Disqus - Friends of Wordsmith_for_Hire

Re: Press Gazette - Timothy Smith

Martin Stabe — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:19:00 -0000

Patterson was convicted of Smith's murder in December 2007, several months after this article was published.

Re: Mindy McAdams: Post-grads are a waste of time

Martin Stabe — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:08:06 -0000

I wouldn't paint all post-grad courses with that brush. I did a post-grad journalism course (yes, at City, Ben) and we didn't just talk about journalism (except, ahem, in Prof Greenslade's bit).

That said, I didn't study journalism as an undergrad and did wait a couple of years before going back to do the course at City.

You could make a case against undergraduate journalism degrees, too. I can't quite work out what on earth you would study on a three-year journalism degree. Study economics or something for three years, then go do journalism on a short post-grad course.

Re: Telegraph developer weekend: Showing off the possibilites of Google Earth

Martin Stabe — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:46:55 -0000

Dave, No, I didn't have them to hand when I wrote this. I'll see if I can find them and will add them to the post.

Re: Press Gazette - British Press Awards: The full list of winners

Martin Stabe — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:50:36 -0000

It is true, but they were referring to the London Press Club awards, not the British Press Awards.

Re: Educators debate: Do journalists still need shorthand?

Martin Stabe — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:50:45 -0000

So there are no journalists outside the UK and the few other countries where shorthand is a major part of a reporter's education?

Re: Press Gazette - Final shortlists revealed for Regional Press Awards

Martin Stabe — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:19:29 -0000

Dave, Sunday newspapers are included in the daily category, which is actually called "Daily/Sunday" in full. We will change the headings in the story to reflect this.

Re: MEP slams ‘gutter press’ after News of the World sting

Martin Stabe — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:05:20 -0000

The first paragraph of this post has now been edited to reflect Mr Helmer's correction.

Re: Press Gazette - Trust in journalists plummets - but estate agents come last in new survey

Martin Stabe — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:56:11 -0000

Forrester Research actually did some similar research in the United States recently that included bloggers. They asked whom people trust for information about products and services. Bloggers didn't do very well:

http://blogs.forrester.com/...

Some would argue, though, that the whole debate is academic, since people trust individual bloggers rather than the blogging form as such. The same could probably also be said of journalists.

Re: Press Gazette to relaunch as monthly magazine from September - Press Gazette

Martin Stabe — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:07:59 -0000

Graham, This week's issue was delayed by a problem we encountered during printing, which was unrelated to the decision to go monthly. You should have received your copy one day later than usual.

Re: Press Gazette hasn’t demised yet Roy

Martin Stabe — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:44:12 -0000

The digital edition is an online version of the print magazine produced by Exact Editions. You can find out more here:

http://www.exacteditions.co...

It has been regularly advertised both in the magazine and in the subscription section of our our website since 2006, and has been available either as a standalone product, or as part of the print subscription offer.

Re: At home with Pete Doherty: how I got access to the troubled star - Press Gazette

Martin Stabe — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:52:42 -0000

The interview is in the September issue of Loaded magazine.

Re: New era for your monthly Press Gazette - Press Gazette

Martin Stabe — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:19:08 -0000

Naz,

No, the new magazine will only be available by subscription.

A tool for subscribing online will be added to this website soon.

Re: 'Baldy Blogger' Adrian Sudbury dies - Press Gazette

Martin Stabe — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:23:10 -0000

Ree, No disrespect is intended by this. It is simply our house style to refer to people by their surname on second and subsequent reference. You'll see that this is the case throughout our website.

Re: Trinity Midlands titles get £7.5m newsroom revamp as up to 65 jobs go - Press Gazette

Martin Stabe — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:16:03 -0000

You'll find the NUJ response here:

http://www.pressgazette.co....

Re: Out of Office and Email Approvals?

Martin Stabe — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:24:19 -0000

I've just noticed the problem of out of office replies appearing on our website as well. I have there been any developments on resolving this issue? If not, is there some way to set e-mailed replies to be moderated even if replies via the web are not?

Re: Full disclosure time: New job

Martin Stabe — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:55:08 -0000

I hope that the FS2.0 blog (which has gone quiet in recent months as we concentrated on The Wire) will live on here, where it started.

As for The Wire - it's still very much a going concern and will probably play an ever greater role at Press Gazette.

Re: Hey j-schools, teach before you unleash

Martin Stabe — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:22:27 -0000

Robert, Sorry you feel that way.

As I said in the post, if this were any ordinary "amateur" blogger, none of this would have been be an issue.

In fact, I strongly oppose the idea that blogging requires some sort of "credential". The point was that the blog in question was by a journalism student - a media professional in training. And a media professional in training must understand that the same standards of professional conduct - attribution, not infringing copyright and so on - apply on their blogs as in any other published medium.

I don't think it is patronising to apply the same standards to a student journalist as you would to a graduate "professional". Quite the contrary: I think it would be more patronising to take the attitude that someone is "just a student" or "just a blogger".

I was also careful not to "humiliate" anybody. Nobody is mentioned by name. In fact, I still don't know the name of the student in question, nor do I care. However, I know that my criticisms were taken on board by all the students on the course. I know, because some of them e-mailed me to discuss the issue. You'll see in the comments above that some lecturers on the course, were also very positive about my approach.

Re: Guardian Media Group shuts Greater Manchester weekly offices

Martin Stabe — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:01:07 -0000

I guess Subscriber 1978 has never heard of blogging.

What's wrong with an "unashamed crib" that links to the complete and original report for the sake of completeness?

It's certainly preferable to the newspaper practice of cribbing without any attribution or linking. Now that's shameful.

Re: Guardian Media Group shuts Greater Manchester weekly offices

Martin Stabe — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:11:22 -0000

Press Gazette has run blog posts like this one for well over a year, so I'm not sure how this could be perceived as an "insult" that has anything to do with the move to monthly in print.

I suppose Patrick Smith could have just ignored the story on HTFP -- but then some interested readers might have missed it. Personally I think he's done the right thing by linking to it.

Incidentally, he also wrote a post about the value of linking in journalism earlier today.

(Full disclosure, BTW: I used to work at Press Gazette, and the people there are friends.)

Re: Guardian Media Group shuts Greater Manchester weekly offices

Martin Stabe — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:34:01 -0000

Of course not. But given the vast amount of information on the internet from any number of sources - including sites like HTFP that have a narrow focus on a particular segment of the industry - it is inevitable that not all stories will be reported here first.

It works the other way around, too, of course.

If you take as given that there is more than one site on the Internet, a journalist has several options: Pretend you haven't seen stories on competitors' sites, or attempt to serve your readers by picking up those stories that are relevant to your readership and ignore the rest of the noise.

Part of a journalist's job in the age of information overload is the serve the time-pressed reader by finding and filtering the most significant bits of reliable information or significant ideas that are available online. In his other blog post yesterday, Patrick noted a thoughtful piece by a noted American media blogger - a useful site, but one that most Press Gazette readers probably don't visit every day. Should he have just pretended that wasn't out there as well?

Print publications perform the same exact function every day when they follow up competitors' stories - they are usually just much less transparent about it than this blog is.

Re: Doing your smalls

Martin Stabe — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:07:03 -0000

It's not just their print sales that they are hurting with this, it's their website, too.

There are online services - not run by local newspapers sites - that do a much better job of providing this sort of basic local information.

Re: One Man and His Blog: Digital Journalism: The Time For Talk Is Done

Martin Stabe — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:12:13 -0000

Argh! Sorry.

The dangers of blogging by feed aggregation. I fixed it on delicious, but the feed must have updated the blog before I noticed the typo.

Re: One Man and His Blog: Digital Journalism: The Time For Talk Is Done

Martin Stabe — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:58:22 -0000

Fixed it now. Much easier to pronounce that way, I find.

Re: Which CMS do they use in online journalism utopia?

Martin Stabe — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:44:34 -0000

Absolutely right.

But wouldn't you agree that most newsroom CMSs are designed specifically to do the sort of "knock out a piece of text" journalism and actually discourage the sort of mind shift towards data-driven work you describe?

To build your database-driven football tables, for example, a technically knowledgeable journalist like yourself will most likely have to step outside the constraints of the system used by the to build it from scratch.

The output from that application would then probably be piped back into the general framework that runs the paper's site with some ugly hack involving Javascript or iframes. That's an example of the creative workarounds I was talking about.

The best website editors are those who can achieve this sort of stuff in spite of whatever systems are at their disposal.

Re: Private: Writing for the web: What belongs in the online style guide?

Martin Stabe — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:03:57 -0000

"Spooky synchronicity" indeed. Thanks for the link.