Is this useful? An account of how I started blogging and how it changed my journalism

I’ve just been going through my Google Docs and came across this draft post I wrote back in March last year about how I got into blogging.

I didn’t publish it at the time, thinking some of the things I was saying about The Birmingham Post wouldn’t go down too well considering the upheaval the newspaper was going through.

As you can see, it isn’t finished – and I certainly had no idea that in a year I’d be working for The Times – but I thought I’d post up what was there because it is a record of how I got into blogging and might be of some use to someone.

Let me know if it is and whether you think I should try and bring it up to date!

You know what you should do?” said Stef to me on the night of The Media Guardian Awards as we sat mulling over the night’s award-winning, stage-invading, surreality:

“Write a post explaining how things have changed since you started your blog.”

It’s one of those suggestions that makes your heart sink to your boots. Yes, I agreed, it would be a good exercise. But then so much has changed since September 2007 that I’m not sure I’m able to put it all into words.

But, having had a break for Easter, I feel re-enthused enough to give it a go:

The easiest way to sum it up is this: In August 2007, I was fed up with the state of UK newspapers and seriously considering my employment options. In March 2008, I am still fed up with the state of UK newspapers but now firmly committed to the industry.

So, what has changed?

I have always loved the internet and have been an active member of forums and chat rooms since I was a teenager. But, in all that time, I never considered that I deserved a corner of the web to call my own. I contributed to other people’s websites, but that was as far as I thought I would ever get.

I think that attitude came from the same stable as my dislike for writing newspaper opinion pieces. I’m happiest when I’m learning from and with others: bouncing ideas around.

A column doesn’t do this. It takes a stance, argues its case, ends the conversation. I think there is a confidence bordering on arrogance that you must have to write columns. I just didn’t have it.

My lack of confidence also extended to being unsure I had anything of value to say at all, because I didn’t think I held any strong opinions.

Then, some time in the spring of 2007, along came Birmingham blogger Pete Ashton. Really, Pete had been there all along, building Birmingham’s blogging community but I hadn’t really paid attention until I was directed to his Created in Birmingham blog by a member of AWM after following up a story for The Birmingham Post’s Media & Marketing page.

At first I ignored it as a rather amateurish publication. But soon I was intrigued.

At the time I saw it as a different model for distributing certain types of news and information. What stood out for me at the time (and I hope Marc, my editor, will forgive me for saying this) was as far as “What’s On”-style coverage of the specific creative sector in Birmingham was concerned, CiB kicked The Birmingham Post’s butt. It would take me much longer to understand how important it was in serving its community and giving it a voice.

So I followed CiB for a few months, found out what I could about its author and sent an email asking to have a chat. Pete, catching the whiff of mainstream journalism, promptly ignored me.

It took until Birmingham’s Creative City Awards in September for me to convince Pete to meet me. I had badgered Marc to take a table at the event and, as a result, I got to choose which guests to invite. Pete was the wildcard – I didn’t think he’d accept. But I was delighted when he did.

Luckily, we got on. Actually, as time has passed I think we’ve realised we’re doing similar things, just coming at them from completely different angles.

It was Pete – who many Birmingham blog scene know as an ardent recruiter of bloggers – who told me to write a blog. He had to tell me twice, because at first I said I wasn’t interested.

Although, I didn’t really know what I was doing with the thing, with hindsight I can see from the second post on I started exploring the idea of increasing audience interaction.

I swore Pete to secrecy and asked him not to tell anyone what I was doing.

I also kept it from The Birmingham Post. Not because I had plans to use it as a bitching platform, but because I was genuinely nervous about revealing more of my personality publicly. I thought I’d be a rubbish blogger.

But I didn’t understand that by linking to other people’s blogs, they would know of my existence anyway. So it wasn’t long before I got a few comments…and people were friendly.

The third post was another voyage of discovery. I outpoured about Birmingham and its support of the creative sector. As well as comments, this time Pete broke his silence and blogged about what I had said. Then things started to roll: suddenly people I didn’t know were getting in touch saying that they had read my blog. Then the Head of Communications at Birmingham City Council called to arrange a meeting to discuss my post.

The last one was particularly strange and got me thinking about the power of blogging. I could have written exactly the same thing in The Birmingham Post, which has tens of thousands more readers than my blog, but would I have got that response from the council? I am pretty sure I would not.

It was when I announced a change to my reporting role, that Marc found out about the blog. I’ll be honest, he didn’t find out from me (I hadn’t dared to tell him), but from a colleague of mine who had mentioned it to him.

I remember being told Marc knew and waiting nervously to find out what he was going to do about it. He didn’t do anything. In fact, I believe he walked past my desk and said: “like the blog”. I don’t think to this day he knows how relieved I was to hear that!

But still, the blog had an audience, and suddenly I didn’t really know what I was supposed to write about. Coming from journalism training that teaches you that there is a form and structure to the way you write, a empty blog page was a bit of a nightmare. There was no convention to cling to. It was entirely up to me what I wrote.

It was the post Blogisfear where I expressed that and, with the help of those that commented, particularly Nick Booth, I began to realise that it was only journalists who thought they always had to finish the stories by themselves. On blogs there was collaboration, often a story would remain open-ended. I started to think about why that wasn’t being applied in the same way to news.

I became engrossed in the concept of “Web 2.0” – that there were millions of people out there thinking, creating content and collaborating. I had no more ownership over content or news than they did and, in fact, it was my responsibility, as supposedly employed to be “the eyes and ears of the people” to consult them about what I was doing.

I decided to start asking people to put forward questions for people I was interviewing. This had varying degrees of success and was something I enjoyed (it’s died out a bit now as I don’t interview people all that often now).

Pete told me this was known as “crowd-sourcing” and had a wide range of potential applications for newspapers. I can not stress enough how helpful it was to have someone that I could call to have coffee with and pick their brains on how the web “worked”. I started to look at journalism in a new way through Pete’s explanations of blogging.

It was also Pete, I think, who was the first person to teach me the concept of blogging as a conversation.

I first joined the UK journalism “conversation” the day I wrote about Roy Greenslade leaving the NUJ. His decision was a fantastic catalyst for me to write about what I had been discovering for myself about the future of journalism. Some of the things I write about make me smile now (they were nearly there, but not quite), but I had some great feedback from people in the industry.

One commentor was Craig McGinty, who introduced me to the idea of papers developing online communty. It’s funny. Looking back at Craig’s comment, I remember at the time thinking that it was unlikely that any newspaper would employs a person with “the responsibility to help local groups and organisations set up blog-driven sites.” Now, after launching 35 bloggers on The Birmingham Post website, that idea seems perfectly reasonable!

The NUJ debate also showed me how blogging can take you into the heart of a community as, within a few posts, I was debating in the comments section of my blog with Donnacha Delong – the journalist that had sparked the whole debate in the first place with an article in The Journalist.

By the time Trinity Mirror’s chief executive Sly Bailey turned up at our offices, to explain why The Birmingham Post & Mail was no longer for sale, I was being watched by a number of management-types in the company… which was a little unnerving to say the least.

So much so, that I actually stopped posting for a bit, worried that I was starting to act like a monkey performing tricks to try and impress an audience.

It’s something that has continued to be on my mind when I write. I still want this to be a home for half-baked ideas and chats with colleagues, but you can not forget that what you say can make people pretty darn cross… as I was to discover a bit later into my blogging experiment.

An interview with an anonymous blog commenter

One of the problems with the online space is the perception of distance and anonymity that it creates. It means that people often say things in ways that are harsher than they would in real life.

But do they even realise they are coming across that way? I’ve always wondered what the people behind the spikey comments on our blogs are like.

Richard regularly comments on The Birmingham Post blogs under the pseudonym “Clifford” and, it is fair to say, has developed quite a bit of a reputation as a curmudgeon. But, despite his criticisms of The Post, he has stuck with us even when we didn’t quite get things right.

For that reason I wanted to meet him and, I have to admit with some considerable trepidation, I invited him for a tour of our offices.

The man I met in reception could not have been further from what I expected – polite, erudite, passionate and engaged in local news. For his part, he was oblivious to the image he had been portraying to others online.

Of course the wider point is that those who engage on the internet need to remember there are humans behind the handles (or bylines) and try and think about how their comments might be taken.

However, I don’t see internet arcadia arriving any time soon, so I think it’s worth journalists seeing that not all aggressive commenters are always aware how they are coming across. It is not always personal.

Whilst with us at The Post, Richard kindly agreed to go on video and talk frankly about why he commented on the blogs and how he’d want to see the newspaper develop in the future.

Richard has also told me he is considering retiring Clifford and in future wants to comment online as himself.

In total the two videos come in at around 15 minutes long. I haven’t edited them much, as so much of what Richard said interested me and I wanted to keep it for future reference!

However, if you want to jump to a particular point, here is a guide:

Video 1 (above):
00:36: On how his comments were percieved by journalists.
01:53: On pseudonyms and putting personal details online.
04:48: On political coverage in The Birmingham Post.
05:49: On the development of Birminghampost.net.
07:00: On the need for web-first publishing (and why it won’t affect newspaper sales).

Video 2 (below):
00:19: Why scale is important in making a blog feel like a community.
01:36: What makes someone comment on a blog.
02:40: What blogs would work best on a newspaper website.
03:20: Why journalists should try and engage on blogs and not worry about bad comments.
05:42: On revitalising the Birminghampost.net blogs

Twitter name change: @bhampostjoanna => @timesjoanna

People have been asking what I plan to do with @bhampostjoanna after I leave the Post at the end this week.

The answer seems to cause some consternation: I am keeping the account and changing the name to reflect the new publication I work for.

“But these are contacts you’ve built up during your time at The Post! You can’t just take them with you,” has been one of the responses. (NB. It is worth noting that The Post has been very happy for me to retain my account – the comments have mostly come from people outside of journalism).

I guess it raises the question: who owns a journalist’s account on a social network, if they use it purely for work?

The answer seems simple to me: what journalist doesn’t take their contact book with them when they leave (or at very least a copy of it)? The nature of the job is that you build relationships with people and, although some will leave you when you switch titles, others will be contacts throughout your working life.

The benefit of a Twitter account is, of course, that all my contacts are publicly available for anyone to see. So, unlike a contact book, I can’t run off and hide it when I leave!

This blog post is the start of letting people know that on March 9 I hope to change @bhampostjoanna to @timesjoanna.

Alternate Birmingham Post Twitterers include:

@marcreeves, editor
@mikehughes, executive editor
@steve_nicholls, multimedia editor
@paulmdale, public affairs editor
@jonwalker121, political editor
@tomscotney, business reporter, legal and financial
@anna_blackaby, business reporter, creative industries
@mandybrain, marketing development manager

A big thank you and an invite

I have been utterly blown away by the response to my new job blog post last week and have felt guilty that I haven’t been able to thank everyone for their kind comments.

If I haven’t been in touch – please know I’m chuffed to bits and very grateful for the good wishes.

To answer the main questions: my last day at The Birmingham Post will be March 6th. After that I will be off to SXSWi and will start at The Times on March 23rd. Inbetween I will find somewhere to live in London!

In the meantime I would like to invite my friends and colleagues to join me for a drink at Pennyblacks in the Mailbox, Birmingham on March 6th. It would be great to see you there.

New Job

Today I have resigned from my job at the Birmingham Post.

I will be leaving the paper and Birmingham in just over a month to take up a new position as a web development editor for The Times.

This is a pretty big deal for me. The Post was where I got my first break into journalism and where I had the opportunity to develop my interest in the web. I am a passionate supporter of the title and of the city and I will miss both immensely.

I’m really grateful to everyone at the paper who supported me and encouraged me to develop my expertise in blogging and social media. Also, big thanks to Birmingham’s exceptionally friendly and welcoming online community who have been generous with their time and taught me so much.

Looking forward, The Times is a phenomenally exciting opportunity for me and, in very many ways, my dream job. I’ll go into the details in another post soon, but suffice to say I’m really looking forward to it and will, I hope, be able to fill you in about my London adventures via this blog.

Newspaper brands – “crucial as records of facts”?

I just wanted to quickly and shamelessly point out again that a rather fantastic debate has broken out underneath my post about how most news doesn’t need journalism.

It has prompted a very considered and interesting comment from Steve Dyson – editor of the Birmingham Mail and the Sunday Mercury.

An extract:

Local newspaper brands have great reputations for reporting trusted facts. Let’s not dilute this too quickly without knowing what we’re diluting it with. Yes, add interaction, online and in print, but let’s clearly label what is what.

There is more, including comments disagreeing with his stance.

Sly Bailey on the future of digital – full speech

When Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey spoke at the Association of Online Publishers earlier this month, people seemed to focus on her predictions that 2009 would be a repeat of 1999 with the digital bubble bursting.

I hadn’t heard the whole speech until today, but journalism.co.uk has a natty recording of the whole thing. I think it’s worth listening to, not least in terms of how TM strategy is communicated.

[display_podcast]


Big changes for The Birmingham Post – reaction round-up

We’re just come back from a big announcement about the future of Trinity Mirror Midlands, part of that was a major announcement about the future of The Birmingham Post.

I think I want some of the dust to settle before blogging my own thought (and don’t want to gazump my Editor!), but I thought I’d provide a bundle of links to other people talking about what is happening.

I will post my thoughts a bit later, so if you want to leave some questions in the comments, I’ll try and answer them. Suffice to say there are some very interesting times ahead.

How transparent should newspapers get?

A little while ago I got myself embroiled in a rather heated debate with another member of the newspaper industry over the “transparent newsroom”.

It’s a policy that has been adopted by The Spokesman Review in the US.

The newspaper has embraced transparency in an attempt to regain credibility in its community. It even has an interactive news conference which is videoed and put onto the web.

Why shouldn’t UK newspapers such as mine embrace this practice, I asked? Surely it would make us more accountable and show a willingness to engage with our readers. Isn’t our biggest battle on the web for trust and credibility? This would be one way to help us establish ours.

Not so, said my friend. It would be dangerous as news conferences will discuss the legalities of some stories, some of which would not be approved for publication. Showing video of these conversations on the web was publication in itself and we could be sued for that.

Also, there are journalists who are very good at what they do and not very good at public speaking – they would come across poorly on video and may actually lose the trust of readers.

Language and “gallows humour” would also be a problem, he suggested.

These are not, however, issues that come up in this video by The Spokesman Review:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLCAZBYQMCg&hl=en]

[via Colin Mulvany]

The top issues here are nutters and the increased amount of time needed to interact with and justify editorial decisions to readers.

What is also worth noting is that there is also no current statistical information to demonstrate that this practice is bringing more people to the newspaper.

But, it’s an idea that has been taken up by other UK newspapers. Last month, The Liverpool Daily Post dabbled with transparency and became the first paper in the country to broadcast their news conference live over the Internet.

So, should The Birmingham Post be doing the same?