I helped teach the web journalism students – a fantastic bunch who produced some brilliant websites for their dissertations.

Find out more about journalism at the University of Sheffield.

Good luck class of 2012!

Iulia on graduation day

The piece has been nominated for a Canadian Online Publishing Award.

Chickens to roost in Vancouver backyards

There’s no denying it’s a good piece of journalism – but is it web video? In Marie’s words: “Look how closely it follows broadcast conventions.”

I subscribe to the web rule that ‘simple is best’ and show the web students this video on pocket-sized journalism (from the BBC College of Journalism) as a guide to best practice.

So where does this leave web video? Is it different to broadcast video? What makes a video piece ‘web’?

On election night 2010, one student at the Department of Journalism at the University of Sheffield discovered a story. Through a combination of speed, contacts and Twitter we made her story go national – and this is how we did it.

Let me set the scene

The journalism postgraduates at Sheffield University work together for one week in the second semester to produce news output of the highest standard possible. I help the web MAs with the website – how to populate with content and organise it, how to attract an audience and keep the site fresh. What I love about this week is that the adrenaline is flowing, stress levels skyrocket and the output is absolutely top drawer.

Output from the students

Print: Two editions of a newspaper (Thursday and Friday)
Broadcast: Hourly radio news bulletins plus an extended final show and two TV bulletins (Thursday and Friday)
Magazine: Work for several weeks beforehand to produce a 60-page magazine
Web: Liaise with all the groups to put the best content online on the JUS News website, as well as populating the site with local, national and sport news. The website is also able to stream the news bulletins and showcase the TV packages.

Spotting the story

Print student Anna Macnaughton noticed a friend’s tweet saying she’d been waiting in a queue for two hours to vote. Anna decided to head over to the polling station to investigate. She had her journalistic instincts firmly engaged:

• Is this new?
• Is it interesting?
• Do I want to know more – and are there several points of view I can gather?

Anna popped into the multimedia newsroom (where the web team were stationed) to pick up a camera and tell us where she was going. We decided to run the story and Joey Close (the day’s web editor) started writing it up from tweets he found using the search function. Anna promised to call us with more details once she was at the polling station and rushed off, tiny kodak video camera in hand.

Just a few minutes later, Anna called up with more details and to let us know she had pictures and video. Joey was able to file the first version of the story, which he pushed out to Twitter using the @JUS_News account.

Knowing who to look for on Twitter

Neal Mann, Sky News journalist, had been in the department the day before to help out. Neal graduated from the department a few years ago and we’d spent a few minutes catching up. We talked about how Twitter is today’s essential tool for journalists and how helpful it is to him as a journalist as Sky strive to be first with the news.

Knowing Neal (and Sky) would be interested in the story, I sent a tweet that we would have video from Ranmoor polling station shortly and were they interested? (Incidentally, I’d seen Neal say he was going to get some sleep as he was on shift in the early hours of the morning, so Broadcast Course leader Marie Kinsey suggested we tweet Sky journalist Niall Paterson.)

A few minutes later we had a message from Hazel, Sky News online journalist/producer asking for video/pictures.

Bingo. Once we had uploaded our fresh pictures and video we sent the information to Hazel. And once Sky were running our stuff, other news agencies saw it and wanted it!

Other news agencies come running

Soon enough we had spotted our story (and several incoming links) on the Times Online, the BBC, Channel4 and the New Statesman (see the screengrabs below).

By this time, a couple more student journalists had gone to join Anna with a stills camera and video camera to get better quality content. Reuters paid the student who took the camera footage £150 for using her video and picture agency Picture It Now used the images taken by Colin Shek.

So, how DO you break a national news story?

Assuming you are in the right place at the right time:

• Have a smartphone that can take pictures, video, audio, even type up text
• Be quick! Others might be doing as you do so your aim is to file first
• Be connected – follow journalists. Who will want your story? Is it local, national or special interest?
• Use Twitter to tap into the contacts in your network quickly
• Be trustworthy: Report the facts, don’t omit anything – and did I mention checking your facts?

We also hashtagged all our tweets (whether from our own accounts or the @JUS_News one) with #jusnews to help others following us see what new content we were putting live and also to cross promote the other output the students were producing. See the #jusnews tweets.

Further reading: In the students’ own words:

Anna Macnaughton: Blog: Getting the story at Hallam polling station

Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy: People denied the right to vote at Sheffield Hallam polling station: link round-up

The first thing I’ve learned is that although a huge and growing number of people get their news primarily online, most I’ve spoken to don’t have a clear idea of what “web journalism” actually is. When I tell people what course I’m doing, I generally get a reaction along the lines of, “So, is that, like, blogging?”

So the second thing I’ve had to learn on this course is how to respond to that question gracefully. I used to say, “No, anybody with an opinion and an internet connection can blog. Why would I pay thousands of pounds to learn how?” True and succinct, but not the politest way to say it.

Then I started responding, “No, like journalism… only on a website.” This tended to be met with a blank stare. “Like the BBC news website or the [insert name of newspaper here] online.” Faint glimmer of understanding.

And then there was the rant. “No, blogging is mainly people’s opinions and anyone can write a blog. Web journalism is much more specialised. It’s like any kind of journalism in the newsgathering sense, but it’s written differently, specifically for websites. There are all kinds of things like search engine optimisation that you use when you’re writing for a real website. Plus web journalists are trained in media law, which most bloggers aren’t. A web journalist might also blog, but it’s not the same thing and they’re not interchangeable terms.”

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against blogs as a rule. Obviously I’m writing for one now. And there are many excellent blogs, some of them even journalistic. What irks me is the attitude of many people I’ve met, including some other journalists, that web writing is inferior to print or broadcast in some way.

It’s particularly troublesome as the market is headed more and more towards online content. But really, I’ll have the last laugh because of the specialised skills I’m learning. Like search engine optimisation, making sure relevant keywords are in appropriate places on the page so it ranks well in search engines. How to structure a story that engages the reader and makes them click through to other pages on the site. How to use photos and teaser text to the best advantage.

So now I smile and say, “No, not really. We build websites and then we write news stories to put on them using specific web techniques.”

What do you think? How do you describe web journalism?

Last week I was a bit baffled by one student. I’d asked them to practice different writing styles – sport, news and entertainment. I had prepared three stories for them to re-write.

This student was finding the entertainment story particularly hard going. It was about Cheryl Cole’s number one single and album. “Try something like… Sexy Cheryl…” I started, then stopped. He’d started his headline and it was already breaking the law.

“You wouldn’t say that, would you?” I said, then added: “You’ve learned about libel on this course haven’t you?”.

“Oh, I know I couldn’t publish it,” he brushed aside my concern, “But I hate her.”

I’ve never come across this before: (a) Hating a celebrity so much that I can’t bear to write about them or (b) Not being able to write about anything because my feelings are so strong.

Maybe if you asked me to write about Phil Collins or doing the washing up I might understand. What’s your line? What wouldn’t you be able to bring yourself to write about?

This post was originally published by Christine on Tue, 11/10/2009