing things and with no sharing buttons, it’s very frustrating to ‘do’ anything with the articles. It’s still possible to hold back the really good stuff for the paper while filling the the essentials in a good, non-bitty article online as it breaks. If they could open up and make all their articles available on the day, it would help web goodwill towards them no end.

Going Web 2.0 and combining traditional and new media

Now, let’s bring together a few strands from both here. The Echo’s online coverage was ok to good in places but could have enhanced the user experience far more. The most obvious idea here would be rather than posting the bitty updates, would be to have a reporter liveblogging and bringing all the strands together. The Guardian are particularly good at this, and its an easy and coherent read, and this could apply equally the Gemini’s site.

The same reporter would be able to scour the web for any decent links, blogs, or Tweets and link to them as appropriate, plus there would be the chance to work from any tip-offs that might arise in the comments [6]. The question will always arise here at what level do you credit blogs as sources, and how reliable are they, which is something Robin Hamman has written about many times [7].

It’s a toughie, but blogs do add and enhance, and are part of the liveblogging experience. Best practice would suggest that if, as a journalist, the information isn’t immediately verifiable, but worth linking too, then flag up this fact in the liveblog before you link. That should cover it all. Perhaps another option would be to save it to delicious and publish all the saved delicious links on the blog at the end of the day.

Local papers are usually the first, and best place, to turn to when there’s an event on their patch that’s of national interest, due to good local knowledge and contacts, and the really savvy local media (papers and radio) would already have a Twitter feed in place – it’s at times like this that Twitter really can release its potential (and generate more traffic for your site).

It goes without saying that any good reporter should be setting up technorati and Google alerts relevant to a story like this, while also checking for information on Facebook, and the more Web 2.0 of them will have thoughts about putting the videos on YouTube and working the links and tags on Digg and delicious, even if it means bookmarking the paper’s own liveblog as a start.

How much the newspaper or radio’s site wants to share with users, or keep for themselves, is another matter, but both visible or just used by the journalist, they all combine to enhance the user experience, without a great deal of effort from the person sat in front of the keyboard.

Conclusion

The more events like this occur, the more opportunities and tools your average reader will have to hunt down information. Twitter is becoming more useful as a journalistic tool by the day, and once again showed its worth here.

What this also shows, is that any traditional media that ignores these social media tools and neglects the user experience throughout breaking news, risks losing them elsewhere, possibly for good. After all, if there up to date information on forums and blogs that’s seemingly no less reliable than the mainstream media, why bother? But if the paper or radio in question starts bringing together these tools on their website – ah, now that’s a different story.

One place they could do a lot worse than take a lead from is the Birmingham Post (even if they do have one of my least favourite journalist-only words – slammed- in their front page headline), who’ve done some excellent work across the site (thanks, in no small part, I suspect, to Joanna Geary). I’d wager if the same event happened in Birmingham, the Post’s online coverage would exceed my suggestions.

The Echo haven’t done a bad job online, that’s for sure – with a little bit of tweaking they could really take their Web 1.5 site to Web 2.0. The same goes for Gemini, who do offer extras, but (and this is largely because all GCap sites are the same and not great for anything unique to one specific station) really need to add in lots more Web 2.0 features (hell, why not do a special news podcast?).

But the encouraging thing is they’re getting there. Even is social media is still hurtling forward at a faster pace.

UPDATE: And proof, if any were needed, about the importance of good tagging and titling. This post alone has seen nearly 200% more hits and counting than an average post on this blog. And this blog is now also on the front page of Google if you search for ‘Exeter bomb’. Now how many media organisations would love to see their coverage listed on the first set of results on Google?

UPDATE 2: With wonderful gallows humour the British do so well, there’s now a Facebook Group, I survived the 22/05/08 Exeter bombing.

[1] And even so, the general consensus from friends and online sources seems to be one nutter who’d probably have done more damage with a baseball bat than a bomb, and doesn’t seem to have affected people that much. But that’s by the by.

[2] And I’m still not really au fait with getting the best out of Digg so if anybody has found anything that I’ve missed feel free to tell me I’m rubbish.

[3] Ok, I’m not a total subscriber to the “I come not to praise newspapers but bury them” crowd but it does show that users are getting more savvy and much of traditional media needs to shake up PDQ.

[4] I’m going to put Gemini very much to one side here – partly because they would have been working towards regular on-air updates, and also I know what their online CMS is like – an absolute inflexible dog that doesn’t offer a great deal of scope for experimentation, and that’s really not their fault. There’s plenty of extra audio for you to get their teeth into though, which is good, and they’re updating regularly (in between me starting this post and writing this. I can guess which poor sod it is who won’t be sleeping tonight, and will buy him a pint when I’m next in Exeter).

[5] And I’ll even put aside my usual quibbles about editing and other TV techniques here as it was a very decent video and, given the time they had to do it in, well put together – certainly better in content than a lot of the sensationalist crap on the national bulletins.

[6] The Echo do have a note on their site that comments are disabled due to abuse, which is fair enough if they’re stretched – comment moderation takes up a bit of time and in events like this you do get a fair share of nutters leaving comments. I’ve no idea what caused them to switch it off though, as it was already disabled by the time I logged onto their site.

[7] If he’s reading this, Robin, I’d love to know your thoughts.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Birmingham Post, blogs, breaking news, del.icio.us, Digg, Exeter, Exeter bomb, Exeter explosion, Exeweb, Express and Echo, Gemini FM, Giraffe, Giraffe explosion, online news, Princesshay, social media, Technorati, Twitter