Multimedia reporting of a tragedy

Tuesday 10th August was unremarkable. A normal day at the office in a month that is traditionally quiet, although we’d had South Wales Police doing a press conference as they hunted another suspect in the Aamir Siddiqi murder case.

That all changed around 7 PM when the police helicopter was hovering above my flat. I thought it might have something to do with the hunt for Siddiqi suspect and the sound was deafening so I went to have a look and I thought I’d reflect into what turned out to be an evening full of reporting. Read the rest of this entry »

How journalists can create readers+

There’s been a lot of talk about funding journalism and how the web can play a part in this, but the web above all for journalists offers an opportunity to create readers+.

Journalists have always had contacts, those people who we can go to for comment and stories. They might be professional people, police officers, nurses or the local cleaner at the comprehensive who overhears gossip when he’s having a ciggie round the back of the head’s office.

Now, though, through social media and the web we’ve got a pool of intelligent, connected and helpful people at our finger-tips. Here’s how to leverage it: Read the rest of this entry »

Council documents tell stories, not just Freedom of Information requests

The Freedom of Information Act was great for journalism, opening up a world of information on public authorities and definitely very useful when it comes to squirreling away stories (getting stories ready ahead of a holiday period such as Christmas).

While I don’t dispute the great stories that come from FOI requests, just see David Higgerson’s weekly round-up ‘FOI Friday’ for some superb stories across the UK media, it’s worth remembering what can come from sifting through council documents that often contain data as controversial as that in FOI requests – it’s just not as straight forward to find.

There’s a few ways you can find stories from council documents:

- Scrutiny committee papers

- Executive business meetings

- Councillor’s questions Read the rest of this entry »

When hyperlocal gets too local?

Been reporting on a lot of PACT meetings in the last few months. These are ‘Partners and Communities Together’ meetings, where the local residents come together in an area and raise issues with local police and councillors.

At one meeting I went to there were a group of residents from a particular group of houses in Cardiff. They complained about youth annoyance, a problem that is regularly raised at PACT meetings across the city. The Police made this group of houses one of their PACT priorities, along with other problems in the area. If something is a PACT priority then this means extra patrols will take place and resources are put into trying to stop the problem.

This issue was a big talking point at the meeting, and residents gave quotes about the particular problems they’d been having.

I wrote up an article for yourCardiff about the PACT meeting and led with the line on the youth annoyance at this particular group of houses. I included the name of these particular houses (not the houses numbers, but the overall name for that area of housing, such as Meadow Close, Finlay Estate).

I received an email from a resident of said housing area, complaining that they had been unable to sell their house due to the article. Apparently the prospective buyer had read the article and decided against the purchase.

I stood by the article, but agreed to change the name of the housing area to a more generic area name in the headline. The article was riding high in Google for the specific housing area name, because there was little else published about the area.

I also offered to add a quote from the person complaining into the article to offer an alternative viewpoint to living in the housing area.

This is an area that could cause problems in the future as hyperlocal sites populate niche and very local search terms. As far as I was concerned, I was at a public meeting which helps set policing priorities and I have a duty to report what happened at that meeting and let the public know what the priorities are for the local police.

What do you think? Can hyperlocal reporting get too local? Have you had a similar problem when reporting and what did you do?