We had a great family visit to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich recently. I hadn’t been since the re-opening, and it is absolutely fascinating. There are two sections, one dedicated to time, the other to astronomy. The time section contains the four clocks manufactured by John Harrison in his ultimately successful attempt to solve the problem of longitude, and the concept is explained in a clear and engaging way.
But it’s the astronomy section which really impresses. The interactive displays really work, unlike so many museums which seem to have opted for little more than sub-standard computer-gamery to pull the punters in. The Science Museum is particularly bad for this. It’s really well-thought out, with a combination of graphics, short films and interactive tasks. The advantage the designers here had was that the work is based around the biggest questions of all: How did the universe start?; What are we made of? Why is the universe expanding? And they don’t fumble the opportunity.
My nine-year-old was fascinated, and came home to pour over his books on the stars and ask endless questions. I was glad he picked up on Einstein’s quote that “It is important you keep asking questions”, although not, of course, “when me or your Mum tells you to do something” 
The house is now full of discussions about dark matter and the fact that we are all stardust.
I thoroughly recommend a visit, especially as you’ve got the beautiful Greenwich Park to spill into when you’ve had enough. There’s enough here for more than one visit, and best of all, it’s free. Although you really should make a donation when you leave, it is one of the best attractions I’ve been to in years.
Tea & biscuits, my feature on Reed Business Information’s innovative approach to new media tools and techniques, has just gone online in InPublishing’s Knowledge Bank, with the print edition due to hit desks later this week. It’s a while since my visit to the company’s Sutton offices, but what RBI is doing still holds up as a good, practical example of how to get to grips with the many changes the trade faces. The full feature can be found by clicking the link above or the image below, and there’s a podcast of me reading the feature if you want to check out my dulcets.
You’ll have noticed some changes, so I thought I’d explain. I felt the blog needed a freshen up, and I also wanted to address a few issues that I’d come across in the process of keeping this going for a year or so.
I spent some time trying to get my head around wordpress.org. But I ran into quicksand pretty quickly. I will crack it, but I began to realise that I was spending much more time on working out how to use various tools than I was on creating work with them – so much for what I’ve said regularly on this blog! I the past 18 months, I have taught myself how to build a website in Rapidweaver, a blog in wordpress.com, got to grips with Twitter and integrated it with my blog, discovered that Facebook can be used more productively than I at first thought (although I still find elements of it intensely irritating) and started to look at the mechanics of self-hosted blogs using WordPress and Joomla.
That’s a fair bit of tech, and I’ve been neglecting the business of actually writing and creating material. So I’m putting my journey into the back end of blogdom on the back burner for a while. I also wanted to see how far I could push using a free, hosted service in a flexible way. So I’ve stuck with wordpress.com.
What’s changed
I didn’t like the thick band across the top of the old look, it wasn’t a good use of space and I wasn’t that happy with my picture either. I’d also gone off the serif font in the blog title. So that’s gone, replaced with a cleaner banner that sits at the top of the screen, and enables readers to see more immediately what there is to offer. The banner is no design classic, but it provides some personality and a cleaner typeface. It also works nicely with the way the Vigilance theme presents other pages.
I choose Vigilance because it offers more flexibility than most other wordpress.com themes, and of course I like the basic design. I’ve now got a space top right for latest news which allows me to publicise and market work, and to inject some more energy and movement onto the home page. The two column sidebar also allows for more efficient and effective presentation. Paul Robert Lloyd’s neat social media icons replace the rather scrappy arrangement I had before, and the RSS feed option is more prominent and efficiently presented. And there’s a new addition to the blogroll, with all the Spurs stuff now appearing under the title of The Spurs End.
Anyone who wants to know what I look like can find out on the About Me page, which now sports a pic of me attempting to look relatively approachable. Two other temporary pages advertise my latest book and the course I am running in February, with a page linking to my static website rounding off the menu. The new image of my site was created using Realmac Software’s excellent Littlesnapper. The Martin Cloake Blog has become Martin Cloake online because it’s less clunky and a more accurate description of what this blog is. I’m hoping it becomes the first point of contact for me online, the central hub which connects my presence online and in social media.
And finally, I’ve added an easier way to share to the end of the more recent posts.
There have been a few changes. There are some more to come. A few things don’t work yet. But they will. There will also be some more stuff. And better organisation. It’s media transparency writ large. Bear with me.
I was going to try to post something on this rather excellent NUJ event, held on Saturday, but while researching an article on this and the equally useful and stimulating news rewired shindig last week I came across Ian Wylie’s detailed round-up of the day. I heartily recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the media, and I also tip my hat to Ian for preserving my sanity.
To tell the truth, after two days of media conference brainstorm network debate action, sandwiched around a full day of teaching at LCC and in advance of a full week of shifts at several different clients – oh, and an early start for the under-9s football on Sunday morning – my head is spinning. I sat late into Sunday evening trying to do a first draft of my feature, but rapidly reached the conclusion I need more time to mull it all over. I also worried about finding time to post on the NUJ event, make some long overdue changes to this blog, organise my teaching notes for next week, prepare for a meeting with my publisher, and get my head into gear for a new client on Monday morning. That is the nature of freelance life, I guess.
So, thanks to Ian Wylie for providing a great example of what an individual journalist can do with modern technology and some nous, for easing the pressure on my brain just a little, and for prompting me to bookmark a blog that looks like a very entertaining read. And thanks to the ever-marvellous Sarah Hartley for posting the link in the first place.
Is directing readers to other people’s stuff cheating? No. This is how media works now – link, credit, share. Why replicate when you can innovate? My contribution will come, and I am not passing off anyone’s contribution as my own.
What I aim to do now is drink just one glass of the eight-year-old single malt I got for Christmas, watch some rubbish TV, talk to my wife and get an early night in. A very busy week ahead means it’ll almost certainly be quiet on this blog for a few days, but I’ll leave you with a first impression that is forming from the gazillions of thoughts spinning around in my brain at the moment. It is just possible that we are at the start of the development of a far better media than we have ever had. The innovation, enthusiasm, co-operation and sheer friendliness I’ve experienced over the last few days have been quite extraordinary.
It seems a storm’s a-brewing in the wake of the news rewired event. A fair number of the Tweets and posts I’ve been able to look at today have picked up on this. It would be a pity if this was seen as the dominant theme of the day. I thought there was a great deal of positive, practical discussion. But, at the risk of fuelling the debate, I think it’s worth considering what we mean when we use certain terms. Because I think offence is being taken where none is intended, and points that need to be considered are getting lost.
I know why people such as Andy Dickinson (linked above) get irritated when people say things such as “taking photographs doesn’t make you a photographer”. He is right to say that, actually, yes it does. But it depends what is really meant by “photographer”. My experience is that there are actually very few people who really think it is possible or desirable to stop people using whatever they can to produce whatever they can.
But while I, for example, can take as reasonable a photograph as the next person of, let’s say, a person I’m interviewing or a bus fire or a road sign, I’d be the first to concede that I am not yer man for taking a picture of the winning horse crossing the line in the Grand National. Or, much as I would like to, to shoot a fashion piece with Kate Moss. For those tasks, someone with more specialist skills, experience and equipment is needed. So maybe it’s easier to say “photographer” when we really mean “specialist photographer”, but there is an important difference in that one has a particular set of skills that the other doesn’t necessarily have.
This isn’t an argument to build walls around a protected guild, it’s an argument in favour of valuing skill. Most anyone can take a photograph, but most cannot take, for example, the kind of photographs for which The Times’s Marc Aspland is respected. Marc Aspland is not necessarily more valuable than me, unless you want that specialist application. In which case he is, but ‘more valuable’ or ‘more appropriate’ doesn’t always mean ‘better’.
There are numerous other examples. I can lay out pages, leaflets and brochures, and work up the look of a website. I am interested in design and I can apply some design skills to what I do. But I wouldn’t call myself a designer. (Insert criticism of how this blog looks here). I don’t feel insulted not to be considered a designer, and I don’t think designers are Gods (except for my wife, who obviously is ) I just recognise that there’s a difference.
Why does all this matter? Partly because we need to be sure we are talking about the same things – I often feel various people participating in this discussion are talking at cross purposes. But also because the debate about ‘what defines journalism?” is important. It is wrong to think anyone can be “stopped” from doing anything when it comes to creating and publishing media. And the opening up of the opportunity to publish and create is without doubt a good thing. But if we think there is value in the skills and experience and practices the trade of journalism has built up, then we need to be clear what these things are and why. It’s too easy to dismiss anything that values skill or even simply experience as “elitism”. That way encourages mediocrity.
There’s much that so-called traditional media can learn from new, and vice-versa. What The Lichfield Blog’s Philip John described as “active citizens creating media” don’t even, as he eloquently pointed out, necessarily want to be journalists or “take” journalists’ jobs. But blogs such as his serve a purpose, sometimes because traditional media have withdrawn, sometimes because traditional media is not serving its market. If another newspaper starts up in a town which already has one, that’s not seen as something that ‘takes’ jobs. It’s seen as job creation. And yet the competition here is more direct.
The defensiveness in the debate often comes down to cold, hard, economics. But journalists who value their skill set and are paid full time to develop and deploy them shouldn’t really feel threatened by people who create media in their spare time, however diligently they do it. No doubt someone will see that as a dismissive description of those “active citizens who create media”, but it’s not. As Joanna Geary pointed out in her excellent contribution to the hyperlocal debate at news rewired, what can reasonably be expected of bloggers, users who create content, whatever, is an expertise in niche areas applied as and when it is most effective.
People in the media have always worked with niche experts. We used to describe the two groups as journalists and contacts. These days, the contacts have a more active and skilled role, and a greater opportunity to apply that expertise. And a good thing too. There’s still room for everyone, but we need to get our terms right, and we need to recognise the value of specialism. If we do, we’ve got the basis of a conversation.
Just back home from a great day at news rewired at City University. Much to mull over, and I notice a heated debate has already broken out – which I made a short contribution to on the train home. (It was still awaiting moderation as I write this).
More to come in the next few days, and again after I have the chance to mull over both this event and the NUJ’s New Ways to Make Journalism Pay conference on Saturday. But I wanted to put some brief initial thoughts down, as part of the process of seeing how this very thoughtful and practical start to the year pans out.
Thought 1: How much pleasure was expressed in turning virtual into physical encounters. I certainly enjoyed meeting people I’ve only encountered via blog, email or Tweet.
Thought 2: (And there will be arguments about this, but it’s what has made most impression at the moment). I picked up an assertion of confidence in journalism as a trade or skillset alongside an awareness of how new tools can enhance that traditional process to create a better media. I loved The Telegraph’s Greg Hadfield’s closing comments.
More to come, as it’s late, I have to teach tomorrow, and there is much to ruminate upon. All of which makes it sound as if I am about to decant a rare Scotch from the crystal decanter and settle down in a leather armchair with a cigar, but it actually means I’m off to bed in order to get up early enough to gather my teaching material and make the kids’ packed lunch.
Art direction (the sort you get in magazines) has always been a bit absent on the web, and for good reason. A lot of people around the world use the internet to publish content, but only a fraction of them are actual designers. So it makes sense that most of the content on the web is being spooned into pre-designed moulds, to make publishing quick and easy. Such is the beauty of the internet; anyone can publish whatever they want without any special skills or knowledge.
However, as a designer of the internet, I have no excuse to carry on publishing content via the same old templates.
Designer Greg Wood.
I’ve never seen design as something separate from the editorial process. But I have always seen it as a specific skill. This morning a very thoughtful post entitled Why the designer holds the key to the future of journalism by Adam Westbrook on Journalism 2.0 helped bring a few thoughts together.
When I came into the trade, desk top publishing was the big deal, and we were all in awe of a computer with a tiny screen and 1MB of memory called a Mac Classic. Many people thought that knowing how to use Pagemaker, the layout software then standard, made them designers. But they were wrong. DTP did bring many parts of the process into the grasp of in house editorial teams, and offered greater control over the finished product to those who created it. But I still shudder at the memory of being told by a colleague at one trade paper I used to work at to “stretch that typeface to 150% to make it look a bit funkier”. And, having lived with a designer for the past 18 years, I’m always guaranteed to be reminded of the limitations of my faltering design efforts.
Creative differences
My wife is not being the type of “precious” designer it was always fashionable for the “word people” to sneer at. There is an important difference between laying out and designing. Design is a more creative process, and there are different skillsets and considerations involved in the job. Of course, subs can now do what compositors used to and designers now implement much that used to be done at the repro house. But while technology offers the chance to reduce costs by combining many skillsets into one job, questions of quality, time and expertise have to be considered. That is always assuming the people running the show think these things are important.
Unfortunately, the view that design is just a matter of assembling “stuff” has tended to become more common. The growth of web publishing means this misguided view has to be reconsidered. As Adam says in his post, “if people are going to pay for journalistic content in a digital form, it’s going to have to look good, not just read good.” I’d go further and say that, paid for or not, good design should not be an optional extra.
Inflexible working
There are real problems to address here. Several editors I’ve worked with have expressed frustration with the constraints of content management systems that force material into grids, instead of allowing the kind of flexibility to break out and innovate that DTP packages offer. The technical constraints of how work is rendered on screen rather than in print are given. But the time devoted to getting to grips with them and trying to move them on isn’t. Because companies tend to see technology primarily as a way to save money, they are too eager to implement mechanical processes which rely on journalists fitting material into templates quickly. ‘Get it up simple and quick’ may well be the optimum way of presenting news online. But more skill and time could be applied to much of what’s currently on the web in order to produce a better reader experience, and greater retention on site.
When I visited Reed Business Information for a feature I was researching a few months ago, the general view of those at the brainstorming session I attended was that design and production staff had not been involved early enough in the process of changing the way RBI’s titles were published. That’s an encouraging recognition, because too many companies see the editorial process increasingly as something performed by technicians who churn out ’stuff’ to predetermined templates. Cheaply.
Time means motion
It’s accepted that there are a greater variety of tools on offer, that journalists need to learn new skills. But we need time to develop and apply and refine those skills if the quality of the product is to improve. Although I’ve always been interested in design, I’ve had to get to grips with it much more since I started getting stuck into web work. My journey has taken time. I learnt how to use Rapidweaver to design my website (see link at the top of the page). It’s a great piece of kit, and nowhere near as expensive as the upgrade to CS4 I need in order to use Dreamweaver. It’s also much simpler to use than Dreamweaver and helped me understand the basics. But, flexible as it is, it’s still template-based and I haven’t got the total control over look and structure that I want.
I started blogging on Rapidweaver, but it’s not the most searchable kit to use. So I went for WordPress, starting with the hosted version. It’s what this blog is created with, and using WordPress has taught me much more about the basics of using a content management system, driving traffic, search and all the other now vital skills we need. But I’m starting to get to the point where it’s not flexible enough for my needs. And I want more control over the look – especially the elements of this theme I’ve never liked. To do that I need to move to WordPress.org. That involves learning a whole new set of skills, and really getting to grips with coding and structure issues.
It’s all very useful and very interesting – although I must confess learning how to use and implement self-hosted WordPress is proving very complicated. Adding to my frustration is the realisation that learning and trialing all this new and stimulating stuff has led to a situation where I am creating less than I used to. I’m certainly writing less than I used to. Because while my level of skill is increasing, the time I have available isn’t.
New landscapes, greater value
It may be that much of what I want to do comes easier to a designer than it does to a writer and sub-editor. But I’m not arguing in favour of strict demarcation. What I am saying is that rather than seeing technology as something which gives everyone the chance to do most stuff to an acceptable standard, the business also needs to recognise the value of developing specialist skills. Not doing so has led to the current neglect of design online. As Adam Westbrook says, “making your website look pretty isn’t just style over substance. It opens up a new landscape of narrative and storytelling to the journalist. It adds untold value to your content.” This means giving people such as Greg Wood the room they need to develop, and not seeing it as a luxury. Or as Greg puts it;
Creativity is like a big pair of bollocks, and regular releases are required if you want to avoid an awkward situation.
I’ve said a lot about emphasising the message more than the medium, so I thought it would be useful to look at a couple of good examples of storytelling which show what can be done with the tools now available. This is based on a session I do with students at LCC and Goldsmiths, and the point I make is that both examples give a glimpse of a step change in the way we can tell stories to our audience. Rather than simply put print on the web, we can now try to develop a genuinely original style of media which enhances the quality of what we produce, and the user experience.
The journalist who created this first example, Alexis Akwagyiram, came in to talk to students at LCC about the story, and it was a fascinating session. BBC journalists are encouraged to submit ideas for extended pieces, and Alexis based his on the 20th anniversary of the release of The Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight. Generally considered the track that spawned hip-hop – although I’d argue the case for Gil Scott Heron here – it’s an iconic slice of a genre that has become all-pervasive. Rather than do a ‘best of’ round-up, Alexis decided to look at just what effect hip-hop has had.
The first thing that struck me about the piece is that it contradicts one of what’s been touted as a basic principle of web journalism – keep it brief. There are over 3,000 words in the feature. Of course, it’s more specialist than general, it’s a feature rather than news, and there are plenty of entry points and a variety of media. But still, it shows how an extended and in-depth piece of journalism can work.
There are lots of nice little touches dropped in, such as this example of how the language of hip-hop has made it into the most unlikely corners of the mainstream. A box out is not a new technique but this, like the best ideas, is nice and simple and shows how a bit of thought and simple research can provide a new angle. And it’s original.
Alexis’s feature is a well-researched, well-argued and entertaining read, perfectly capable of holding a reader’s attention for longer than the average surf. But the beauty of the web is that you can do more than just tell people about something. You can provide the chance to listen to and see what you’re writing about.
Another box out encourages a little reader participation while also showcasing examples of how hip-hop has been taken up across the globe. A click on any one of the tags on this graphic brings up a short video featuring artists from around the world. This device breaks up the copy and provides a fresh entry point in traditional manner, but also changes the consumption of the feature from a passive to an active process.
Another page features a slideshow in which a former colleague of Alexis’s provides commentary on street fashion over a series of stills taken in New York, and it’s worth watching for an example of how to make an entertaining piece on a high-profile subject when the budget doesn’t let you buy all the images you might want. In fact, the piece is enhanced by the use of a little lateral thinking in the picture selection department.
One of my favourite parts of the feature is this short film in which photographer Joe Conzo takes us around the neighbourhood where the scene started and tells how he came to be involved. It’s full of really nice little touches, such as Joe wearing his NYFD uniform, a marvellous still of a 14-year-old Joe with his camera, and some great images of the early flyers that advertised the events Joe’s high school buddies asked him to photograph. Again, it shows the value of a little extra thought. Instead of just showing Joe’s pictures, Alexis has asked Joe to tell his own story, and illustrated the tour not only with footage but also photos and original material that puts across some of the flavour of the times. The soundtrack is pretty good too.
I thoroughly recommend settling down to enjoy the feature in full. The four tab set-up also provides a clear illustration of the non-linear nature of web storytelling; this feature can be entered at any point and it still works.
This has proved a popular session, with punchy images and great sounds engaging students. What’s really good is seeing the light bulb come on above heads as students ‘get’ the point of all the things we’ve been discussing. Showing something that works well and breaking it down is great way to demonstrate what’s possible, and to make sense of the many techniques new students on a multimedia course are exposed to.
Alexis made another interesting point, which is that to do something like this takes time. He reckoned it took him about 80 hours to do the whole thing – research, interviews, processing. That could be seen as a waste of time and resources. I prefer to see it as proof of the quality that can be achieved if journalists are given the right time and resources.
I also read, and use as an example, FLYP magazine. It’s stated aim is to “exploit the full palette of web tools to provide users with an engaging multimedia experience about the issues shaping America”, and it’s certainly got very high production values. It’s structure follows that of a traditional print magazine very closely, right down to the page-turning swf files. But there is extensive use of graphics, film and sound to enhance the material. And again, it’s anything but short. There are some long and thoughtful pieces here, but all engaging – partly because there are so many ways into each feature.
FLYP’s design team do some really nice things with type – nothing groundbreaking for anyone familiar with magazine design from the late 1980s onwards, but some of the best and most original work I’ve seen on the web. I really like the clean, bold look of the whole project.
This opening page is a pretty simple example of what FLYP does well. Some tidy graphics, a simple animation, some sound – all coming together to finish on a traditional opener. Reading on through the piece provides the opportunity to see more footage and hear more of the band, with many of the arresting images high-quality embedded videos which offer new angles on the feature.
I’m not using these as absolute examples of the way forward, just as a starting point for some consideration of how we can all use the enhanced storytelling opportunities now on offer.
The radio phone-in has long been the favoured habitat of the bar room politician, and this morning on Radio London I heard a suggestion so utterly bad that it was almost a work of genius.
In a debate about the widespread school closures, one caller suggested “teachers should just go to their local school”. He suggested it was only a lack of common sense and inability to “bend the rules a little” that prevented this. Because, as everyone knows, it’s pretty simple to just turn up and teach a group of kids you haven’t seen before with no preparation. And everyone would be perfectly happy if strangers just bowled up at a school to teach their kids.
I worry, I really do.
