Earlier this year I was at a journalism conference in Perugia and on one of the panels was a chap from the Huffington Post. He described how during the 2008 Presidential campaign they’d had a massive scoop when one of their contributors caught a candidate gaffe on video, it was uploaded and within hours it was leading most international news sites and the talk of the day on Twitter, Facebook and more.

Our panel discussed the implications of this on the media, and I said we’re living in a golden age of social media stupidity. Why? Because at the moment you can find copious amounts of information on people, their activities, and much more – but you can also find it very quickly.

I was reminded of this by Alison Gow’s excellent post on How to (Not) kill Journalism and how the web represents such an opportunity, particularly being able to crowdsource direct with your followers.

Sadly, I was also reminded of it by the university where I did my degree as X Factor reject Frankie Cocozza came to perform at the student night club.

Lots of excited youngsters queued to see Mr Cocozza and one young lady decided to ask for her ass to be signed by the man himself. She found herself on the Daily Mail and quickly saw tweets and Facebook messages about the offending incident, and a Facebook photo album, which was completely public, became a hunting ground for people to leave downright abusive comments about some of the people having their photo taken with Cocozza (Interestingly, the photo Daniel Bentley tweeted, which drew nearly 400 comments about a certain girl, has now been removed.

The comments were, as Dave Lee has previously pointed out in his post about YouTube comments, rude, abusive and wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else (see terms and conditions etc). So why do we unleash and let forth a torrent of “what we really think” online?

To me it is all about education. There’s not many who can say they’ve grown up with social media, for my generation (growing up around the turn of the century) it was MSN, AOL, ICQ and chatrooms when we were teens – oh and email. But these tended to be 1-2-1 chats, usually not able for use afterwards unless someone saved the chat and printed it out.

For the generation after it was MySpace, Faceparty and Bebo. But these weren’t discussed in school, there was no how to, we were being trained in Excel, Word and Access. The curriculum was Microsoft and how to “do things” on computers.

Journalists are nearly always early adopters, we worked out how to do things with mobile phones earlier than most, same with the internet and computers. We might not be the best, but we know how to make technology do what we want it to do in very creative ways. And it is the same with social media, around 2009 there was always the complaint that the only person you’ll find on Twitter is a journalist.

But as the population have mainly taught themselves how to use social media, and used it as something akin to a hobby, they perhaps don’t think too carefully about the real-life implications.

The amount of personal information available on Facebook is stunning, and yet these people might be X-Directory because they don’t want their home phone number being found. A quick search can reveal nearly the exact location you live in, who all your family are, your phone number, numerous photos of you (which are often dated and located), and very quickly a back story can be found on who you are.

Twitter acts as an archive of what you say. They aren’t deleted after a certain time, there are thousands of tweets stretching back, with their conversations available so context can be placed.

Journalists have been quick to the party, the number of “and he said on Twitter” stories has been growing. Especially as more and more people with authority or celeb status take to the service to use it as a communication channel. If it happens on Twitter, it will be on the mainstream media websites within hours and in the papers the next morning, and the magazines within a couple of days. The media amplifies the Facebook and Twitter spats, announcements and stupidity to whole new levels.

Before if you did something stupid, your friends knew it and would (most of the time) never let you forget. Now if you’re filmed naked and running into a window on holiday you are that bloke off the YouTube clip, forever and on your CV.

So, why is this so great for journalists? Because it is real. It’s moments we just wouldn’t get to see otherwise, it’s the angry opinions of someone unleashed directly and it’s an insight into what people really think and do. It’s lifting the lid off life itself, and that’s what shifts page views and sells papers.

Until the right education on social media privacy is given at an early age to the masses, this boom time will continue. I guess it will be anything you tweet may be given as evidence, and as we’ve seen with the Facebook riot inciters – it rightly can be.

Image credit to charlessc

It has my journey from journalism degree, to student media, to placements, to running Blog Preston (now that’s probably more hyperlocal, as Preston’s a smaller city). But I’m not going to get into the debate about what is, or isn’t, hyperlocal. It’s all good stuff.

Have a read of ‘Lessons from the hyperlocal frontline…’

Three weeks and a little bit into the role as Online Communities Editor with Media Wales and we’ve only gone and launched a community website for Cardiff.

We’re taking a bit of a risk, developing as we go along and hopefully building a community around the yourCardiff website. I’m hoping that by being open during the development stage we get people chipping in, suggesting ideas and feeling like it’s their site too – rather than just being developed some suits in an office.

This does however mean we’ve got a few gaping holes, some bits that say ‘under development’ and no doubt some parts that don’t display properly in Internet Explorer or some obscure browser.

But, it’s a win. We’ve hit the ground running, we’re building from the bottom up and hopefully creating a site that Cardiff can be proud of. It’s about the little things, celebrating what happens in communities (both location and interest wise) across the capital city of Wales.

We’ll no doubt have some fallings out, some disputes and some triumphs but I’m sure it’ll be fun along the way as we try to break our content down into hyper-local chunks – putting news and information into the hands of people in Cardiff. Sounds dangerous, it could be. Sounds ambitious, it is.

We’ll be using social media to help build our community, but it’s also about getting out of the office, out of the media hub and sticking our camera or pen and paper, into different places to find out what’s going on.

As I saw posted on a rather visceral blog post the other week – hyper-local is nothing new. It’s doing what local news organisations do best, tell people what’s going on in their area and community (be that location or subject of interest) but the web just opens up new opportunities and ways of doing that.

And finally, a huge thank you to unclewilco (Andrew Wilcox) for his break-neck development over the last few weeks. There’s much more to come.

Image credit to Auntie P

It’s a tough market out there at the moment, not just in journalism but in any industry. As a legion of graduates prepare to scrap like never before for jobs with contracting companies, it must feel horrible to have started your studies in 2006 when the economy was stable, optomism was high and journalism was starting out on its adventure into a multimedia future.

Now it’s a different story. I read Kyle Christie’s post with interest, particularly about whether you should take a ‘non-journalism’ job to pay the rent or whether you should risk debt and starvation on a basic trainee salary.

There’s no easy answer. But I wouldn’t rail against anyone who took the non-journalism route, as that’s what I ended up doing.

My first job was actually a journalism job (and a few other things besides). It was running the student media at the University of Central Lancashire Students’ Union and I’d thoroughly recommend the opportunity to any students reading this. If you get the chance to stand for election, or apply for the position as it is in some places, do it. You learn a lot in a short space of time and you learn how to manage a team. You’re the editor, it’s on your head. It’s a great experience and it’s a real experience.

But, as I came to the end of my tenure as editor it was time find a job. I applied, citing my experience, showing my skills, pointing to my excellent degree. But nothing came of it, interviews came and went and I was staring unemployment in the eye. I landed a job where I had been working but on a short-term contract, it was a mix of different roles but ultimately a web-based role. It needed some journalism skills.

The advantage to doing a journalism degree is that you learn so many transferable skills. You learn how to tell stories, create content, edit, it’s not hard to make the jump into some other industries. You have to be organised, confident and a good communicator – and be able to work as part of a team. You’re ticking a lot of person spec boxes in many jobs that require less work/effort and command a better salary than those trainee positions.

But, as Kyle alluded to. You’ve got to keep your hand in. Once I had my reasonable salary and regular hours, I found I had some spare time. I set up a hyper-local blog for where I live. I wrote content, I blagged content from people. I got into my community, put on events, took pictures. Now I have 150 unique visitors a day, on average, and I might be able to apply for some funding.

So, if you do find yourself in a ‘non-journalism’ job, just remember it’s not the end. You can still be a journalist, you just might have to do it as a hobby to start off with and then see when the break comes. When it comes, take it with both hands.

I thought long and hard about this month’s question, puzzling about whether it would be the new start-ups who will rule the media roost or whether the old juggernauts will continue in their place at the top of the media tree. After much puzzling I decided that I couldn’t decide who would win, and it lead me to the conclusion that there perhaps isn’t a battle-line being drawn yet – as we haven’t seen enough evidence of new start-ups.

To reach my conclusion I weighed up both sides:

The “old”

They have the power, resources and knowledge to transform themselves. Indeed some of them already are, opening themselves up, pushing more resources into multimedia and pushing their content out via different platforms.

Most importantly the “old” news organisations still have a huge readership, centred in one place, and they still have trust with a lot of their readers. Not everyone is in the ‘new wave’ of digitally literate. There are still those who prefer the printed page and there always will be.

The “old” media organisations will need to be working closely with those in the tech industry, particularly mobile phone makers and networks, to ensure that their content is accessible from anywhere at anytime. As mobile phones become more important for internet use and widespread easy access to wireless networks is commonplace, reading the latest headlines on your mobile phone web browser will be considered everyday normality.

“old” media brands will always have a place in the new media world, but they need to ensure that they have their content opened up and accessible in as many different ways as possible to their increasingly scattered and diverse readership.

The “new”

New start ups would be a good place to put yourself as a new journalist, but with them they carry huge risks. They exist in the online world, one that is still expanding, but as everyone keeps saying “there’s no money there yet” – well, not the money that was required to support the “old” media models.

Start ups will have to work hard to win trust, capture the public’s attention and ensure they are providing the right content. True it’ll be easier to make their content accessible and incorporate multimedia, it’s always starting afresh with a blank slate – but the “old” media have their archives, providing a lot of added value to their content.

The other thing that worries me is will any new start up that makes more than a penny suddenly by snapped up by the “old” media and incorporated into their corporate structures? We see it in the tech sector, a new network/tool comes along and then a giant like Google or Microsoft weighs in and buys it.

Startups though could have a big role to play in local/regional journalism. With a smaller patch to cover and the tools at their disposal, and with a declining local/regional “old” media (well here in the UK anyway) and murmurs of state intervention to save them – wouldn’t it be amazing if a state bail out went to a big fund that new media entrepreneurs could bid to for their local news media startup (yes, I realise this raises a whole load of ethical questions but it’s an idea)?

The battle between “old” and “new” media does not seem to be fully joined yet, as the “old” still dominate but if the “old” do not pull their fingers out over the next decade then the “new” will start to become a reality.

• You can’t just have peanut butter

How do you measure social media success?

• Obama – the revolution will be televised

Short piece about how if Obama does win next week, it could cause a lot of people to start re-write the politics marketing books. He’s shown how online can connect with the grassroots but that you can’t just be online, you have to be everywhere.

• The nostalgia of the hyperlocal

Nigel Barlow points me in the direction of Andrew Grant-Adamson who makes some interesting points about whether online could be the future of hyperlocal. With local newspapers across the country in huge decline, could online present a return to the local, local, news agenda? I think it’s all a question of resources.

The biggest challenge is… first the sheer amount of competition there now is in the media industry. I know it’s always been competitive, but with more and more universities offering journalism/media degrees the industry is full of ‘wannabe journalists’. This means that media organisations can keep their salaries nice and low, or in some cases not pay at all, and yet people will still bite at the chance to ‘have a go’. The turnover is high, the hours long, and I’m pretty sure for a recent graduate it’s demoralising stuff. I have friends who’ve gone in with high hopes, and been left nearly broke and their dreams shattered – or been stuck doing mundane work with little freedom.

As the economic slowdown begins to bite in the UK, and circulations continue to fall, the task of getting out on the beat and doing proper journalism is fast being ditched in favour of the story that will shift more papers there and then. The quick buck is often coming first. Going ‘off-diary’ is a luxury that few media organisations feel they can afford. For a young journalist, with ideas and drive, to be sat at a desk and faced with a pile of press releases and every ‘idea’ is shot down by more experienced colleagues must be a hell of a challenge in itself. As the recent departure of the BBC’s North-West political editor shows, the trend to ‘fluffy’ and ‘politics-lite’ reporting, is forcing many to consider their futures – and I’m sure there will be plenty of fresh meat willing to do ‘politics-lite’ reporting.

The challenge for many young journalist’s is having the confidence to stand up to an editor, or more senior colleague, and say ‘No, I think this is really important and I’ve got a great idea of how we can do more with this. We could do this on the web, we could do that on the web and cross-over to the paper/radio etc…’

Faced with negativity, cynicism and a lack of opportunities in traditioinal media organisations, it’s no wonder that so many talented journalist’s are jumping ship to public relations or other communications industries – where the budgets are bigger, the pay is better and the hours are more flexible.

Interesting piece from Paul Bradshaw about the role that blogging/online/networked journalism can play online. Although, Paul does point out that this article wasn’t just about blogging but about investigative journalism as a whole.

a) Under 30-years-old. I know there will be a couple of disappointed people out there with this restriction, but without it I feel we lose the point a bit.

b) You blog (or plan to blog) about journalism in some shape or form. Bit of an obvious one, this, but I think it’s important that we’re all coming from the same place here. I’m not bothered what stage of you’re career you’re at, so long as that career’s journalism.

c) You promote the ring! If we all bring attention to this by shouting it from the rooftops, then there’s no reason why this can’t become the best point for young opinion on the media on the web.

Sounds good to me, I fit the criteria and dropped Dave an email – so I await more details with anticipation.